Last year, the Brand I work for began a project to “re-stack” the cubicles, offices and conference rooms at my office space. This is a very polite way to say they were re-sizing to make it possible for more people to inhabit the building.
The first section to be re-sized was the north end of my floor – where I work. The commencement of that re-model project temporarily moved me and my colleagues into the very close proximity of our customer service phone shop for almost half a year. Every day, we heard one side of the calls customer service representatives took from those customers with a problem of some kind.
I don’t want to give the impression that there are huge numbers of complaints. We do a pretty good job with our products and services. I know, I sound like a sports team “homer” but so what? I am a big fan of my brand, my colleagues and our products. Those products and services are great and they work. And when surveyed, a large proportion of our customers love us, or like us a lot (what we call, “top-two-box.)
But with financial products or services, excellence depends not only on what we do, but also on the execution of merchants and third-party vendors, the avoidance of crooks who perpetrate fraud, and even merchant product quality.
Our harried customer service representatives field calls about a variety of customer concerns, and it is very different to spend the bulk of your day dealing with the complaining portion of the consuming public than it is to listen in to an hour of customer calls on a weekly basis in order to make product feature decisions (which people of my profession routinely do.)
Being a captive audience to one side of those conversations gave me and my colleagues a new insight into patterns in the calls.
One example: for a period of time a very hard-working immigrant from an African nation, who spoke English with what sounded like an Eastern –European accent, sat just north of my office. It is one thing to read in the financial press that Americans are opposed to the off-shoring of customer service, and quite another to notice that every other caller, obnoxiously asked this conscientious young man where he lived. I could tell by the young man’s reaction that the caller did not for a minute believe him when he replied, “Salt Lake City, why do you ask?”
This frustrated young man from time to time became very combative, and all of us who heard him felt deeply sorry that he had to endure the abuse that was heaped on him day after day. His immigration story was heart-wrenching and heroic. His work ethic was first-rate. His grasp of English was better by far than say, my grasp of Spanish when I’m visiting Mexico. Honestly, I think this kid is smarter than me.
Another example: while at lunch with a former colleague I overheard another patron verbally abusing a waitress over something related to the food. Not her fault really – she handles the service, but remember, the kitchen doesn’t face the public, they face only management and waiters and waitresses. As the waitress apologetically walked away to fix the problem, and after already causing her more trouble than the bulk of us, the patron commented about the size – or rather lack of size of her future tip.
It is my general observation that most people are bullies to the weak and helpless who don’t seem to matter. If you aren’t weak or helpless, you are probably a bully from time to time too. And there are few people with less power than a customer service representative.
If there seems to be no love in most customer service, perhaps it is less about training on the part of the company, or desire on the part of the employee, and more about the last ten customers who verbally abused them. If there is one thing I have learned well it is that in order to change the dynamics of a relationship, you need only change one side of the equation.
If you want better service, you need to be more like my Dad. He is polite and patient with everyone, most especially the weak and helpless. When he knows it, he uses their name. He thanks them. He is genuine and respectful. He uses the words “please” and “thank you.” He compliments them. He is consistent. Listening to him, you would think he was dealing with the president of the company. And it has been my life-long observation that he gets better service than most people I know, especially where he is well known.
Another observation: Companies are rewarding customers for obnoxious behavior. The unhappy customer that doesn’t push and abuse, demand and cajole, will get no compensational perk.
The jerk, on the other hand – well now, company polices and partially empowered employees and managers will credit their account, send them movie tickets or some other such thing, and thank them profusely for their abuse, bow and scrape. We’ve set up our front-line employees and we’ve ensured that the abuse will continue to escalate.
There are ways to overcome these issues, but the current policies of most customer service organizations, policies devised by re-engineering project managers and approved by senior managers, lead to unintended consequences and escalation remains hidden to those “strategists.”
Those re-engineering project managers are people who jump from one operation to another, think they understand all the pertinent data in minutes, but miss the nuances. They are really good with process maps, project plans and “managing upward.” We’ve left the devising of our most important relationships to people with a cursory understanding of the dynamics or consequences of these key relationships.
These re-engineering project managers think they are more clever than the experts. The experts are those people who do this each and every day. And on that rare occasion when the re-engineering project manager does ask and listen to the experts, they routinely ignore what they say.
Next time you decide some pierced, tattooed, baggy-panted, and very bored or unhappy looking minimum wage service jockey needs a bit of straightening out, take a moment to think about who actually determined the policies, designed the product, or determined the process for that service. Chances are that guy has an MBA, owns the house next door and makes a lot more than minimum wage.
Oh, and he can’t figure out why he can’t find good help these days.
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