Customer Disservice: When Personal Drama Effects Professional Drive

Steve is having a financial crisis. Steve is in over his head and is quickly running out of options. He says he has sterling credit and a home that is worth far more than the remaining mortgage, yet he cannot get a home equity loan. Steve has children that are in college and is struggling to find the money he needs while putting the kids through school. How do I know all of this? Steve is a tour guide in Boston. More specifically, Steve was my tour guide in Boston.

My family and I just returned from Boston for a trip that was part business, but mostly pleasure. As January in Boston is not known for its mild weather, we opted to spend our sightseeing hours in the comfort of one of the tour trolleys that proliferate this beautiful and historic city. We felt that we made a wise choice when our guide, Mike, was not only knowledgeable and entertaining, but also personalized the tour as we were the only group on the trolley while we were riding with him.

What did Mike do right? He learned about my husband and me by asking questions, then pointed out items and fun facts that he thought would specifically pertain to what we most enjoyed. When we stopped for a 15 minute potty break, he gave us directions to the cleanest restroom for changing the baby and even a spot where we could get a free chocolate milk for our four year old son. Before we hopped off the trolley for lunch, he made suggestions for eating establishments and assured us that we could pop back on any of the trolleys at any time and would receive exceptional service.

Mike was right about dining (I ordered the chocolate sambuca cake he suggested and he was right, I nearly died from joy), but he was wrong about the service of his fellow tour guide. Steve offered to drive us directly to our hotel rather than make the customary stops, but the excellent service ended there. As soon as we were on board, Steve fired up his cell phone and spent half of the ride negotiating finances. When he was off, he apologized, then proceeded to tell us of his financial difficulties until he was near tears and even my eight-month old seemed uncomfortable. Noticing the looks my husband and I were exchanging, he apologized again, pointed out the architecture of a building nearby, then promptly dove into a diatribe on the banking industry and the economy in general.

What did Steve do wrong? Basically, everything. Whereas Mike allowed his personal experiences to enhance his customer service, Steve allowed his personal experiences to not only interfere but to completely overwhelm the task at hand. Steve’s lack of professionalism affected him personally as he received a smaller tip from us, and it also affected the company as a whole. Whereas our experience with the first tour guide left us wanting more, the experience with number two cost the company repeat business and valuable word of mouth. Imagine Steve conducting tours eight hours a day, five days each week, fifty weeks per year. Granted, he may not always be experiencing a “financial crisis” (his words), but it is clear that he does not know when to leave his personal life at home and it became clear to us that the tour company does not put customer service first.

Reputation Management

Are you managing your reputation, or is your reputation managing you?

Where do you look to find out what others are saying about you?

If there are negative assessments, what can you do to fix them?

Reputation management has become one of the most valuable and confounding tools businesses face. At one time, a company’s reputation was based on word-of-mouth amongst small parties and, on larger scales, in magazine and newspaper write-ups. Now that nearly every consumer with a computer is a critic with potential to wreak wide-spread havoc, eliminating negative opinions of one’s company is vital to success.

Negative feedback can be difficult and nearly impossible to remove. Once a customer has a bad experience with a company, that one bad experience can can cause a lot more than just headaches to the business; it can cost real dollars and cents in lost business and lost opportunities from those who use word of mouth to determine where their hard earned paychecks are spent. It can take years for a company with a bad reputation to recover, and many do not recover at all.

The best way for a company to manage its reputation is not to try to repudiate the negativity, but to address it head on by improving those poor practices. Better still, a company can discover where their problems lie in the first place and alter the problems before they become a part of the company’s identity. This can involve spotting a poorly functioning product, understanding when services are not up to par, and possibly most importantly, knowing when one’s customer service staff is performing below acceptable standards.

Finding customer service issues can take little time and effort if given the right approach. Molloy Business Development helps companies find their weaknesses by listening to actual calls and by mystery shopping. This gives the company the best idea of what problems exist and how they can be best addressed, on an individual basis and as a whole. When a company is proactive, they can stop a negative reputation before it gets started.

Avoiding the Trap of the Rearview Mirror

Looking back to the past while driving a business into tomorrow is like cruising down the highway using only a rearview mirror.

Most business executives can easily generate a myriad of financial and operational reports to be debated and deliberated in a series of endless management meetings. As the economy tanks, business leaders use these reports to trim overhead, shutter stores, and lay off staff in an effort to stay in business. Additionally, they study the bottom line and plan changes designed to grow profits and increase revenue down the road. Unfortunately for most of these professionals, this data, though useful, does not supply some key information critical to the future success of the company.

Management professionals may not understand commerce is generated when people exchange commitments with one another over the course of business conversations. Since commerce is generated during these business conversations, any and all financial reports are representative of the effectiveness of the communication skills of the individuals within the company. The problem facing most organizations is, they rely on the financial reports without accurately assessing the conversational competence of the members of their staff. For example, if a company engages in 1,000 sales conversations each month with an overall closing percentage of 20 percent, the company has successfully completed 200 sales. The financials are generated by the literal sales numbers, but this doesn't assess the reasons why the remaining 800 calls didn't produce any sales. Furthermore, the financials do not assess the competence of the salespersons that were successful. The data, as such, is incomplete.

Additionally, although many companies record customer service and sales conversations, they lack the distinctions needed to make grounded assessments about the conversations that generate the numbers. This lack of data about the language that creates the very essence of the company inhibits even the most well-meaning of business managers from planning the future in the most effective way. By planning only through the study of past data without assessing communications competence in the future, business leaders are in effect driving their company forward while looking into the rear view mirror—a dangerous way to drive both a vehicle and a business.

Management needs to be able to look into their company person by person, as well as branch by branch, to accurately assess the competence of their staff. The simplest assessment should be based on coordinating action successfully. For instance, sales and customer service staff need to be able to coordinate action with customers and prospects, while managers and operational staff need to be able to coordinate action internally.

Assessing competence in the domain of communication necessitates we have core distinctions upon which we base our assessments, and can fix problem areas we encounter. For instance, measuring a person's ability and understanding about how to "build trust and credibility" and how to design conversations which "produce the desired action" is a starting point.

This naturally leads to questions about designing with language. In addition to moving our bodies, all we have to generate revenues in our business is "language." So a good question to ask is, "What is the language that produces trust?" Another one would be, "How do you design conversations that produce productive action between two or more people?"

Additionally, core distinctions such as "What constitutes a great customer service call?" and "What constitutes a great effort with a new prospect during a sales call?" are central to being able to project the likelihood of future success. If leaders, managers, coaches, and trainers can't articulate the standards and demonstrate how they need to be applied in the future, odds are good the future won’t be what you want.

Typically, business leaders articulate a clear vision about what the future of the company looks like. They lay out new products, policies, and procedures for handling financial transactions. Where the rubber meets the road, however, is in the sales, customer service, and operational conversations. In these areas, the ability to assess competence generally does not exist.