Customer Service: Give the People What They Want
Ok I couldn’t resist starting this blog with the title of Kinks Album..”Give the People What they Want.”
So you came this far. Perhaps you would like to come a little further? First off let me tell you one of my personal agitations life. Bad customer service. Many companies think that the idea of customer service is sticking you, the customer, into a system that was designed with the best intentions but ultimately leaves you with a sense of, “why did I come here at all.” I myself even in my daily life always notice how I am being treated as a customer. Even the largest companies in the world are only as good as the service they provide. Everyone of us has had nightmare stories of long waits, catch twenty two bureaucratic loops and employees living with the idea of “just get this person off the phone with his blah blah blah and I can go home.”
Thinking along these lines I will share a few stories about customer service. The names have been changed to protect the innocent or perhaps lack thereof. The first one involves an overseas firm I was interested in working with on a project who is one of the largest organizations of its kind in its particular market. Despite this, I went through normal channels, meaning filled out an on line form and then got routed to the proper email address to establish contact with a sales person. Well I emailed some basic details to the contact email provided and got a response from an overseas contact who was in charge of the intake of my kind of business. Now the overseas contact was supposedly a person in charge of sales alliances and analyzing projects, meaning this wasn’t someone simply to be called to help you stop pop ups on your computer, but a senior sales associate. Well guess what? The person couldn’t care less about our project or anything else as witnessed by a curt and detached email followed that ultimately had one purpose which was politely to say, “don’t let the door hit your @#$ on the way out. Since I am not one to take things lying down, I decided to write to the CEO of the corporation in question, after all he seemed like a person who built his company on customer service.
Now for a second let me explain the CEO mentality, or shall I say the responsible CEO’s mentality who ultimately wants to know the experience of all customers great and small when they are interact with their organization. CEO’s with this level of responsibility or perhaps economic power have staff that do nothing but make sure all letters and emails and correspondences are answered and resolved because truthfully if someone is upset enough to take the time to write to them well then it is important. Again this isn’t “Office Space” with Lumberg saying “Right, Yeah,” but a desire to know what customers want, feel, think about the companies products and services. Well in my case we were definitely batting 0 and 3 on this because the letter received zero response. Not that their were cobwebs in my post box, but I wasn’t feeling the love from this organization in the form of any sort of written correspondence, email, phone call, sky writing, you name it. Ok I can accept maybe our beloved USPS might have broken down in a Nuemanesque Jerry Seinfeld moment, but some how I sincerely doubt it. Crickets were making more noise around my mail box then this company was. All this though got me to thinking… Yes there was cranial smoke when this occurred, but lets move onto the point.
I think perhaps in this respect many CEOs should follow the lead of the United States House of Representatives. Yes I am aware I just kicked over the hornets nest of poltics and probably ripped every deep seated thought about elected officials but bear with me for a second here since this isn’t an Anne Coulter versus Micheal Moore showdown, but a simple observation because really, if there is one thing politicians do very well it is listening to what their constituents are saying because if they don’t they won’t be in office very long. Ok Ok, I know what you are saying, we in the US can be very apathetic about politics, and call me the last boy scout, but seriously if you don’t believe me call your Congressman or Congresswoman and see if they will listen, I am willing to bet someone will take the call and want to know what issue you are facing and how they can help. After all the tell take sign of any election into office is votes and without votes you are packing up your things in cardboard boxes and going home. Really, just look at every US election and see how narrow some of the margins are in states, districts just to see the power of single votes.
So now I go back to the point at hand, no response from said company, and a “flick you off like a piece of lint on a jacket” email. To this day every time I think of that company that is the first thing I think of. Also in a strange twist of fate, the person would have kicked themselves if they knew what eventually happened in terms of project development. Tisk. Tisk.
Now this brings me to situation number two and here we have an example of why you should always pay attention to every potential client’s inquiry no matter what it might look like. Our story begins anew…. A large technology company who unless you have been done an “Into The Wild” kind of spiritual detachment from civilization, all know very well. Needless to say this company in question was searching for a particular service and rather then going in with guns blazing and throwing their power and weight around they opted to send a polite inquiry through an online form as opposed to the phone very much like I did. They of course received a call from a sales associate who was shocked to find out who had sent it. And they lived happily every after…
The point I am trying to make here is that never underestimate any client or potential client interaction. The most dangerous poison in business is hubris. It is like a cancer eating at any organization who does not guard itself from its ill effects. It can cripple even the mightiest of enterprises and slowly bring them to their knees. It is something we all must be on the lookout always in business because we can be on either side of its ill effects very easily unless we are willing to take a hard look at ourselves and what we produce, provide and create for our customers. I mean consider this, to this very day the person who told me to “get lost” has no idea what he did and as the American Indian saying goes“walk a mile in a mans shoes and you will know who he is,” and inside of this we can see ourselves in it as well or we risk the same mistakes.
Tags: CEO, Customer service, democratization