Of Business and Customer Service

As an entrepreneur, a business owner, a LIFE Coaching enthusiast, and a person struggling to take control of his own life, I've seen a lot of things I was blinded to before. I read an article the other day that made me think long and hard, and it was called "Maybe it's not bad customer service, maybe you're a bad customer" and the whole point of the article was the person who thinks they are entitled to superiority when being served at a fast food restaurant. A person who screams at the worker behind the counter and creates a huge scene over minute, insignificant things. Making statements like "I don't know why I come back here!" when they really should just never go back there...but that's not what I pulled from the article.

Yes, there's horrible customers. People who think they know more than the world and actually suffer because of their pride and their inability to educate themselves or BE educated, those people exist. I've watched contractors add a line item to the contract that didn't quite make sense and they laugh and say it's "the asshole tax" they give to particularly rude or difficult clients. I've seen Building Inspectors being screamed at by a contractor over the phone and they hang up and on their way out the door, their buddy leans over and says "are you going to find something wrong?" and he smiles and says "yeah, it'll be a few weeks before they get their signoff." YES! Horrible customers exist and YES! Horrible employees exist but guess what? All the screaming and the yelling and the sense of entitlement leads to a history of disdain and you will suffer for it long-term, even if you get the short-term results you're looking for.

But that's not why I'm writing this Article. I'm writing this Article because I also think the employer's perspective is a bit skewed. See, the customer isn't always right and in this industry, the customer is rarely right and even when they KNOW they're right, it's your job to educate them to make them even MORE right. There was this slump in our economy, and it hit small business and middle-class workers HARD. So employers have laid off hundreds of workers in their establishment, lowered wages, ran furloughs, and they do NOTHING to circumvent the workload or to SHOW employees that they APPRECIATE the fact that one man or one woman is doing three people's job in 32 hour work week. Training has suffered. Education has suffered. In turn, Customer Service that is extended to the meat of the corporation, your clients, has suffered. There are bad customers, but rule them out and you've got bad customer service. You get bad customer service because the employees don't know any better.

As an employer, it's important to know the customer is not always right. It's important that every once in awhile, when the customer is screaming at your employee and they are being rude, selfish individuals...you ask them to leave. Give them their cash back, let them keep their defective hamburger, let them know they are no longer welcome, and have them leave. Your employees will know you have their back, and they will appreciate the gesture, and you will build trust in the company and in you, faith in the system, and an overall better work culture. Sometimes that's really, really important. In my industry, too. You will lose business. And your employees will love you for it. Remember that your product is the people, it's not all about the money.

But of course, there's a flipside. Where the employer went wrong. Remember also that your workers, if you hired right, are trying their very best to make your company function. If you sold them your vision and got the #Allin from them, they are working their butts off for you. And YOUR job should be to better THEIR job. You should be pushing them, and teaching them, and moving them forward in their career path so should they become more valuable to you, and even if they leave you, they have a knowledge and experience that they took from you to become better employees in this industry! You have to teach customer service, and you have to value it. I HATE talking to a lower-level personnel about something and they can't speak educatedly about it. Like they don't know about their company or their product and if they don't know then I assume either THEY DON'T CARE or the employer doesn't give them the TIME OF DAY to teach them about it. You can easily see the problem with both of those assumptions when the way to dispel a lack of knowledge is to TEACH them! If they can't handle customer service, DON'T PUT THEM THERE!

An employer has the responsibility to their employees to grow them, and the responsibility to the clients to provide good service. Would YOU as a business owner talk to your clients the way the receptionist does? What if you audit yourself? How would you feel if your receptionist spoke to YOU the way she or he speaks to clients? If it's bad or it's wrong, CHANGE it! Teach! Educate! Make your employees WANT to do this, because if they don't then YOU failed as a leader! Your company should be an ever-growing opportunity because unless someone becomes satisfied with their lives and stops pursuing their goals then they will always want to grow. It's about the end game.

It's about the delivery to your clients! Employers became so focused on being "lean and mean" that they sacrificed expedience. They sacrificed service. They sacrificed product, and jobs. A client called in and spent fifteen minutes on hold, that's a problem! A client calls in and there is just this automated message that routes them everywhere except to an actual person on the other end, that's a problem! There are companies who flourished through the recession without ever lowering their prices, and that's because the competition beat themselves out of the game, I know because I worked for one! They sacrificed everything that mattered. Don't make that mistake. Don't make that fatal blow to your own company! Never forget this golden piece of advice I got long ago: You do a good job, and your client will tell their friends and their family. But if you do a bad job, they're going to tell EVERYONE.

So I leave this to you, as food for thought, because I don't know it all but I've seen what doesn't work:

There are four drivers to customer satisfaction!

1) Prompt Responsiveness- educate, then underpromise so you can overdeliver, NOT the other way around!

2) Accurate Information- Let your customer know the value of what they're buying and exactly WHAT they're buying.....NO SURPRISES!!!

3) Give personalized attention- Develop long-term relationships first and then drive them forward.

4) Dependability and reliability- It's the little lies that will bury you, so be on time, do what you say, give accurate information, and deliver what you promise.