I’ve been involved in creating customer focused cultures for many years and have seen the incredible empowering impact it can have on your front line people and on tangible business results. There is no doubt that when customer service becomes strategic for your enterprise you can win – beyond your wildest imagination. But most organizations, most of the time, don’t get it.
For most enterprises most of the time, the best they can come up with is customer service scripting. Scripting is really, quite feeble. It speaks to an intent to provide a certain minimum of engagement but most often just sounds like lip service to customer service.
I’ve wondered why. I think I have the answer.
I think it is all very logical and reasonable. It does seem to make sense.
If a customer is satisfied, her expectations of you were met, the product was good, the service was fine – what’s the impact? Might tell a few people about it. (Positive but not overly memorable.) You get paid, life goes on.
If you wow your customer! (And that’s a very good thing!) You’ll create a fan (maybe a raving fan) and loyal supporter who will tell several people about his wonderful experience. Great referrals! Excellent stuff! (Positive and very memorable.)
But if you screw up, guess what? Your customer will tell a lot of people about this very negative and memorable experience. (All negative experiences are very memorable – aren’t they?)
And here’s the kicker. If you screw up and then screw up the complaint process your customer will tell hundreds of people about her most negative and very memorable experience of you!
So the logical solution is to avoid the negative – to have a play safe script for your people to “perform” to avoid the nightmare. Have your service providers ‘get with the program’ and do their very best to meet expectations and minimize the risk of screwing anything up. Totally logical! It’s an MBA approach to engineering the customer service “experience.”
Trouble is … we all know it’s lip service. Your customers know it and feel it. Your service providers know it too. That’s why it doesn’t make any $%^& difference! All it does is keep you on a very mediocre path and not very memorable, unless of course you screw up, which you inevitably will.
You cannot ever dream to provide a script to deal with every new and unique experience! Yet most businesses most of the time keep on trying the same things and then wondering why the results aren’t really any different. Must be a problem with your people – in their commitment and execution. This reminds of a wonderful question posed by Paul Levesque in one of his presentations. “Are your people unmotivated, lackluster and uncommitted 24 hours a day, or only the 8 hours a day they spend with you?”
How do you create great experiences for your customers if every new and unique experience is new and unique? You have to start from an ethic or value of service. It’s about who you are and what you stand for and believe in. And you can’t fake it!
It’s about inviting positive and caring people to share your values and then being able to make it real for your customers. Stories help communicate some of the elements of success however, great service is always “improv” within the framework of shared values. You create the framework and ‘context’ and then empower your people to unleash their creativity to make it so.
So please throw out the scripts and unleash the creativity of your people.
Try this the next time you’re in one of your favourite restaurants and the server attempts to very professionally recite all of the specials of the day with all of the detail and pizzazz they can muster, (and it’s best if it’s a new server trainee.) Say, “Wow, sounds like you have the script down pat, good job!” “Have you tried them?” Which one do you like best?” Very often you will get more scripting as in “They’re all great!” Occasionally, your questions will invite the wow factor into the experience and you might just get a most interesting, improvised, passionate and refreshing performance.
Scrap the scripts. Let your people perform!
2 comments:
You are asking for examples of unusual ande surprising service for a book. How about postal service? It may seem an oxymoron...
I live in Toronto, Canada. Over the years the same 'postie' has always delivered the mail at the house and I have gotten to know this very nice chap. I talked to him on many occasions and we always waved to each other when I was walking the dog which he liked and often he even carried dog treats with him. Last year I moved house and bought from Canada Post a 6-months forwarding subscription. A couple of months after it expired I happened to park my car in my old street on my way to a lunch appointment and saw 'my postie'. I said Hello and he was delighted to see me and of course asked about my dog. He then mentioned that at the station some more of my mail had piled up since the subscription had expired. Although I told him that I was quite certain that by now only junk mail would continue to be sent to my old address he made a really surprising offer to me. He said: "I know where you live now… this is on my way home… I am not supposed to do this but I will drop it off for you… ". Lo and behold, that afternoon the promised mail was in my mail box!!! [never mind that I was right about it being junk mail].
Now, Canada Post is heavily unionized and the postal unions were for years very antagonistic, in the face of antagonistic management. But, things have changed fortunately. In this environment, here is a real customer service hero doing what he believes is right for 'his customers'. There is actually an old saying in this business: "Good People are stopped by Bad Management and Bad Process".
Of course, great service begins and ends with good people, such as "my" postie. They have the right stuff between their ears and are unsung customer service heroes. Actually, this experience made me determined to continue to point out that companies need to take a look at their hiring policies and process. If they want to create a customer focused culture where service excellence is the norm, throughout the organization [externally as well as internally], they have to hire right. Everybody needs to have "the right stuff".
Eric Fraterman - Customer Focus Consultant
web: www.customerfocusconsult.com
blog: www.customerfocusconsult.blogspot.com
email: eric@customerfocusconsult.com
Maybe it's an ordinary one, but I've never forgotten it. Arriving at the Marriott Hotel and Spa in Bangkok, Thailand after a 12 hour overnighter from London. It's 5PM or so as we (my wife and I) approach the desk to check in. "Sorry, Mr Bryer, your room isn't ready." "Isn't ready? What do you mean it isn't ready? It's nearly dark outside etc, etc." I was too busy ranting to realise that she had also said, "so we've upgraded you to a suite for the duration of your stay." None of the waiting around in a communal lounge drinking nasty coffee - which is what it was like at The Marriott in Sydney just four days later.
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