A friend of mine shared an experience he had at the new Yankee Stadium a couple of weeks ago that I felt important to share concerning customer service.

When he arrived at the stadium there were dozens of people with signs that said” Hello, may I help you?” This was the first time he had seen this at the stadium. They were there to help people find their gate and answered any questions they had. My friend did not need this help and proceeded to this gate. Upon handing the usher the ticket the guy said “Thank you, there are people inside that will help you”. As soon as he walked into to the main area someone came up to him and said “Hello, may I help you?” He gave her the ticket and she told him to go down the corridor and take the elevators on the left. When he got to the elevators a person was there that said, “Hello, may I help you?” He presented him the ticket and told to take the elevator to the 250 level and someone will help you. When he was exiting the elevator, sure enough there was person there and said, “Hello may I help you?” That person proceeded to escort him to the suite. Since this was my friends first trip to the new stadium he was looking at all the great pictures and stories that lined the corridor. The customer service person shadowed him far enough behind so that my friend did not feel rushed. When they got to the suite there was a person there that greeted him with, you guessed it, “Hello may I help you?” He was then shown into the suite and given a tour and had all his questions answered. Throughout the entire game he was asked if there was anything they can do.

The story amazed me for two reasons. The number of people visibly out in the open proactively trying to help their guests and the consistent mantra they all were using. There was no question they were all taking their customer service role seriously. When your customer is spending their money and time with you, the Yankees, at least for the time being wanted to make sure you have an easy and enjoyable experience. You never had to look far for help.

My friends totally experience left him feeling really good about wanting to come back for more.

Tags: crm

One of the most basic features of any CRM solution is the ability to manage your calendar. Sounds simple, but with the way sales people work there is more to it than meets the eye. There is your CRM calendar, your Lotus Notes or Outlook calendar, your BlackBerry/iPhone/Nokia/Motorola/G1 calendar. While many companies have been trying to standardize many still allow a combination of devices. And even if you do need to use one type of PDA for business many reps will then have a personal PDA.

Besides the different phones and operating systems there are also the types of entries you want to keep track of. Lotus Notes and Outlook keep only scheduled activities on the calendar. That means things like phone calls will not show up. Many CRM solutions have their own calendar which allows you to see all your activity types and also synchronizes with your corporate calendar (less calls and to do’s). I have found it to be more work and not as reliable. You really want to use your corporate calendar and a CRM solution that uses all the native forms of it. It makes it much easier for users since they are already familiar with it. It allows them to work right in their calendar and still be using CRM.

In order to make using CRM easy and part of your day to day routine you need to have all activities show up on all the clients/devices you use. This means there will probably be some IT involvement in making it happen. The good news is it does not take a lot of effort. Lotus Notes and Outlook calendars have synchronization between Blackberry and Windows Mobile calendars. Some CRM solutions like Relavis CRM allows you to easily track not only synchronized activities but Call’s and To Do’s in the same native calendar view. Dynamics CRM keeps track of it in a separate section plus those calls will not be synchronized with your PDA device. Integration with iPhones and other devices is available but not yet widely used with CRM.

Finally there are the issues around seeing your team’s group calendar. It is important in order to better track and work together as a team. While Lotus Notes has group calendaring built in Outlook requires a third party tool.

To really empower your CRM users try to do what is necessary to keep all their calendars in sync so they can be just as productive out of the office as they are at their desk.

Tags: crm, CRM Basics, crm productivity