Tag Customer Service Leadership

A Culture of Customer Service

Steve Keating 3 Comments

Over the years I’ve done a bunch of Customer Service Training. I don’t do much anymore because the “new” methods for providing customer service seem to have more to do with profitability and less to do with service. 

I realize this is crazily old school thinking but I still believe the surest way to profitability is to provide your customers with outstanding service. It’s not a one or the other kinda thing. It’s more than a little disappointing how many people and companies disagree with me. 

Today Customer Service “experts” talk about CX Hubs, creating customer experiences, deflecting customers from expensive technical help by shifting them over to a bot or some chat thing. 

There’s actually some research that shows the Gen Z demographic would prefer to not speak with a human when accessing customer support. But not all of them and even if it were their purchasing power does not yet match that of Millennials, Gen X and Boomers. 

Most people want to talk to someone who gives a damn about helping them. 

But sadly there’s a lot more money to be made by talking about creating customer experiences and CX than there is to be made by teaching the basic skills needed to truly help a customer and make them feel valued. 

My biggest problem with most Customer Service training is that the best customer service doesn’t come from a series of actions, responses, or policies. It comes from creating a culture of caring for customers. Not only from the Customer Service Department but from every department. When I call a company for help I don’t care what department the person who answers the phone works in. I expect everyone working there to give a damn about me and every single customer. 

There are no “tricks” to helping customers. There is just help. That help doesn’t come from a policy, it comes from a deeply held conviction that helping customers is the right thing to do. It’s always always always the right thing to do. 

A culture of caring for customers can only be “taught” by modeling it. It must be coached and demonstrated on a daily basis. 

If Customer Service isn’t everyone’s responsibility then sooner or later your customer will get the feeling that it’s nobody’s responsibility. If your organization treats Customer Service as an expense rather than an investment your customers will quickly pick up on that mindset too.

Customers by and large are good people. They don’t want to be a bother so when they feel as if they are bothering you they will stop…stop bothering and stop buying. 

How does your business treat customers…like an expense or an investment? Think about that.

Customer Deflections

Steve Keating Leave a comment

Companies spend tons of money to attract customers. They invest a small fortune to train their salespeople to professionally represent their products. (At least the good ones do) They hire people to provide service to those customers after the salespeople earn their business. 

The best salespeople “sell” that customer service as a benefit of doing business with their company. 

Those things have always been pretty much standard business practice. Finding new customers and earning their repeat business has always been considered a good investment for a company.

But today some companies are developing something like a split personality. While they continue to invest in attracting new customers they are beginning to see retaining those customers as an expense. 

As we all know well run companies look for new ways to reduce expenses at every opportunity. That’s not the problem…the problem is seeing customer service as one of those expenses to be cut.

Some companies are investing in research to determine an acceptable level of customer intolerance. That means they are trying to figure out just how crummy their customer service can be without losing their customers. Providing a higher level of customer service than the company absolutely has to is considered waste. 

Those same companies send their people to training but not to learn how to better serve their customers. The training is on how to “deflect” customers away from the customer service department. “Progressive” customer service departments “deflect” customers to ChatBots or websites. Sometimes even into an endless loop of holds and transfers. 

This might be upsetting to the customer but just so long as the customer’s intolerance level isn’t exceeded all is well. The customer might not agree. They likely believe they deserve better. 

Some service organizations are actually showing reports with the number of customers they “successfully” deflect each month. I pity the poor salesperson who works their tail off only to have their customers “deflected” to some ChatBot. 

Can you tell I’m a little irritated with this new way of thinking? One thing I can say with a very high degree of confidence is that this will never become an old way of thinking. That’s because companies who adopt it won’t be around for long. 

The consultant who “sold” these companies on the word “deflect” should be embarrassed. 

The word should be banned in any conversation that involves a customer.

Words matter. When a customer care manager tells their team they are trying to deflect customers the signal it sends is completely wrong. It negatively affects even the calls that are accepted. The calls tend to be shorter, more abrupt and less helpful. The goal becomes to get the customer off the phone as soon as possible.

Here’s a couple of questions for companies who have adopted this “deflection” strategy. Do you think your customers would like knowing they are being deflected? Are you willing to show your customers the charts and graphs about how many of them you “successfully” deflected?

Remember if you have to hide information from your customers then you may have an ethics problem. 

Companies that invest in technology to help them deflect customers see it as improving their bottom line. I look at it as decreasing their integrity. That’s because their salespeople are still trying to sell excellent customer service as a benefit. Except excellent customer service has become a mirage.

I’ve never seen a stupid customer in my life and if you’re honest neither have you. They may have been misinformed or misunderstood something but that doesn’t make them stupid. They will eventually figure the goal is to “deflect” them and they will respond exactly the way we all would. 

There are still plenty of companies that have no plans to deflect their customers away from their human customer care teams. The customers who experience being “deflected” will find one of them. Then companies that deflect won’t have to worry about the “expense” of having those customers anymore.

Unfortunately is More Than a Word

Steve Keating 10 Comments

Unfortunately! It’s more than a word, it’s a signal. It’s a signal that whatever follows is sure to be bad. When you’re on the phone with a customer service representative the last thing you want to hear is the dreaded “unfortunately.” You know full well that shortly after unfortunately you’re going to hear the even more dreaded “can’t.”

 

Never tell someone what you can’t do, tell them what you can do. For example, if a friend asks you to help them move on Friday but you can only help them on Saturday then don’t say I can’t help on Friday but I can on Saturday. Just say you can help on Saturday. The psychological difference is huge.

 

“Can’t” gets burned into their memory… You become the person or company who can’t. We think differently about people who can’t and we certainly don’t buy from or do business with people who can’t. 

 

Think about every time you’ve heard the word unfortunately. How many times has it been followed with “you’ve won the lottery?” I’m betting not once!

 

There are a lot of words we would be better off just leaving out of our vocabulary; but, never, and always are just a few. Unfortunately is another one. 

 

Unfortunately is like chewing on an old dirty sock, it may not kill you but it sure leaves a bad taste in your mouth. 

 

If you are in any type of customer service role…I shouldn’t have to say this but somehow I fill compelled; if you are in business or work for a business, regardless of your title, role or job description, YOU DO HAVE A CUSTOMER SERVICE ROLE… do everything you can to avoid using the word unfortunately. 

 

No matter how positive the statement is that you make after using that unfortunate word it will seem like a negative to the person on the receiving end. 


Fortunately with a little forethought you can almost entirely eliminate unfortunately from your vocabulary.  Choices matter, even the choice of the words we use each day. Choose well!

What Your Customer Knows

Steve Keating 5 Comments

I have heard one too many complaints lately about customers and most of the complaints have been from people in customer service roles. They have come from kind of a wide variety of businesses but the majority have been from people working in the retail industry. 

 

It’s those complaints and additional comments regarding customers that prompted this post. 

 

While the complaints and comments have come from a variety of industries they all seem to have the same underlying theme…. “we” would have much easier jobs if it weren’t for these pesky, demanding customers. 

 

Keep in mind that the vast majority of these comments have come from people specifically charged with caring for customers. 

 

I find that amazing. 

 

Now I don’t think they actually mean that they wish all their customers would leave; if they would just listen for a second to what they are saying I’m certain they would quickly realize how foolish they sound. 

 

It’s a couple of other comments however which are really concerning. A couple of people I had lunch with recently work in the call center for a huge brick & mortar retailer with thousands of stores around the United States.

 

It became clear that they really believed a good many customers they dealt with on the phone all day were just plain stupid. They assured me however that they were experts in hiding that “belief” from those same customers. I think these two “professionals” honestly believed that the customers were so dumb that they could not tell the true feelings of the reps on the phone. 

 

If you’re a customer service representative of any kind and you told me 1000 times that you had the absolute ability to hide your true feelings and emotions from the customers you interact with I would tell you 1000 times that you are wrong. 

 

And I don’t believe in telling anyone they are wrong. But in this case you are as wrong a wrong could be.

 

You can only hide the fact that you believe the people you’re dealing with are stupid for so long. Sooner or later, likely sooner, much sooner, the people will figure it out. A few words here, a little tone of voice there and your “professional” demeanor is betrayed. 

 

Your customers know whether or not you respect them. Your customer knows whether or not you value their business. They know when you think they are a pain in the butt. I mean seriously, you can tell when you’re annoying someone, you can tell when the customer service rep just wants to get you off the phone….well guess what, your customers can tell that too. 

 

But that’s not the important lesson in this post. The lesson is this: your customers are NOT stupid. Yes, they may get some things wrong, they might not understand all your “policies” and they may at times exaggerate because they don’t trust you enough to take the matter seriously if they don’t. You likely do know more about their situation than they do but hey, you’re supposed to, you’re getting paid for it.

 

If you’re in any kind of position where you interact with customers you must treat with them the full level of respect that they deserve and I didn’t say deserve by accident. They aren’t just paying for your products, they are paying to be treated fairly and with respect. If you find yourself unable to do that on a very consistent basis then you need to find another line of work. Sorry to be so direct with that but hey, if you’re not taking care of the customer you’re not taking care of the business. 

 

There is this great big hulking monster of retail out there largely unencumbered by bricks and mortar who will take care of your customer if you don’t and in doing so they will take your business with them. 

 

In today’s business environment if you think that outstanding customer service is optional you won’t need to be thinking much longer.


Think about that! 

Why Customer Service Is So Bad

Steve Keating 4 Comments

If I were King I’d make a rule that whenever Customer Service was written out it would say Customer SERVICE. That rule would also require that when spoken special emphasis would have to be given to the word SERVICE. Maybe they would have to say SERVICE louder or slowly so they would have an extra millisecond to realize what the word SERVICE actually means. 

 

That assumes of course that you could get them to utter the word service. 

 

This post is admittedly more of a rant against the ghastly customer service that has been in the news lately but seriously folks a rant seems to be required. It’s required because I know where at least part of that horrific service is coming from. 

 

Sadly it’s coming from huckster training organizations offering terrible Customer Service training. I see brochures and emails cross my desk constantly offering the latest skills in Handling Customers, on how to “convince your customers they are satisfied.” On how to remove the “baggage” of customer interactions. (by the way the only real way to convince your customers that they are satisfied is to satisfy them)

 

The tone and word choices of these so called training programs are just atrocious. I absolutely guarantee that if you were to put your people through these programs your customers would notice a difference and that difference will cause them to  become someone else’s customer as soon as they possibly can.

 

These so called training organizations go to great lengths to avoid using the word SERVICE after the word customer. They strain to come up with any word that can possibly be substituted for that dreaded word which might indicate that the person who PAID YOU MONEY for your product or service is in fact be a very important person. It all seems to be an attempt to dehumanize the customer so dragging them off your damn plane will seem perfectly okay.

 

Congratulations United, it worked! You received exactly the outcome that you trained and rewarded your people to provide. Sadly, so did your customer. (It should be noted here that United didn’t drag a human being off the plane, they removed a randomly selected seat number. The whole process was completely dehumanized. Or so they thought.)

 

These programs offer the latest “tricks” for dealing with customers. Well guess what? There are no new tricks because there are no old tricks. If you’re tricking your customer then you’re not SERVING them. Oh and by the way, you don’t “deal” with customers either, you help them, you solve their problems, you SERVE them. 

 

Any customer service training that doesn’t focus plainly and transparently on SERVING the customer is not worthy to be called Customer SERVICE training. When you see training companies offering junk called “Engineering Customer Experiences,” “Reducing Customer Dissatisfaction,” Low Effort Customer Experiences” or any other buzzword loaded titles, RUN. 

 

Authentic Customer SERVICE involves truly caring about the customer. It means doing whatever is required to make the situation right for them…and the customer determines what is right. When your customer determines that you have a genuine interest in solving their issue they very very seldom have unreasonable demands. Customers get unreasonable when they determine you are trying to “engineer” their situation, when you are trying to trick them into thinking you’re saying yes when you’re saying no. When your customer figures out you really don’t care and are just trying to make them go away they can get “unreasonable” in a hurry. 

 

Your poor SERVICE caused that, not the customer.

 

At the core of horrible customer service is this simple fact. Businesses have forgotten that whatever business they are in they are in the people business first. United Airlines might fly planes but they are in the people business. Cable companies might provide entertainment but that entertainment is created for people. Cable companies have forgotten that they are in the people business. Cell phone companies provide cellular service to people, they too are in the people business. I could go on and on, every business is in the people business in one way or another. 

 

If you don’t enjoy interacting with your fellow human beings, in any circumstance, then don’t go into business. 

 

Customers are people and you don’t handle, deal with, trick, fool, ignore, manipulate, or otherwise abuse people. If you’re in business you SERVE them. 

 

SERVING your customers does not make you a servant, it is not, or should not be, beneath anyone in business. Caring for your customers is not a weakness, it is in fact a tremendous strength. 


We need to put the SERVICE back in customer service. It’s people who put the SERVICE in Customer Service; train your people in basic human relations principles and leave the tricks behind.

Where Money Comes From

Steve Keating 6 Comments

If you’re employed by a for-profit business then all your money comes from the same place. The money you spent on dinner last night, the money you use to pay the rent or mortgage, the money you invest in your retirement, that all came from the same place too.

It did not come from the company that employs you. It didn’t come from the boss. It didn’t come from HR and it didn’t come from the payroll department.

All of your money, every penny of it, comes from the customers who CHOOSE to do business with your company. The money you receive in the form of a paycheck is not your company’s money, it is the customer’s money, they simply allow your company to use it. The better the job a business does for their customer, the more money the business is allowed to use.

Businesses that employ people who understand that simply fact are businesses that do well. 

Sometimes businesses and their people get so caught up doing urgent things that they forget what’s truly important, the customer. Nothing, absolutely nothing, should be more important to a business than the customer. 

If you’re a for-profit business then your business cannot afford to be focused on measurements, a process or policy. The focus must be on the customer 100% of the time. Never allow yourself to be fooled into believing what you think is more important than what your customer thinks.

There is no metric, no policy, no spreadsheet and no problem that is more important than meeting and exceeding your customer’s expectations. When you forget that don’t be surprised when your customer forgets you. Measuring, surveying, accounting, and planning are all important to a business, but none of it should ever become more important than a customer.

It’s mere busy work when compared to the one vital task of every business interested in making a profit, meeting and exceeding the needs of the customer. They, the customer, that’s where the money comes from. No business, and no person who works for a business should ever allow themselves to believe that the business exists for them, it exists for the customers.

When you’re too busy to take care of customers don’t worry, that situation will rectify itself soon enough. 

Think about that the next time you’re annoyed by those pesky customers. 

 

How Customer Service Disappeared

Steve Keating 22 Comments

customer-service.0822.12I frequently hear people complain about the lack of customer service. I complain about the same thing. Cell phone and cable companies are my favorite targets. Oh, and let’s not forget the airlines, take your pick, any of the major airlines are easy targets for customer service complaints.

Pretty much everyone I know laments the loss of decent customer service. We all seem to remember a time when people just cared more about “the customer” and their job in general.

I wonder if that’s true? Do people really care less these days?

Do companies just invest less in customer service training? Is it possible that when they do train their people that the training just misses the mark?

I personally don’t think any of that is true. I have a completely different thought. I think it’s a leadership issue. To be more precise, I think it’s a careless leadership issue.

Careless as in there are fewer leaders that truly care about their people today than there has been since the advent of capitalism. Authentic leaders know that if they want their people to care about the customer then they need to FIRST care about their people.

I remember years ago when Northwest Airlines was still in business the pilots went out on strike. The pilot’s union and Northwest management both began running ads in the media stating their case and ripping the other side to shreds. Northwest hinted at the fact that their pilots were greedy idiots without the ability to form a cognitive thought. The pilots said it was the airline that was greedy and that they were cutting corners on maintenance that made the airline unsafe to fly. It was pretty ugly and emotional on both sides.

Then one day a local radio station interviewed one of the pilots. This was a very rational guy who explained how he saw the root cause of almost every problem at the airline.

He said the basic problem was that the airline was using unhappy, unengaged, and disillusioned employees to try and make happy, engaged and loyal customers.

He made a powerful case that it was nearly impossible for a unhappy “service worker” as he called them, to happily service a customer. He said it was normal, and should be expected, that if you’re unhappy you won’t exactly kill yourself trying to make somebody else happy.

I have agreed with and believed that ever since I first heard it.

Which brings us to the state of customer service today.

Today, the disparity in pay between those at the top of a company and those in the company who are most likely to provide service to the company’s customers is greater than it has ever been. The disparity is generally greatest in the cable, cell phone and airline industries. Is that a coincidence?

Executive pay in many cases continue’s to grow at double digit rates while the people in the trenches doing the heavy lifting receive increases of 1-2% on average. If that!

That disparity is easily explained by the relative “importance” of the job. Obviously top executives have a lot more responsibility than a front-line customer service rep. Or do they?

Whether they do or not is almost immaterial for this discussion. Here’s the point, if leaders say or do things that cause their people to feel as if what they do is unimportant they will respond accordingly.

Once a person feels unimportant they will be hard pressed to make someone else, a customer for instance, feel important either.

As leaders continue to build walls between themselves and their people, customer service will continue to decline. I don’t believe the building of walls is intentional, but a wall is a wall. Some of the walls are built with cash and some are built with actions but they are built all the same.

If you’re a leader who wants your people to provide a higher level of service to your customers, then don’t ask what your people can do for your customers. Ask what you can do for your people.