Customer Service
Customer service for eLearning. It’s important, obviously.
I was in mid-management in the 90’s for Circuit City and was a regional customer service manager for part of that time. It was a multi-state position over about 30 stores. Our service center handled product for the stores and typically had no direct customer contact (customers brought defective units into the store, those managers sent the units to us). My customers were internal – the store managers.
Circuit City would look at any electronics, diagnose them, and send out repair quotes. That process took 3.2 days when I came onboard. After authoring and implementing a national standard operating procedure, that process was reduced to 1.7 days. That was a good metric (along with a call answering time going from 35 seconds to 9).
We had one lady that brought in a VCR in which her cat had obviously puked. Cats like to lie on warm things, get overheated and barf. It’s something we saw regularly. And you know it’s a cat because of the large amount of cat hair in these electronics.
This customer called us because the store managers had passed our number to her and we explained that we could not service her VCR due to its age and that we had never carried that brand (we could not even cannibalize another unit). And her VCR was 5 years old. We waived the $35 testing fee and apologized.
She was very upset and sent a letter to Circuit City’s CEO. In her letter she explained, and named, how five regional managers and several store managers were all unable to fix her VCR. By this time, a lot of Circuit City time had been focused on her (and our bonuses were affected severely that month).
In the end, we gave her a new VCR. Is that good customer service? It is and illustrates the lengths that we went to hopefully turn this person into a customer. Is it fair? I don’t think so because she was that squeaky wheel, but she did become a customer as soon as she brought in her VCR.
The point of all this is that we did respond. And all of this happened in the course of about two weeks. A person that spent $0 with Circuit City ended up with a free VCR.
What does that have to do with Second Life as an eLearning tool? Customer service. I create free tutorials for eLearning providers. They support my presentations at conferences. These activities cost me time and money (conferences do not pay you as a presenter, in fact; I have an upcoming one where you actually have to pay to attend your own session. I answer emails, do Adobe Connect, and even phone calls. Why?
I love education, I think the world can be a better place, and I love to serve (I was a volunteer ski patroller, skater aid, and later a certified firefighter and paramedic). There was no pay in being a volunteer firefighter and I did get hurt in a rescue call, but as a modern society we depend on service from others, and sometimes the reward is not money. Delivering a baby at 4 AM or removing the body of a hero who drove his cement truck into a ditch rather than through stopped cars on a highway is a reward that cannot be matched (and is humbling).
Customer service comes in many forms.
Our l33t speak counterparts at the iliveisl blog seemed to be thrilled about M Linden being responsive to a post on his blog. I am glad that there was a response but it is a shame that it had to get to the CEO. It’s just a simple matter of asking for a few links to point corporations to that are trying to determine is SL is right to them. Very minor but a legitimate request for promoting SL. Lol, I was finally was sent a link to the official business request form via an accidental inworld conversation with a Linden.
I say “lol” because that link would actually be a great resource to send businesses. In using the form, I received an automated email that says “you will be contacted within 2 business days”. Good thing I have not sent that link out, because the 10 days it’s so far would have been a reflection on me.
I have spent hours searching for this type of information on ROI and so on. Those who know me know that I am passionate and persistent, if nothing else.
Remember your customers, they don’t have to be the ones that pay you thousnads a month a month to be worth an answer. And blaming it on email is unacceptable. Thank your customers, thank your learners, and care about people. At least enough to not let things fall through the cracks. Onward to more eLearning!
update: M was true to his word and I was contacted inworld by George Linden to learn more specifics to my request. It seems like there may not be the type of information out there that people I run into want. Many elearning departments of Fortune 500’s have tight budgets both in time and money. They can’t afford a Maya license or the talent required to create 3D animation. But with Second Life you can create very good animation and bring it into Flash for creating branched scenarios. Those are the people trying to justify how to get land in Second Life. Most don’t need an entire island and a quarter sim or less would be ample. Perhaps it’s time for iliveisl to move into the corporate realm to fill this need! I look forward to what George and the team can come up with. It will be well received. Thanks Linden!
Is Voice Essential for Serious Virtual Worlds?
Nick over at Clever Zebra posted the question: Is Voice Essential for Serious Virtual Worlds? And has a poll with it as well. I have been asked this in the past and wanted to share my philosophy on this with the comment I posted on his site:
I think the option is vital, but for me it is not necessary. Do I lose work because I typically don’t do voice? Likely. But I may also lose work if I did voice. Why? It’s easy to go off on tangents. It is commonplace that at least once a week I have 10+ IMs going plus a chat conversation with one or two present avatars. There is no way I could do that with voice.
My customers are told that I am in multiple IMs when this happens and understand the etiquette involved in that (after all, they are often in multiple IMs as well).
As for pitching an idea, anyone can bs all day long about what they can do. But this is exactly why I don’t need voice in Second Life. I don’t need to “pitch” my ideas, clients can go see them first hand. A quick right-click and they can see if I was the creator of the whatever. I use Flickr for this as well. So a quick trip to that and if they like it, they then can verify it inworld. It’s fast and efficient for both of us.
Potential client: “Hello, are you able to build a four sim border stage that allows for 3 video feeds, has image viewers, and is low prim?”
Me: “Sure, I made this one last month [Flickr link], here’s the slurl (if it’s open to the public, if not, then a slurl to the rezzed whatever on my own sim), here’s a free megaprim stage you can inspect, and here is free online training to help your presenters if you need it: [link]. I can even put in scripting to prevent one day old accounts from griefing you. Let me know if you’d like me to create a scope of work for you with Google docs. Good luck. :)”
For the future of virtual worlds, voice is a necessity, imo. And keep in mind that voice in Second Life is carried on dedicated servers to reduce performnace hits on the viewer itself.
But that is the way I have shaped my virtual business. To give you a sense of what my business entails, I generate about $3200 USD a month for my virtual real estate business (about 92 clients and that is flow, not all profit), do custom builds for universities and corporate ventures (developed 21 islands over the past 18 months), and am very active in the eLearning community (speak at conferences, develop “learning paths” for educational venues, and create video tutorials).
But I am a small player compared to many in Second Life. And I have a full time day job and spend about 5 hours a week promoting both my ventures (I only promote the land business and elearning, not the sim development) via social networking and media (blogs, Ning, etc).
So for me, I can’t imagine doing voice and my clients are fine with that. We share Google documents as a major communication tool with the projects’ scope of work being a collaborative document and single point of information that is well documented for all parties involved. I would hate to rely on memory or chat logs for real business endeavors.