Appletree Answering Service

20 times return on investment in less than a year; record retention of customers in a commodity business during a severe downturn; highest morale in the history of the company; and the best two quarters, ever, in terms of profitability. The key? An initiative called “Dream On.”

“You’re either a giver or taker,” explains John Ratliff, founder and CEO AppleTree Answering Service, a 350 employee inbound call center company based in Wilmington, Delaware with call centers in 12 locations throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico. “Givers tend to get stuff back while takers fight for every last nickel and they are always the ones, in the end, who are struggling - they never have abundance.”

Huge Problem

The transformation of Ratliff’s 13 year-old firm began during a quarterly offsite as the company prepared its plan for the coming 3rd quarter of 2008. “Employee attrition was the ‘critical number’ we chose to focus on,” recalls Ratliff. “We were running an industry average 95% turnover of our frontline employees while our non-exempt turnover was just 3% — clearly we were doing something right for one group but not the other - and just being average has never been our goal.”

Ratliff knew that the company’s growth, through 13 acquisitions in six years, had made it impossible to create a cohesive culture. And he had a nagging feeling that Appletree needed to be more than just a place for his employees to come to work. What he didn’t realize was how painfully out of touch he and his executive team had become with their frontline employees.

“We were in our planning session brainstorming ways to create a better experience for our employees when Lisa Phillips, our director of operations, asked how we could become more like ‘Make a Wish’ for our employees,” notes Ratliff. Over the years, Appletree has generously donated to charities and the “Make a Wish” foundation had always been their favorite.

Human Solution

So they put together a small team of people to flesh out the idea and decided it wasn’t about identifying their hard luck employees. Instead they simply wanted to know one thing, in a perfect world, that each of their employees would like to have happen in their personal lives. Critical to the request - there were no restrictions or caveats. And final decisions would be made by a secret committee.

Dreams

Titled “Dream On”, they announced it on their intranet and supported it with printed collateral and posters in all of their offices. Not surprisingly, like most new initiatives, the responses were slow to come in, but the requests that did trickle in began to provide the executive team a glimpse into the lives of their people.

“It was nothing short of shocking to discover the situation of our frontline employees,” remembers Ratliff. “Just like you do demographic research on your customers, we started to really get an insight into the challenges of our employees and the kinds of situations they had inherited.”

Dream Requests

Health was a staggering shocker for the executive team as well as challenges caring for an elderly parent or grandparent. Others found themselves caught on a financial treadmill, having been out of work for a couple months before joining Appletree and needing a couple thousand dollars to get caught up.

“And I was surprised by the car situation - how a change in a bus route can force our employees to change jobs or how a previous employer may have changed job hours which no longer matched public transportation schedules,” explains Ratliff. Seventeen employees simply wished to own a car.

Living in a car

“One of the first requests we got was from a manager of one of our employees,” recalls Ratliff. Through a perfect storm of events, including the employee’s husband getting in a pretty serious accident and losing his job, the couple and their child found themselves living in a car, unbeknownst to Ratliff and his executive team. So the company put up the deposit money and worked with a landlord to get her a decent lease. They also provided furniture and gift cards to help the family get back on their feet.

“We meant to do this privately but the employee let a lot of people know and soon it was on our intranet and that dramatically increased submissions,” adds Ratliff.

Contact

The company intranet has been a powerful vehicle for linking their employees across 12 sites and creating a sense of community, witnessed by the companywide assistance that poured in when Hurricane Gustav hit Houma, location of one of their call centers. Employees stepped up to the plate and shipped clothes, food, and other necessities within 48 hours to their fellow employees. “It was an instant injection of positive to our culture.”

Access

Helping eight people with living situations like bills and rent; sending two employees on their first honeymoons leveraging Amex points; flying a mom over Christmas to see her daughter in the Navy; providing four employees with personal computers at home; and fulfilling the dream of a 90 year old employee to take her first family vacation with her mentally challenged daughter are just some of the dreams they’ve made come true.

Sick

“What CEOs don’t realize is the access you have that other people don’t and how you can create opportunities for people you never would have thought of,” reflects Ratliff. This was driven home when one of Ratliff’s employees, who had been with him from the beginning of the company, asked for help in sending her 28 year old husband, who is suffering from stage 4 Hodgkins disease, to an Eagles football game.

Through connections Ratliff had, the team picked him up in a limo, brought him down to the field and sat him in the wives section for the game. After the game each player came out of the locker room, greeted him, and signed a game ball, including his favorite player who took his game shirt out of his duffle bag, signed it, and asked him to walk him to his car.

“This cost me zero dollars - just some time to access my network,” notes Ratliff. “It’s not about throwing money at problems.”

Results

In turn, the company has had its best six months ever. First, turnover dropped instantly once “Dream On” was launched, where today it sits around 30%. At a cost of $5k to replace an employee, there’s already been a net $1 million contribution from a program that has cost $50,000 so far. And for the cynics that would say the terrible economy would have driven this rate down anyway, customer turnover, which should have been high, is also the lowest in history due to a highly engaged and upbeat workforce. And all of this has resulted in the two most profitable quarters in Appletree history!

“The overall sense of belonging - of being something bigger than themselves or their individual sites - and part of a community has been the biggest change I’ve seen among the employees,” concludes Ratliff. “And for me, I feel more connected, now, to our entire group, and the company has become much more human to people.”

Verne Harnish

Appletree Answers is excited to announce that we are now offering online bill pay.  Our customers will have the ability to pay their bills via credit or debit transactions with Visa, Mastercard, AMEX and Discover! 

Feel confident that your payment will post to your account within one business day.  Simplify the invoicing process and schedule your payments ahead of time.  Eliminate mail delays and never again pay late fees! Manage your businesses from a tax perspective by printing out an instant payment receipt, as well as, receive payment confirmations via email.

Thinking green, Appletree is moving full steam ahead to provide as many green transactions/interactions with our customers…  In addition, we are encouraging our customers to not only use the on-line bill pay feature, but reach out to get your newsletters and invoicing emailed to you.  Together we can partner to make our planet more green.

Beginning February 23rd, 2009, go to https://www.appletreeanswers.com/secure/billpay.php, it’s fast and secure!

For those of you who are sports fans, this story may peek your interest, but I will not give you the blow by blow recant of the game.  Stay with me, I promise it’s going somewhere. 

So last night, I was lucky enough to get 2 club box tickets to the Philadelphia Flyers vs. Dallas Stars game, with a premier parking pass.  We had exceptional seats, about 12 rows off of center ice; access to the club box bar and close proximity to a restroom, which seems small, but quite the luxury at a crowded sporting event.  The game proved to be exciting clear through the 3^rd period where the Flyers pulled out a 4 -3 win over the Stars, giving them their 5^th win in a row.  With all the commotion of an exciting win and masses of people exiting the stadium, my friend and I went out the wrong exit.  So much for a premier parking pass…  And to add to it, it was raining, hard!  Taking advantage of the situation, we decided to run through the parking lot, jumping in rain puddles, splashing each other and racing through the parked cars like an obstacle coarse.  It was freezing cold and we were soaked, but it was fun.  Fun that you see children having, carefree, easy fun and it was all stimulated by a mistake.  When I woke up this morning, I was excited to share my story.  If it made me take the time to reflect on the simplicity and smile, then maybe it would touch someone else.  I guess the moral of the story is, not to let mistakes get you down, don’t dwell on them.  Get through them, learn from them and make the most of the situation! 

I am the President for the National Amtelco Equipment Owners Association and in that capacity I write a monthly column for our newsletter.  The overall topic of this month was Customer Service.  I really had to stop and think about the state of Customer Service today and how it fits into an overall business strategy.  It is sad but true that delivering an above average level of Customer Service has become a competitive advantage!  Deliver extraordinary service and books will be written about you…

Why has it gotten to this point?  I get the sense that a variety of factors have led us to this point.  At or near the top of the list is the pace at which we move today.  We are in a 24/7/365 world.  I know because my company helps power that world.  We get the strangest and most routine calls at 3am, at times you would think it was midday on a Tuesday.  Customers have come to expect instant access, not just to information but to people.  That means you need to be on your Customer Service game around the clock.  30 years ago this was pretty much unheard of, but today it is the standard.

Another factor in the demise of service is the number of customer touchpoints that must be managed.  It used to be phone call, letter (snail mail) and face to face.  Now there are a wide variety of channels customers use to make contact, and many of them are difficult to manage in real time because they require someone to “notice” them.  Web chat, email, voicemail, etc. are at times more passive and require tightly defined systems to deliver a high level of service.  Training costs and challenges increase exponentially as well.  The skill sets required to serve in this new world are more diverse.  Written and oral communication skills are now a must, and much harder to find in the employee pool.

The upside to all this, for the companies that crack the Customer Service Code, is a huge competitive advantage!

Have a great week!

There are lessons everywhere about the differences among people, customer service, sales and innovation. In my role I have to travel a great deal, often three or more weeks per month on the road. Therefore I have been identified by my principle airline as one of their most “frequent” customers. While we could debate the merits of whether or not to stratify your customers for hours, we will set that argument aside since the airlines spend millions to stratify their customers. It works too, because with the perks I receive I am VERY loyal to my particular airline. But I can tell you it is a false loyalty. Given any opportunity to get a better experience elsewhere I will take it in a heartbeat. But as of now they have me in golden handcuffs with frequent ugrades, free trips and special extras.

Where they fail me though is in service. They spend all this money to trap you as a customer and then they fail at the most critical part. For the most part things are uneventful when I fly them. They lose my bags (they say “delay”) about 30% of the time when I check bags, but I have grown accustomed to that and rarely check bags. More often than not things go well. But let me tell you when it goes south it goes so far south that I am often found shaking my head and cursing their existence. Here it is, they know I am in their top tier of customers, they spent millions to identify that and create loyalty. Then, when they get the chance to serve me during a bad experience they completely fail. They use words like “policy” and “nothing else I can do”. I am often left so disgusted that I use their competitors for a few months and forgo all my extra perks, only to return. I guess the golden handcuffs are working, but I can tell you I am not happy.

Many times what they would need to do to make me happy would be so ridiculously simple a 3 year old could figure it out, but then policy rears it’s ugly head and the answer is NO to my simple request. Next time you travel take the chance to learn some lessons about business and service and reflect back on your own company. Are you creating these experiences and don’t even know it? I ask myself this question all the time. We fight like hell to avoid it but I am sure it is happening. If you have any experience with Appletree that sounds like the above I would like to hear about it personally. My email is jratliff@appletreeanswers.com.

Have a great week.

Appletree is joining the blog world! As an innovator in the marketing arena for our industry, I am embarrassed that we are so late to the blog party. In our research we have found there are a multitude of reasons to actively participate in the blogosphere, not the least of which is communication with stakeholders. Customers, employees and key vendors are all engaged in research and interaction with related companies.I am excited that our employees will have a venue to make more of a connection with me and our company in general, and that is the primary driver for me becoming an active blogger. Business today has changed dramatically, and valuing employees as true stakeholders in the company is central to our philosophy. We even design new office spaces around front line employees first. They get the best views, the best space and the most ergonomic workstations.As a CEO, this progression to employee centric thinking is very rewarding. While it costs more to provide employees a first class experience, the service they deliver to our customers makes it well worth it. There are topics in just about every executive meeting about how to make the front line employee experience better. Our number one job as a company is to service our employees, so that they in turn service our customers. It is a real shift in thinking but one that is completely worth it.

Appletree Answering Service launches company blog to promote employee and customer education and communication.