Make Customer Service an Outlier Not an Outpost (Part 1)

Refining the Frontline and Lifeblood of Your Business

A go-to manual with practical and helpful advice. A primer to assist managers, human resource departments, and small business owners.

Introduction

All around us, commerce is changing. It’s also shifting in the where, when, and how we do business. From the ancient bazaars to the apps on our phones, the principles of the transaction remain. The recipient of a seller’s product and service is a consumer.

Products, tools, and delivery systems evolve. The one constant that remains is consumer relations. The contact, service, and appreciation of any company’s biggest asset is still the customer.

As artificial intelligence and software programs manifest, they all enter the customer service sector. Sending data to the consumer at sonic speeds. As new departments are created through technology and societal shifts, the customer service department remains.

When customers contact your call center, they want resolutions to their problems. They require understanding and empathy. They yearn to be heard, not just listened to.

Meanwhile, customer service departments reap the bad rap. Unreturned emails and compromised chat sessions. Customers are put on hold for eons when they require something beyond an automated system with generic questions and answers.

Once a customer labors through the chore of reaching a real person, they get an agent working from a script. By now, the consumer’s percolated blood boils over. “Let me speak to your supervisor,” says the frustrated customer.

The agent may or may not get a supervisor. Some are determined to set us straight. The company has designed this culture, not the agent. As consumers, we know these reps have been trained for this type of behavior.

The company thinks they’re saving money by not issuing discounts and refunds to every disgruntled caller. Fair enough. In place of savings, they’re burning through their customer’s time and faith.

Rather than improving their product’s performance, they’re allocating resources to protect their bottom line. Company decisions and policies speak volumes.

Instead of resolving your customer’s issue, you’ve created a bigger dilemma. Whether it’s an agent following directions or a guard dog protecting profits, you’re building distance instead of trust between you and your customers.

You’re also sending a deeper and more damaging signal. An apathetic agent reveals a company that doesn’t value their customers nor their consumer experience. A watchdog says you favor adversary over engagement.

Meanwhile, anxiety mounts. Miscommunication, sub-par performance, and this us against you mindset only add to the customer’s negative experience.

Your customer service agent not only fails to find a resolution but a working one. The customer feels alienated, abandoned, and betrayed by your practices.

The divide between clients and customer service departments is the highest it’s ever been and only rising. The lack of empathy, awareness, and product knowledge by your agents is driving customers away.

Leading these transactions is a business allowing this to happen. Customers are forced to flee your company and patronize the competition.

Customers aren’t leaving — they’re escaping. Across the board and in all industries, consumers are deciding to compromise quality, performance, and pricing. Extreme measures just to eliminate contact with dysfunctional customer service departments.

Too many companies expect their customer service departments to exhibit internal corrections. To exit the learning curves, find their footing and get up to speed.

Even as we speak to those outside agencies. The people with foreign accents halfway across the globe. They sound professional and even have an American-sounding name.

Yet, we remain skeptical. This person might be better than an automated chatterbox, but geez, they’re halfway around the globe and a few oceans away. They might be nice and well-meaning, but do they understand my issues? More importantly, could they solve my problem?

The purpose of this manual is to help you rethink your customer service strategy. To stop believing and accepting that your department is a boot camp for new hires. Nothing more, nothing less.

Let’s forge a customer service department that is just as robust as any other cog in your business because it ought to be. You owe this to your employees, your company’s future, and your customer base.

Instead of assembling a department to save money and to stop the bleeding, create a division that grows and earns. An opportunity to share, spread and magnify your reach and message.

A ship-shape customer service department will add prestige to your company culture. It will also pay dividends with your most treasured asset: the customer.

Make your customer service a sector full of pride and results. A place where skilled employees are helping you and your customers succeed and prosper. The support system to keep consumers coming back while spreading the good news about your products, services, and the stories behind them.

1. The Current Customer Service Model

In most companies, the customer service department remains the lowest rung on the corporate ladder. The least prestigious position with the stale, generic, run-of-the-mill job description.

The outpost for new hires to learn the ropes of your business, industry, and customer base. An entry-level position where the countless pay their dues.

The stowaways answer phone calls, requests, and complaints. They also get to work on their writing skills by composing emails and chat sessions. Their public speaking skills are enhanced through phone conversations and portables like Skype.

As middlemen, they maintain contact with the various inner departments of your business. Working relationships are practiced for the here and now as well as the future.

Your customer service team is growing into their natural positions. They’re learning about your company, products, and services while assisting the customer base.

Once this trial-by-fire ends, the agents are often promoted to serve in their intended capacities. They graduate customer service for the next wave of new hires. Just like the minor league farm system and rookie leagues for Major League Baseball.

On the surface, it’s all good and makes sense. It’s the way you’ve always been doing it. So does everyone else, no matter the industry. Even your competitors.

2. Rethinking and Refining Orientation

Companies spend fortunes to craft a message that is designed to separate themselves from their competitors. Advertisement, social media campaigns, content marketing, and consulting fees.

When it comes to their employees, they feed them an off-point and vanilla concoction. The equivalent of stale cookies and sour milk. Too many orientations these days are about rules and regulations. Generic presentations with unemotional videos and slide shows.

When the rah-rah stuff shows up, eyeballs are rolling. The brave and loose cannons in the crowd chuckle. You’ve abandoned these people before they’ve hit the floors and start working.

I’ve sat in my share of these orientations. I’m sure you have too. The same people you’re entrusting your customers with have their trust in you questioned and tarnished.

I’ve watched too many firms feel this is the best and only way to get people on board. Logic dictates commitment is never enough. Instead, they demand compliance. What firms miss out on, is that they’ve created a climate of disconnection and distrust from day one.

Why not personalize your orientations from the get? When the fresh hires are at full attention, give them a history of the company. Show them the importance of your products and services. Demonstrate how they have and continue to make a difference in the lives of your customers.

Hire a video crew and get real customers with genuine testimonials. If you need actors, direct them to be real and down to earth. Over-the-top will defeat the purpose. The incoming agents will see right through this charade.

Production companies are in the video and media business, not yours. Coach them on what you need and want.

Make your orientation video a story. A balance between inspiration, brand awareness, and history. Heck, make it a TED Talk if you have to. Anything but the stuff going on in current orientations all over the place.

Many of your new hires will be recent graduates, still in a classroom mindset. They might not know your industry, products, and brand, but they know authenticity. After four years of lectures, they know the difference between a moderator who’s mailing it in, following a script, and selling something.

Harken back to your school days. The professors who were inspiring versus the duds and misfires. Seize this opportunity by revealing the root of your business, culture, and future.

You have a great company with even greater potential. Make these people feel part of it. Show them the opportunity to share in your mission.

In my experience, authenticity beats authority. True, sometimes people need to be reminded of this, but not enough to treat the entire lot like minions.

Picture a scenario where instead of your employees, your customers are in these rooms. Is this the version of yourself you’d like them to see? How do you think your recruits are feeling?

If the company and your customers believe in your business, why wouldn’t your employees? The power of your brand will fill their sails beyond anything delivered in a common orientation class.

Make them feel included, not like an outsider. They’re already on board — they’re here and present. Use these moments to forge a connection.

3. Making Customer Service A Disruptor

In our age of innovation, change, and disruption, it’s hard to imagine customer service at the forefront, much less a corporate tool and change agent. But that is exactly what Lexus incorporated when breaking into the luxury auto market.

The big boys scoffed and laughed. Unable to believe a Toyota with bells and whistles could muster a threat. All they saw was folly, waiting for Toyota, i.e., Lexus to implode on the launch pad.

Who would have thought Lexus could ever make the gains in the luxury auto market that they have? Mercedes Benz, BMW, and Jaguar owned this market and luxury consumers. Yet Lexus, with little brand recognition, pushed customer service.

They make excellent vehicles but were unknown in the auto industry. Yet, to survive and thrive, they needed to take on brand names that are synonymous with luxury, quality, and performance. The best of the best.

Not only did Lexus climb the ranks and establish themselves. They took customer service to another level. By doing so, they surpassed the competition by recognizing a need and creating a new standard.

As Lexus grew in sales, image, and brand recognition, Mercedes, BMW, and Jaguar began restructuring, firing, and hiring upper management and division Big Whigs.

Lexus disrupted the luxury auto market and created a new, improved, and higher standard. From their Toyota division, they prided on the value of customer service. Lexus understood it as something intrinsic. As culture and not a perk.

The aforementioned luxury makers took their customers for granted. No doubt the cars sold themselves, but in the end, they learned the hard way it wasn’t enough.

Lexus built their customer base through add-ons and after-purchase follow up. Only a fraction of luxury customers are rich and wealthy. The rest aren’t. Lexus understood this customer enjoys perks, discounts, and extra-mile service that equals savings.

Lexus called it service, when in fact, savings and discounts were at the core. They used different terminology to express this. Comped instead of free. Our thanks for your patronage in place of discounts. They didn’t make the customer feel cheap, they made them feel valued.

While the other automakers piled up profits through their service wing of tune-ups, oil changes, and accessories, Lexus took another approach. No doubt, tires, batteries, and brake jobs are a huge moneymaker.

What Lexus saw was an opportunity to absorb these costs to gain new buyers. They don’t give these product replacements and services away. By lowering their margins, they collected more customers.

These days, Lexus is no less regarded in the luxury auto market than most. By valuing their customers, they opened up a new angle to sell their cars. They garnered respect by respecting the customer.

Imagine the uphill battle Lexus undertook. Failure would have sunk them. To this day and beyond, this legacy would have been taught in business schools and graduate programs all around the world.

Yet, they persisted with their vision and commitment, despite the Toyota name. Toyota’s a great brand in the compact and mid-size divisions, not the high-performance and luxury league.

Toyota’s akin and linked to basic, economical, and dependable. Sticker price and gas mileage are strong selling points for the non-luxury market.

Of course, Lexus downplayed the Toyota name and affiliation. The things they absorbed from Toyota were the essentials like engineering and customer service.

In only a few years, Lexus ate into serious market share. As they continued to make ground, they gained and earned respect.

Lexus not only converted the luxury customers from Mercedes Benz, BMW, and Jaguar — they cut into the Lincoln and Cadillac sectors as well. All this while each year gained new customers at a much higher ratio than those they had lost.

Luxury consumers aren’t product pioneers nor known to leapfrog around and about. With high five to low six-figure purchases, the luxury customer doesn’t line up and volunteer to switch brands. Far from it.

Luxury customers are known to be clients. They’re loyal and known to invest in one brand. The dividends they enjoy are found in the prestige and identification these names carry and provide. The luxury customer is the most difficult and challenging consumer to convert.

All things from a car standpoint are equal and comparable. Versus the mentioned luxury brands, the Lexus models are no better or less in quality, value, price, and performance.

Through superior customer service, Lexus forged a path and identity. They created a new category and standard for others to follow or lose out. Lexus forced their competitors to raise their standards of customer service or fall further behind.

In doing so, they not only collected new customers, they converted and hung onto them. Without this customer service initiative, Lexus would have never accomplished their success and continued growth.

4. Taking On Water

Most companies that lose market share don’t give it up over quality, value, and price. They concede ground through the service sector.

From brainstorm sessions to weekend retreats, companies spend time and resources searching for these linchpins. More often than not it’s found in their customer service departments.

When bottom lines begin to lag, it’s easy to find other forces to blame. The economy and state-of-the-industry come to mind. Internally, it’s the board, middle managers, and department supervisors.

By the time a business realizes their problems are in the customer service department, they’re forced to play catch-up. By now, more damage has been done.

If your company plays the blame game, this situation will fester. To these companies, the customer service department is regarded and viewed as something pesky. We need it, we have to have one, but boy, what a drag on our bottom line.

You could fire the service managers and supervisors. Replace them with an in-house manager who’s struggling in their current department.

They’re a nice person and loyal. You’d hate to lose them, so you demote them to manage customer service. It’s a feel-good trick, knowing this is the last stop. If this nice person can’t hack customer service, they’re out. Well, you tried.

Other companies decide to hire outside the firm. Many of these moves fail to furnish optimum results. Due to the current corporate climate, one service manager is no different or that much better than the next.

Meanwhile, nothing else has changed. The department continues to operate with the same stimuli and handbook. All this, as the communication gulf between your business and customer base, widens rather than coalesces.

You could scapegoat the customer service manager and their agents for being this or that. For lacking this and that. I wouldn’t go there. Not when it’s your doctrine they’re practicing.

Besides the disruptions, progressions, and innovations, it costs more time, money, and resources to acquire new customers instead of investing in keeping your current ones. We’re not talking a few bucks and minutes here. The ratios and percentages are staggering.

Despite this, we see the big boys going hog wild over expansion. Spectrum and Verizon battling over cable and Internet users. Each poaching the other’s customer base with better rates and added services.

The introductory pricing is a fraction of their monthly bills. Join now! Get the triple-play bundle for $79.99. That’s a 40% savings for your first three months. Sign up today!

What about the customers who have stuck with them for years? The ones who don’t jump back and forth?

Whenever a customer decides to change a service, such as our cable example, they often weigh the dread of running into trouble, setbacks, and inconvenience. It’s telling when it’s this instead of price, quality, and value that influences their purchase decisions.

How many times have you heard this conversation?

Customer: Your product sounds great. It solves my problems and eases my pain. The price seems reasonable too.

Sales Rep: What is your other concern?

Customer: When the thing malfunctions, who do I speak to? An automated chatterbox, ‘Mike’ from three oceans away, or a clueless customer service agent?

The objections aren’t in the product, service, price, or delivery. Most are lurking in the aftermath. Are you going to take my money, no longer care about me, while moving onto the next greenback?

How often have we purchased an item that has underperformed, expired sooner than stated, or just flat-out malfunctioned and stopped working?

When we contact the seller, we get the roundabout. One guy told me it was past the thirty-day purchase period. Really? The item was supposed to last two years. They sold me an inferior product and failed to stand behind it.

Instead of a refund or a replacement, I was told to contact the manufacturer. Great. Besides an I don’t care and Not my problem, I got stuck dealing with an owner who failed to back his product and accepts responsibility for its subpar performance.

The guy should have known it was a bad item, but he didn’t care. He already had my money. I’m not implying he’s unethical or dishonest, just another weasel playing the numbers game.

This stuff goes on every day. It just happened to be my turn to get the lemon. The way most people solve this stuff is the way I did — by purchasing a replacement with another vendor.