It’s no secret when I tell you that customer service sucks. Go into a bookstore, call your phone provider, or dine out for dinner and you’ll probably experience some crappy customer service. I’m so tired, as I’m sure you are too, of experiencing not poor customer service, but horrible customer service.
Customer service is simple: it’s the business doing what they promised. It is the employee doing what was promised. It’s a fulfillment of the scope of the agreement. In broader terms, customer service is really quality. Quality is the totality of the agreement: the business says they’ll offer certain services, the employee agrees to act as a representative of the business, and the customer pays for the services. In theory, it’s not that hard: do what you promise. But the totality of the agreement is that there are stated and implied terms in the agreement.
When you go to a restaurant for dinner it’s implied that the dishes you eat from will be clean. When you purchase something from a store it’s implied that the people working there will help you with your purchase. When you order phone, television, or Internet services it’s implied that you’ll get what you pay for. The implications of the deal, as I’m sure you’ve experienced, don’t often live up to the realities of the deal. What’s implied and what’s experienced are often two different things.
Quality is an esoteric substance. Companies can establish metrics to try to measure quality, but when it comes to experiences of service it’s really more about grade and expectations. Some restaurants have tried to prove their quality of service by timing how fast the food comes from the kitchen – never mind they’re keeping all their food under heat lamps. Or call centers ask if you’ll take a survey when they’ve solved your problem – funny how I never get asked to complete a survey when the problem is not resolved.
Grade is the ranking of service and the expectation of what you’ll receive in proportion to what you pay for. Have dinner at McDonald’s versus dinner at City Hall Restaurant in New York and you’ll have two vastly different grades of service and experience. But quality, the fulfillment of the scope of the agreement, can be achieved with both restaurant experiences. You might enjoy the experience more at City Hall but it’s not necessarily a higher quality of service – it’s in alignment with what is promised in their restaurant.
Your measurement of service is often graded by your experience. If you frequent a neighborhood restaurant and you’ve always had reliable service you’ll develop an expectation for that service to continue. But overtime the level of service you’re accustomed to may decline based on business, employees, familiarity, and a number of other reasons. Past experiences are your benchmark for the present service.
It’s pleasant to philosophize about why customer service sucks, grade, quality, and expectations, but let’s have some frank truth. Customer service sucks because people do not care about you. When you have poor customer service, when you have poor quality, it’s the acting fulfillment of the individual’s lack of care about you. Your customer experience is someone’s job. When that someone is indifferent about their job then they are, by proxy, indifferent to you. Hate isn’t the opposite of love – indifference is.
If customer service equates to quality and quality equates to the fulfillment of the scope then we must ask who created the scope? The owners of the restaurant and management may have created the scope, but who is fulfilling the scope? Rarely the person serving dinner, providing the phone support, or helping the customer is the same individual that defined the scope of the agreement for the business enterprise. So if the person that’s providing the service didn’t create the scope what motivation do they have to fulfill the scope?
Herzberg’s Theory of Motivation tells us that there are two categories of agents that affect performance of all people: hygiene agents and motivating agents. Hygiene agents are the expectations of the employee from the employer: paycheck, acceptable working conditions, perhaps some benefits, and other terms based on the type of work the employee is to do for management. Motivating agents are the things which motivate the employee to go above and beyond the expectations of the hygiene agents. For example, bonuses, advancement opportunities, time off, education, and other rewards in exchange for a higher level of performance.
Hygiene agents must exist before motivating agents can work. If you go to work and don’t get your paycheck will you really be all that motivated for an advancement opportunity? Probably not.
Motivating agents, however, have to really motivate the employee. If the employee sees this as a dead-end job there’s little to motive. If the employee doesn’t care about anything offered as a motivating agent there’s no reason to excel. If management doesn’t offer any motivating agents then it’s tough luck to get much more than the minimum. The problem with this mentality is that there’s an assumption that management must motivate employees to do their job when actually a deal’s a deal. When an employee takes a job, management should justly expect the employee to do what has been promised. Just as customer service is about doing what was promised so too is the employee-employer relationship – and yes, it’s a two-way street.
Back to sucky customer service. If customer service sucks because employees don’t care about their job, and employees don’t care about the promises proprietors have made to their patrons, it stands to reason that employees don’t care about you. Customer service, from restaurants to retail, is awful and the reason why is that people don’t care. People don’t want to help you – but more importantly, I’m afraid, is that these people no longer want to help themselves.
I believe that when I experience poor customer service it’s evidence of an individual that has given up on themselves and ergo they’ve given up on others. People with poor attitudes, rude behavior, and a don’t-bother-me mentality have problems beyond filling your soda or helping you solve your computer crash. Yes, I deplore poor service, but I try to empathize with these people and realize they may be facing problems in many areas of their life.
What people need to realize, however, is that the people they’re serving didn’t cause the problems they’re experiencing. It’s a nice idea to compartmentalize, but stub your toe and your whole body knows about. Have a tough financial time, lose your job and wait tables, or graduate from college with no prospects and your whole life is affected. But it’s no excuse for not doing what you’ve agreed to do.
Life is not fair. Life is not easy. Life has expectations of us all. I still believe, regardless of the economic, political, or financial times that how you act in all areas of your life affect all areas of your life. Your life is integrated of experiences – things that happen to you and the things you make happen. Companies and people that give poor customer service have a lesson to learn: take charge of what you can, keep your promises, and see beyond your own troubles to the grief you may be causing others.
Finally, I am not accepting service that sucks anymore and you shouldn’t either. As customers we have a key role in customer service. It is easy to react to poor customer service – and I think we should. Tell the owners, management, write letters, and tip accordingly. When we receive great customer service we should do the same: tell management, write letters, and tip accordingly.
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