Customer Service Warning—What to
Watch for That Indicate We Have a Customer Service
Problem
By Alan
Boyer
Do
you frequently hear that customers are unhappy about
something, and sometimes they are downright frustrated.
Yet, what
you hear from your employees is, “Stupid customers! They
just don’t understand how to use the product”?
As the
owner, or manager, what has been your response? Has it
been to back up your employees, or do you go find out
what the customer is really saying?
WARNING:
you’ve been given an indicator of what is going on in
the organization. The customers aren’t getting what they
thought they paid for, and the employees are actually
blocking access to what the customer wants.
Let’s look
at it from the customer’s view: You’ve just bought a new
XYZ that is critical to your business operation. You get
it back to the office, and can’t make it work as
advertised. You call customer support, with hope that it
is just something that can be quickly fixed. After
waiting on the phone for 30-40 minutes you finally get a
live person who immediately says, “Oh sure. Everyone
makes that mistake. All you have to do is ……[stand on
your left foot while pushing the button with the right
index finger]. No problem. Thanks for calling…click.”
You didn’t
even have the chance to tell him that you aren’t one of
those everyday customers. You are actually quite
knowledgeable and already tried that, but it didn’t
work. So, since he didn’t listen, you’ve got to make
that call again. Another 30-40 minutes waiting and
finally get someone else whose immediate response
is….[exactly the same as the last time] but you are
trying to get him to listen before he cuts you off list
the last one. You finally get him to stop and listen,
but his response is, “You’re using it wrong. It wasn’t
meant to do that, at least that way. When you are using
it THAT way you have to stand on the right foot while
pushing the button with the left index finger. Geeeeee!!!
…..click.”
And after
you try it on the left foot it starts working. In the
meantime you and your business were off line for how
long at how much cost?
What did
it cost you to buy that product that was supposed to
save you money?
And
chances are that there will be another 20-30 calls for
other issues. In the meantime it’s costing you tons of
time and money while you are trying to fix THEIR
product, and, in some cases, because your business is
dependent upon having the product working, the entire
business is down.
So, what’s
the answer to this?
Although
many customer service reps, managers, and business
owners think this is a technical problem that can be
fixed by fixing the technical issue, please listen
carefully IT IS NOT. It is a management problem. It is
up to management to fix the fact that the person
directly in contact with the customer is more concerned
in proving that the product really does work and the
customer is too stupid to know it instead of helping the
customer get what he really wants. The employees must be
informed, maybe trained, to understand their real job is
to help the customer and that requires listening to him
thoroughly. Otherwise they are probably answering the
WRONG question.
Sometimes
there really is a good technical reason to stand on the
left foot instead of the right when pushing the button.
And if a customer doesn’t know how or when to do that,
isn’t the problem with the instructions, not the
customer.
Keep good
records on what customers are calling about. Even if an
employee has what he thinks is a justifiable answer, if
that question just keeps coming up over and over it is
time to find out what the real base cause is.
I also
believe that most customer service people actually are
trying to do a good job for their boss, but they don’t
understand what the goals of their job really are. So
they are doing a good job delivering the wrong service.
Most feel that their job is to protect the boss, the
company, and maybe their own job, from that “stupid
customer.” That makes it a losing situation for the
customer.
If they
change their perspective to, “My job is to help the
customer get what he wants. I’m the expert on company
policy, the technical issues, and I’ll use those tools
to help the customer get what he really wants, which
usually is a product that works.”
I was
traveling to the Middle East last year and saw a perfect
example of how the perception of an employee might
affect his customers. When arriving at the counter where
they check passports there were two people that were
there to facilitate faster movement through the
different lines.
One
considered themselves as someone to help the people get
what they wanted. They walked up to the arriving
passengers, asking them if they were citizens or not and
guiding citizens quickly to the right line. If they were
not citizens, then they asked if they had each of the
several papers filled out, checked those papers and then
suggested that they correct line XYZ before getting up
to the counter that they were now being pointed toward.
The other
considered himself a policeman. He was preventing people
from getting in line, preventing them from getting in
the wrong lines, and sending them over to a work table
to fill out the papers themselves. When they came back
the “policeman” would check the papers again and send
them back to do them over. No offer to help other than
to say, this isn’t filled out right, do it again.
The
difference between these people: mainly in their vision
of their job, what they perceive as their job. They both
have the same job description, making sure that the
agent at the counter doesn’t have to deal with
improperly filled out forms and to make the lines move
through faster.
However,
one sees his job as catching mistakes and taking them
out of line. That might actually make things easier on
the guy checking papers at the counter, but certainly
not on the customer, the guy trying to get in to the
country. The other sees his job as helping the customer
get through this tough process and guiding him to get
the answers on the paper, and into the right line.
So,
ultimately how can this be used in your company? Make
sure that the employees in direct contact with a
customer have a vision of their job that is clearly
defined as: Your job, if you decide to take it, is to
make sure that customer gets what he wants. You are the
expert in company policy, and possibly even technical
issues of the product so use those tools to facilitate,
smooth out, getting the customer what he wants.
Many times
the responsibility of the employee is not to find a
technical reason (standing on the left foot while…..).
The employees should be trained to think beyond the fact
that some technical aspect of a product is or is not
broken. He should be asking the customer why he is
struggling, it could be in the instructions, it could be
customers are buying it to do something that it wasn’t
intended to do (marketing, advertising, are saying the
wrong thing, or not saying it clearly enough).
Frequently
the employees need to be trained to think out of the
box, and help the customer in ways that are not quite as
obvious. The employees can better help a customer if
they have the skills to probe find what is the real
cause that is well beyond a technical “it’s broken”
response from a customer.
Alan
Boyer, CEO of The Leader’s Perspective, LLC is
considered one of the world’s leading breakthrough
specialists.
With over
35 years of business experience, he has catapulted
businesses lightyears ahead in weeks. Some double, some
jump 10 times.
He helps
companies worldwide reach further than they EVER thought
possible….FASTER
http://www.leaders-perspective.com
mailto:AlanBoyer@leaders-perspective.com
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