ARE YOU BEING SERVED?
The Secret to Great Customer Service in the Age of Technology
The other day, a friend was venting furiously about a phone call he had to make to his mobile service provider. His irritation and frustration provided a lot of amusement, till a few days later, I found myself at the grumpy end of a similar phone call. Suddenly, it wasn’t so funny.
So often, while engaging with ‘customer service associates’ in department stores, banks, mobile or internet companies, I find myself missing the days of real customer service in the private businesses I bought from, where the person I interacted with actually served me – helped me solve a problem, brought me what I was looking for or simply did what I needed done. These days, interacting with most customer service interfaces is reminiscent of dealing with ‘babus’, that famed Indian species that’s evolved for the singular purpose of driving people to the curious practice of gnawing on furniture.
Why is it that we hear so many stories of people being frustrated with customer service, rather than being delighted or just plain satisfied with it? I think the answer lies in the way process and technology are deployed. This came home to me almost a decade ago, as I stood bewildered in the middle of a huge food store in Central London. I was looking for something rather mundane – a packet of instant noodles I think and just couldn’t seem to find the elusive thing. After several ‘excuse me’s’ I accosted what looked like a store attendant – there were just too few of them for a store that size, and apologetically asked if I could have a packet of instant noodles. Out came a PDA. These hand held devices were all the rage a decade ago and after poking at it briefly, she asked me to wait a minute and disappeared. I stood rooted to the spot, afraid that when the noodles arrived, they wouldn’t be able to find me. Several minutes later she reappeared and led me to the middle of a mile long aisle, where I had, half an hour back, discovered that the noodles I wanted didn’t live. I ate a sandwich for dinner that evening. All in all, it took the better part of an hour to discover I wasn’t going to get what I needed at that store. I’m sure this experience resonates with many of you in stores, banks and other places where you go to be served.
What I realised that evening was that the store management had deployed a process and technology to serve me. The human being, the store attendant, was simply trained and paid to serve the process. This was the problem.
Since then, I’ve observed the same pattern being repeated over and over, at ever increasing scale in every type of business. Unfortunately, many Indian businesses are just following the herd. Deploy new processes and technologies to actually serve the business but package it to appear as serving the customer. What ends up happening is that processes, systems and technology become the determinants of customer experience. Customer service associates are just trained to serve the process.
It should work right? Fact is, it doesn’t. What it does is ensure that a minimum level of predictable dissatisfaction is achieved. Given that many modern executives prefer predictability over quality, I’m not surprised everyone’s going this route. Eventually, you end up with a customer service organisation where the process rules, technology dictates, the associates become mini bureaucrats and the customer is not served. It is no accident that customer service associates tend to feel dis-empowered, disengaged and have the highest job turnovers. All this can’t be good for business.
In my work with organisations that deliver business services globally, achieving good customer outcomes is a constant goal, even as the goal posts keep moving. I never tire of repeating my formula for achieving outstanding customer experience – train and empower people to serve the customer. Give them the appropriate processes, tools and technologies to support them in this. Processes, tools and technologies should serve the people who serve other people. Not the other way round. This way, the chances of delivering predictable customer delight are higher. It will also develop motivated and engaged customer service associates. Ones that genuinely take pleasure and pride in helping solve customer problems and not just mouth polite reassurances and helpless platitudes while their customer grinds her teeth down to the gums. Besides, it has to be good for business.
So in your business, who is serving your customer?
Please let me know what you think. And if you’d like to discuss how you could improve customer satisfaction in your business, please drop me a note. I’d be delighted to have a conversation with you.
Vijay Narayanan