Customer Service Round 2

Customer service problems can be a source of great learning when there exists a desire to learn. Lessons good and back regarding openness to feedback.

Last week I wrote about the good and bad parts of my Galaxy Note 7 exchange. Parts of AT&T did great; other parts were nothing short of horrible. My Note 7 exchange took almost a full week (I began on Friday, September 9 and it did not finish until Thursday, September 15.) Yet, this story has a happy ending. Not only did I get the two phones exchanged, but I discovered that the top and middle echelons at AT&T actually care about their customers and truly crave meaningful feedback.

It was a refreshing lesson in respect. You see these folks at AT&T actually respect their customers. If only that could be said about most vendors. Respect is to treat others as if you will be seeing them again and again — ‘re’ meaning “again” and ‘spect’ meaning “to view.” Respect is the opposite of viewing an encounter as a one-off transaction. Our current focus on efficiency tends to lead many people to go the route of “transactions” rather than the route of “respect.” It may be cost effective in the short-term, but the long term costs to society as a whole may be huge.

How many of you always say thank you to toll collectors? I do. It is a mark of respect that that person is also a person and doing a tedious job so that the driving public can be served. Do you thank the cashier at the supermarket? Or the gate attendant who scans your boarding pass at the airport? It is too easy to treat these interactions as “one-off’s”— things that will not repeat. But, I must remind you — you repeat them perhaps with different others. Each time you are removing respect from the encounter you are inuring yourself to the idea that it is okay to be disrespectful. Cutting someone off on a road requires dis-respect (even if it is you and your friends, after all others may get hurt).

In my AT&T case, a total of almost a dozen people reached out to get the problem fixed. They checked in to see what progress was being made. And as one of them put it, “we are approaching this holistically” — because what the computer systems were doing to me could happen to untold numbers of others. In truth, the mid level people and above were appalled by the lack of respect shown by some of their staff (including the programmers who failed to provide a proper means to accomplish the exchange in the first place). I do not know what internal changes are happening as a result — but I do know that the AT&T folk who spoke with me regarded the adventure as a learning experience.

There is a lesson here. Including your customer in the “learning experience” of processing what might be done to fix problems or overcome negative feedback is a great way to create goodwill and customer loyalty.

Contrast my AT&T experience with a recent experience with National Grid (in this case the gas company). By law in Massachusetts, National Grid must replace gas meters every 7 years. Despite the fact that I live in a large apartment building where all the meters are in one place, National Grid insists on making individual arrangements with each tenant. Seems simple, (as I am want to say) if only. The first problem: appointments are only available during the week during normal business hours. So National Grid is requesting that you take time off from work to be home so that they can take care of something you could not care less about. Second problem: National Grid calls you from a “disconnected number” (i.e. if you call it back that is the message you receive) and, if they can get through, plays an unclear automated message. Notice I said IF they can get through. As of today, the spam blocker on my cell phone reports that more than 16,000 people had listed that number as spam or a scam. Calls to my phone from that number get blocked.

Curious why I had received more than a dozen blocked calls from National Grid, I enquired in the apartment complex office and was informed of the meter replacement program. Pro-active person that I am, I call National Grid to set up an appointment. And then the horror begins. It seems that National Grid will ONLY call you from blocked numbers and will not leave a proper callback number. Okay so I tell them to just assume I will be home at the appointed time. This is supposedly written down. Appointment time comes. So too arrives a blocked call. I look out the window to see the truck pulling away “because you did not answer.” Luckily the apartment complex has a landline (I do not) and we could make the half-dozen calls necessary to get the truck back that day.

Foolish me calls National Grid to discuss the story and point out that calling cellphones from a disconnected and blocked number seldom works. ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP OF THE ORGANIZATION, I am told “you should remove the call blocking feature from your phone so we can call you if we need to.” Respect? None. I then point out that most of the people in my apartment building have phones provided by the cable company (Comcast, but that is its own story) and that they too have call blockers. The district manager then notes “perhaps that is why we have only reached half of your building” and then adds in “ maybe you should get them to remove that service.” Excuse me? Remember the customer has no interest in getting the meters exchanged, it is National Grid’s issue. As of this writing, the situation remains half done. And they wonder why they get marked as “horrible” for customer service.

Or another example this time from the media. Last week a columnist from Vice.com wrote an article which my non-profit believes contains numerous mis-statements and mis-understanding about one of our offerings. Indeed the columnist never bothered to contact us at all. So we attempt to reach out and generate a dialogue — don’t try one with Vice.com it will not work. First we email the author and her editors. No response. Then we try calling. The Vice.com switchboard has a dial by name system which does not work and a general mailbox which is full and not accepting messages. Then we tweet to the author and her editors. Still no response. I then try to tweet and LinkedIn email to others at Vice to get to the editor/author. Instead of getting a response about what we believe to be at issue, I get tweet-stormed for daring to disturb their “busy” crew. When I do reach the editor (three days later) by phone, he informs me that “by definition if you send multiple emails they will be ignored.” Okay, the non-profit and I are not their customer. But, the response is indicative of disdain not respect.

Which leads to a somber general point: the millennials and their ilk (I believe this describes the Vice.com folks) have a belief that they are entitled to demand that you see the world from their point of view. Other points of view are “simply wrong.” To suggest that there needs to be dialogue or discussion to resolve issues arising out of multiple points of view is to get called any of a dozen unprintable names — all of which are intended to convey the idea that you fail to qualify as a “person” unless you accept their point of view.

We see this happen all the time on college campuses. We see it with how the millennials communicate or rather how they do not. Thus, the discussions about “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings.”

An entire generation attempts to have conversations through the one symbol expressions known as emoji. Emoji highlight the importance of shared context. In October 2015, Australian Foreign Minister Julia Bishop sent a twitter of a red-faced angry man to describe Russian President Vladimir Putin. Australian media were perplexed. So were most government officials. Putin was otherwise distracted and did not respond. But what if it had been North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un or thin-skinned Donald Trump? After all, Donald Trump went on a rampage after Marco Rubio suggested Trump had “small hands.” And neither Rubio nor Bishop attempted to qualify (or lessen) their emoji by adding “:-P.” Not that that adding that particular emoji would have added clarity. A series of court cases in 2016 and 2016 have held that adding “:-P” to a conversation does not somehow render them harmless. But emoji can be harmful. Several court cases have centered on the proposal that a “winkie face” emoji was a consent to have sex. Thus far, the defendants offering that argument have been convicted regardless.

Insisting that my generation understand emoji is no different from National Grid insisting that we give up call blockers or Vice.com insisting that it is rude to request a timely response when one has an issue. All three come across as “how dare you disturb the King?” When customer service feels like this — it is NOT customer service.

Respect and taking ownership of problems are the keys to good customer service. So too is being respectful of feedback and being willing to learn.

AT&T did it right. National Grid and Vice.com did it wrong. And if any customer service person attempts to communicate with emoji: