Your Customer Service Tells Me All I Need to Know About Your Management Quality
Of my many quirks, one that I actually enjoy is my unceasing study of customer service. I love to observe customer service interactions and I’ve made it a habit to try and figure out why the good ones are good and the bad ones so miserable.
I’ve noticed a distinct upturn in attempts to improve customer service from organizations that have conditioned us not to expect it. A thin silver lining in a struggling economy.
My unscientific but well considered conclusion is that you can learn all you need to know about a manager and a management team by how his/her associates serve customers.
Good customer service flows from people that genuinely enjoy their jobs and respect their organizations and the people that they work for every day. The respect and the concern for customers is palpable in these environments.
I credit the leadership for hiring and training properly, for establishing and reinforcing values and for understanding that every point of contact with a customer leaves an impression.
Lousy customer service is reflective of pent up anger, unhappy workers and a distinct lack of regard for the organization and the people in charge. The management is to blame for these conditions, and in my opinion, should be summarily fired and horsewhipped, perhaps not in that order. In lieu of corporal punishment, perhaps some time in jail would help them reflect upon the misery that they’ve inflicted on countless well-intentioned but unwitting victims.
OK, enough with my unpopular suggestions for curing bad customer service. Here are some good and not so good examples. You be the judge.
Case 1: The Hardware Store
A few months ago I had a fairly long list of items to procure for a home improvement project. I shop at the local Ace versus the Big Box because people actually answer questions and don’t run in the opposite direction when they see you approaching with the dazed and lost look in your eyes. The Ace is a bit pricier, but it is worth it.
It happened to be an off time and business was slow. The helpful clerk took one look at my long list, grabbed a cart and said, “Let’s go shopping.” He took me from item to item, offering helpful and even money-saving suggestions and filling my cart. I followed dutifully, a bit confused. Bet that never happens at the Big Box.
Case 2: The Hardware Store Again
Another quirk…I like holiday lighting. I happen to invest a hefty amount in this hobby every year to satisfy my inner Clark Griswold, and this same Ace had always carried the industrial-grade, multi-color lights with just the right color spectrum. No pink and yellow, just amber, red and green. As I scouted the aisle looking in the usual places, the lights were nowhere to be found. I approached the new young manager and received a curt, eyes averted, “we don’t carry those anymore,” answer. He added insult to injury by turning around and heading the other way. I had been dismissed!
There are many number of ways to deliver less than ideal news,but this wasn’t one of them. A better approach is to show concern, attempt to see where I could procure the 30 sets of these insanely pricey lights or at least be apologetic and empathetic. The curt response with eyes averted and the quick turn and run tactic at the Ace where clerks had personally shopped for me was disagreeable at best.
After stewing for a few minutes, I re-approached this manager and proceeded to provide a polite, quiet and fairly lengthy round of constructive feedback. Yep, he received a nice, no-fee lecture on customer service. I’ve seen him since, and he always comes up and says hello and offers his help. I hope that he is doing that for everyone.
Case 3: The Power of Making Eye Contact and SMILING:
Another pet peeve in customer service is any customer service representative that fails to look you in the eyes and smile. Start observing this yourself. The next time you approach the cashier at the grocery store or elsewhere, judge his or her performance like you are Simon on American Idol.
A good smile is priceless and changes the nature of the transaction. The lack of contact and consideration tells me that the clerk and the management don’t give a crap.
Case 4: A Coffee Shop that Gets It
I’ve written about the incredible customer service at Conscious Cup before in my post, The Best Marketing Ever.. . Just yesterday, I stopped off to pick up a pound of the Fair Trade Mexican Roast to give as a gift to a guest lecturer in the class that I’m teaching at DePaul. I indicated that this was a gift and wondered whether they had a nice bag to dress it up. The clerk thought about it and dashed into the back to emerge a few moments later with a nice gift box. She assembled it, arranged things for a nice presentation and handed it to me with a smile. I offered to pay for the box, and she declined. I left a nice tip.
Case 5: The Cup-holder from Hell.
OK, this one totally doesn’t fit with the customer service examples, but bear with me. I have an unnatural affection for my automobile (yeah, another quirk), and still smile every time I drive it. However, as the customer, I’m allowed to judge it for flaws, and it has one flaw so big that it can only be the work of a madman bent on inconveniencing customers around the world.
Imagine if you will, a precision engineered machine that rewards you with performance the harder you drive it. Now imagine the initial planning session for this great piece of machinery. I believe that the aforementioned madman placed at the center of the design, the world’s biggest piece of you know what cup-holder. And said something like, “We will drive them crazy and make certain that they never ever drink anything while they are driving our automobile.”
This evil genius knew full well that his cars would find their way to the Chicago-area where the winters, the plows and the salt combine to create potholes that swallow large animals and mid-sized cars. I can only imagine him laughing maniacally as my large coffee does yet another triple-gainer dive into the air and all over precision engineering and really nice leather. “That will teach you to drink coffee in our cars,” I hear him saying as that evil laugh echoes through the forests of Bavaria.
OK, Enough for Now:
Manager, get your act together. Hire people that care. Teach people the power of a smile. Make certain that your values reflect serving your customers and hold yourself and your team accountable for supporting those values. Otherwise, I’ll write about you.
Will this Business Revolutionize How Men Shop and Rescue Me from My 1970′s Fashion Training at the Same Time?
Note from Art: I plan on chronicling my experience in several posts over the next few weeks, with an exciting new men’s clothing/shopping service that I was introduced to called Trunk Club. I’m not sure if I’m more excited about the solution to my fashion challenges, or the fact that this is the best recent example that I’ve seen of a service that so perfectly solves a problem that it practically sells itself. (The authors of the book Tuned In describe this type of offering as a Resonator.)
I have no stake in the Trunk Club for Men and when I let the co-founder, Matthew Scott, know that I planned on posting about my experience with his service, he urged me to help them get better. I love his attitude! And I will.
I’m not sure guys are supposed to write posts about fashion. I’m expecting a call from my friend Chris, encouraging me to turn in my “man card” for writing on this topic. He did that the one and only time I was dumb enough to indicate that I might have caught a fleeting glimpse of Oprah’s show when author Marcus Buckingham was the guest.
We’ll Chris, my excuse is even better this time. I’m mixing fashion with business research. Take that!
OK, some background is in order here on the roots of my fashion challenges.
First, I am a child of the 70s, when to quote my kids looking at the old family pictures, “What were you people thinking?”
“Hey, what’s wrong with yellow and green plaid bell-bottoms paired with rust colored shirts?” I retort to these logo-covered and self-annointed fashion critics. I don’t have the heart to tell them that I look at these same pictures in horror that anyone ever thought those clothes were acceptable for public consumption.
For those too young to recall, the 70’s started out with post-hippie era styling and concluded with disco. Leisure suits were born somewhere in the middle of that “tasteful” decade.
Second, I transitioned at some point in my career from the standard blue suit, white shirt uniform that we wore at Panasonic to software-sloppy…the business casual that dominated the software industry for so many years.
Combine my 70’s experience with the blue suit to software casual experience, and I have a wardrobe that is just short of lousy with a sense of style that matches.
The Problem:
My professional world has transitioned from the daily corporate casual to super casual (home office) or on-stage as a speaker, seminar leader or MBA instructor. I need some great quality clothes for the “on” days, and thankfully, there are many of these days on the calendar in the coming months. It’s time for a wardrobe makeover.
A bit more background. is in order. I hate shopping. I hate shopping for clothing most of all. There are many bad things that could be done to me that would be less painful than shopping. The thought of it makes me recoil in horror. If my wife suggests a shopping trip that will take us even close to the Men’s department, my mind goes blank, my eyes glaze over and I immediately feel the need to take a long nap. Ask me to figure out any color and pattern combinations beyond white or off-white with dark and once again my mind goes blank.
I survived fashion hell for a number of years with a great retail clerk at the former Marshall Fields. Jan learned my tastes and did a pretty good job of helping me out during my once a year visit. Well, Fields is gone and so is Jan, replaced by crappy off the rack merchandise and unhelpful staff at the local Macy’s. My last fashion lifeline disappeared when Fields died.
Until now. Enter Trunk Club for Men. The service is positioned as an innovative new service for busy professional men and successful entrepreneurs. There is a membership component that gives it an air of personalization and exclusivity. If this works, it may rank as one of the great problem-solving discoveries of my adult life.
One to One meets Web 2.0:
Here’s the business in a nutshell. You start by visiting the website and completing an application. I was invited to join by the co-founder, but be aware that the process does involve completing a no-fee application that helps Trunk Club understand a bit more about you and your clothing tastes and needs. More about the application process in a future post.
Once you’ve been accepted as a member, you meet via webcam with a personal fashion consultant who interviews you to understand your requirements and your budget parameters. After your webcam interview, your fashion consultant shops for and ships your clothes.
Once you’ve received the shipment, you and your consultant reconvene on a webcam call to review the items. You decide what you will keep and return the rest, paying only for your final selections. That’s it. Oh, and your consultant will even direct you to a Trunk Club approved tailor in your area.
Let’s review:
- I never have to leave my house. The clothes come to me.
- I gain the best guidance of a fashion pro.
- I return what I don’t want and only pay for what I keep. There are no other fees or no minimum purchase amounts.
- The fashion consultant shops to my budget and seeks out the best quality and value that fits that budget.
- Unlike the visit to a retail store, your fashion consultant works with you over time to learn your likes and dislikes and to fill out your wardrobe with a plan in mind.
- If I need more of something, I send a note and things magically show up.
This rocks!
While I’m being a bit melodramatic in my description of my helplessness in the line of retail fire, I truly love this concept. I don’t know too many guys that care about shopping and those that do seem to operate with a search and destroy mentality. Go in, select and exit as quickly as possible. There’s no plan, just a short-term mission.
With Trunk Club for Men, my modus operandi hasn’t changed, but all of the pain is gone. I will spend minimal time thinking about the topic and leave the execution to a professional. No stores, no changing rooms, just a big box of things to try on in my home. Delegating to experts is something that I can handle. This seems right on so many levels!
My parameters to Darcy, my consultant, are to focus on developing a small selection of high quality items of classic styling for use in speaking and workshop engagements. Most of my work does not require a suit, so establishing a core grouping of jackets, shirts, slacks and ties is the top priority.
I can’t wait to see what Darcy sends me.
Stay tuned to see if this is as good as it sounds or too good to be true. I’m betting on the former.
Future Post: I’ll share more about the video interview and business process, as well as the results of Darcy’s shopping trip.
A Rave Against Miserable Customer Service, Lousy Leaders and Protectionist Policies
Filed under: Leadership, Performance, Surviving Lousy Leaders
One of my favorite, provocative business thinkers, Gary Hamel, says what we’ve all been thinking about in his Wall Street Journal blog post, “Too Many Industries Suffering from Detroititis.”
While the term “Detroititis” is not yet in common use, it isn’t hard to intuit the meaning. A mix of myopic thinking, short-term management approaches and a damn the consumer mentality, all jump to my mind.
Hamel appropriately skewers the U.S. airline industry for suffering from a chronic case of this newly named malady. He also chastises the U.S. government for propping up this industry with a “blatantly protectionist policy” that bars foreign ownership of U.S. air carriers.
Note from Art: this protectionist policy and the adverse implications for consumers and for society speak to the heart of my post: If Ayn Rand Could See Us Now.
The U.S. airlines are easy and deserving targets. It is nearly impossible to find any customer satisfaction, much less enjoyment flying with these broken-down flying bus companies. (Apologies to any bus companies that I’ve insulted.)
More often than not, you deal with ridiculous lines, grumpy attendants and flight personnel that visibly hate their jobs. Most of the customer service practices recently put into place are shortsighted and designed with the carrier in mind, not the customer.
In the vernacular of one of my favorite recent books, Tuned-In, the carriers truly do create remarkable customer experiences. Unfortunately, they missed the memo on making these experiences positive ones.
The contrast between the customer experience on a U.S. Air Carrier and an overseas carrier is stark. Fly Singapore Airlines or JAL and you’ll spend most of your trip in shock over how nice the experience can be. Something will feel very different and out of place. The poor treatment is gone, replaced by great service provided by people that seem to enjoy creating nice experiences for customers.
Other than the cathartic exercise of criticizing the U.S. carriers (of which I have over 1 million miles on), there are a few reminders for all of us in our businesses as we work to immunize our thinking against the deadly disease of “Detroititis.”
- Keep the government out of the business of artificially protecting under performing industries and companies. Hamel is right. If Singapore Airlines wants to compete for routes in the U.S., they should have that option.
- Evaluate what your customers truly think about their experience with your firm and DO SOMETHING to improve the experience. The airlines employ legions of marketing people to fly around the globe and evaluating customer experiences…but nothing seems to come out from this effort other than dumb policies and new fees.
- Fight for the customer like you livelihood depends upon it. It does.
- As a leader, work unceasingly to instill a sense of pride and commitment to customers in your workplace. If your business is a high-contact customer business, every person that touches a customer must strive to create a positive experience. Working a ticket counter at terminal B at O’Hare may involve dealing with thousands of people per day who are stressed and frustrated. Take away a little of their stress and frustration, treat them like humans and show them that you care! Send thousands of people home everyday with an improved experience, and maybe your business will improve. Go figure.
- No one ever wants to talk to someone that they cannot understand and that they cannot hear on the telephone. Stop subjecting us to these horrendous phone experiences. If you are in charge of this area of your customer experience, what the blank are you thinking?
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The people that I don’t get are the managers and leaders responsible for managing and leading the customer service representatives in organizations that clearly have lousy customer service. Fire yourself, please.
The customer experience at Gate C14 starts at the top of the organization. The same goes for your firm. Unfortunately, we can all learn a lot about what not to do from the auto companies and air carriers in the U.S.
Now quit reading and find something that you can do to improve the experience for your customers!
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