One of my life guides is a guy called Wayne Dyer. He is one of those people that tries to keep a holistic view of the human experience and its relationships.

In one of his talks he brought up the idea of being Right vs. Kind and the thought that the inflexibility of rightousness often strains relationships with those dear to us. I think this may also apply to customers.

It is not unusual for the customers to be wrong, unreasonable or otherwise simply off their rocker. This makes us (the company, the agent), RIGHT, and it feels so good, doesn’t it?

I have found in speaking with agents, that they have a tough time letting the customer off-the-hook when they are wrong, and inspite of this, doing their best to assist. Sometimes we simply get stuck on “customer is wrong”.

A clarification that usually helps me is:

Customer Service is not meant to be fair. There is no right or wrong. The goal is to help the customer with their issue to the greatest extent that we can. If we find ourselves being Right, let our rightful position empower us to express Kindness. Our mission is to serve, provide understanding and a gesture of a caring attitude.

Of course, as a philosophical point of view, this is easy to understand. But in a practical world, how Kind can we be? What is allowed by policy and our bottom line?

Answering this question and providing the appropriate guidelines is the responsibility of management. It is up to us to train our organizations to take action in different situations. It is also our responsibility to empower our front lines to look for the best way they can serve the customers and take action on behalf of both, the company and the customer.

Customer Service cultures can, at times, reach an adversarial point of “Us vs. Them”. This should be avoided at all costs. To the extent the culture begins to defend itself from customers, things are only going to get worse. (The first symptoms are usually found in defensive policies that affect all customers, in an effort to defend against a small group – see a previous post)

When agents have a difficult time letting go of “Being Right” for the benefit of the customer relationship, it usually means management is more interested in being right than in serving their customers.

Between Right and Kind, we should always choose Kind. It doesn’t mean we need to stop being right. It means the customer should always feel the effort and gesture of a caring attitude.

Today I was part of conversation where it came to my attention that a feedback mechanism at a certain company was being ignored. When digging a little deeper into the matter, the reason for the lack of attention was “there are too many complaints being submitted and many of them are user problems”. This is the kind of thing that gives me a sense of job security.

The reality is that 93% of companies gather customer feedback. However, only about 33% actually use the information to make changes to product or process in order to improve the customer experience. The reason for this negligence is more often than not, unfavorably perceived ROI and perceived degree of difficulty. It’s too hard; it’s probably not worth it.

Although these perceptions may be true in any one case, feedback is no less important and should not be ignored. Customer feedback is the embodiment of the customer, who otherwise may not be directly represented.

In my mind, the voice of the customer is the ultimate driver of all experience initiatives. Until we hear the voice of the customer we will never know if we are moving in the right direction. No one in the company should be trusted to foretell, or indirectly assess the customer’s point of view.

Here are some thoughts on Customer Feedback.

1. Too much is better than not enough – (be careful not to overwhelm customers with surveys).
2. Never allow the culture to ignore it. It’s better to suspend it if you are not willing to act on it. Ignoring customer feedback causes the culture to devalue the customer and will make any improvement harder still.
3. Get feedback as close to the time of interaction as possible.
4. Provide the feedback directly to the person interfacing with the customer or providing the service – employees accept criticism and praise better from customers than they do from their supervisors.
5. Analyse and act – it helps the culture, the customer and your business.
6. The ultimate form of customer feedback is to bring dissatisfied customers to your office. Pay them as consultants for a day so they can provide their point of view to your team. Make sure you have some Q&A time. You won’t be sorry!

Here is a link to a recent podcast in which I had the pleasure to participate with BTQ magazine.

A customer is the personification of all possibilities in your business. Hug one.