Total, Relaxed Organization, The Blog

This really isn’t a gripe session. We hope that Rackspace will soon deliver the “fanatical customer support” they advertise for all its clients, all the time. It’s a great slogan, it’s a superb goal, and it is achievable.

Unfortunately, Rackspace isn’t even close yet. This business case study analyzes why Rackspace falls short and—more importantly—what they must change to deliver the promise.

If you yearn for world-class support in any industry, read on. These principles are universal.

The Story

My company, Priacta, uses Rackspace Cloud Sites. We really liked the idea of agile, infinite scalability and multiple-site hosting packaged in a single managed account. But we especially liked the idea of fanatical support promised by Rackspace, seeing as that’s part of our mission, too. Your suppliers need to share your company values, or they could work against you.

Furthermore, to be productive (and we are productivity experts) you can’t waste your time pulling weeds. Hire someone else to do that—someone fanatical about weeds.

Lately, however, Rackspace seriously let Priacta down in the reliability department over and over … and over. Small groups of emails started intermittently “bouncing” and then disappeared, accompanied by only occasional, cryptic error messages. Then an entire days’ worth of emails disappeared, with Rackspace’s knowledge but without a word of warning until we asked. Worst of all, our shopping cart kept going offline through no fault of our own. Mysterious “No suitable nodes” errors kept flashing before our eyes—and our customers’ eyes—as prospects left our store with nothing to show but abandoned carts.

Not to worry! Mistakes happen. Cloud technology is new, Rackspace is a pioneer, and we signed on for that ride, so we expected a few arrows along the trail. We didn’t worry, at first, because “fanatical support” will make it right. If the person on the phone really, really cares, a solution is always within reach.

Hacking Fanatical Support

Unfortunately, chat sessions became long email chains followed by frustrating phone calls. Support ticket after ticket was opened. Rackspace techs said our email provider was to blame. Our email provider blamed Rackspace. Neither party pressed the matter once they figured that it wasn’t their fault. End of discussion. Both parties lost sight of the simple fact that their customer still had a problem.

Far from fanatical support.

Finally, in desperation, our top developer dusted off his social engineering skills and hacker instincts, poked around the web, and found the email addresses of both CEOs. Then he crafted a beautiful email and cc:ed everyone, “Escalating the Issue to the CEO’s.” (Anyone else want those email addresses? Sorry, it’s a Priacta trade secret for now. We may need them again to get our remaining problems resolved.)

We also did a little tweeting and were contacted by a fanatical (but not all-powerful) PR rep at Rackspace. He tried pulling some strings for us too. Finally, with both CEOs and others looking out for us, the ball began to roll. It took more than a week and two dozen more emails, but that issue was finally identified and fixed.

Should a customer have to go through all that?

No. But we can learn some things from it.

The Plot Thickens

More recently, we started down a similar path on our “No suitable nodes are available to serve your request” errors. (As of this writing, Google gives about 43,300 hits when you search that message!) Rackspace explained that this error comes from their load balancers, but Rackspace cannot track down the cause. What?! Their message was clear: in essence, “Our error, not our responsibility. Find some way to handle this yourself. Call us if you see it happen again.” Never mind that we had already reported it several times, and by the time their admins checked, they could not reproduce the problem. Our issue was unresolved.

Not fanatical.

What’s the Real Problem Here?

You might think we got a bad support operator or two. Maybe, but it’s definitely bigger than that since we got poor support repeatedly, on different issues, regardless of the technician. Something was wrong with the Rackspace support process itself.

Any company the size of Rackspace needs reliable, repeatable processes to support its mission. You just can’t count on always hiring the few exceptional people with initiative, and then emphasize the need for fanatical service. Your basic delivery process has to be right, regardless of who is on the phone, or you will fail.

So what, exactly, is currently missing from the Rackspace support model?

Clue #1:  Social Media (Accountability)

Remember United Breaks Guitars? 6 million views and counting. That catchy YouTube video worked for Dave Carroll and hurt United’s reputation big-time. But why?

Social media creates a fast channel of accountability—public accountability, driven by the consumer. When you have darkness, social media lets you dispel it by shining a bright light on it. YouTube can be a very big light, and so is Twitter. Just make sure you are very careful with your facts when you do it.

The truth is, however, that companies are always accountable to their customers, whether they realize it or not.  Social media just accelerates and magnifies that accountability and makes it stick. That YouTube video will be out there for years.

Public accountability isn’t ideal for the company, however. It can hurt big time. That’s why Rackspace was smart to have a sharp PR rep monitoring tweets and offering help pronto. That’s also why United Airlines was downright stupid. When Mr. Carroll popularized their blunder, United should have jumped up and quickly countered with a video of their own: “United LOVES Guitars.” I’m picturing reformed, teary-eyed, penitent baggage handlers handing off guitars with gloves, as if they were made of fine glass. Make it funny, and try to turn huge negative publicity into a new, positive reputation. Give Mr. Carroll lifetime free airline tickets, so he can unofficially test the “new” United every time he flies. Help him post a public report card on all his flights. They could turn Mr. Carroll into a very popular, very influential, unofficial company spokesperson. Think Verizon guy, but so much better.

That’s called “damage control.” But how much better is damage prevention? And as good as damage prevention is, there is still something better.

Clue #2: Kenny the Printer (Ownership)

Years ago, my father told me about an amazing company called Kenny the Printer. When he walked into the store with a project, someone at the counter took the job, asked questions, and then ended with these critical words: “I will personally manage your job from start to finish. Here is my card. Call me if you have any questions or issues.”

Any fear fear that your job won’t go as planned? Why not?

Kenny the Printer delivered personal accountability to the customer that created a sense of ownership in the service representative. No need to create YouTube videos or blog articles to get their attention. No need to wonder if they care about your problem. You have a personal rep who’s taken charge of your job; the staff member’s reputation is tied to the service they give; the company ties its reputation to the staff’s reputation; you are in the driver’s seat as the consumer.

Accountability and Ownership at Rackspace?

When we first called Rackspace with our bounced email problem, who owned it? We did, not the technician. The customer owns the problem with their current system. No wonder support reps feel comfortable passing the work back to us. “Let us know if it happens again.” And again, and again.

And who was measuring if the service was excellent? The customer service rep, not the customer. The simple customer satisfaction survey afterwards didn’t fix that problem. Customer surveys usually fail to provide proper accountability because they are implemented or used badly. If they only provide semi-anonymous feedback that is reviewed internally against standards that the customer does not see (lack of transparency), then the survey doesn’t really exist for the customer, and the rep feels no accountability to the client. No real customer accountability, no real staff ownership.

Fixing the System

Rackspace support became fanatical when the CEO was brought into the loop. Why? 1) We were given a named contact who felt real ownership of the issue, because 2) that contact knew that they had to satisfy us to satisfy the CEO. The support operator was suddenly accountable to the customer, and his reputation depended on our satisfaction.

So, for Rackspace to deliver consistent, fanatical support, they must re-engineer their process like the one their CEO created. Make it the rule, not the exception—and yes, make it economical at the same time. It can be done.

Apply the lessons of Kenny the Printer and social media. Create personal staff ownership by assigning specific reps to specific problems or clients, and let the consumer be the judge of “fanatical.”

Real, personal accountability to the customer. Personal ownership within the organization based on that accountability. Taking ownership of the problem from the customer.

Now that’s a fanatical idea!

Kevin Crenshaw is a productivity expert, business consultant, and executive coach. He is also CEO of Priacta, Inc., a time management company that helps you get an extra two hours out of your day—for life.