Right, Wrong, or Customer Service

One of the first mistakes most people make when responding to customer complaints is to get overly mired in determining right or wrong.

            “Of course,” you say, “that’s a no-brainer. The customer’s always right. Everybody knows that.”

            Unfortunately, not everyone does, because a great many customer grievances are not so cut and dry. How do you address a customer’s ire over your late delivery of a project when he himself was late getting essential information to you? How do you explain to her that her abrasive behaviors have been upsetting your staff?

            Here’s the key: Don’t think in terms of right or wrong. First, get inside the customer’s head to comprehend how they’re perceiving the problem. Usually you’ll find it has less to do with right or wrong, more to do with other issues that have cropped up to ruin their day—the customer may be feeling new stressors at work or need help doing some incidental face-saving.

            But don’t get into the trap of determining right or wrong: you’ll only earn your customer’s resentment. After all, who died and made you judge and jury?

Take the time to fully understand how your customer’s experiencing the stated problem, and you’ll be more than halfway there to solving it. Along the way, you may also gain crucial insights on your customer’s work environment.

The Technology of Listening

In the comedy “Last Holiday,” Queen Latifah’s character becomes so frustrated by her boss’s preoccupation with his cell phone, she winds up smashing it as a prelude to quitting.

Why is that funny? Why are handhelds used as symbols of arrogance? Obviously, it struck a chord because audiences cheered and laughed when Queen Latifah finally demolished her boss’ phone.

Ever worked with a bad listener? Ever worked for a bad listener who also derived a sense of personal importance from being “always on,” constantly texting and responding to cell phone calls when others are trying to speak? In her book Seven: The Number for Happiness, Love, and Success, former Reader’s Digest editor Jacqueline Leo remarks, “Our own conceit becomes one of the reasons people can’t put their machines down. They make us feel too important.”

Not being heard is frustrating and draining, and can usually mean business gets done ineffectively, with needless errors, or not at all. Relationships also suffer from the lack of courtesy.

Regardless of technological advances, being heard is a basic human need.

We’re so preoccupied by “digital traffic” we forget how important it is to listen, and to develop those skills. What’s more, we’ve forgotten the value of the listener in routine human contact. Being listened to has a transformative effect on human beings—they feel valued and revitalized—better information is exchanged, and relationships deepen and strengthen.

So bear this in mind the next time you put someone off because you’ve just got to get that text across: these devices are intended to help communication, not hinder them.

Why It's No Longer Your Daddy's Customer Service

Jeff De Cagna (Principled Innovation LLC) describes it as “the recalibration of society.” What does that mean?

Four forces are changing our world, another page in the story of man (ie, don’t try to fight this).

1. Globalization. What does it mean in human terms? Adult learning expert Elliott Masie illustrates with an anecdote: “I had dinner last night with colleagues from Europe. Most of them spoke four to six languages and most of them did business in many countries. I mentioned a price, and they could very quickly, in their head, translate it into euros, and two or three other currencies. Americans can’t.” Bottom line: Professionals must become truly global executives, not U.S. executives playing on a global stage.

2. Demographic changes. Over 15 years ago Atlanta became a stop for many of the world’s refugees, and I predicted an Ethiopian business coalition would soon become reality. And it has. As refugees and immigrants become entrepreneurs, and technology puts us in touch across barriers of time and space, so have markets changed around us. Bottom line: Serving a local homogeneous customer base is locking yourself out of significant economic opportunities. Local is global.

3. Complexity. Inevitable to pluralistic populations are bouts of turbulence as communities struggle to adjust to one another. One example is the need to learn quickly about other cultural norms and protocols for smoother business transactions: this involves suspending judgment and developing tolerance for ambiguities. Bottom line: Customer service will require alert employees operating under guidelines from a savvy management focus. It’s no longer enough to merely advise, “The customer’s always right.”

4. Customization. Recent TV commercials for consumer products speak to this. Everything from autos to auto insurance is modular, geared for personal customization. Bottom line: The belief that “one size will fit all” is, at the least, very complacent.

This is a time for learning and adaptability. It will only help your bottom line.

Don't Overlook Your Human Capital

Most businesses are so intensely focused on developing new revenues, leaders and managers typically overlook a hidden corrosive that will cost plenty if left unaddressed.

Aggression is valued in sales teams—and why not? Sales really isn’t for “sissies” or the faint-hearted; it’s demanding, vigorous work.

But there’s a danger in becoming a workplace culture so reverent of aggression that it tips into tolerating or even encouraging uncivil behaviors.

Low-intensity incivility ranges from stealing someone’s food out of the break-room fridge to leaving shared work areas untidy and depleted of supplies. High-intensity acts include sending nasty e-mails, hogging credit, or yelling at and publicly humiliating colleagues and subordinates.

Intentional or not, incivility exacts a huge toll: authors Christine Pearson and Christine Porath (The Costs of Bad Behavior) state rudeness is on the rise and estimate the tab at $300 billion/year for U.S. employers in expenses related to lost time, lowered morale/productivity, and employees fleeing a toxic workplace.

Fact: Chronic offenders will alienate other employees. Teams need trust (“psychological safety”) in order to learn and to reach peak collaborative skills, and offenders kill this, especially if they’re team leaders. Coping behaviors can include avoiding the offender; withholding effort, help, or information; or sabotaging the organization for tolerating the offender.

Fact: Witnesses to rude behavior register the same physiological stress reactions as targets, and few customers will continue to do business with an organization that permits rude behaviors, even from their high achievers.

Fact: Employees who are habitually targeted by rude behaviors will leave, and the costs of replacing them are high, to say nothing of the relationships and networks that leave with them. Pearson & Porath’s formula for quantifying this: 150% the annual salary of a low-ranking employee; 250% the salary of middle management; and as high as 400% the salary of upper management.

Customer Service Does Not Mean No Service

Few things in life are as fascinating as the denial suffered by humans who’ve invested in technology, and how they insist it will work despite problems cited by customers.

In recent years, for example, commercial printers have invested in FTP sites to enable clients to upload project files. FTP stands for “File Transfer Protocol” — such a site allows the printers’ clients to upload large files via the Internet quickly and securely. This means a project can be delivered to the printer 24/7, without transportation costs, particularly at the clients’ convenience. And yet I’ve only known a handful of FTP sites to work smoothly. Why? The reasons are spectacularly human.

Printers would change their upload procedure without notifying their clients about it: in other words, it took a failed upload to make that clear. When an upload was successful, seldom is an email automatically sent to the client confirming it.

Even more staggering, if an upload wasn’t successful, it meant the client had to persist in calling to ask, “Did my files come through?” only to receive that half-blank, “I don’t think so...let me check...no, they didn’t come through...can you resend?” The last part of that conversation could take hours to resolve. I’ve wondered how this made the printer look to their customers, about their commitment to service after the sale.

I’ve experienced upload complications that took up so much time, a courier could’ve been sent to pick up a disk for less money than was consumed by wasted time. I’ve also encountered technical people who wanted me to run through a variety of upload alternatives, without considering the impact on my time. Why is this important? The point is to get the work, not mire your customers in your technological wonders.

Put your ear to the ground and assess if your technology may in fact be annoying your customers.

The Waiter Rule

The word “context” is frequently used by those in the helping professions, to suggest that care be taken to understand an individual in a bigger-picture way—in the full context of his life, and not merely via a single aspect, such business identity. Western cultures tend to be “low-context,” preferring to focus in on specific aspects. In contrast, certain Asian cultures are “high-context,” believing it’s important to comprehend the character of the whole person, so it would not be impolite to ask a new business associate where she is in birth order, a bit about family history, and how or why she chose her career.

As emotional intelligence and soft skills gain importance in how we conduct business, we’re going to see a more intuitive, high-context approach to selecting candidates for jobs and suppliers for business relationships. This will require a more articulated, well-defined customer service attitude—ie, zero-tolerance for abrasive jerks.

For example, many leaders take cues from “the Waiter Rule.” Recently one of my clients took a new supplier to lunch to discuss a potential business relationship. Up until the lunch, the supplier had been genial, friendly, and alert. Things looked promising. But at the restaurant, the supplier let down his guard and was rude and condescending to a waitress who’d gotten his order wrong.

My client was startled by the change in behavior and, needless to say, the guy didn’t win the account.

Or, to quote CEO Bill Swanson of Raytheon: Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can switch the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they're interacting with. Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles.