Customer Servces
Customer Service Lostby Thomas Fee
Scrooge tells Bob Cratchit that he’d better not catch him putting an extra piece of coal on the fire because it will run up the cost of doing business. Bah! Humbug!
Not once in the entire account of Dickens’s Scrooge (aka A Christmas Carol) does Ebenezer Scrooge ever mention that those whose money have kept him in business all these years deserve anything but his scorn. He has the same scorn for his employees.
Scrooge would be a perfect manager for this day and age. Much like those of modern organizations, his customers are a meaningless part of the equation for success. Things like keeping down costs, increasing income and wealth for upper management and the acquisition of greater power and influence are the focus of this laughable, but miserable, caricature of today’s successful business leader.
Why Has Customer Service Been Lost?
Ask anybody to tell you ten stories about poor customer service and they will reel them off like a 7th Grader reciting the Preamble to the Constitution. Ask the same people to come up with one or two good stories and they’ll be stumped.
Forget the statistics and number crunching developed from self-serving "customer satisfaction" surveys. Customer Service sucks and everybody knows it.
The consuming public doesn’t even expect common courtesy anymore. The state of customer care is at an all time low. Forget being treated well. How about being treated like human beings?
Does it bother anybody that customer service has virtually disappeared? This former art was a key differentiator for organizations throughout the modern age. We are entreated with the stories about IBM, Xerox and others whose stock and trade were serving the customer. Now, customer service is a faint memory from a bygone era.
Why Has Customer Service Disappeared?
Organizations have shifted from being human (social) groups to object-oriented entities.
The pencil pushers of this world have taken the money generated by sales, marketing and customer service and are putting it into their pockets. They are rich, but their companies are poor – in spirit, in human care and concern and in their attitude that their customers deserve to be treated with respect and appreciation.
Customer service has become the victim of two modern phenomena:
The Age of Technology – In an effort to focus on technology, organizations have lost sight of the fact that it is merely a tool to be used rather than an end in itself. Organizations are much more technology focused and much less human focused.
Organizations have come to adopt the "political model" as the acceptable standard of practice. In this model, the focus for organizations is internal, resulting in the squandering of resources as rewards for those whose skill at getting ahead is valued more than those who put the organization and its customers first.
The Failure of Empowerment
Wall Street has become the only customer that most organizations are concerned about. There is a constant struggle (what am I saying "struggle" - the struggle is over) between doing what is best for the customer and doing what is most self-profitable in the minds of upper management. Organizations are run by people at the top who put themselves first, not their companies or customers.
These practices violate the most basic principles of good business to acquire and keep customers satisfied as a means to stay in business. Empowerment has failed because the policies set by upper management favor the short-term procurement of resources for themselves over the longer term need to use those resources to solve customers’ problems.
Empowerment would require that those who make the decisions would have to give up some of what goes into their pockets to take better care of their customers. In today’s world, managers get ahead because of self-interest, not company or customer interest. Limited resources and self-enriching priorities restrain those who are in the position to do good from actually solving customers’ problems.
Can the Situation Be Remedied?
As long as inwardly focused, self-enriching practices are the goal of upper management, there is no solution to the deplorable state of customer service. Most organizations today are run by people who are willing to sacrifice the good will of customers for self-enrichment.
Employees have dutifully accepted the standard set by upper management and are working hard to lower the standards of customer service across the board. They have finally decided that what’s good enough for management is good enough for them. Employees have given up trying to please customers because that is not what personal survival in most organizations is about.
Organizational life is about political positioning and the ability to gain power and influence within the organization and to hell with the customers, employees and other constituents. The "political model" has taken a firm hold on organizations.
Consequences
If the current trend continues, I predict that there will be more and more organizational failures. By failure I mean any practice that tends to prevent the achievement of an organization’s full potential. This includes: mergers, acquisitions, buyouts, IPO’s, LBO’s and other macho, inwardly focused solutions to short-term, self-rewarding practices that destroy an organization’s ability to perform at optimum levels.
Wall Street now sets the standards for how businesses are run. These coldhearted, inhuman money mongers who live an elite existence above the rest (and often above the law) are now dictating who succeeds and who fails based on their whims and personal desires for increasing their own wealth.
Increased litigation will continue to prevail. The tobacco companies, tire companies and other large consumer companies are already learning the lessons of poor customer service. The new language of the customer is litigation. It seems to be the only way they can express themselves to these uncaring companies who refuse to be held accountable. The saddest of all observations is that the companies seem willing to pay their fines and continue to do business the same old way. What kind of people are these?
A Classic Response
There are business practices than cost much less that law suits and the time and resources it takes to "finesse" a customer. Let me give you an example.
I recently had a terrible experience at the Hyatt Beaver Creek in Colorado. I wrote the company explaining a comedy of errors that led to my extreme dissatisfaction with a weekend stay.
What did I get back: An expression of concern about the fact that I had a terrible weekend? Not on your life. Instead I got a classic litany of excuses and explanations. This example is all too common a response for unhappy customers:
I would like to take this opportunity to respond to your comments…
We do reduce our departmental hours as business dictates…
Sorry we were unable to accommodate…
Thank you for taking the time in making me aware of your concerns.
Not once did this Hyatt General Manager say, "Sorry you had a bad experience" or "We regret your weekend was not what you expected." Nothing. Making this person aware of the problems I encountered with his organization didn’t seem to solicit much concern based on his response. It made me wonder if it wasn’t a common experience.
What’s worse, this is the guy who runs the joint. If this is the attitude at the top, how much do you think the rest of the staff cares?
When I read this letter, I thought it must be that the people who send them don’t even realize how insulting they are. There must be some new school of thought that I missed in which "letters to unsatisfied customers" have become ways to express disdain for them.
Solution Alternatives
Somebody, somewhere has to take responsibility for treating customers with a little more respect. Customers are not always right, but they are always customers. We are not a bunch of unruly, unreasonable people who are asking for the Moon! We are human beings who expect at least the courtesy of a response from service providers that recognizes our humanity.
What can organizations do?
Stop the carefully worded non-responsible language.
"Sorry our tires killed your (fill in the title of your relative)" would be a nice start!
Address the cognitive and interpersonal issues.
"We care that you had a bad time" might be a suitable statement!
Don’t make excuses – offer solutions.
Instead of rationalizing problems – how about suggesting solutions like: "Perhaps we could do this…"
Don’t assume that every customer’s problem falls into some business policy category.
Comments from the Hyatt GM, after expressing his disdain for my problem, like, "If I can ever be of assistance to you …." are code for, "Don’t bother me again slug."
Try to determine what is the most important issue to the customer and address it.
Forget the self-justifying comments and try to address the customer’s problem. Try finding out:
What is the problem?
What can we do to fix it?
How can we make you feel better about us?
Try something customer focused:
Put the customer first.
Make their problem your problem.
Take responsibility to fix it.
Try to resolve things in favor of the customer.
Customer service isn’t so hard. It’s a matter of understanding the difference between humans and objects. Humans don’t like to be treated like objects because they have emotional content, self-awareness and act and react. Objects have none of these characteristics.
When human beings have problems, they don’t want to be lectured to or get a lesson on business policy. They want you to help them solve their problem. More importantly they want to know that somebody cares.
Is customer service a reality for the 21st century? I can’t honestly say. What can be said is this: Ultimately the customer will decide who stays in business and who doesn’t. This should scare the heck out of lots of organizations. Hopefully it will scare them straight.
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Thomas Fee
tomfee@procentral.com
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