Customer Service At Work.
One of my old marketing responsibilities was to write call-center scripts. The idea was to think about almost every scenario that a call-center person might encounter with a customer.
Attempting this in any rational manner, is simply maddening. So like everyone else…Customer Service was just some unkown group, usually located in the mid-west…who had nothing to do with my really important job.
I now believe customer service to be the true backbone of a company. Customer service tells the world the story of an organization (and therefore, its brand and its reason for being) with much more clarity and succinctness than even the most polished business plan, the most clever TV ad or the most innovative product.
Think about sitting in a restaurant — and how it would feel if you were ignored by the wait staff or host for 15 minutes. (An unforgivable restaurant faux pas.) Would you not, pick up your things and leave? We all want to be acknowledged.
Doug, who writes and oversees, the amazing, Service Untitled has dedicated himself, through this blog, to communicating the complexities, the trends and the importance of good customer service.
In my opinion, customer service does not begin and end with the almighty 1-800 number, an entity detached from the rest of the company. It is a philosophy that has to exist within the core of the business model — applies to everyone, and should be exemplified from the top down, intra-departmentally.
If customer service is an element which has been designed to live and breath within the fabric of a company, the everyday mind-set would be to treat all constituents with the respect they deserve — whether that person is an outside vendor or someone from another department who is looking for your help.
What I expect from external partners, is not always a stoic answer to a complaint I may have. Sometimes, I’m simply looking for that person to help me think through the problem — so that together, we can find an answer.
A person who seems unwilling or untrained to offer some empathy and guidance, says two things to me about the company: First, these employees are trained to follow a script and not think outside the box.
And second, the company has not given enough thought to how significantly a bad experience with — a call taker, an account manager, or even the receptionist–can affect my impression of that company.
When that happens, often I’m thinking…next…there’s another place down the street.
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