Its all in the chit chat

"NO THAT IS NOT THE CASE, WE HAD CALLED YOU ON THE 4th TO REMIND YOU"......The operators voice had cut through the melody of keyboards and clicking mouse, like an off note on an operational excellence orchestra. Undeterred and obviously fueled with an emotional drive of a tsunami, our enraged operator went on.

Those sitting close by looked up at each other with a smirk, some even managed a courageous shake of the head to empathize with the poor customer on the other end of the line. The operator obviously at the end of her tether stopped mid sentence, and stared at her phone, the customer had hung up, only then did she become aware that she might have been a little too loud.

She went into recovery mode, put the phone down and sighed loudly enough so that the boss in his glass walled office could hear. She rolled her eyes upwards while turning to her neighbor "Man these customers are something else, they obviously don't know what they are talking about and they won't listen when you try to correct them".

The neighbor not willing to upset the balance of sharing lunch and tea, in a few minutes, joined in, saying, "Tell me about it, they can be so frustrating to deal with, sometimes I just let them think what they like".

This show of peer support helped the operator get some composure and all was well, the orchestra of keyboards, printers and ringing telephones resumed.

Our not so mild mannered staff was oblivious to the chain of events that she had triggered after her call. The business lost 15 customers due to the poor experience that one customer had faced, with the customer went savings accounts, close friends accounts, potential home loan accounts and term deposits belonging to friends of our customers. When the customers facebook post went wild, the business was in reputation damage territory. The total business loss was more than 3 years worth of salary, of our agitated operator and her unwitting neighbor. 

The operator was interviewed by her team lead after the 56th customer knew well enough to send in a poor customer experience concern. When confronted with the letter of complaint, our villain was defensive, quoting the high volumes that the staff have to go through and how customers are usually aggressive and become abusive on the call. When the team lead did not seem to sympathize with the usual one liners, our operator resorted to personal issues and an unusual downturn in personal health that seems to be affecting her performance.

This too seems to have no effect on our stoic hedgehog like team lead. Three diary notes later, and after a multitude of bad customer experiences and huge considerable loss to the business, our operator finally admitted that, talking to customers was perhaps not her thing. It was a costly exercise for the business, to come to such an unworthy discovery.

A business we can not and must not condone conversations that happen in this analogy. Customers are our priority, a good business thrives on building relationships, through great customer experiences. This edge will set a business apart from it's competition.