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)