Recognizing Customer Service

Earlier this month, Multi Service celebrated Customer Service Week. While The Payments Puzzle Box is not a customer service blog per se, I think this is an ideal opportunity to acknowledge all of individuals that play a role in the payments process.

Since Customer Service Week 2008, Multi Service has successfully launched three new payment programs. Earlier this year, special circumstances required that one program launch three weeks prior to the scheduled date. With only days’ notice of the change, I asked not only our customer service group, but also our underwriting and collections, systems, financial controls, program management, and operations teams what it would take to go live in less than 5 days!

I was ready for a reaction of disbelief, but within an hour we had a critical path and a plan to meet the new target date. The launch went flawlessly, and it was because all these departments worked together in a coordinated manner with a customer service-oriented mindset.

To be successful and achieve growth, it is imperative for a company to realize that customer service is not only the team that directly responds to customer calls. Customer service includes all of the personnel that work behind the scenes to take care of the customers. And in this situation, all the teams demonstrated their commitment to customer service.

Beyond the dedicated efforts of our behind-the-scenes personnel, our customer service team has responded to over 415,000 customer and merchant phone calls since last year's Customer Service Week. And, internally, our technical support group has resolved more than 8,500 work orders to keep customer-facing processes running smoothly this year.

That is a lot of people contributing to the purchase experience and a multitude of well-deserved Thank You’s. Though some of these groups may never have direct contact with customers, their ability to assess and fulfill customer needs from behind the scenes is as influential to the customer experience as your best marketing retention campaign.

- Martha

Some Dis-Assembly Required

On my sweet sixteenth, my high school boyfriend presented me with an interesting birthday gift – a tool set wrapped in a brown grocery sack. Yes, you read that correctly – a tool set – comprised of a hammer, a drill and a flat head and Phillips head screwdriver. Needless to say, his romantic gesture displeased me immensely.

But when Justin later pleaded his case, I learned that his odd choice of gift actually had some degree of thought behind it...some degree.

You see, when I was bored, I spent much of my spare time taking things around the house apart, simply to see if I could figure out how to piece them back together. I took apart ceiling fans, electric can openers, vacuum cleaners, and more. It was a pastime that aggravated my parents tremendously (especially considering that my attempts at reconstruction were not always successful), but it was one of my quirky habits that my boyfriend enjoyed most.

And over time, I grew to enjoy the tool set, and I put it to good use on many a household appliance. (Note to all the boyfriends and husbands out there: Despite growing to it enjoy it, I do NOT recommend giving tool sets to your ladies on their birthdays.)

This habit of dissecting things just to piece them back together is one that has stuck with me over the years. Only now, the focus of my efforts isn’t household appliances. My focus is business processes.

I recently spoke with a prospect, for example, that has implemented consolidated invoicing practices by collecting invoices from each of its dealers. The goal was to simplify the payment process for their commercial customers and gain a better understanding of what customers were purchasing, but the implementation has resulted in lots of transaction disputes, which are taxing internal resources for the prospect.

When we looked at the reasons for so many disputes, a majority were caused by the fact that the buyer did not have corporate approval to make their purchase in the first place. With an understanding that corporate approval is required for most purchases made by their commercial customers, the company is now looking to introduce a new step into the transaction process.

By requiring a P.O. Number at the time of authorization, the company will see fewer disputes on invoices, a decrease of time spent managing disputes internally, and quicker payments from their commercial clients.

I spend my weekdays now learning how companies transact with their commercial customers. And once I have an intimate understanding of the process, I tear it all apart, and piece it back together more effectively. Admittedly, deconstructing and reconstructing billing and payment processes isn’t “sexy” any more so than my boyfriend’s gift was a great romantic gesture. But, thankfully, our clients tend to appreciate the value of process improvement more easily than I adjusted to my first set of tools. And I think it’s pretty cool to see the results.

- Jenny

The Launch

The launch date of a new billing and payment program is a day of incredible anticipation at Multi Service. Everyone waits for news on the first transaction, the first merchant support call, the first completed billing cycle. Even though these programs belong to our clients, we tend to get attached, invested as we build the program for their requirements.

“Belong to our clients”….Yes, that’s our philosophy. Once a program is implemented, it lives and breathes as part of the client’s brand. The idea is that Multi Service is the well-oiled machine “behind the curtain”. There is a down-side to being “behind the curtain” of a private label program, though. That is, if you do your job well, nobody ever really finds out who you are or how it all works.

“Multi Service? I have never heard of you, but WOW! I wish we had known about you years ago!” Great compliment that causes great frustration for all of us at Multi Service especially those of us whose focus is to grow the company.

So, to solve this issue we’ve, decided to take a step out from behind the curtain to share what we know about the wonderful world of commercial billings and payments with a broader audience.

The blog:
We’ve developed the Payments Puzzle Box to examine all of the individual bits and pieces that come together to create the collective commercial payments industry. Throughout this blog, we will discuss payment methods, fraud protection, purchasing controls, Interchange fees, business interfaces, credit, apply and buy requirements, buying power, data security and compliance, and industry regulations as they relate to commercial payments.

What this blog is not:
This blog is not a consumer credit or consumer payments reference point. Multi Service specializes in commercial credit. We proactively choose to focus our business within the business-to-business sector, and, thus far, it has offered no shortage of interesting topics. So we’ll stick to what we know and what we love.

The bloggers:
The Payments Puzzle Box is a discussion of the commercial payments industry from two perspectives. Jenny Prater is Manager, Business Development at Multi Service. Through her years at Multi Service, she has developed a unique understanding of our clients’ and prospects’ business challenges which makes her not only an invaluable member of my team but a refreshing sounding board to brainstorm with. My name is Martha Salinas, I am Vice President of Multi Service and oversee the management of our private label programs. Jenny and I both enjoy tackling complicated subjects and complex puzzles but approach them completely differently which makes for interesting collaboration!

Periodically, you may also read posts by other specialists in the billing and payments arena – just to keep things more refreshing!

What to expect:
On a weekly basis, Jenny and I will discuss updates, trends, and our own opinions on the commercial payments world. Often times, we will comment on one another’s blog posts or directly address the other’s entry in a post of our own. In either case, we hope that you will also become a regular participant in the discussion.

3-2-1:
So today, we experience a launch date of our own. We’ll eagerly await our first comment, first subscriber, and our first healthy debate. We expect that they will be the first of many.
- Martha