Why These Articles?

These articles could benefit from a short introduction.

If taken out of context the perspective may seem to have a negative position.

The purpose of these articles is to help the individual customer service representative in dealing with some of the challenges of this role. It can be a difficult role and the people that excel at it are truly great folks.

There is no perspective here that people are generally difficult to deal with nor is there an assumption that one cannot just have a good time in customer service. It is a great field in which to meet all kinds of really interesting people.

So, why these articles?

Let me ask you this - do you always get warm, friendly greetings and super helpful and caring customer service in all you consumer experiences? No, right?

Secondly, have you ever switched from one service provider to another or cancelled your business with an organization because of a bad customer service experience?

If these conditions exist, there must be a few people in customer service that are not happy in their jobs and somehow find ways to justify poor or discourteous service.

That is what these articles are designed to address.

The school of "wow them" customer service will never arrive and be embraced by someone who doesn't like to feel like a servant and who thinks customers are difficult or annoying and that his job is degrading.

These articles are designed to remove the barriers to arriving at a high level of customer service and to make it abundantly clear that to do anything else is unethical and not even workable.

I have worked in customer service for a long time and trust me, people working in this industry complain and speak disparagingly about customers as an almost normal action. Not all of them but plenty. And not all the time but often. By these actions they are seeking to justify their poor conduct and to make it OK to have been rude or unhelpful to the customer.

The goal of these articles is to remove the barriers to genuinely friendly and helpful customer service.

Stellar levels of wowing the customer can naturally occur and all with integrity no matter what the situation or provocation once these articles are understood.

I hope you find these of some service.

Myles

Surviving Customer Service - Do I Always Have to be Nice?

To better understand the perspective of this and my other articles on customer service I recommend you read the short introduction at Why These Articles? first.

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What, really, am I telling you through all these articles? BE NICE. Just continue to be nice.

However, there is a big difference between being nice under protest and duress because you are worried about losing your job and being nice because you are totally comfortable in the correctness of your actions and know what you are doing. This is the difference between being a savant and a servant. If you read my article Domination and Class Distinction you will understand how this is your weapon to deal with any unpleasant or challenging customer experience. 

I’m asking you also to take ownership and responsibility for this interchange and relationship, temporary as it may be. I’m asking you to - despite any non-cooperation on the part of the customer - continue to care about this person’s customer service experience and to continue to hold an attitude of affinity and courtesy on the faith that some of it will get through to this person. If nothing else, it will serve to honor you in your execution of your responsibilities.

Here’s a story that might illustrate this for you.

We have these two regular customers at our restaurant. A couple of ladies in their fifties with two of the sourest faces you have ever seen. They are miserable human beings in their outer presentation. That I can tell you for a fact. If you overheard their conversations, they are filled with criticisms of others.

Every time they come in, which is at least once a week, they have a complaint about their meal. It’s as certain as the sunrise. They will complain as surely as they have walked through the door.

In the past, we have given them free food or a discount to make up for our “failure.” Our servers dread having to serve them and always get ruffled by the experience.

The first time I dealt with them the one lady told me, “This was the driest burger I have ever had.”

When I probed for more information, she told me that there wasn’t enough sauce. Now, her plate was covered with mayonnaise and relish. What I did next may seem to differ slightly from what I have been preaching so far, but I want to make this point also for you.

I said, “You mean that sauce that is all over your plate? We’re talking about the burger sauce, right? Was that not on the burger?”

She said, “Oh, yeah, well, um. Well it just seemed dry.” Crazy!

I still offered apologies and to fix it up for her but nothing really had to be done at that point. It may sound like I was being confrontational but really I was just willing to be in honest communication with her. That’s being truthful.

She still comes in once or twice a week and complains every time. I’m very nice to her and gracious. She always appreciates the extra attention and seems very content when I resolve her three or four complaints per visit.

It’s usually just bringing her some more onions for her burger and the like. It’s nothing that costs much or is a big problem. Nevertheless, she comes back all the time and spends money every time.

What I’m trying to show you is that you’re allowed to stick closely to the truth, and you’re allowed to be in direct communication with people. You have to learn to pick your battles, though, and you should always have as a goal that the customer will leave happy no matter what.

It’s actually a little game now for me to deal with this customer when the server tells me, “Everything seems to be going wrong and nothing will make her happy, etc.” A situation that seemed unmanageable and everyone just wanted this person to go away and never come back, has turned into a game for me. It brings a smile to my face every time. And guess what? I’m just being nice!

This happiness I wish for you.

What starts out as a temporary job in customer service can often last a decade or a lifetime. During that entire time, life is passing by. This is a day in your life. I know you may wish you were doing something else but why not find what pleasure you can in it?

As John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens while you are making other plans.”

How, you might ask, do I be nice when I don’t feel like it? Well, if you have read the preceding pages, you may have the idea by now that the alternative is too grisly to face. It could make you feel worse and worse.

Try for comparison what people have said about courage—courage is not the lack of fear, but is rather doing things that one may fear because they are the right thing to do. The courage comes from the doing and not from the lack of fear.

I have worked with these principles for some time now and have found that the ability to be genuinely nice to all sorts of people comes from just deciding that you’re going to be nice at all times and then doing it. You tend to warm up to it after awhile and it becomes more fun and more genuine as you go along.

Being nice is your vanguard and your last bastion.

You use it as a first foray to engage the hostile customer and hopefully quell his/her discontent. Being nice unarms the otherwise antagonistic counterpart.

You also use it as a final defense in case you were just serving Charles Manson or a freshly divorced person who just lost a house and two kids. You may not make them happy but you have done the right thing; you were nice no matter what the provocation was to be otherwise. You can answer up to any scrutiny, internal or external.

Realize also that being nice does not mean being apologetic, undeserving or worthless. You can have considerable strength of character and personal presence and still be nice. There is no benefit to being self-depreciating while saying, “May I take your coat?”

If you can’t at first be nice in earnest for the other fellow, be nice for your own sake. Make life easier for yourself.

Your genuine pleasantness will tend to melt away the more abrasive emotions you encounter as a CSR. You may never know the trouble you have averted by your kind and courteous address to the weary and haggard souls that end up in the port of your hospitality.

I hope this material has been of some service to you.

Surviving Customer Service - Is the Customer Always Right?

To better understand the perspective of this and my other articles on customer service I recommend you read the short introduction at Why These Articles? first.

Is the customer always right?

This is not a workable statement, and you should just forget about it.

This statement is not accurate so doesn't provide you a framework of how to deal with a customer who seems to be wrong or is making an unreasonable demand. Of course some customers are wrong sometimes. They could be completely in error about their account balance and how it got that way, for example. Are you just going to hand them some money because "The customer is always right"? Once in  a long while they are completely crazy. But how do you manage this? How do you keep your integrity in this situation?

What we are dealing with really is risk management. How much should we bend to the seemingly unreasonable request or perhaps a scam before it’s not a good business decision? In most cases you should do a lot. In this article you’ll find out why.

As a CSR your role very often includes the salvaging of a potential loss of future business. You should always think in terms of future business. It will give you the proper perspective. Right now you may be a customer service rep but you may have your own business someday or may be in a position where you are responsible for revenue and the bottom line, so follow along. 

Now, regarding the seemingly unreasonable request itself; forget about whether you think this person is an idiot or a weirdo. It’s irrelevant. Talk about it later with your spouse of friend if you even remember.

As CSRs we are often faced with an expressed concern or complaint from a customer that seems ridiculous. You have all heard them. On the Internet you can find entire web sites dedicated to stories of “unintelligent” requests or statements from customers.

There are two main elements to balance and use as guidelines when presented with such situations:

1.     You are not that person and you don’t know how serious this may be in their world.

2.     Scammers are a very low percentage and the future business of that customer, most of the time, outweighs the current cost in dispute.

Let’s look at point number one above. I have seen customers get very upset if we forgot that they didn’t want any coleslaw on their plate. You might say to yourself or a colleague, “The guy doesn’t have to freak out! Just don’t eat it.”

How do you know that this person is not deathly allergic to the sunflower seeds in the coleslaw or that he/she didn’t almost die one time of food poisoning from mayonnaise or perhaps forced to eat coleslaw when he/she didn’t like it as a kid, etc., etc.? You get the point?

Their reaction may seem illogical or disproportionate to you, but that is you, not them. People have all kinds of odd phobias or considerations about things that you may not have. That is not your concern at all in this case. Your concern is to salvage the future business of this customer by correcting the error and making them happy. (See my article on the Happy Customer)

Assume that they think it is important or serious because they mentioned it to you. Don’t spend too much time trying to figure out why they don’t like so-and-so because it seems strange to you. Just carry on and fix it. Listen, understand and acknowledge. Apologize. They should leave smiling every time.

Regarding point number two above: the actual percentage of people who complain just to get something free is not that high. It’s probably less than 10 percent, and more likely around 3 percent.

So what do we do?

Follow the formula for point number one, and treat it as a real concern. Unless you can prove it without a doubt then you had better not accuse the customer of fraud. Be direct and polite. Gather all the facts in case you have to do further investigation or pass it on to a manager. The thing is; that in a lot of cases, the part or item won’t actually cost your business much at all to replace or fix.

Take a restaurant for example. A food item with a menu price of about $10.00 usually has a cost of about $1.50 for the actual food. This can vary but let's use it as an example. There is also labor, electricity to factor in, etc.

Let’s look at how this fits into the big picture. The customer has come in the door and is patronizing your establishment right now. We don’t know how he/she got there, but it could have been through one of those $100,000 commercials. Now you won’t spend $1.50 to keep this customer because he or she says the burger is raw and you don’t really think it was that raw?

Now weigh this against the lifetime value of a typical customer, which goes as follows:

Average purchase multiplied by the number of visits per month multiplied by twelve months multiplied by twenty years.

Let’s say this person spends $10.00 per visit and comes once per week.

That would be 10 X 4 X 12 X 20 = $9,600.00.  All lost for the sake of $1.50 and a smile. Oops!

And what if he or she starts bad-mouthing your business around town now? Conversely, some customers patronize the same restaurant two or three times a week and bring friends as well and recommend it to others.

From a business point of view it’s a good risk. Besides, if you are still not too sure about this customer, make sure you get their name and address and remember their face. They can only run this on you so many times and then you’ll be sure about proceeding with the “divorce”:

“Well, sir, we have tried on many occasions to get your order right. Perhaps we are not up to your standards and you would be happier down the road at…”

Risk management. And, “Until you have walked a mile in their shoes…” (a good idea because they will be a mile away and have no shoes if you still disagree)

Surviving Customer Service - The Happy Customer

To better understand the perspective of this and my other articles on customer service I recommend you read the short introduction at Why These Articles? first.

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This, like all of my articles on customer service is designed to help the person in customer service to retain their integrity while doing the best possible job. 

If they are generally happier about being in customer service and can have a majority of pleasant interactions no matter what the mood of the customer then the company they work for will look better as well.

I’d like to clarify this “happy customer” animal.

You cannot make someone into something they are not in a brief customer service interaction. You would have a difficult, if not impossible, time achieving this if you had months with this person and unlimited resources.

I have seen other materials and trainers use the brush-him-off-as-a-jerk philosophy if he is difficult to please or make “happy.” That is a cop-out and a negative assumption. I agree that you should not necessarily bear all of this person’s bitterness and contempt as if it’s your fault. Nor should you ever accept personal abuse as a requirement of your job.

What I do know that has some workability and that takes into account a broader perspective is this: You don’t know this person - what’s really going on in his or her mind or what this person may have experienced. Let’s start with that as a working datum.

For example, the parents of children in critical care in hospitals can be extremely brave and composed when at their child’s side, but go out for lunch with them and they can fly off the handle at the slightest flaw in their experience.

What if you were serving one of them and you just gave them the old “jerk” routine? Or, maybe you just served someone who just got fired or divorced or a serial killer. Who knows? The point is that your obligation can be strictly held to the customer being pleased with the quality of the product and the pleasantness and competence of the service. That’s your happy customer right there. If you have done all you can to achieve this and they still have an unpleasant demeanor, don’t worry about it.

This position is not intended to reduce customer service to a minimum but as my introductory article Why These Articles? states, to remove barriers to justifying poor service or discourteous behavior and to make life easier for the CSR.

If they are a reasonable person, which most people are, they will be pleased and will be willing to recommend your business to another. Of course, great customer service can and should go beyond this to add that wow factor and extra caring and attention to detail that will make your business stand out. We are covering a different point here.

You are not obliged to change his/her life on the spot. However, you must remember to give the person the benefit of the doubt and at least give the person a chance to have a pleasant experience. Find out what is really going on. Do the usual of making sure you fully understand and acknowledge their complaint or poor experience. Try your best to make it right.

I’m telling you that most of the time things will turn out all right if you are just nice and tolerant. That makes you the one in charge. That makes you the big being. That will protect your integrity. You will have done the right thing.

Surviving Customer Service - I Can Hear You Smiling

To better understand the perspective of this and my other articles on customer service I recommend you read the short introduction at Why These Articles? first.

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Have you ever really noticed what it feels like when a CSR doesn’t smile when they greet you? It’s terrible!

Really, you should go out and make an experiment of this. When you go to the gas station, corner store, etc., take note of it and see how it makes you feel.

We are so used to this that we don't put any attention on it or choose to ignore it. But it does make a big difference.

The CSR who doesn’t smile is blowing customers off! That’s not only a violation of their obligation as a CSR, to just be friendly but, because they’re actually turning customers away they acting like an enemy of the organization that pays them.

You can try this yourself. Say "Good morning, how can I help you" and try to sound cheerful. Do this with a smile and without smiling. You can hear the difference. Ask a friend to close their eyes or face the other way and tell you if you are smiling or not.

It’s very difficult and takes considerable specific effort to sound cheerful, warm and friendly if you don’t smile. It takes so much effort that I know that it never happens unless you smile. End of story.

CSRs who work for me will be fired if they don’t greet every customer with a smile. It’s that important. You must do it.

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Survivng Customer Service - Domination and Class Distinction

The CSR’s struggle often flies in the teeth of the age old source of invalidation of identity and status: Class Distinction. You are the servant. No escaping it. Ouch!

You are also, perhaps, a proud person, the head of a household, a scholar, or an athlete. And here you are, day after day, in a position of being commanded by others, scolded if you err, sometimes condescended to, and again, it seems like you pretty much have to take it. Apologize if you have offended or fallen short of some expectation. SUBMIT. Yuck!

How does one rise above this and still keep his job?

I have tried to out-condescend them. That is not a recommended approach to this problem. You will feel at once that you have handled it poorly. Brushing them off doesn’t work either because they perceive your inattentiveness.

Either way, you end up having to justify your poor conduct by being critical of customers. That will lead to the affirmation of the “bad customer,” and pretty soon they will be everywhere, and you’ll have a worse and worse attitude.

This could be a downward spiral that could cost you your job, or at the very least, severely limit your opportunities. In addition, if you work for tips, you won’t make any to take back to your household!

How can you elevate yourself and retain your dignity and integrity in such a situation?

Let me ask you this: Have you ever had a really great customer service experience, even when perhaps you were not so nice as a customer? Perhaps you had a legitimate complaint and were none too pleased about it and started out by venting on this poor CSR.

Then this person calmly and graciously did everything they could to put you at ease and to solve your problem for you. They were polite, considerate, kind, patient and tolerant.

That doesn’t sound like a servant to me – that sounds like a saint!

I tell you, when this happened to me on one occasion, I was not only impressed with that person but I thought at that moment that he was a bigger person than I was. I had tremendous admiration for him. In my eyes, he was not only much more than a servant but he was a better person than I had come across in quite awhile. Sure, he was just doing his job, but he significantly changed the course of my day in those very few moments.

That experience stuck with me as a moment of revelation on my own actions and on the greatness of others. That guy was great!

Therefore, my suggestion, the next time you feel put down by an apparent distinction of class between yourself and the people you serve, just act with graciousness, kindness, tolerance, understanding and patience.

I bet you will see a new light of appreciation in your customer’s eyes. I know you will feel better about yourself regardless of any turnabout in the customer’s attitude. You have acted in the highest level of conduct and professionalism at your duty.

Also, don’t discount the influence of your actions on others. Carl G. Jung once said, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

This has a more general application as well. I have seen the saga of crude or sarcastic conduct pass for normal with the belief that one “has a good heart,” or “if they knew how I felt inside…” or “everybody talks that way,” or “they know I’m just kidding.” The trouble is how are others supposed to know your heart when your words and deeds show something else?

It’s the same as if company comes over to your house time after time and the place is a mess— scum ring in the bathtub, dishes piled up, etc. How are they supposed to believe that you really are a neat person at heart?

Your virtuous conduct not only has the potential to make your work more pleasurable and to touch the lives of those you serve, but can also be a model for your co-workers.

They may be fighting their own battles and you might just be a beacon of hope for a more endurable existence.

Base conduct on your part will lower your status in the eyes of the customer and in your heart.

Virtuous conduct on your part will raise you in the eyes of your customers and in fact.

For, who are you but what you do?