Balancing Customer Service with the Needs of the Company
Balancing Customer Service with the Needs of the Company
I had three customer service upsets in the past 10 days. Two turned out well, one not so much.
The GoDaddy issue was, not surprisingly, eventually handled the right way. I was surprised there was ever a problem. Using their ˜website tonight’ function for a friend, I ran into documentation / direction issues. Some things weren’t clear and what I thought would take a few hours stretched into 4 days. In the end, Matt was great. He did it right: apologize, figure out the problem, find a solution, help me so it won’t happen again. Perfect. I wish the world were peopled with Matt’s.
My USAA issue took a little longer. But they are impressing the hell out of me as they work to resolve it. I got stonewalled by the customer rep at first. They had not made a policy clear and as a result, what I thought was a simple transaction threatened to screw up my credit and make my life miserable. All because I was supposed to guess their policy. (Nothing in writing anywhere on what is a standard, no-problem-transaction with other banks.)
Customer Service gave me the, “nope, we can’t do that. Sorry. Not possible.” What she was saying really was “Not my problem that you can’t read our minds.”
Stonewalling is what powerless people do
when pushed for a resolution.
Eh, don’t pretend YOU haven’t done it! She really couldn’t help me. “Nope nope nope nope nope.” Didn’t matter she was very nice about not helping me. You can be nice about saying “No” – But for heaven’s sakes, tell me how to get the answer to my problem at the same time! Who do I call? How do I take this higher?
Thankfully, my assistant, hearing my growing frustration, looked up the person in charge. She slipped me a note with the name of the Executive VP in charge of HR for the whole company, and helpfully made an envelope for me. When I hung up, she said, “This sounds like a good time to write a letter.” So I did.
An hour ago, I got a call from the head honcho. She was very polite, very apologetic, very professional, and let me know she’d passed my letter on to the President and I could expect a call. Woo hoo! NOW we’re getting somewhere! I’m impressed!
[A side note here -- if you're writing a complaint letter-- tell them how to do it better. Suggest ways it would have made more sense for you. Tell them how they can make you whole again. That really works. NOW it is a conversation about saving their business and not just your hide.]
The third event: the other party in the problem I had with USAA, was TBW mortgage. Sigh. The stonewall continues weeks later. No mercy. Not their fault. And worse, they really don’t empower their Customer Service reps to do anything. Nor do they seem to care. When I asked the rep to make a note to file that I had called, he told me, I Can’t do anything. My computer is locked up. Can’t put comments. Can’t do anything. You have to write them and tell them all this. Nope nope nope nope nope nope.
Guess what I’m doing?
I’m trying to figure out how to move all the rest of my business from TBW to USAA.
Wouldn’t you?
If you are a manager or business owner reading this, how do you make sure YOU don’t become the subject of an upset customer’s blog? The three lessons of my week are obvious:
1. Documentation is key. We can’t read your mind. We don’t know ˜industry standards”
Given the opportunity to guess the right way and the wrong way, most humans will invariably pick the wrong way.
So make it easy for us to figure it out! Write even the most obvious directions. Look, if a shampoo bottle has to say, “Pour on head, lather, rinse, repeat.” we probably need to know, for instance, that you have a policy against using certain accounts for online payments.
2. Get the facts quickly. The person is upset or they wouldn’t be contacting you. This is not the time for you to win arguments, point out their low IQ, or stonewall. Be empathetic; get information. What happened, how did it happen, what was involved that caused the confusion?
3. Get to solution as quickly as possible. What can be done right now to fix this? What can be done so it doesn’t happen again? Who else needs to know about this? If I can’t fix this, who can?
If you’re in customer service you’ve noticed people are getting crankier. It’s because service is getting poorer. Causes? Outsourcing to places where they don’t speak our language; maybe the company doesn’t spend enough on training; maybe policies for that issue are not clear. Or, as in one of my cases, it just hadn’t happened before, and since they hadn’t seen it, they didn’t know how to fix it.
Bottom line?
- Keep your cool
- Learn from every customer contact.
- And remember, every customer is a walking advertisement.
- Keep yours happy ads (who knows, they might be bloggers, too!)
Got a great customer service story? Share it with us!
Cheers!
Beth
a customer who actually tells YOU
when she’s upset so you can fix it!
~~~~~~~~~
I’ve had great service at Staples, too. I drive a couple miles out of my way to go to them here in Phoenix. The difference there is they are awake. That’s what I keep telling my kids. If you want to always be employed and employable – be awake. It’s a rare thing these days!
thanks for posting,
Beth
I had to return a printer cartridge to Staples because it was printing orange, instead of yellow, and I wasn’t too happy about making this extra trip to their store. When I walked in, the clerk quickly conducted the return transacation, but here’s the GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE part. While I was in line, a manager asked me whether I would need a replacement for the faulty cartridge. When I answered in the affirmative, she found my new cartridge and brought it to the checkout line so I could pay for it right then. What could have been a negative was turned into a totally positive experience because they fixed my problem and didn’t make me stand in line twice. I’ll definitely do business with Staples again.