A conversation with Paul English about customer service and human dignity

This week’s podcast features Paul English. He’s a software veteran who’s been VP of technology at Intuit and runs the Internet travel search engine at Kayak.com, but is best known for the IVR Cheat Sheet. Now available at gethuman.com, this popular database of voice-system shortcuts makes it easier for people to get the human assistance they crave when calling customer service centers.

The gethuman project isn’t just a list of IVR hacks anymore. It’s evolved into a consumer movement that publishes best practices for quality phone service and rates companies’ adherence to those best practices.

Although human-intensive customer service is usually regarded as costly and inefficient, operations like craigslist — where Craig Newmark’s title is, famously, customer service representative and founder — invite us to rethink that conventional wisdom. Kayak.com’s customer service was inspired by craigslist. Paul English says that making his engineers directly responsible for customer service has done wonders for the software development process. Because they’re on the front lines dealing with the fallout from poor usability, they’re highly motivated to improve it.

We also discussed web-based data management. The original IVR Cheat Sheet was done with Intuit QuickBase, an early and little-known entrant into a category that’s now heating up: web databases.

Finally, we talked about Partners in Health, the organization to which Paul English donates his consulting fees. The story of Partners in Health is told in Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains: Healing the World: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer. At the end of the podcast I mention that I’d added that book to my Amazon wishlist. The other day, while looking for something to listen to on an afternoon run, I checked my RSS reader and saw that the book was available in my local library in audio format. Sweet! Two afternoon runs later, I’m halfway through. It’s both an inspirational tale about Paul Farmer’s mission and a case study in how holistic health care systems can operate far more cost-effectively than most do today.

Nicholas Riley Says:

December 30, 2006 at 2:52 pm

Your RSS feed is messed up – the tag for the last two entries points to http://blog.jonudell.net/podcast/ju_halamka.mp3, which doesn’t contain anything. This breaks in iTunes, at least.

December 30, 2006 at 2:55 pm

Sorry, the comment system ate my text – it’s supposed to say the “enclosure” tag above. And in case it wasn’t clear, the feed I’m talking about is http://feeds.feedburner.com/JonUdellFridayPodcasts.

Delia Says:

December 30, 2006 at 4:47 pm

re: “Although human-intensive customer service is usually regarded as costly and inefficient, operations like craigslist — where Craig Newmark’s title is, famously, customer service representative and founder — invite us to rethink that conventional wisdom”

well… I’d rethink again! (especially the *combination* of human-intensive customer service AND severely understaffed “customer service team” a la craigslist)

Delia

Jon Udell Says:

December 30, 2006 at 11:14 pm

“Your RSS feed is messed up – the tag for the last two entries points to”

Whoops, you’re right. The enclosure tags were wrong. Fixed now, I think, thanks for reporting the problem

December 30, 2006 at 11:15 pm

“I’d rethink again! (especially the *combination* of human-intensive customer service AND severely understaffed “customer service team” a la craigslist)”

Hi Delia,

Would you care to elaborate?

December 31, 2006 at 8:22 am

Jon,

I’m suggesting it doesn’t work… (users needs aren’t being met).

re: the *combination* of human-intensive customer service AND severely understaffed “customer service team” a la craigslist

kaizensand Says:

January 3, 2007 at 4:15 pm

I agree with Delia.

I’m so over Craigslist now. I still prefer it over eBay, though.

kateben Says:

January 3, 2007 at 4:40 pm

People do crave human contact. Both in service areas and customer related issues.
I understand the automated systems and have no problem with them but my mother in law (82) is often in tears because she simply cannot understand and therefore, feels isolated from doing any kind of business transaction, getting a balance, or just the temperature outside.

It’s been almost ten years since I worked as a customer service telephone person and I remember one gentleman who, in trying to resolve his cell phone issues, had begun to look forward to the exchange. When we finally got to the area of billing, and were saying our final goodbyes, he yelled at his wife in the background “No, no, it’s just Kate, and we’re sure gonna miss her!”

You don’t remember what a machine tells you. But who forgets what a human being tells them, or more importantly, how they made them feel?

Smarter Messaging [Mike Jones, UK] » Blog Archive » Symantec: What do you do? Says:

January 25, 2007 at 4:09 pm

[...] often repeated again and again. The excellent Jon Udell recently interviewed Paul English on his weekly podcast who stuck his entire staff on support so they would fully appriciate customers problems. I know 30 [...]

Trusted feeds « Jon Udell Says:

June 10, 2009 at 10:36 am

[...] course anything short of frictionless participation is an obstacle. On the other hand, based on my conversation with Paul English about customer service, there’s a lot to be said for a required step in the process that [...]