To all my readers, please be notified that I moved my blog to:
http://dohashawki.wordpress.com
I will be writing my blog posts there from now on.
Thank you
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Comparing Starbucks, Cilantro and Costa
If you are a service provider all you care about is the quality of your service. If you are a coffee shop for example all you care about should be your quality of service. I thought of comparing three of the well known coffee shops here in Egypt regarding the quality of service: Costa, Cilantro and Starbucks.
I will focus on the following points regarding the quality of service in my comparison:
- Cleanliness of the place.
- How friendly, prompt and professional the waiters are.
- Quality of food and drinks.
- Speed of service.
- Quality & usability of the take away utensils.
- Their working hours.
- Environment.
- Cost
Let us take the above points one by one:
- Cleanliness of the place.
- I think all are very good in that regards.
- How friendly, prompt and professional the waiters are.
- Cilantro would rate the highest in this regards. They are always smiling and friendly and they execute your special requests promptly. What is more important also is that they listen! They let you finish what you are saying and then comment if any.
- After Cilantro comes Starbucks, they are not friendly at all. Most of the time you can not figure out what they are saying, they never smile and they would not care if they spilled your drink, they will give you the mug dripping!! (it happened to me). They also do not listen. Once I asked them to heat my cheese croissant an extra amount of time than they usually do. After he did heat it, I asked: “did you heat it extra?” I got a weird answer, “It is ready”, the waiter said!!… This meant only one thing to me; it is as if he told me “shut-up”. But they are fast. They will not make you wait forever for your order.
- The last is Costa, most of the time waiters are not concentrating, they are very slow and they forget what you ordered sometimes. In many cases you have to check on your order several times until you get it. Once I asked for a hot egg sandwich, I got it cold! So I told the waiter it is cold. The first answer was, “no it is heated” ….frustrating!!
- Quality of food and drinks
- Starbucks is the best when it comes to quality of drinks. I have not tried their food though so I can not judge (except for the cheese croissant and it is delicious). In Cappuccino for example, Starbucks is the only one who gets right. The right amount and flavor of coffee with the right amount of milk. I never get it too strong and never too much milk.
- Costa comes second in the quality of drinks (but food wise Cilantro is better).
- Cilantro comes third in the quality of drinks (but in food Quality rates higher than Costa). Cilantro’s coffee is too strong; maybe they are rare on milk. I do not know but I never drink coffee at Cilantro. But they have nice varieties of food, whether desserts or breakfast and lunch foods. And they do something very annoying if you ask for a delivery; they only fill half the cup!! But you pay for a full cup.
- Speed of service.
(I am not comparing in peak times. The comparison is based on the time when they have a reasonable amount of customers)- Starbucks. When I go there whether to stay or take away I do not feel that I waited at all for my order. I just order, pay, pick-up and go.
- Cilantro. Here I feel that I waited sometime especially if I am staying. Not an annoying interval of time but I feel it.
- Costa. I can take a nap until I get what I ordered!!
- Quality & usability of the take away utensils
- When I order take away drinks from Starbucks I know I am safe. The cup is holding itself well. It is not easily twisted; its lid is well closed. I know I will not spill on myself if I am in a moving car or walking on foot. They also provide the hard-cardboard cover to protect your hands from the hot drink automatically without you having to ask for it.
- Cilantro rates second. The quality of the cup is less than Starbucks’s (it is not as hard) and the lid is not as tight. But they did something new and nice, you can lock and un-lock the lid. I do not think they have the hard-cardboard cover. Actually I do not know as they never gave it to me.
- Costa is a disaster in this respect. The cups get twisted and squeezed very easily and lid flies away and you suddenly find the very hot drink all over your clothes. And again they do not give you the hard-cardboard.
- Working hours.
- Starbucks is the smartest; they open 6:00a.m. So they get most of the customers who need an early breakfast before they go to work.
- Costa opens early as well but they provide only one waiter who is trying to wake up most of the time so the service is very slow.
- Cilantro is not intelligent in that matter. They do not open before 8:30a.m. or 9:00 sometimes (Abbas el Akkad branch). So they miss all the possible customers who could pass by before going to work.
- Environment:
- Starbucks again is the best because it is a smoke-free place. Smoking is completely prohibited in Starbucks which shows that they care for your health as their customer. It is also wise because it will make you able to stay longer to finish some work or chat with your friends and in either case you might order more than once.
- Cilantro and Costa are the same in that matter, it is very difficult to sit and enjoy your drink. Although there is a section for smokers and a section for non-smokers, but the two sections are right beside each other and you will suffer from the smoke and want to leave quickly.
- Cost:
- Costa and Cilantro are nearly close in that matter and relatively ok (could be cheaper of course)
- Starbucks is very expensive.
Very small issues matter when it comes to customer service. Here in Egypt we are very weak in that matter. I am sure chains like Starbucks and Costa outside Egypt will never serve the way they do here because they will have strong management watching their backs. We need the firm manager who would not settle for less than perfect when comes to serving customers. Especially when you have lots of competitors, you have to excel to attract more customers.
How about you give me your opinion? Answer the survey below to compare the three coffee shops. I will give the survey one week and then I will publish the result to see how most of us rate those coffee shops.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Ten Signs your are offering a bad customer support service
Want to know whether your customer support service is good enough? Need to know whether your customers are satisfied or not? Check for the following ten signs. If they exist then be sure your customer support needs a boost.
1- You are not directly communicating with your customers and not collecting their feedback on your level of service. Some good examples are: online feedback forms, surveys, questionnaires, feedback collection phone calls .....
2- You do not have any targets or standards for performance. This means your customer support employees do not have any standards to meet. If you work without targets then you do not have a challenge to meet and hence you will not go anywhere.
3- You do not have any effective training programs (whether internal or external) to leverage your support team’s performance and refresh their minds every while.
4- You do not have a clear workflow that all support members follow clearly and without a flaw when serving a customer.
5- You have a set of de-motivated customer support employees. This can be because they are not rewarded for extraordinary effort, or there is no room for growth or no room for acquiring new skills or they work in a bad environment…..
6- You are not watching your support staff closely. By this I mean:
a.if your are offering customer support over the phone: overhearing their conversations with customers and recording them for future reference
b.If it is face-to-face support service with the customer: Watching their performance on shift and commenting on the spot (not in front of the customer of course). In other word you are not doing one-to-one sessions with each employee to show him where he went wrong and when he performed well and why.
7- You do not have a clear reward and punishment policy based on performance that is actually being implemented.
8- You are not willing to swallow some costs to compensate customers for bad customer support services they received from your employees.
9- YOU LIE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. Whether regularly or once in a while to cover for an issue you have, in either ways lying is the worst thing you can do.
10- You are not easily accessible. Example: your phones are busy all the time, your web site is too heavy to load or always down, your support centers are not easy to find and visit (you are awkwardly located) , OR…..
I’ll give an example from one of the projects that I worked on. I used to work as a Business Development Manager at an IT company that offered customer support services over the phone. They had most of the 10 fatal signs above:
1-They had a group of de-motivated employees
2-No defined workflow
3-No targets or standards to meet
4-No training program
5-Never thought of asking their customers what they thought of their service
6-No close monitoring of support center team performance
7-No clear reward and punishment policy
8-Lied to their customers all the time.
After I tackled the issues above, here is how their performance was boosted within the period of one year (we had a milestone after 6months and then contiued to improve):
1. Increased the average percentage of accepted calls per day from 50% to 94%
2. Improved the average speed of answer from 3mins to 21secs.
3. Increased the percent of cases resolved and closed in the same day from 57% to 64%
4. Improved the ability of call center agents to resolve cases without routing to other departments to increase from 35% to 57%
5. Improved the average case resolution time from 35hours to 20hours
6. We conducted regular surveys to collect customer feedback. Some where online questionnaires and others were quick short ones over the phone. The scores in one of the short over the phone ones once we started collecting feedback was as follows:
In four questions (out of 5) respectively: 4, 4, 2.8 and 2
After 6 months of applying the new workflows the scores became:4.9, 4.8, 3.6 and 4
The questions were:
A-How do you rate the CS representative in terms of: politeness - clear voice - attitude?
B-How do you rate the CS representative in terms of: understanding his duties - asking effective/reasonable questions - know the reason of the problem?
C-How do you rate the resolution time of the problem and avoidance of repeating it again?
D-Generally, how do you rate your experience in dealing with the support of X Company?
1- You are not directly communicating with your customers and not collecting their feedback on your level of service. Some good examples are: online feedback forms, surveys, questionnaires, feedback collection phone calls .....
2- You do not have any targets or standards for performance. This means your customer support employees do not have any standards to meet. If you work without targets then you do not have a challenge to meet and hence you will not go anywhere.
3- You do not have any effective training programs (whether internal or external) to leverage your support team’s performance and refresh their minds every while.
4- You do not have a clear workflow that all support members follow clearly and without a flaw when serving a customer.
5- You have a set of de-motivated customer support employees. This can be because they are not rewarded for extraordinary effort, or there is no room for growth or no room for acquiring new skills or they work in a bad environment…..
6- You are not watching your support staff closely. By this I mean:
a.if your are offering customer support over the phone: overhearing their conversations with customers and recording them for future reference
b.If it is face-to-face support service with the customer: Watching their performance on shift and commenting on the spot (not in front of the customer of course). In other word you are not doing one-to-one sessions with each employee to show him where he went wrong and when he performed well and why.
7- You do not have a clear reward and punishment policy based on performance that is actually being implemented.
8- You are not willing to swallow some costs to compensate customers for bad customer support services they received from your employees.
9- YOU LIE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. Whether regularly or once in a while to cover for an issue you have, in either ways lying is the worst thing you can do.
10- You are not easily accessible. Example: your phones are busy all the time, your web site is too heavy to load or always down, your support centers are not easy to find and visit (you are awkwardly located) , OR…..
I’ll give an example from one of the projects that I worked on. I used to work as a Business Development Manager at an IT company that offered customer support services over the phone. They had most of the 10 fatal signs above:
1-They had a group of de-motivated employees
2-No defined workflow
3-No targets or standards to meet
4-No training program
5-Never thought of asking their customers what they thought of their service
6-No close monitoring of support center team performance
7-No clear reward and punishment policy
8-Lied to their customers all the time.
After I tackled the issues above, here is how their performance was boosted within the period of one year (we had a milestone after 6months and then contiued to improve):
1. Increased the average percentage of accepted calls per day from 50% to 94%
2. Improved the average speed of answer from 3mins to 21secs.
3. Increased the percent of cases resolved and closed in the same day from 57% to 64%
4. Improved the ability of call center agents to resolve cases without routing to other departments to increase from 35% to 57%
5. Improved the average case resolution time from 35hours to 20hours
6. We conducted regular surveys to collect customer feedback. Some where online questionnaires and others were quick short ones over the phone. The scores in one of the short over the phone ones once we started collecting feedback was as follows:
In four questions (out of 5) respectively: 4, 4, 2.8 and 2
After 6 months of applying the new workflows the scores became:4.9, 4.8, 3.6 and 4
The questions were:
A-How do you rate the CS representative in terms of: politeness - clear voice - attitude?
B-How do you rate the CS representative in terms of: understanding his duties - asking effective/reasonable questions - know the reason of the problem?
C-How do you rate the resolution time of the problem and avoidance of repeating it again?
D-Generally, how do you rate your experience in dealing with the support of X Company?
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Want to enhance your customer service? watch the smallest actions
I went to Starbucks (City Stars branch) yesterday and I ordered an Earl Grey tea with milk. First the Starbucks employee told his colleague who was supposed to prepare my order “tea with milk”. I had to remind him that I ordered it Earl Grey. He then said “yes Earl Grey”. Then I paid him and he was supposed to give me back my change (10LE). He did not and moved on to the next customer, I had to tell him that he did not give me my change. He said “ah yes Oops sorry” and he gave me my money. Then his colleague, who was supposed to prepare my drink, spilled some milk while pouring it in my mug. He did not even bother to clean the mug; he just gave it to me dripping!!!! He did not even apologize.
This morning, I went to Starbucks again for my morning cup of tea but this time the branch beside City Center. I ordered it take away and I asked him to add extra milk because he usually puts very few milk. What happened is I regretted asking for the extra because when I got into my car and we started moving, the cup spilled on me. He filled it too much till it became too close to the opening in the lid. Once we moved it started spilling. I had to drink as much as I could very quickly ,and it was extremely hot, to make it stop spilling!!. I have to add here that the employee on shift is also not friendly at all. Every time I go, he never smiles and he replies back in a rude way. Once before I asked him to heat my croissant for an extra amount of time than he usually does. His reply was astonishing: “It is ready khalas”. Is that a reply to what I said?
I wonder if there were branch or shift managers available on shift, what would they have done in both cases. Would they have noticed and took action or not? How would they rate this quality of customer service?
If I were the shift or branch manager in the city stars branch event for example, I would have apologized and changed the whole mug before giving it to the customer. I would never have let the employee hand in a dripping mug to a customer. And definitely I would have deducted from his salary for such an action.
Want to really offer your customer a high quality customer service? Watch your employees’ smallest actions.
This morning, I went to Starbucks again for my morning cup of tea but this time the branch beside City Center. I ordered it take away and I asked him to add extra milk because he usually puts very few milk. What happened is I regretted asking for the extra because when I got into my car and we started moving, the cup spilled on me. He filled it too much till it became too close to the opening in the lid. Once we moved it started spilling. I had to drink as much as I could very quickly ,and it was extremely hot, to make it stop spilling!!. I have to add here that the employee on shift is also not friendly at all. Every time I go, he never smiles and he replies back in a rude way. Once before I asked him to heat my croissant for an extra amount of time than he usually does. His reply was astonishing: “It is ready khalas”. Is that a reply to what I said?
I wonder if there were branch or shift managers available on shift, what would they have done in both cases. Would they have noticed and took action or not? How would they rate this quality of customer service?
If I were the shift or branch manager in the city stars branch event for example, I would have apologized and changed the whole mug before giving it to the customer. I would never have let the employee hand in a dripping mug to a customer. And definitely I would have deducted from his salary for such an action.
Want to really offer your customer a high quality customer service? Watch your employees’ smallest actions.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
I miss you dad
Today is my father’s birthday. Had he lived he would have turned 73. He died last April and yet I still feel that it was a week ago. I miss him so much. I miss the way he laughed, smiled and talked. I miss his advice to me. I miss consulting him before I take any decisions. I miss the way he greeted me when I went to visit. I miss his funny comments. I still sometimes feel that he will walk through the door and talk to me any minute. On my daughter’s birthday last October, I wished he were there. It was her first birthday and he had lots of plans for it, I cried a lot because he missed it. I am still thinking about him all the time and I feel that I am turning to be like him in a lot of ways. I feel so lonely and insecure without him, it is as if something is missing all the time but can’t explain what it is. I feel so fragile without you daddy. I need you so much. I never imagined how much you are the source of my strength until I lost you.
My priorities changed ever since he died, I felt that the number one priority – after of course strengthening my relation with GOD – is to make sure that I please my Mom all the time. To make sure that she is not mad at me for any reason. To make sure she knows how much I love her and respect her. I always feel that I never really made sure to let dad know how much I love him, respect him and how proud I am for just being his daughter. I do not want to make the same mistake with my Mom.I am so lucky to have my Mom and Dad as my parents. They are really the best. They were always my friends and not just my parents.
My dear dad, may GOD rest your soul in peace. I am praying for you all the time and I hope we meet by GOD’s will in Al Ferdaws Al 2a3la in paradise ISA.
My priorities changed ever since he died, I felt that the number one priority – after of course strengthening my relation with GOD – is to make sure that I please my Mom all the time. To make sure that she is not mad at me for any reason. To make sure she knows how much I love her and respect her. I always feel that I never really made sure to let dad know how much I love him, respect him and how proud I am for just being his daughter. I do not want to make the same mistake with my Mom.I am so lucky to have my Mom and Dad as my parents. They are really the best. They were always my friends and not just my parents.
My dear dad, may GOD rest your soul in peace. I am praying for you all the time and I hope we meet by GOD’s will in Al Ferdaws Al 2a3la in paradise ISA.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Self Awareness and the Effective Leader
Very Important article:
http://www.inc.com/resources/leadership/articles/20071001/musselwhite.html
Most of Egyptian managers pretend they know it all, when in fact they do not! They even go the extreme of harming the business because they do not want to learn what they do not know. There is an illusion that a manager should be an expert in everything.
Read the article above, it is very true ....I even borrowed its title
http://www.inc.com/resources/leadership/articles/20071001/musselwhite.html
Most of Egyptian managers pretend they know it all, when in fact they do not! They even go the extreme of harming the business because they do not want to learn what they do not know. There is an illusion that a manager should be an expert in everything.
Read the article above, it is very true ....I even borrowed its title
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Keep your customers happy
Read this, Very true!
It simply says do not promise the world to your customer if you can'y keep your promise. Promise what you truly can deliver or else you will endup with unhappy customers.
This is the tip to keep your customers happy 100% of the time
http://www.goldbusinesstips.com/page/2/
It simply says do not promise the world to your customer if you can'y keep your promise. Promise what you truly can deliver or else you will endup with unhappy customers.
This is the tip to keep your customers happy 100% of the time
http://www.goldbusinesstips.com/page/2/
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