Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Brands, Colleagues, Communication Strategy, Complicity, Confidence, Context, Culture, Customer Service, Egovertising, Fake Attitude, Finance
Customer service is a funny thing.
Companies make such a big deal of saying they care about their customers, but more often than not, the emphasis is adhering to their internal processes and protocols.
Now I get the importance of that, but the problem is that in most organisations, they forget to include one of the most critical elements to achieving customer satisfaction …
Empathy.
Empathy doesn’t mean accepting blame when it’s not your fault. Nor does it mean blindly agreeing with whatever you’re being asked. What empathy means is understanding what the customer is really saying.
Not their words.
Not what they write.
But connecting to what has led them to act.
Now it is important to note I am in no way blaming the people on the front line for any issue here. Frankly, they have an awful job, full of mental, emotional, and physical challenges.
No, my issue is with the policies they are mandated to adhere to by their bosses because more often than not, they care more about protecting the company than helping the customer.
Of course I get there are reasons for this.
Let’s be honest, some people are assholes and some ‘complaints’ are more about issues the person is dealing with than the company.
But maybe that’s the problem behind many organisations approach to customer service … that their starting point is ‘the customer is having a bad day’, rather than ‘why have we caused our customer to have a bad day’.
I remember working with a brilliant – but consistently angry – brand consultant, who was once hired by a car manufacturer to stop their customer service people being so generous to complaining customers.
After doing an audit on the business, he told the board the solution was simple:
“Stop making bad cars”.
He was right. They were notorious for building vehicles that failed. Or rusted. But that’s the issue behind many of the reasons ‘customer service departments’ face such a battle to do their job properly, because ultimately many of the issues they have to deal with are from issues company bosses know, but don’t want to acknowledge.
There may be many reasons for this situation, but – as we saw in the deliberate ignorance of the Sackler family in relation to the effects Codine was having on society – I can’t help but feel Upton Sinclair’s quote sums it up best:
“Man has difficulty understanding something if his salary depends on his not understanding”.
Maybe that’s why so many of the ‘customer satisfaction metrics and surveys’ that so many companies bang on on about are driven by systems, processes and data that is vague, loose and questionable.
Allegedly.
But as I said, often it’s not really about money … but empathy and that’s why I was particularly drawn to this tweet I read recently.
How awesome is that?
How loyal is that woman going to be now?
How many people are going to recognise an organisation who see’s customers as humans not just walking wallets?
Now I get it, her interact was not based on a complaint so you could argue it was a whole lot less difficult to deal with.
But here’s the thing, for me, the opposite is true.
That it wasn’t a complaint and yet they went out of their way to do something amazing shows a company who actually understands the importance of meeting and connecting with their customers mindset.
I wrote about the time I emailed Texas Instruments about a calculator I had that had been broken on the move between the US and the UK.
I said how – despite being almost 40 years old – it was very important to me because not only had my Mum given it to me when I was a young kid … she had helped actually design it.
I talked about how they wrote back saying that unfortunately they couldn’t fix it, but then did something that blew me away …
They found one in their vaults and sent it to me.
In its box.
With a case.
In perfect condition.
They could have easily just said they couldn’t help.
Hell, they could have just ignored me altogether.
But instead, they actively went out of their way to try and find a solution that would make some random guy who wrote to them from a random country, feel seen, understood, valued and cared for.
I cannot tell you what that meant to me.
I cannot tell you what that still means to me.
And I feel gratitude towards them every single day, because what that individual at Texas Instruments customer service did was not just give me a calculator that I use every day, they gave me a way to feel close to my Mum every day.
They didn’t have to do that.
There was nothing in it for them.
But they did.
And let’s remember, we’re talking about a calculator company here.
A FUCKING CALCULATOR COMPANY.
More than that, a calculator company who I last got a product from over 40 years ago.
And yet they showed more care and consideration towards me than pretty much any other brand I’ve interacted with in recent years.
Brands I’ve spent a shitload more cash with.
Like Audi. And Apple. And Air New Zealand. And ANZ Bank. And countless fucking more.
And while you could point at me and say, “why should they when you buy their products regardless?” … there’s a simple reason why they should re-evaluate.
Because – despite spending millions telling everyone how much they value their customers – their actions don’t come anywhere close to what a Calculator Company or a Fish Company have shown. In fact the very opposite.
For them, customer service is focused on ‘what’s easy and cheap’ whereas I’ve learned real customer service is when a company embraces inconvenience as a longer-term investment in their relationship.
Which iswhy I now have the same level of loyalty to all the ‘customer service imposters’ as they have for me.
Because service is not about what I get for free, it’s about serving what I need.
Even if that is just an empathetic ear.
So much customer service is designed around cliched archetypes.
Cliched archetypes that are more about what the brand wants me to like rather than what I actually want.
Because I fly a lot, I am generally in the top tier of many airline frequent flyer programs … and yet, excluding Virgin Atlantic, [which is more to do with my relationship with Lee than the airline having their shit together] none of them show they see me as an individual. Nope, all of them bombard me with ‘deals’ on golf memberships or wine or exclusive restaurants despite the fact I don’t drink, I don’t like fancy food and I fucking hate people who are a member of a golf club.
And this is not a new view, I’ve always had it.
Which is why the next time you meet someone who says their company is ‘customer centric’, ask them 2 questions:
1. What does that mean to them?
2. What are their people empowered and enabled to do?
Because if their definition doesn’t come close to referencing what the people at Texas Instruments – and The North Atlantic Fish Company – do … which, let’s face it, it won’t … then you can inform them they need to rename their customer service department to what it really is, the C-Suite profit protection service.