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.

Yesterday I arrived in Salt Lake City, after a three day trek from New Jersey with my son (Alex, 25) in a Penske Truck. During the trip, while my son was driving, I took care of some last minute housekeeping issues with accounts, changes in address and all the related matters of moving. One of the issues at hand, required me to speak with my branch manager to see if there was any way she could help with difficulties in making a wire transfer. I went on line to find the phone number for my branch. When I called the number, I was greeted by a call center agent. I explained that I had expected to get my branch and that I needed to speak with my branch manager. She kindly explained that customer calls were being taken by the general call center. In that case, I asked to be transferred to my branch manager, to which she replied she could not because all customer calls to the branch were being taken by the general call center. I explained, that I needed to speak to my manager to see if there was any way she could assist me in making a wire transfer, quickly. She explained that in order to do that I would need to go to the branch. I once again asked for my branch’s telephone number, and hen she said it “Sir your branch does not accept customer calls – I cannot give you their number, especially in this busy season”. I gave up. To some executive, who has not needed the help of a banker in the last 20 years, the process he/she has set in place is adequate, I’m sure. But how is it that anyone in the business of taking CARE of people’s financial needs thinks it is remotely ok to create a situation where, you cannot speak with the person immediately in charge of taking care of your financial needs. My funds and banking activity will also be moving.

One of the aspects of corporate culture that is hardest to shift are outdated policies. There are so many, especially in mature businesses. Easily, over 75% of all policies I have studied across companies and departments are designed to keep bad things from happening – they are the “You can’t do this, and you can’t do that – policies”.

I have no issue with them. If it’s bad, keeping it from happening may be an important thing. But , why not put as much emphasis on policies that will cause “good things” to happen? Why can’t we have policies that proactively guide us to do things that create conditions for a preferred future state? More sales, higher customer satisfaction, empowerment.

I think it’s just because coming up with the policies to create desired outcomes is not as easy as identifying those things we would like to outlaw. We are usually more sensitive to the stuff we don’t like.

“You should Policies”:

• Upper management should talk to at least one dissatisfied customer per month. That’s a policy I like.
• Customer Service agents are now empowered to do whatever they think is right for the customer. Scary, huh?
• One customer service team cannot transfer the customer to another team until they have solved the problem. But escalation is my only way out !

Admittedly, some proactive policies require careful assessment and good process to facilitate our preferred future. It’s not easy, but I have found that I am more successful when I concentrate on creating the desired output, instead of focusing on those things that keep me form it.

Which culture would you like to build?