Tag People Business

Taking Care of Business

Steve Keating 1 Comment

Every business promises to take care of their customers. Many have departments they call Customer Care. The new “thing” in customer service is called CX which short for the Customer Experience. Companies are investing small fortunes with consultants. All to improve the experience for their customers. 

They do this in an attempt to take care of business. 

But for many of those companies, way way too many, they have put the cart before the horse. 

I fully support anything that improves the customer experience. I’m all in on anything that gives the customer a reason to continue doing business with a company. It’s just that every business is in the people business, no matter the product or service they sell. 

Companies can invest literally millions of dollars trying to improve their customer’s experience. They spend on systems, programs and technology. But if they refuse to invest one dollar on improving the working experience of their employees the customer will never be happy. 

I recall a whole bunch of years ago when the pilots union at one of the major airlines in the US went on strike. It was a pretty contentious strike right from the beginning. Both the company and the pilots union took out ads in the newspapers saying that the other side were basically morons. I still don’t understand the airline’s strategy of telling their customers that the people who were flying them across the country were morons. But that’s another story. 

Part way through the strike one of the pilots was on a local talk radio show discussing the strike. He said something that has stuck with me to this day. He said the crux of the problem at the airline was that they were trying to satisfy customers with dissatisfied employees. 

The employees, throughout the airline, were disgruntled and disengaged. They believed they were taken for granted and disrespected. They passed those feelings on to the customers. 

The “cart” that many companies put before the horse is investing in customer service programs before they invest in the people responsible for implementing the programs. They are trying to make satisfied customers when their employees could be dissatisfied. That is unlikely to work. 

Most companies today know that regardless of what they sell they are in the people business. What they don’t seem to realize is that the employees of the company are people too. While the popular thinking says “the customer comes first” the reality is that unless employees know they matter the customer doesn’t come at all. 

Companies that attempt to take care of business before they take care of their people are making a mistake, often a very costly one. 

The most successful and profitable companies know that it’s their people who create satisfied and loyal customers. Programs, technology and systems do not. What they can do is help the people in the organization better serve customers. But if the people who are employed by the company do not feel valued it’s unlikely they will add much value to the customer. 

That’s why companies that last invest as much in their people as they do their products and customers. 

Does your organization have the cart before the horse? If so a change of focus is in order. Focus on your people first so they will enthusiastically focus on your customers. 

The Death of Customer Service

Steve Keating 1 Comment

I’ve written about this topic before but “new” concepts in Customer Service keep popping up so I have to keep smacking them down.

One of the newest says that customers aren’t really customers….they are personas that have to be “dealt with.”

Wow, that really sounds like the right mindset for providing decent customer service to the people who buy your products so that you can stay in business so that you can feed your family and have a roof over your head.

Those “personas” are the people who pay for everything a business AND their employees own. When a company forgets that the customers, those pesky people who the company exists to serve, tend to go away.

And go away is exactly what they should do!

If you are in business then you are in the people business. If you refuse to acknowledge people are human beings and insist on calling them baggage, personas, problem causers, or whatever else you want to call them you’ll be out of business soon enough. The sad thing is how many people you’ll have frustrated along the way.

If you’re in business stop throwing money away on the latest Customer Service fad. Start treating your customers with the same decency and respect that you expect when you’re a customer.

It’s really that easy. Remember, you are in business to serve your customer. You are in business to help your customers. You are in business to solve problems for your customers. Are you getting this yet…you are in business for your customer’s benefit.

Your business is ALL ABOUT your customers.

Yes, you need to make money but if that’s your primary focus you can’t last. If you treat customers, every customer, with dignity and respect they will tell people about it. Those people will beat a path to your door. You will be making more money than you ever imagined.

You cannot go wrong taking care, showing care, and truly caring for your customer.

If some “professional” Customer Service Training Company tries to sell you or your company on the latest “fad” in customer service don’t even talk to them unless the customer, the real customers who keep your business in business, is at the center of that training.

If that so called training company calls a customer by any name other than customer you don’t need that kind of help. A customer by any other name will not feel valued the way they should.

Your people don’t need tricks, fads, or buzz words to help your customers. They need Human Relations Skills, also known as People Skills, because if you’re in business then you’re in the people business.

The day you forget that isn’t only the day your Customer Service dies, it’s also the day you start going out of business.

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.

The People Business

Steve Keating 9 Comments

I was very fortunate years ago to have a mentor who was also a great salesperson. Whenever someone asked him what business he was in he would answer “the people business.” 

My mentor’s name was Jack and for 40 years he owned a commercial heating and air conditioning company. When asked how he got “people business” out of heating and air conditioning he replied, “simple, my business is about helping other businesses and organizations provide a comfortable and productive working environment for their people.” 

Jack believed that every business and every product was in some way about helping people. He often said that if your product or service didn’t in some way benefit people then you wouldn’t be in business for very long. He taught me to never sell my product, he taught me to sell what it could do for the people who might buy it. 

The moment a business or it’s leadership lose sight of the fact that, regardless of what they sell, they are in the people business their potential for long-term success begins to decline.

If you’re in business, any business, then you are in the people business.

There should never be a policy, process, or procedure that is more important than people. Your people are your business, both the people who work for your business and the people who are served by your business.

Years ago the pilots of the now merged Northwest Airlines went on strike. It was very contentious and both sides, the airlines and the pilots union, starting running ads on local radio to “get their side of the story out.” Basically each side said the other were complete idiots. 

I wasn’t too sure about flying on an airline run by idiots but I was certain I didn’t what to fly on a plane piloted by someone considered to be an idiot by the very airline that hired them. I don’t really know much about the airline business but I do know some stuff about the people business. Something one of the striking pilots said during a radio interview has stuck with me to this day.

The pilot said the airlines whole problem was that they were trying to make customers happy while doing nothing to make their own people happy. He said he believed it impossible to have happy customers if the people tasked with making them happy were unhappy.

I doubt whether that was the airlines “whole problem” but it was absolutely one of the biggest. Northwest Airlines forgot that they were in the people business and they also forgot that their employees were people too.

I believe in measuring pretty much everything a business does, you need a yardstick to see progress and determine opportunities for improvement. However, when your metrics become more important than your customer…or your own people, then you have a problem. Metrics are a guide to success, they are not a bible for success. 

When people are involved in your business you will sometimes need to throw the numbers out to do the right thing and remember, people are always involved in your business.

Put people first and your business will last!