Newest MA blog post: Topflight customer service from a Shoe Salesman and a Cabinet Maker

Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, wrote a terrific article in the August, 2010 Harvard Business Review.  He recognized that he and his company have one product: customer service.  They don’t make a widget, they just resell someone else’s widgets.  But his company goes the extra mile in everything they do in customer service and have set the standard.  They allow people to return shoes up to 365 days after receipt, they have no call trees, they truly believe that Customer Service is an extension of marketing and not a ‘cost they must pare’ to the Company.

At Mobile Aspects, since Day 1, we have had the same philosophy: Customer service is a differentiator and is 1.a in priority (right next to having an incredibly easy to use, reliable product).  But every member of our team, top to bottom is incredibly focused on customer service.  When you call our 800 number with a question, you dont get a call tree; you will reach one of our Client Service team in Pittsburgh.  These aren’t just call center people, but in fact, great people who have serviced and worked with the product in the field and continue to do so today.

Customer service is not just about taking a call and filing it.  It is about the relationship with the customer.   Our customers know most of our employees by name, know their cell phone numbers and know their home phone numbers (as Tony Hsieh says, ‘the telephone is one of the best branding devices.’).  They know us and our families and we know our customers by heart and their families.  I can’t tell you how many times customers call us just to talk.  We love to ‘just talk’!

Sometimes when you call, you will reach our CTO, our VP of Engineering, or many other people outside of core Customer Service.  Yours truly, and also the CFO and all management go out into into the field weekly and discuss and talk with customers to get their feedback.  No one, and I mean, NO ONE has a desk job at our company.  Truly at Mobile Aspects, we believe customer service is EVERYONE’s responsibility, and you see that from the incredible dedication of our people.  When an issue happens in the field, you will not see a team of people react faster and work harder to solve that customer’s problems.

It’s starts with the culture in the company set by our great employees.  But it also continues into our HR practices.  We look for only those people that have shown us strong evidence they will do whatever it takes for our customers, roll up their sleeves, and do anything we can to make them happy.  Everyone in our company knows how important a happy customer is.  We’re not perfect (we’re just human beings!), but we make up for any imperfections with passion.

Though we make a widget, we also understand every business is in the hospitality business.  It makes the customer feel comfortable about the company and the product.  Our customers know if they call us with an issue, we’ll jump to solve it.  And if we can’t solve it remotely, we’ll be in a car or on a plane the next day to solve it in person.  Customer service is not just for hotels, it’s also vital to the business of a Shoe Salesman and Cabinet Maker.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

via mobileaspects.com

In my post on the Mobile Aspects blog, I discuss Zappos' philosophy on customer service, as well as our own. Hospitality is in everyone's business. The most important thing we can all provide is a great customer experience. Click on the link to read the whole post.

Posted via email from Suneil Mandava's Posterous

The Volt vs The Leaf. Both a great choice, but one wins out

I am close to getting ready to be in the market for a new car. My trusty Mazda 6 Hatchback Sport is still doing very well after almost 6 years (and barely 55k miles). But with all the ads now coming up around electric cars I am getting excited. We already own a hybrid (Toyota Camry Hybrid) and love getting 30+ mpg's in the city and 40 on the highway in such a big, family friendly car.

So far, the choices are boiling down to the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf (mainly because of availability). Thankfully, both have a $7,500 federal tax credit and the state of Pennsylvania will give us an additional $500.

My main factors for choosing a car would be:
1. Cool (I know thats generally in the eye of the beholder)
2. Size (needs to be big enough for wife + 2 growing girls)
3. High MPG
4. Technology
5. Want to buy American
6. Layout of dash, console
7. Want to have a nice car, but not to showy

(note: agreement by the wife trumps all of the above). Now reviewing the two cars, I think I am landing on the Volt. It is definitely bigger and that is a big reason. The other and more important is that the Volt has the backup gasoline engine.

It seems a lot of environmentalists want to 100% eliminate use of oil. I am not in this camp. I believe we need to reduce oil consumption, but eliminating is too extreme (right now) of a goal. Overuse of oil is bad not only for the environment, but also because extra money gets into bad people's hands. A reduction of oil use by 20% in the very near term (next decade) will have a real effect - only spare money goes to terrorists, and all the spare money will be gone. The US has already flattened out amount of oil use on an annual basis. Now we can reduce the overall use year over year, in combination with better catalytic converters, will reduce pollution tremendously enabling the ecosystem some 'breathing room'.

The other great thing about the Volt is that it uses standard 120v plugs in the house. The Leaf will require new plugs in the house, adding cost and frustration. On a daily basis, I can get to work or the airport and back without having to use any oil. If I combine this with moving my electric source to a clean energy provider I will dramatically reduce my personal footprint.

Lastly, the Volt is American. I would like to buy American more often, but in the past, American cars have been clunky, poorly laid out internally, uncool, immediate value loss cars with poor quality. This caused us to buy the Toyota Camry Hybrid last time and the Mazda 6 before. This is changing in both reality and perception now (perception vs reality IS important).

Now my only problem with the Volt (other than still a little hesitancy to buy a Chevy due to perception issues) is price. Now Chevy says that their cost is so high due to the battery. But the Leaf would have this same problem, yet comes in at $8,000 less. At least Chevy has made the lease rate the same as the Leaf ($350 per month).

I haven't 100% decided, and I haven't even seen in person, nevertheless test driven either car. But on what I know so far, the Chevy Volt seems to be the choice over the Nissan Leaf. The prevailing thought I have heard is 'the Volt an be your first car, whereas the Leaf really should be your 2nd or even 3rd car.' Let's hope more choices come on the market soon. In the mean time, I am hopeful the Volt can be a pretty big mass market hit, reduce our oil usage and put America in the lead again.

From The New York Times:

The Volt, G.M.’s Plug-In Car, Gets a $41,000 Price Tag

The carmaker has begun taking orders for the plug-in vehicle, which is expected to be at dealers in November.

http://nyti.ms/dAzIY7

Posted via email from Suneil Mandava's Posterous

Oil Rig Alarm Was Not Fully Turned On, Worker Says

Once again, one of the biggest learning from the BP oil disaster is that severe disasters are never the result of one smoking gun incident, but a series of errors:

"At hearings this week, crew members have described repeated failures in the weeks before the disaster, including power losses, computer crashes and leaking emergency equipment."

This applies to energy disasters, healthcare disasters (unnecessary death or serious injury to patient), and industrial accidents.  Human beings are very good at putting measures into place and to learn from previous disasters.  The problem is they eventually fail due to human involvement.  It only takes being careless just that one time.  Alarm fatigue became a big issue on the oil rig, and so the workers turned it off so they wouldn't be woken up (listen up car manufacturers!).

Design of systems for human interaction has become the skill du jour.  We practice it heavily at Mobile Aspects.  Our RFID systems for hospitals are some of the easiest to use for any system in healthcare.  But we also realize that design of failure systems is just as important: systems work the way as intended 99% of the time.  1% sounds minuscule, but in reality, it is a large number.  We advocate for our systems and for anything else that our customers ensure the failsafes built in are meant for human use and without alarm fatigue.

From The New York Times:

Oil Rig Alarm Was Not Fully Turned On, Worker Says

The safety alarm was not fully activated to avoid waking up the crew, and so did not sound during the disaster, a worker testified.

http://nyti.ms/a3cmDW

Posted via email from Suneil Mandava's Posterous

Congrats to Childrens Hospital Boston - ranked #1 Childrens Hospital... again!

Most kids have no more than the usual assortment of childhood medical mishaps and never go beyond the ER if they spike a fever or the outpatient clinic for tests. But there's always that "what if." Many thousands of children every year do need expert care. What do you do if your child has a heart defect, or a disorder that interferes with digestion? Out of all of the roughly 5,000 U.S. hospitals, only about 1 in 30 has deep expertise in caring for children with serious problems. For youngsters who need that quality of care, the Best Children's Hospitals rankings showcase the medical centers that see kids every day who have cancer, cystic fibrosis, defective hearts, and countless other life-threatening or rare conditions beyond the capabilities of most hospitals, even those with sizable pediatric departments.

A small number of hospitals—eight this year—ranked in all 10 specialties and make up the 2010-11 Best Children's Hospitals Honor Roll. They are in alphabetical order.

Best Children's Hospitals Honor Roll
Children's Hospital Boston
Childrens Hospital Los Angeles
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley-Komansky Children's Hospital
St. Louis Children's Hospital-Washington University
Texas Children's Hospital, Houston

via health.usnews.com

Childrens Hospital Boston continues to lead the way in Pediatrics. From its cutting edge research, great staff, to its outreach in the community (as well as being the hospital Curious George goes to) Childrens show how to do it. We have worked closely with the staff there in the operating rooms in use of our RFID systems. In fact, they pioneered our RFID tissue tracking system. We want to thank them for being such tremendous partners!

Posted via email from Suneil Mandava's Posterous

Congrats to all our RFID clients on the top Hospitals list!

2010 US News and World Report Honor Roll

 

It's no secret that all hospitals are not equal. The special quality shared by the 152 that made it into the new 2010-11 Best Hospitals rankings (out of nearly 5,000 that were considered), and even more so by the 14 in this year's Honor Roll, is their ability to take on and meet the most difficult challenges. Their operating rooms showcase delicate, demanding procedures—excising a cancerous portion of a pancreas without destroying the rest of the fragile organ, say, or restoring function to an arthritis-ravaged hand through a creative blend of fusing joints and splicing tendons. They are referral centers for ill patients with multiple risks—advanced age plus heart failure plus diabetes, perhaps.

Patients at these centers are not exempt from picking up hospital-based infections, getting the wrong drugs, or becoming victims of other medical errors. No matter how skilled or deep their expertise, even "best hospitals" don't do everything right. But when high stakes call for unusual capabilities, they are hospitals that can save lives that might be lost or preserve quality of life that might be sacrificed. That is why U.S. News has published the Best Hospitals rankings for 21 years: to help guide patients who need high-stakes care because of the complexity or difficulty of their condition or procedure. For 2010-11 we analyzed 4,852 hospitals, virtually every one in the United States, in 16 specialties from cancer and heart disease to respiratory disorders and urology. Only 152 centers appear in even one of the 16 specialty rankings. Fourteen ultra-elite Honor Roll hospitals had very high scores in six or more specialties.

 

 

The Honor Roll requirements were so stiff that 99.7 percent of all centers in the nation were excluded. A hospital had to be ranked in at least six specialties, but ranking alone was insufficient for inclusion. It also had to have an extremely high score (in statisticians' terms, at least 3 standard deviations above the mean). That earned 1 point per specialty. Reaching the top of the Honor Roll called for even higher scores (4 or more standard deviations above the mean), earning 2 points, in far more specialties. The highest-ranked hospitals on the Honor Roll, which is ordered by points, had high scores in 15 of the 16 specialty rankings. Johns Hopkins stands at No. 1—as it has for the last 20 years.

Rank	Hospital	Points	Specialties
1	Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore	30	15
2	Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.	28	15
3	Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston	27	15
4	Cleveland Clinic	26	13
5	Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles	24	14
6	New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell	21	11
7	University of California, San Francisco Medical Center	20	11
8	Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University, St. Louis	17	10
9	Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia	16	12
10	Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.	16	10
11	Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston	14	10
12	University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle	14	8
13	UPMC-University of Pittsburgh Medical Center	13	8
14	University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, Ann Arbor	12	8

via health.usnews.com

It continues that the top hospitals in the country are also the most forward looking and innovative. From Massachusetts General Hospital, to the Cleveland Clinic to the University of Pennsylvania and many others on the list, they all use our RFID systems to make their operations more efficient and drive actionable data. We know how important innovation is to the list and we are proud, in our small part, to help these hospital achieve excellence.

Posted via email from Suneil Mandava's Posterous