I was at one of my favorite restaurants. I’ve become somewhat of a regular, they seated me at my normal table, my favorite server was waiting on me. But something was really off that evening. The restaurant wasn’t that full, the wait staff were busy, but service was really slow. My server is normally on top of things, but she was struggling. When she brought my glass of wine, she apologized. “Dave, I’m so sorry, things are screwed up today, unfortunately, we are ‘Giving the Illusion of Service….'”
It struck me, that’s what so many are giving these days. They talk about their commitment to customers, the websites talk about the focus on customer service, we tout NPS scores, on the surface everything appears to be “customer focused.” But it seems to stop there.
We set our own goals for customer service/experience often in the absence of any meaningful input from customers. We want to maximize renewal retention. We want to maximize the performance/productivity of the people in the organization. We measure number of calls, hold time, time spent on each call. We may have a survey after each call, looking at experience with the agent. Sometimes we ask, “Did we solve your problem?” Too often, I reply “No,” but I never get a call or email. But at least we collect the data.
In the past few weeks, I’ve been having “discussions” with a supplier. We spend a high 5 figure amount on them every year. We have a high dependence on them. And we’ve been having problems. You know how the conversations went, nominal discussion about our problems, but they kept converting the conversation to an upsell. We went for weeks, going in circles. Had I been able to change vendors, I would have. Finally, escalating it two levels in the company, we got the problem fixed. As I talked to other users, admittedly a small number, all of them had similar stories. Yet you go to their website, look at testimonials and “data” they present, they are the paragon of customer service.
Each of us has dozens of examples of similar experiences.
We, also, play a part in this, we accept an erosion of expectations over time. What would have been unacceptable 10-15 years ago, we have come to accept–perhaps begrudgingly–but we continue to accept lower levels of customer experience. Just look at the machinations we go through with our devices, continually shifting them to get more than “one bar….”
When one looks at the pursuit of excellence, it’s continued learning, continued improvement. People and organizations pose a different question than most. Rather than, “How do we get by with minimal impact on retention,” they think, “How do we continue to raise the bar and get better? How might we surprise our customers, partners, employees?”
The funny thing, when you look at the data, these organizations consistently perform better than their competition, year after year…..
Afterword, below is the AI generated discussion of this article. Enjoy!
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