Arguing With Safety

You have a sign - say 12ft long x 2ft high.
You spray it luminous yellow.
You display the words "DANGER TO PEDESTRIANS" and "NO ENTRY" on it in 1ft high, bold, black letters.
You place it next to an entrance marked "BUSES ONLY".
You park 15 buses in a line, ready to reverse on the inside of the entrance.

You will then spend the day making announcements over a PA system to people who think it is ok to walk through the entrance and along behind the buses.

You will argue with workmen who get cross with you for frantically yelling and gesturing for them to return to safety, whilst they stand in a blind spot for bus drivers, when a bus is due, with no high vis jacket, saying they know "all about safety".

You will feel your blood pressure rise with every person who says: "I didn't see any sign!"

You will go home a nervous wreck and cry into your own high vis jacket - wondering why Darwin can no longer be allowed to take his course in today's legal culture.

You will be sorely tempted to replace the sign with a high voltage electric current equipped with motion sensors when you return to work.

But no matter what, you must resist, keep smiling, apologising and reciting: "its health and safety, I'm afraid!"

Trust me.

The Customer Is NOT Always Right!

The old myth that "the customer is always right" is possibly the most dangerous and frustrating common misconception that was ever contrived. It is enough to contract the cranial blood vessels of even the most placid customer service worker.

It is simply not true.

Controversial as this may sound, it is so. Customers are quite often wrong. Some companies may want their customers to go away thinking that they are right, and therefore feel good about themselves and the company, but that is not the same thing.

It is a cliche that often causes us major problems in our office.

Customers are simply not happy unless they are vindicated and very often cannot see their own failings (or stupidities), even in the face of glaring evidence. Many disputes are caused by the poor communication skills of customers, rather than staff, or by blatant misunderstandings on the part of the customer.

My question is: how do you tell a customer they are wrong?

I, personally, will not lie to a customer. Unfortunately, this means I cannot pay lip-service by telling someone they are right when they are more than 110% wrong. This means I have the linguistic challenge of explaining the mistake and finding a tactful way of saying: "Ha ha! You were wrong! Now go away!".

My favourite way of achieving this is to go into a lengthy description of the investigation conducted into the customer's complaint, give detailed results, then simply say "in light of this evidence, I regret that I cannot explain your observations". I will often give the customer a let out - asking them to check that we have recorded all the details of their complaint accurately and offering to re investigate if there is any discrepancy - but basically, I can see no other way of doing it. Admitting the company was in the wrong when it was not could lead to expensive compensation claims and a poor public image. Unfortunately, telling the customer they are wrong also gives us a poor public image, as the customer goes away indignant and unhappy.

So is there a solution? Can anyone convince me that maintaining that "the customer is always right" really is a valuable slogan within modern customer services? Or does anyone else have the same problem with this expression?

The only other solution I have at present is to run a deep, hot bath and to forget about customers altogether!

Why Blog?

After several posts, this may seem like an odd time to think about why I am blogging.

However, on Friday I went to a fantastic conference about just that... and several other things as well! :p

The Women, Business & Blogging conference at DMU in Leicester focused on the role women bloggers play in business and how blogging can be used to both reach and empower women. It featured key note talks by Meg Pickard, Eileen Brown and Jory Des Jardin, as well as plenty of space for networking and discussion about all aspects of technology and blogging.

The conference made me think about what I am actually trying to achieve here. Really, I am using this particular blog as a release mechanism for all those observations about life in a customer services department. I could just keep a diary, but I would like to share these observations and engage with other customer service workers to help resolve some of these issues - or at least have a good old chin wag about them.

In addition to this, the most useful thing I took away from the conference, which I want to share, is the potential for using blogs to interact with customers. Eileen Brown has the strange job title of "technology evangelist" for Microsoft. She spoke about how Microsoft is using blogging to open itself up to customers and interact with them - and particularly how this is helping to improve their customer image, which was pretty lousy. She even converted my friend who attended with me - a staunch whinger about anything Bill Gates related!

Following this, I intend to email our marketing department to see if they would consider letting us set up a customer services blog. I would like to gear this specifically at our student customers, as we have reached a bit of a stand off with this group. They hate our company: we hate them. All we are doing in customer services at the moment is scoring points off the students and grumbling - answering complaints as and when they come in. I hope a blog would give the students the opportunity to interact with us, see that we are human, and possibly start building a relationship so we can improve our services and the students can improve their communication skills with us.

I will let you know how it goes! The company might not be as open minded as Microsoft...

Seven Wonders of the Complaining World

I know EVERYONE loves to complain about buses. You wait for ages and three come at once... they are always late... etc etc etc.

BUT... could you seriously bring yourself to make any of the following complaints (and expect to be taken seriously!)

1. The bus driver looked at me funny
   
2. The Number 332 bus only stops at Sikh temples and chip shops (what more could you want?)
   
3. I walked past the bus stop and it just exploded! (... followed by an obvious claim for compensation)
4. The driver got out of the bus and started shouting at a tree (yes, that one was actually true!)
5. The bus ran over my cat... my neighbour saw it happen and said the driver didn't even barke (possibly the most unfortunate typo in the world!)
6. Your bus assaulted me (all by itself... clever!)
7. I waved at the bus driver and he waved back (I'm sure there was a problem there somewhere... :s)

Believe it or not, these were all apparently genuine complaints! It just goes to show that people really are funny things.

I'd love to hear if anyone can better any of these. Answers on a postcard please... (or in a comment of course :P)

Who Complains MOST?

It is important not to stereotype.

Anyone can be a complainer, regardless of age, gender, nationality, intelligence, social status or hair colour. One of the most interesting things about working in the customer services sector is the range of people that one meets!

It is also important not to confuse complainants with complainers.

Complainants are people who make a complaint; complainers are people who habitually complain. We often refer to the latter as "penpals" in our office.

But who complains the MOST?

This obviously depends on the industry to a large extent. However, I have observed a number of more unusal trends that mark out people who regularly complain:

1. People with unfortunate names - people who have unfortunate names seem to complain more often and more viciously than anyone else. This may be a psychological thing. Many of the most familiar names in our files belong to people who MUST have suffered major bullying at school. Maybe they are taking this out on us...
2. Students - amazing, but true. Yes, older people do complain lots as well, but generally the most unnecessarily aggressive complaints come from students. They tend to go a little over the top in making their points, and often forget that people outside the university may be intelligent individuals as well. As a graduate and part-time post grad student, it always makes me laugh when students take this line with me. Do they realise that they too could graduate and end up in customer services...?
3. Menopausal Women - these can be spotted a mile a way. "I am NOT menopausal... I have a responsible job and I DON'T deserve to be treated like this!". The tears almost drip off the page sometimes. It is an unfortunate effect of hormones in some women, and I do not mean to cause any offence by suggesting that sometimes women of this age can get a little obsessional about complaining. Pregnant women often do the same. Despite my best diplomatic efforts, I have often resigned a telephone call by asking a weeping lady to write to us with her concerns so we can investigate formally. This gives them the time to think about things and hopefully write calmly - and us time to construct a water-tight, sympathetic response.

I would never advise anyone within these groups to refrain from making a valid complaint for fear of being branded. However, I would always advise taking a deep breath first. Remember: we customer service workers can often be menopausal students with unfortunate names too!

Has anyone else observed odd trends in complainant demographics? It would be an interesting thing to survey, wouldn't it? What creates a complainer's psyche? Comments very welcome!

Group Mentality

Have you ever noticed how groups of people can whip themselves into a frenzy about an issue? They come storming up to your customer services desk and create absolute stink complaining about it... then when you investigate you find that the whole thing was just NOT TRUE!

I have come across this several times.

Group complaining mentality can be a dangerous and frustrating thing. It is relatively easy to cope with an individual person who has made a mistake and is complaining about it indignantly... you can explain their error to them politely and they go off all sheepish-like. But when a whole group of people come in claiming the same thing, it is really hard to trust yourself when you find that they just can't be right.

I like to refer to this as "bus stop" complaining - as this is exactly what happens when groups of people complain to each other at a bus stop. It works like this:

1. One person suffers from a misconception about an incident
i.e. they misunderstand something or trigger a dispute with their own attitude, but can't see that they were wrong

2. Several other people hear about the incident and discuss it
- the first person's misconception is treated as truth by others who were not present, but are predisposed to think the worst of the company involved

3. Continued discussion creates increased anger within the group
- the version of events presented becomes fixed as truth in the minds of all the individuals within the group

4. The original instigator takes on the role of a hero and group whips itself into a defensive frenzy around this hero.
- Group participants cannot then accept the falsehood of the story, unless proven and presented in writing.

It is almost as if people within this sort of complaining gaggle want to be within a story or soap opera. They want a hero to worship and a bad guy (normally your company) to hate.

There is simply no use arguing with these people in person, especially if they all bombard you together. The only way you can deal with them is to take down all of the details, leave it for a week or so, then write to them, explaining the truth and apologising for any confusion.

In our company, we have discussed whether we should refuse to accept secondhand complaints, to avoid this very issue. "Were you involved, madam?" "No, I was just standing nearby... but I thought it was disgusting" "Well we can only take a complaint from the person who was actually involved, but thank you for calling!".

Needless to say, we didn't thing we could get away with this - not and maintain the true, caring spirit of customer services. But it is an odd phenomenon indeed.

People are definitely strange creatures when they are in groups!

Training

This is a perennial problem in my work place, and, no doubt, in many other customer service departments within all kinds of organisations: training. Lack of, quality of, quantity of... you name it!

In my work place, it is a lack of proper training causes a problem. Generally, we work together as a small team to discuss the best approaches to common problems, and to apply hindsight to specific incidents. This helps to an extent, but it does mean that on some of the more challenging issues that arise, we really have to make do with our own judgement, rather than relying on solid training.

A topical example:

You receive a telephone call from a blatantly racist customer. How do you handle their comments?

I am really not comfortable with racism, so on one occasion I decided the best option was to put the call across to my manager. This proved to be a mistake, because the manager in question turned out to be incredible prejudice AGAINST racist people. The conversation very quickly dissolved into an abusive tirade, with my boss slamming down the phone on the lady in question. I later had to deal with her husband, who also wanted to speak to the manager and could not see how his wife had been racist, as there was nothing wrong with what she said. Another abusive call with much shouting ensued.

This incident raised several issues for me:

1) how important it is to keep ALL prejudices, even apparently positive ones, out of the way when dealing with customers
2) how you cannot always rely on your manager to keep their temper, so it is better to deal with discomfort during a call as far as possible, rather than chickening out
3) specific to this particular call - how many people don't think that making derogatory comments about Eastern European (particularly Polish) people is racism, which of course it is.

I pondered this incident for some time, not least because I felt partially responsible for making the situation worse by handing the call over to my manager in the first place. It made me braver today when someone made the following comment:

"I used to work for you so I know what the company is like... you need to tell X to train your f***ing Poles better..."

I felt my blood turn in one beautifully cold, crisp wave. Apparently my voice did the same thing. My response was as follows:

"With all due respect, sir, I currently work for the company, so I know what they are like now. X does not train our staff and the issue would be the same regardless of the nationality of the staff member."

The call went on for some time, with me keeping a very forceful tone of voice and repeating my advice, which actually solved the chap's problem, but he didn't want to admit defeat. I did win out in the end, but not without a fairly large dose of adrenaline, and a bar of chocolate to restore my nerves afterwards.

My question is whether there is a good, customer-friendly way of dealing with a racist customer? Should the comment just be ignored, or is a firm line needed to make sure the customer realises they have stepped over the mark? Or would such people understand a subtle indicator like: "the nationality of the member of staff makes no difference"?

In a politically correct and sensitive world, it is a very difficult thing to judge. Do we have to respect everyone else's views, even when those views are disrespectful to others? Is there any advice out there for people on the front line of customer services to help them deal with this problem?

I don't really want to be political with this blog, but this has to be the most pressing issue I face as a customer service worker and I think it is time it was aired and discussed sensibly. With a friendly, understanding smile of course... :P