Energy Customer Bill of Rights

OK. I know i’m developing a reputation as a curmudgeon, a crank, a whiner, a crab, a bellyacher, a griper. In short, a sourpuss. And that’s without consulting the Thesaurus. I could add grumbler, bear, malcontent, moaner, kvetch. You get the idea.

And why have I earned these pleasant monikers? Because I seem to take pleasure in recounting a never-ending parade of consumer nightmares – my own. Nothing makes one more sensitive to consumer rights than being in a consumer service business. Knowing how hard we work to help customers get good service at fair prices – and receive accurate bills to boot – it boggles my mind how oblivious most companies are to the most basic principles.

In this blog I have recounted my unsuccessful effort to snag an extra bag of peanuts on Delta. Of getting documents copied at FedEx/Kinko’s. I’ve even told of one of our Georgia customer’s sad experience of having their gas turned out because they claimed that their MXenergy bill – yes, we drop the ball too sometimes! -- looked like junk mail.

Recently I have added another one to my litany of woe: Showing up at the City Transit terminal in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

Here’s my tale. If you’re a cheapskate like I am, and don’t want to take the train from O’Hare to downtown, it will cost you $2 on the train…that is, if you have exact change. You see, the automatic ticket machines at City Transit only take exact change. If you have a $10 bill you must spend it all…or you can walk. Arriving at the turnstile – with my train idling on the platform below -- I asked an attendant at the ticket booth – who does not sell tickets, of course – how to get change. “Walk down the hallway,” he pointed, “and you can get change.”

I sighed. I mumbled. While my train departed on the platform below, I proceeded to drag my luggage in the direction he indicated. About 50 yards away I came to a stop in front of a large picture window with this sign: “Checks cashed here” and then below another sign: “We charge for making change.”

“What?!” I exclaimed. “You charge for changing a $10 bill?“

Being true to form, I could not bring myself to pay a dollar to make change. So I asked where I could buy some breath mints. “In the Hilton Gift Shop,” came the helpful reply. I continued along the hallway – another 200 years with my heavy suitcases – and finally arrived in the gift shop.

Ten minutes later – still dragging my luggage --- I returned to the train platform in time to see the next train leave the station without me.

“Excuse me,” I asked the station attendant. “Why don’t you have a change machine?”

“Oh,” he replied, “They took that out of here seven years ago.”

“And why don’t ‘they' replace it?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I hope you have complained to your manager about this,” I said, “because I am your customer and I am sure I am not the first person to ask you for change over the past seven years!”

At MXenergy we talk incessantly about the “customer golden rule: do unto our customers what we would have them do unto us.” But the rule is about as common as finding $1000 bills lying face up in the gutter. Recently, our marketing team had an inspiration: Why don’t we adopt an Energy Customer Bill of Rights, just like the rights that airline passengers are trying to achieve.

So here it is: MXenergy’s equivalent of the Declaration of Independence, a clear statement of what our customers can expect when they do business with us… or else!

MXenergy Customer Bill of Rights
ΠYou have the right to be treated as if you are our most valued customer. Because,
frankly, you are.
 You have the right to speak with a real person, quickly.
Ž You have the right to fully understand your bill. If you don’t, we’ll work with you to make sure that you do.
 You have the right to privacy – we will not share your personal information with anyone outside the company.
 You have the right to switch your service at any time, and we’ll ensure the process goes smoothly.
‘ You have the right to have us listen and work with you to resolve any problem.
’ You have the right to uninterrupted service. And if your service is interrupted, we’d better have a good reason for it.
“ You have the right to not be surprised. The rates we quote are the rates we charge.
” You have the right to have us help you find the best rate plan – for you, not us.
• You have the right to deal with a company that prides itself on ethics, customer service and environmental stewardship.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

I don’t want to disappoint fans of my curmudgeonly take on customer service. It has, after all, provided me with loads of entertainment to regale friends and colleagues.

But even I must concede that praise must be given where praise is due. Herewith are what I hope (but fear will not) be a frequent list, Good customer service experiences that deserve hosannas:

The staff of the Transportation Security Administration at LaGuardia’s Delta terminal.

Believe it or not, the x-ray machine ate my scarf a few weeks ago. I had placed my winter coat in a plastic tub at the airport security and had thrown my scarf on top of it. Then I watched it go through the x-ray machine. On the other side, out came the coat, but no scarf. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the scarf was missing until I emerged from the plane in Chicago. “Oops!” I said to myself, “I must have left my scarf in New York!”

Three days later I was returning from my trip through the same airport. It was midnight. I walked dejectedly over to the TSA guards, sleepily waiting for the last plane of the night to leave. “Any chance you have a Lost and Found for articles lost here? I left a green alpaca scarf here early Monday morning.”

“Of course,” one of the guards said, helpfully. He walked quickly – quickly, mind you – to the TSA office at the end of the platform. There he picked up a clipboard with a log of items that had been left at security. He scanned it and, voila! At 6 am Monday there was an entry: “Long green scarf.”

I was given a phone number and a copy of the log. The next morning I called. The next day I had a Fedex package arrive at my office. I was reunited with my green scarf.

Bravo to the TSA!

The parking valet at Sonny’s Realpit Barbecue in Atlanta.

Even Atlanta can be cold in the winter. And this was a particularly cold day in January. A colleague and I had lunch with one of our large customers. When we emerged the temperature had dropped 10 degrees – it was probably 30 or so, with a blustery wind – and we needed to walk around the back of the restaurant to pick up our car.

We both dreaded the anticipated routine: Give your claim check to the attendant, wait 5 minutes while the attendant finds your key and then saunters at glacial speed to find the car. Then stand another 5 minutes while your car sits behind a long line of other cars waiting to be picked up.

We got to the valet attendant and handed over our ticket. He handed us our keys. The car was sitting at the curb. “Whaaaa?” we each began, confused.

“I saw you leaving the restaurant,” he said, “and I didn’t think you’d want to wait around. So I ran to get your car. It’s cold this time of year!”

Wow! Hats off to you, young man! (On second thought, keep your hat on, it’s cold. Thumbs up!)

My Audi dealer in Fairfield, CT.

So my wife and I leased a lemon. It happens. Of course, we didn’t realize it was a lemon until 13 months after the lease date, just a few weeks after the Connecticut lemon law deadline for asking for another car. Thereafter, the car lived in the dealer’s garage more months than in our driveway.

But we’re not complaining! Why? Because our misery turned out to be an extremely pleasant experience. You see, we would drop the car off in the morning and Carlos, the attendant, would say, “Mr. Mayer, we’ll call you at 3 o’clock and let you know what’s going on.”

And at 3 pm, give or take a couple minutes, the phone would ring. It was Carlos, with a report. “Sorry, Mr. Mayer, we need to order a part. It should be in by Thursday. Would you like a loaner?” The loaner would be dropped off for me at my home.

Of course, on Thursday, the part would not come in. But that was OK. Because, like clockwork, I would get a call! “Sorry, Mr. Mayer, the part has been delayed. But we’ll let you know where it stands tomorrow around 2 pm.” And sure enough, at 2 pm on Friday it was Carlos: “Mr. Mayer, just wanted to let you know the status.”

Go ahead! Surprise me with better service than that. If you’re going to lease a lemon, better to do it with people that serve lemonade!

Kudos, Carlos!

Have a story about great customer service? Let me hear about it. One can’t go through life whining!

Sales Empathy

Moving energy is a business of details: Not only do we have to keep track of the energy itself – the molecules and electrons that make up natural gas and electricity – we also need to track customer consumption which changes daily (or hourly as in the case of electricity) based on weather and such things as whether Junior has decided to take a shower today (thank goodness!) or Dad has a football game he can’t miss.

And that doesn’t include all the details related to meter reads at odd times of the month, data exchange with the utilities, managing sales and marketing, and then keeping all of our data systems running smoothly. On top of the sheer volume of data is the fact that it all interrelates. A change in consumption affects the supply and the billing. A change in the weather forecast can have huge consequences.

This is why we have a philosophy at MX: Everybody should be a jack of all trades and a master of one. We all have skill sets that are important, but only if we know how they fit into the whole can we truly make a valuable contribution. I am always glad to hear when our people express interest in making a move within the company. This helps spread knowledge to other departments and everybody learns more about how we operate.

Recently, I realized there was another benefit when our people move around, particularly when they want to move into sales. Why? To be good at sales requires that you in touch with a customer’s needs. It isn’t enough to get up in the morning and say, “Today, I’m going to sell electricity.” There are lots of competitors that want to do the same and why should somebody deal with us?

There has to be something more: An interest in and understanding of our customers’ energy needs, i.e., empathy. Our business, like most businesses, is about service first and energy second. Harry Bullis, once the chairman of General Mills, said to his sales people: “Forget about the sales you hope to make and concentrate on the service you want to render.” Our customers want to know that their energy needs will be satisfied, they will be billed accurately, and they will have a fair price. The sale is not what serves their needs; it is the service that meets their needs. When our first objective is to serve our customers, our customers will respond with appreciation.

I find that when our people move into sales from other departments, they are better equipped to understand a customer’s business. After all, they have been in the customer’s shoes within our very own business. If they have accounting experience, they understand our customer is watching his billing and the bottom line. If they have IT experience, they understand our customer wants his information in an easily digestible, reportable format. If they are simply breathing, they understand that good service requires integrity, rapid response and thorough attention.

Our products – fixed rate price protection, carbon dioxide offsets – have always been challenging to explain to commercial customers. It gets a whole lot easier when the MX team members making the sale care about and understand the customers’ needs.

Poor Little Lambs

“AAAARGHHHH!!!!”

If you were standing outside anywhere in the Northeastern United States last Saturday morning, you would have heard this plaintive cry.

“AAAARGHHHHH!!!”

My wife had just arrived back from her third (in as many days) frustrating visit to Fedex/Kinko’s with a tale of woe. And being the resident cranky, customer service curmudgeon in my own company, I thought I would bring it to your attention.

The story starts in 1970 in Santa Barbara, California, where Kinko’s first started. According to the Fedex/Kinko web site, the first store front “measured 100 square feet and featured a single copier, offset press, film processing and a small selection of stationery and school supplies.” I think of this as the “copier that could.” Within four years there were 72 other locations.

I can relate to this story because those were the four years that I was in college. I remember the little copy center in New Haven on College Street where copies were 3 cents a page and the people behind the desk knew your name when you came in at 6 am after finishing a paper due at 9.

Over the years I spent many a night in Kinko’s. I remember 4 in the morning in Honolulu. I had a presentation the next morning before Hawaiian Airlines. I had gotten back to my hotel room from dinner the night before and learned that there were going to be 10 more people than I expected.

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll find Kinko’s.” And so I did.

And that night in Baltimore, Maryland, in November 1999. MXenergy was launching its first product – a one year fixed price offer for natural gas to customers of Baltimore Gas & Electric. I was knocking on doors in Lithicum, MD, and the product sold so fast I needed to make more copies of our customer contract.

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll find Kinko’s.” And so I did.

Or that time I visited a commercial customer with a colleague in Cleveland, shortly after Hurricane Katrina blew in. On the way to the meeting we learned that natural gas prices were hitting all time highs. I wanted to bring our customer a price chart and needed to find a computer…quickly.

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll find Kinko’s.” And so I did.

Today you can find 1200 stores in 10 countries with 20,000 employees. Actually, Kinko’s calls its employees “team members,” something we do here at MXenergy as well. Which is one reason I always worshipped this company… until recently.

As much as I admire Federal Express, I’m afraid that I must date the decline of my little “copier that could” to the acquisition of Kinko’s by Fedex in February 2004. Fedex is a great company with its own history, dating back to an undergraduate paper written in 1965 by Frederick Smith. Smith recognized a need for a more efficient mechanism for distributing packages. More power to him. He capitalized on a great idea and built an international business that has improved business productivity worldwide.

I don’t blame Fedex for seeing a good fit with Kinko’s. But soon after the buyout I noticed a few things. The hard-working crew at Kinko’s were no where to be seen. Where were the team members that knew your name and remembered your order? That used to exceed expectations every time by having your copies ready hours before they were promised? That used to go out of their way to offer suggestions to improve the look and feel of your presentation?

I wonder if anybody at Kinko’s noticed that I stopped visiting on my out of town trips. It started when I went to a Kinko’s at midnight…and it was closing!

“But…you…can’t,” I mouthed to the employee on the other side of the glass door. “You’re…always…open!” He ignored me.

And then my wife’s experience. She needed to make 100 copies of a program for a theatrical performance she had produced. After waiting in line for some desultory employees to look up from their work, she left a sample to copy. The next day – after even less motivated employees finally found her order – she found the copies had not been made. She came back a couple hours later after having ordered 100 copies, only to find later that only 50 were made.

“But 50 times 2 pages is 100 copies, no?” asked the confused employee.

“No,” my wife explained. “I ordered 100 copies of a two page program which means 100 copies, not 50 copies.”

“AAARRGHHHH!!!”

What happened? Could it be that the entrepreneurial spirit of Kinko’s was crushed out of existence when Fedex moved in?

I remember late one night in the good old days one of the Kinko’s people – an immigrant from Russia, I recall, who worked long hours – told me that she felt like an owner because she held stock options in Kinko’s. She was motivated because she believed that good customer service would lead to more business and more business would lead to more value in her pocket. I understood this kind of motivation because we try to create the same kind of ownership pride at MXenergy, where many team members have the opportunity to own options or stock in our company.

If anybody over at Kinko’s sees this blog entry, I hope it doesn’t discourage them. Great companies can lose their way and still come back. I hope Kinko’s succeeds, with or without Fedex’s help. I still believe in the “little copier that could.”

Meanwhile, I am reminded of the Whiffenpoof song:

“We are poor little lambs who have lost our way,
Baaaah, Baaaah, Baaaah….”

The Last Six Miles: Not Strength but Will

Sir Edmund Hillary died early this month. He was a childhood hero of mine, one of the first to summit Mt. Everest in 1953 with Tenzing Norgay, his Sherpa. After tackling Everest, Hillary went on to other startling achievements, such as reaching the South Pole in 1958, the first successful overland attempt since Robert Scott’s fatal trip of 1912. His passing started me thinking about the amazing things that human beings can accomplish if they set their minds to it.

Over the years I have had several friends who have attempted to accomplish prodigious feats of athletic or intellectual skill. Their accomplishments may not have been on the order of Hillary and Norgay. But to me they were equally dramatic: Running the 26.2 mile marathon, sailing across the Atlantic, memorizing the Kings and Queens of England, helliskiing in British Columbia, almost climbing K-2 in the Himalayas (28,251 feet), reciting “pi” to 256 decimal places, successfully climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa (19,300 feet). Until recently I admired all of these feats (performed by different people, of course!) with the detached bemusement of an indulgent uncle, pausing over a picture on a mantelpiece here or reading a long letter in the comfort of an armchair there.

Then recently my family and I decided to attempt our own adventure: trekking four days through the Andes to reach Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. We had never done anything as ambitious – or as insane! We flew to Cusco, the Incan capital, which sits at 10,000 feet. After a couple days of acclimatizing, we set out into the mountains, hiking almost 25 miles, much of it on vertical stone trails set in the mountain over 600 years ago. At one point we climbed a pass at 14,000 feet, climbed down a couple thousand feet and then returned to another pass at 13,000 feet.

For our teenage sons it was a day in the park. For my wife and me it was the most demanding athletic challenge we had ever faced. Physically, we were perfectly fit and had no muscle aches going up or down. But in the thin oxygen at that altitude we found ourselves gasping for breath. Frequently we stopped and questioned whether we could go on. After a minute of deep breathing and slowing heart rates, we resumed, telling ourselves again and again that there was no option: We had to go on. And we could go on, as had centuries of Incans and other Andean natives before us.

We dismissed our hardship to age. Then we heard from one of the 32-year old members of our tour party who had run four marathons. “This was like the last 6 miles of a marathon,” she told us. “You train for 20 miles and then you hit the wall. The last six miles you have to dig deep down into yourself, where you find not strength but will.”

“Not strength but will.” As I sit here looking at the screensaver on my computer -- a picture of my family standing in front of Machu Picchu – I am reminded of both the exhilaration and the pain of that journey. For the first time in my life I feel I can relate to Hillary and Norgay trudging those last few hundred feet to the summit. Or to our marathon friend in those last six miles. Each step must have been agony. But there was no option.

Many times in business we face obstacles that seem insurmountable. In our business we are faced daily with demands for overwhelming amounts of information. After all, energy is a 24/7 business. Electricity is dispatched and balanced every 5 minutes. Our customers are located at thousands of different load pockets and pipeline delivery points around the country. Our supply must be constantly balanced against the instantaneous needs of our clients. The weather is unpredictable and differs in every one of our 38 different market areas. And all of this data needs to be rolled up, captured, reconciled, billed accurately, and reported to our customers, our bankers, our shareholders.

These are intimidating requirements. We have built the infrastructure and have the muscle to succeed. Nevertheless, at times when we launch a new product, or enter a new territory, or pursue new customers, we ask ourselves, “Is it worth it? Can we do one more thing? Aren’t we working hard enough? Wouldn’t it be easier to sit back in our armchairs and watch others on the bloody edge of change and growth?”

“Not strength but will.” Our friend said it all. In our business, as on the summit of Mt. Everest, it is the will to succeed as much as the strength to do so that helps us meet our goals. And when we accomplish our objectives, we feel more relief and satisfaction than pride. Hillary said at the end of his life that he never felt like a “hero,” just a guy doing a job nobody else would do. Not a bad legacy to leave behind, whether climbing mountains or serving the needs of customers.

Nanosolar

My oldest son has been subscribing to Popular Science for years. When he was in high school I heard about the latest technologies third hand; the magazine disappeared into his room as soon as it arrived. I never got to read for myself about solo powered air flight, electric cars, and nanorobots. Now that he is off to college I get to read it myself. It is like reading a science fiction novel but it’s real: New gizmos and gadgets that would make the Jetsons take notice.

One perennial topic is solar power. Now I’ve been watching the development of solar panel for years, at least since I was in high school myself and clipped a solar cell to a bulb from a flash light and got a dim glow. The past few years have been particularly interesting. Several months ago I was invited by one of the investment banks on Wall Street to hear from the entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of this promising technology. They talked about new breakthroughs in materials science and design, but all delivered essentially the same message: We can produce power from the inexhaustible rays of the sun, but it will be many years before the cost of solar power is competitive with electricity from conventional sources. Translation: Give us some more investment tax credits and give our customers some tax incentives and we can do more.

So nowadays when I see a story about solar power I usually yawn. That is, until a couple days ago. A story in the Sunday New York Times caught my eye: “Start-Up Sells Solar Panels At Lower-Than-Usual Cost.” Now I’ve heard this claim before so I scanned the article quickly with the intent of going on to something else. That is, until I saw the “Lower-Than-Usual Cost”: $1 per watt. Whoa, I said to myself. That’s cheaper than a new coal plant!

It appears that a new company in California called Nanosolar has been launched with backing by some Silicon Valley sponsors including some of Google’s co-founders, according to the story. The company has built a factory which, it says, prints photovoltaic material on aluminum backing, reducing the cost of solar panels by more than 80%. In other words, with this technology solar power can produce cost effective energy for the first time since Prometheus stole fire from the hearth of Zeus. (Let’s face it, can’t get it much cheaper than stealing it – not a good thing, mind you, but it sure beat freezing in those long nights on Mt. Olympus.)

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Nanosolar’s new idea. It has the power to truly change the world. Sure, solar power cannot supply all of our power needs, unless we all plan to move to the Mojave Desert and go to sleep each night at dusk. But imagine if solar were efficient a mere 10% of the time. That would be enough to provide all the electricity we need to grow for years, certainly until new nuclear power plants are designed and developed. In the meantime, it could reduce our current dependence upon fossil fuels, thereby reducing harmful carbon dioxide emissions from natural gas fired generators and sulphur dioxide emissions from fuel oil and coal plants.

I used to like science fiction as a kid. Jules Verne’s “Trip to the Moon” was fiction until it became a reality. Isaac Asimov’s robots were fantasy until they appeared on the General Motors assembly line. The Jetson Family’s solar powered home was a cartoon…until Nanosolar. As one who lives and breathes energy on a daily basis, I feel like a guy riding on horseback when Gottlieb Daimler passed in his automobile, lurching and backfiring over the rutted road.

Now if I could only get my hands on one of those solo powered aircrafts.

Customer Care from the New York Times

I was rummaging around in my brief case for a pen when I pulled out a yellowing article from the New York Times. http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/opinion/27friedman.html I had clipped it several months ago on a business trip. I intended to send it to our Customer Service Teams in Maryland and Florida. It was written by Thomas Friedman for the Times’ Op-Ed page. I had forgotten to write the date on the clip so I can’t be sure when it appeared but hopefully it was over the last year or else it means I haven’t cleaned out my brief case in quite a while!

Mr. Friedman is an astute commentator on everything from Middle East politics to globalization. In this story he recounted standing in line a couple years earlier at Boston’s Logan airport. He was buying a newspaper when suddenly a woman stepped in front of him and insisted that she be served first. He was incensed, but then woman turned to him and said, “I know who you are,” and so he backed off.

“If that happened today,” he wrote, “I would have had a very different reaction. I would have said: “Miss, I’m so sorry. I am entirely in the wrong. Please, go ahead. And can I buy your magazines for you? May I buy your lunch? Can I shine yours shoes?”

Why did Mr. Friedman say he would have been so eager to please the woman? Because today the woman might have whipped out a cell phone from her purse and, when he was protesting her rudeness, filmed the entire episode and posted the clip on YouTube!

Mr. Friedman – always with an eye to the global implications of everyday events – points out that in a world with instantaneous communications, we are all constantly on stage. Our attitude, demeanor, mood and tone of voice is not ephemeral as in the past. Rather, everything we do could become a permanent part of the collective consciousness. And while sometimes the global archive might be accurate, just as often the behavior that we take for granted can suddenly appear in a sinister and unflattering light.

This is important insight for every company in a customer service business. I am delighted to report that when customers call me directly, they may have complaints but they almost never tell me that our agents were rude or abrupt. That is because we train and coach our customers to “speak with a smile.” Believe it or not, you can “hear” a smile over the phone. Courtesy is not only good business practice. It’s also playing defense. After all, suppose the call is recorded?

Emails raise a similar risk. Say something nasty and write in capitals – i.e., shout – and the email may end up forwarded to a million readers by the end of the day. My personal hangup is typos. Write to somebody: “Yank you tor your bery nice Christmas tift” and you sound like you’re drunk and out of your mind.

Fortunately my blogs have a limited shelf life and are forgotten as soon as they are read….or are they??