In dogged pursuit of customer service excellence

I was surprised in a positive sense by the reaction to my blog last week ‘Why is customer service so tough?’ particularly given that we are still in the holiday period.  From my perspective I chose the topic as a reaction to some particularly poor recent experiences, both automotive and other, but it clearly touched a raw nerve for many.  Across business in general, and certainly in automotive, we spend a lot of time focusing on business models, products, processes and technology, but possibly neglect the critical question of the influence that people have on these and vice versa.  My sense is that we are generally less confident that we know how to get the best out of people, compared to the relative certainty that we might feel in other areas.

By people, I do not only mean the people who might report to you or are the colleagues in other departments, but also those who you depend on in your trading partners.  A contract might define the formal interactions and terms that apply to the contract between a manufacturer and a dealer, or a dealer and a service provider, but we have all experienced business relationships that are clearly more or less effective because of the way that the human interactions work.  The best business relationships are actually those that have the best personal relationships in my view, rather than the best-crafted legal contract.  Indeed, if the personal relationships are good, there is probably no need to pull the contract out of a dusty drawer or the depths of your corporate servers.

The themes that came out from the comments on the blog sites and in direct feedback to me seemed to centre around three things, although there were many other related comments.  Firstly, that nothing will substitute for having the right people in the first place.  If the people you put into customer-facing roles are not genuinely interested in people, we should not be surprised when (not if) they fail to establish rapport, don’t listen to their concerns and needs, and ultimately don’t care how they feel at the end of the interaction.  They may get top marks for persuading dealers to take more cars at the end of a month or accepting tough targets, but they are probably deaf to the feedback on retail trends that will become increasingly vital in the years ahead.  They may have great product knowledge as salespeople, but are more concerned with showing how knowledgeable they are than finding out what the specific one or two questions are that the customer wants to clarify.  They may be great technicians, but do not understand that a service customer just wants his or her car fixed on time, not an explanation of all the reasons why that has not been possible.

Secondly, that we tend to measure the wrong things.  This can range from measuring adherence to some theoretically ideal process that in reality does not reflect the real desire of anyone through to measuring call centre staff on call waiting times and calls handled per hour.  Forcing customers down a process that may not address their needs, or the order in which they want to address them, or encouraging call handlers to deal with questions quickly rather than ensuring that all the customer needs are fully addressed all lead to dissatisfaction.  The base process should be the foundation on which you build a great customer experience, but not all house buyers want the same design, so we need to be flexible to accommodate changes and focus on the areas that are important to the customer.  A good base process with good supporting technology and data management should ensure a strong foundation, but if you look at reviews for top hotel chains like Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons, the comments are almost always about exceptions, where a staff member fixed a problem for a customer that could not be anticipated and was not reflected in any pre-defined process.  Consistently delivering the base process should be the norm, and any failures rigorously investigated and addressed, but the focus should be on raising the bar.

Finally, that we use the information that we do have in the wrong way.  We measure and comment on failure rather than success, thus building barriers in the relationship.  If most of your experiences with a boss or business partner are confrontational and negative, this will influence your motivation and your determination to improve.  Similarly, if you associate a metric with money, then the money will become the motivator rather than the desire to do the genuinely right thing.  This is why we are frequently encouraged to ‘score me a 10’ or ‘please leave a great review’, or even more overt attempts to secure a score that will trigger a bonus.  All of these detract from time that could be spent genuinely giving the customer an improved experience.  This applies to organisations as much as it does to individuals.  If manufacturers tie half the total bonus pot into a complex set of KPIs, do not be surprised when a whole infrastructure develops in dealer groups to ensure that these are met – regardless of whether they are actually right for the customer.

Going back to my canine analogy of last week, many of the ‘best of breed’ dogs at big shows like Crufts have a range of physical and behavioural issues because the criteria that have been set to measure ‘best’ have resulted in highly selective breeding from a narrow gene pool that does not produce a dog that you would want to have as a pet.  They may meet the criteria, but it does not make them ‘best’ in the real sense of the word.