Monthly Archives: September 2009

Road Rage and Customer Service

Posted on 29 September 2009 by | 1 Comment

Road rage and customer service in America are quite similar.  One reason customer service stinks is that companies don’t know their customers.  How could they?  Most customer service is delivered via phone, email, or a chat window.  Most American service isn’t even “made in America”.

Over-crowding – in the 1950s a scientist conducted studies involving over-crowded rats.  (One interpretation contained here.)  A simplistic summary is that overcrowding rats caused them to become aggressive to one another.  If you run a customer service center I have a plea for you.  Stand up, walk outside your office and look around.  Does the scene resemble over-crowding?  Are your service representatives measured by average speed of answer, time to resolve a question/call?  The quality of the service can be only as good as the people you have and their efficacy is impacted by work conditions.

Anonymity – wearing their invisibility cloaks, drivers feel they can treat other drivers (who are people) poorly.  Pedestrians don’t treat each other as rudely as drivers treat each other.  When was the last time you heard of a fist-fight related to one person entering a revolving door before another?  How about someone slipping ahead on an on ramp?  Similarly face-to-face service is more civil than that provided over a phone.  People still crave relationships and responsive customer service is just that – a relationship, albeit brief.  Even if we must provide service via phone or chat window or email, we must preserve the relationship with customers.

Loss of Control – road rage is borne of a feeling of intense frustration.  And that frustration boils over into poor decisions which are at best rude and at worst deadly.  Customer service representatives who lack the tools to solve a problem provide little value to customers – who recognize the fact and grow frustrated.  Likewise, customer service representatives who have no control aren’t engaged and it shows.

The pivot point is that unless you take great care in delivering service, your customers may feel more like victims of road rage than valued stakeholders.  Customer service has gotten a bad reputation and deservedly so. I saw a television commercial extolling the virtues of “speaking with an actual person.”  Imagine that, an actual person! What a sad commentary of how impersonal our service culture has become.  To reverse this trend, treat your people with respect and trust your team, create relationships with customers, and provide tools and training to the people who are charged with earning repeat business and maintaining a respected reputation.

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Steps to Employee Engagement

Posted on 21 September 2009 by | 3 Comments

I read a good post at HBR not too long ago whose premise was that if your employees don’t know what your company does, it’s unlikely your customers will.

Unfortunately not only do employees not know what the company does, they don’t know that what they do matters!  You can amplify your value to your customers (hence your company) as a leader/manager by developing engaged employees:

  1. Knowing what your company does – Read Anthony Tjan’s post for some good ideas.  “Your Employees Have No Clue What Your Company Does”
  2. Translating it into simple language – Google’s done a great job of this.  “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  And a laugh from the other end of the spectrum (yes this is true),  “… to scout profitable growth opportunities in relationships, both internally and externally, in emerging, mission inclusive markets, and explore new paradigms and then filter and communicate and evangelize the findings.”
  3. Explaining how employees contribute to the company’s success – This linkage is the critical piece to linking engaged employees to your company success.  In my experience this link is often ignored, especially in supporting functions (e.g. a Human Resources employee in a Legal Firm).  If the HR specialist doesn’t understand that the benefits program, 401K plan, and compensation policy contribute to the firm’s success, how much passionate engagement will an employer get?
  4. Measure performance and communicate results – Seems simple, but knowing what you do is different than knowing how you do.  How does my performance stack up against my peers’?  How does it compare to my performance last year?

Being able to articulate what the company does is a start. But turning that knowledge into passionate engagement comes from strong management!  The pivot point is that employees who know that what they do is valued and that their improved performance is noticed can increase profits and move your company towards its goals.

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Apollo Astronauts and Outsourcing

Posted on 15 September 2009 by | Leave a comment

I’ve spent a fair amount of time writing about costs and people lately and a quotation attributed to Alan Shepard (the astronaut) came to mind that sums up the pivot point perfectly. Alan Shepard, was reported to say of his time in space:

“It’s a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one’s safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”

Many companies, when finding ways to decrease customer service costs turn to outsourcing as a popular panacea.  Adherents promise lower costs and more time to focus on core competencies.  I’m not against outsourcing per se.  But I am against blindly following the outsourcing crowd.  Simply put, outsourcing doesn’t always work.  Here are a few questions to ask before making the leap with your customer service.

  1. How big are the cultural differences between the people? For example are the new employees likely to be more argumentative because that is an accepted part of the culture?  If you’ve ever traveled to the Middle East you know that bargaining and negotiating is as much a part of a business transaction as the product is.  I once negotiated with a cab driver who was so intent on giving the best bargain (compared to his peers) that he offered to pay me.  True to his word – he did!
  2. How will your customers react to the outsourcing? One reason customer call centers are placed in the Midwest US is because their speech has a neutral accent.  Not so in India, or New York City for that matter.
  3. What types of problems will new employees handle? If they are very similar then outsourcing may be a good solution because flow charts can provide adequate service.  But delivering the service online (without much human interaction) may be a better solution.  If the problems are highly specialized your customer service team has a chance to make a difference in the total experience.  You won’t want to cut corners on delivering great service in this case.

For us, the pivot point is that the hidden differences in outsourcing are also hidden costs.  When your customers contact you, do you want them to realize that you valued them so poorly that you found the lowest bidder you could find?  If more executives applied Shepard’s comment to customer service, the world would have more satisfied customers (of all products and services).

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Posted in How to Deliver Customer Service, Uncategorized

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