The customer service disconnect

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

- Mark Twain

The first time I saw that quote was in an angry email from the President of the small catalog company I had started working for three weeks prior. They were starting to grow and had hired me to help them improve training and employee performance. The company President took exception to a report I wrote that predicted the average order size would go down since the new catalog targeted a wider customer base with a slew of high volume, low priced items.

This turned out to be a tipping point for the company. The average order size did go down, but there were soon other signs that the President (and majority owner) was disconnected from his customers. He remained doggedly loyal to old suppliers even as quality and delivery problems led to mounting customer complaints. The company launched a new line of products that consumed precious resources without coming anywhere near the success of the original catalog. The company started losing loyal customers, ran into cash flow problems, and went out of business for good a few years later.

Unfortunately, this head in the sand approach to customers isn’t uncommon. A 2006 Bain & Company study found that 80% of companies surveyed felt they delivered superior customer service but the customers of only 8% of those companies agreed. It makes you wonder what the management teams at the other companies were thinking.

This disconnect isn’t confined to senior management. I have run a small experiment many times with companies and have received very consistent results. I ask a room full of customer service reps to rate the customer service they personally deliver on a scale of 1 – 5 with 5 being best. Next, I ask the reps to look around the room and assign a rating to the entire team. On average, the reps rate themselves a 4 while rating the team a 3. The math doesn’t add up but it does show that most of the reps believed they were better than their peers even without any objective basis for reaching this conclusion.

Possible Explanations
There are a range of explanations for this disconnect. It might be the company culture, the individual's ego, or perhaps a natural tendancy to ignore blind spots. Please leave a comment if you have an idea about the underlying causes. Better yet, how do companies solve it?

When it comes to service, is conformity contagious?

There are probably a lot of reasons why a company can become known for exceptionally good or bad service. One possibility I’d like to consider is conformity. This post poses more questions than it answers, so I welcome your comments.

Conformity is a strange mixture of social pressures. We may go along with the group out of respect for social norms or because that many people can't possibly be wrong. In service, conformity can exist among employees and among customers’ perceptions.

Employee Conformity
Walk into any In-n-Out during a busy rush and you’ll see a whirlwind of employees serving customers, preparing orders, and cleaning up. If you look carefully, you’ll see employees taking subtle cues from each other. They interact with each other in a positive manner. Each person hustles to do their job quickly and correctly because another employee is depending on them to keep things moving. A lazy or rude employee at In-n-Out would stick out like a sore thumb.

Poor customer service can also be contagious among employees. They loiter and talk while customers go unnoticed. They complain to each other about customers, co-workers, and corporate. Soon it becomes uncool to go out of your way to serve a customer.

Customer Conformity
Nordstrom may be one of the all-time customer service legends, but I have yet to have a good experience shopping there. I’ve even gone back many times against my better judgment because I keep thinking it’s me. Maybe I’m unlucky, maybe I was having a bad day the last time, maybe I’m just not Nordstrom’s material.

The strangest part is people tend to get a little weird when I tell them I’m personally not a fan of Nordstrom. “What do you mean, you don’t think Nordstrom has good service?!” I often start feeling the pull of social pressure and silently ask myself whether I need to give them one more try.

This experience makes me wonder if customers conform in their opinions of businesses. For example, does the Cheesecake Factory offer amazing food at ridiculously low prices, or could there be another reason why people routinely wait more than an hour to eat there? (Or both? Mmmmm. Cheesecake Factory...) On the other hand, you may have an outstanding customer service experience at the DMV, but prepare to be mocked if you choose to share your story with friends.

What do you think?
For now, it's all food for thought but I hope this subject may become a chapter in my book, The Unnatural Act of Customer Service. I welcome your comments, especially if you have links to information on the subject or personal stories to share.

Keep your adverlitter off my doorstep!

Whenever I walk somewhere, and someone hands me a flyer, it's like they're telling me, "Here, you throw this away."

- Mitch Hedberg

The adverlitter epidemic seems to be getting worse in my neighborhood.

If you haven't heard the term "adverlitter" before, it means an advertisement that's really litter. This includes flyers, doorhangers, and other advertising garbage. Roving bands of hooligans leave their adverlitter on your doorstep, your driveway, on your car's windshield, or even try to stuff it into your hand while you walk down the street.

Who is buying anything from these guys??

Somebody has to be or I'd imagine they'd stop littering.

This week, someone left adverlitter for a house painting service on my doorstep. I found an offer for a free termite inspection in my bushes. There was also a baggie full of rocks that contained a flyer advertising a yard maintenance company. Ironically, their service list includes hauling trash.

Many of these adverlitterbugs are shameless. I once called a realitor who left a piece of trash (a.k.a. marketing flyer) on my doorstep and asked him to stop. His response was, "Many homeowners in your neighborhood enjoy learning about exciting real estate opportunities, so I'm going to keep doing it."

For the record, none of my neighbors will admit to being the least bit excited about this yahoo's real estate opportunities.

What can we do about it? Don't buy anything from adverlitter. That means I won't be calling Corky's for a free termite inspection, I definitely won't be calling College Works Painting for that free estimate, and Khe won't be getting any of my yard care business anytime soon.

Response to Fortune article on customer service via Twitter

Fortune ran an interesting article on their website last week titled, "Can I help you? On Twitter, the answer is No." I really liked how the author, Anne VanderMey, and her colleagues put a variety of companies' customer service to the test via Twitter. The result was an interesting article, but I also think there are some points that were left uncovered.

First the positives
I love the idea of doing a real experiment rather than simply reporting on the abstract. Ok, maybe I'm biased because I ran my own social media experiment with customer service last year. (Check out the results.) VanderMey also examined a range of companies and wrote from an objective point of view. She let the results do most of the talking.

A few missing points
There were a few points I think VanderMey missed in her article.

Wait times aren't apples to apples. VanderMey compared the time required to get an answer via Twitter versus getting an answer via other channels, such as a toll-free number. It's a good idea, but with a Tweet (or email), you send it and then presumably go on with your life until you get a response. Calling a number generally requires a bit more of your attention unless you are stuck on hold. Even then, you might catch yourself singing along to the soothing soft rock hits of the '80s.

Twitter is good for info, bad for real problems. The article didn't make a distinction between the types of problems Twitter is good for and the types of issues that are best directed elsewhere. Twitter is a great tool for information. Need step-by-step directions or a list of the nearest stores? A company's Twitter team may be able to help you. Need to change your customer profile or check the status of an order? Better call or email.

Public versus private. The last big one for me was the article didn't squarely address the distinction between Twitter being a public forum while a phone call, email, or chat session is expected to remain between the customer and the company. As a customer, I'd definitely think twice about sharing the details of too many of my service problems in a public forum. (Unless, of course, I wrote a blog. That's waaaaay different.)

My conclusion is it was a good article that could have been even better. What do you think about getting customer service via Twitter? Are companies doing a good job? What expectations should consumers have when they Tweet for service?

Why is that sign so angry?

I went into a small convenience store last weekend to buy a sandwich and was confronted with this sign hanging above their self-serve coffee station.

I felt chastised and I wasn’t even buying coffee! 

Wendi Brick, author of The Science of Service, summed it up nicely:

This sign says to me "I'm sick of my darn customers taking advantage of me, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"  If I saw this sign, I'd never go back.

Still, people do take advantage of companies.  Perhaps the store decided to hang the sign after one-too-many customers abused the self-serve concept.  It can't be fun to face a hoard of agitated caffeine zombies whenever those carafes run out of coffee because some freeloader decided to overindulge. The store has to do something, right?

My new friend at Write the Company, a hilarious website that contains a “candid collection of crazy correspondence” with companies' customer service departments, hit the nail on the head with this observation:

Whoever wrote this should take a sign anger management class and stick strictly to decaf.  If this is how they talk to customers, I wouldn't be surprised if they displayed another sign soon that says "Under New Management."

The problem wasn’t the need for a sign, it was that the sign seemed so angry!

So, what’s the solution?  Patrick Maguire, author of the terrific blog "I’m your server, not your servant,” suggested that companies like this strive for a “Yes” culture that focuses on what customers can do. In those rare cases where a "No" message is warranted, companies should try to lighten it up with a bit of humor. 

He was kind enough to send me this terrific example:

Photo courtesy of Patrick Maguire

As Maguire suggests, a little humor can make the sign seem more agreeable. Brick had another great suggestion - try to positively influence customer behavior by offering a promotion. For example, the store could offer a discount on refills that might even encourage more sales.

If your business has signs to educate, inform, or direct your customers, make sure they aren't angry signs. (Please.)