Path Two: The Human Touch
At ScriptSave no one has to answer to customers after regular business hours. But if one of ScriptSave's customers dials the company's 800 number during the day, a funny thing happens. The caller doesn't get the typical automated menu of choices. An actual human being answers.
Strictly speaking, ScriptSave's customers aren't the people who call its 800 number. Its customers are health-insurance companies, such as BlueCross BlueShield of Florida, that provide prescription-drug benefits to their members. The insurance companies hire ScriptSave to explain members' prescription-drug benefits to them.
Company CEO Charlie Horn says that when he describes his business to other entrepreneurs, their first question usually is, Why don't you just automate your phone system? To answer that query, Horn has to go back to the company's founding, in 1995, when he first began wrestling with the issue of how to handle customer service. A former marketing manager and sales agent at several insurance companies, Horn had 25 years of experience in the industry. He wanted a system at ScriptSave that would allow the company to make explaining prescription-drug programs to members as squeak-free as possible. Horn knew that the majority of ScriptSave's calls would come from cardholders who were 65 or older and that those customers would require the kind of individual attention that a machine couldn't provide.
Horn made a false start, outsourcing customer service to a call center, which left him "in the dark" about whether his customers were being well served, he says. By 1997 he had moved customer service in-house and was determined to maximize personal contact with the people who turned to ScriptSave for help. "We realized if we were going to do it really well, we had to do it ourselves," Horn says. Since its rebirth, four years ago, the company has grown from 3 employees to 105. Sales soared to $13 million in 2000, up from $6.3 million the year before. The company is profitable and carries no debt. All the growth has been financed internally.
Today even something as simple as a customer's call to activate a new prescription-drug card is, quite deliberately, handled "live." Why go to the extra trouble? It's simple. Horn is looking for any excuse to chat with customers -- or rather, his customers' customers.
So that the chat is effective, ScriptSave has to train its people well. Horn insists that all new hires get three weeks of training before they take their first call. The 35 customer-service assistants spend another 60 hours a year in the classroom. The new hires learn the basics of phone etiquette and then move on to the demographics and other characteristics of the ScriptSave customer. For example, new workers attend a "senior sensitivity workshop" to help them deal with callers who might be hard of hearing or unable to read prescription labels.
Horn says that his company's caring sensibility contrasts sharply with the stereotype of how call centers usually operate: with brisk efficiency above all else. It's a point of pride, according to Horn, that ScriptSave has no limit on how long a conversation with a customer can last. He recounts a recent story about an elderly woman who had to interrupt a call to ScriptSave because her husband had suddenly taken a fall. The phone rep called back later to see how the couple were faring. Later the woman E-mailed her thanks to the company for the extra service. "We don't do it for publicity. That's the way we want to be," says Horn, although, of course, keeping customers satisfied is in his company's best interest.
By trying to convey a sense of human warmth in a very different business, Betty Heirich is also seeking to achieve a competitive edge for her company. She is CEO of three-year-old SkiMall.net, an Internet venture based in Telluride, Colo., that she cofounded with her husband, a former district manager for Wal-Mart. The company is one of several online businesses that provide information about the kind of lodging and equipment that's of particular interest to winter-sports enthusiasts. Such information is available in great and colorful profusion on the 500 pages of SkiMall's Web site.
When Heirich first put the site online, she left it up to users to navigate their way through a blizzard of information. After a year, however, she discovered that the mechanized browsing system was undercutting one of her company's greatest potential assets: the image of SkiMall as the skier's genial friend and tour guide. To alter that image, she embarked on a new strategy. Now people who log on to the site find a "live assistance" button on its pages. Visitors can type in a question, connect with a human being at the company, and receive a reply, often within seconds. "We'll help anyone look for anything," says Heirich, who takes a commission on products that are sold or hotel rooms that are booked on the site.
Although the company's chat system combines the comfort of a physical presence with the speed of E-mail, such setups are still not common. A survey last year by International Customer Service Association and e-Satisfy Ltd. found that just 4% of Web sites used live chats. But there are indications that customers crave human intervention. In a survey two years ago by Forrester Research, 71% of online buyers who requested customer service did so by turning to E-mail, compared with the 11% who sought help from a Web page containing answers to frequently asked questions.
Heirich's commitment to service is so strong she still takes a shift herself, joining her nine employees in answering questions from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. -- or in some cases past midnight. Some people want help finding particular brands of skis. Others ask about the skiing conditions in Telluride or for directions to the resort's hot nightspots, like Fly Me to the Moon Saloon. Heirich's goal is round-the-clock service. For a fledgling company like SkiMall, attempting to staff a 24-7 live-help operation seems brashly ambitious, if not a sure path to wipeout. But Heirich's secret weapon may well be her unique workforce. She employs three people in the office and six stay-at-home moms who work in shifts at the real-chat beat.
