By Nimroth Gwetsa, 22 September 2014
What happened to old customer service custom where correspondence to a company was acknowledged and acted upon formerly despite the unpalatability of the message conveyed?
Nowadays, telephones and e-mails sent to companies are ignored and remain unacknowledged despite follow-ups and messages left with receptionists and personal assistants. Why is this deplorable behaviour becoming normal in companies nowadays? Could it be that current generation employees are expected to do much more than was accomplished in a day’s work by previous generation employees? Is the proliferation of technology and broadband consumption of information overwhelming ordinary employees from giving good customer service? What effect has cost cuts in operations had on the effectiveness of customer care and support areas?
Support areas such as customer care, usually are first to get leftover funding and minimal supply of quality resources during budget approvals. Some companies are so arrogantly confident that they don’t care what some customers think about their service levels. Their arrogance is based on their predominance and some protection in the market. Perhaps we’ve now become litigious like American society to the extent that companies feel the need to cover their backside. They do this by not acknowledging anything lest they risk being liable.
Risk and compliance is a strategic function and should not be regarded as a necessary evil to have in companies. The function’s strategic nature derives from the need to maintain a fair balance between risk aversion and company advancement. Risk and compliance function degenerates from being strategic to a necessary “evil” when concerned primarily with what is not allowed and not advising also on how risks could be overcome to accomplish envisioned goals.
I’ve heard people saying risk functions are not internal advisory consultancies but “crap detectors”. Fair enough. Being the internal function that also has an interest in ensuring moral survival of their organisation, they have a duty to provide advice on what it would take for risks to be acceptable. Risk functions refrain from pointing out opportunities because it is much easier, with the benefit of hindsight, to point out what went wrong after the effect. Fact is there will always be two possible outcomes to any situation: for, or against. Depending on the complexity of the decision required, sitting on the fence is the same as being against that decision, and vice versa. Pointing fingers after the effect does not help especially for fence-sitters or fearful ones who can only tell you what is wrong and cannot suggest alternative solutions.
Companies are sometimes justified in blaming the growing influence of compliance and regulatory teams in hamstringing their investment plans. The blame is justifiable especially when those companies have been doing well in the past yet when they decide to do nothing; such decisions are also not endorsed by risk functions.
I’m yet to meet an Obama-styled “Yes you can” compliance officer, consenting to a business request for approval to carry out investment decisions. They cannot, however, be blamed for the financial woes of some companies.
Every company has somehow suffered from balancing risk and investment appetite in their development life-cycle. The reasons could be varied. We have seen the devastation in financial services of the effects of an imbalance in risk and investment appetite. If we were to investigate the causes of those failures, it would not be surprising to find there’s something the company “stopped doing” causing customers to experience poor service levels in basic activities such as acknowledging receipt of correspondence, ultimately leading to the demise of those companies.
Poor customer service levels cannot be blamed on the proliferation of technology and information churning devices. The need for human beings to get and absorb information has never subsided. There were fewer devices that could disseminate big chunks of data in the past than they are today. But the volume of messages conveyed among people between the eras may not necessarily be different. For example, even in the good old days, people spoke to each other in person more than we are doing today. We are probably churning out the same amount of information with our fingers today as they did with their mouths then. I’d bet that we are probably communicating less today electronically than the previous generation did interactively.
Today we can converse with millions of people in faraway places at the same time. Putting aside the reach of today’s communication and today’s vocal cord being replaced with our fingers, typing may never be faster than spoken words in a conversation. We are probably conveying less unique and tangible messages today than the previous generation did with in person communication.
As a side remark and an example, see the picture below. Although the picture’s authenticity may need to be verified, it nevertheless shows that information consumption was just as intense then, from physical documents, as it is through virtual records today.
Picture courtesy of http://www.vintag.es/2012/11/old-photographs-from-chicago-daily.html (last accessed on 12.09.2014), showing “Crowd of unemployed men reading newspapers, standing on the sidewalk in front of the Chicago Daily News building, boy in the foreground”
The picture shows the long inherent nature of the desire by human beings to consume information. Yet faced with the same challenges, the previous generation found time to show common decency by acknowledging receipt of correspondence unlike what we are observing in companies today.
At the root of poor service levels, companies could have disregarded the value of embracing quality in the production and provision of their products and services. Alternatively, creating simple and self-intuitive products and services is no longer “cool”. Complexity is the new simple. Sadly, companies attract unnecessary attention from irate customers forcing them to invest heavily in customer support. If customer support was regarded as an investment for growth and not a cost centre (eroding profits), support functions would not comprise chiefly of people who either just started working to gain some experience or those who still have their eyes and heart set on more “sexier” revenue-oriented areas.
I don’t know much about Google the company except its search-engine product and services. Google is the silent encyclopaedia on business excellence. The simplicity and quality of its search-engine product explains why, to date, I’m yet to meet anyone complaining about Google failing to return results of their search or that, their service was so poor in quality that even when they called the company, their customer support was hopelessly ineffective. I have neither met anyone who couldn’t search using Google, nor needed to call them to complain or ask for clarification on their search-engine. Yes, Google does go down, and I have experienced their downtime on a number of occasions. In my many years of using their service, I have experienced less than 7 Google search engine outages. Google is not perfect, but it is great compared to services I have experienced from other companies. Perhaps I’m naively showing how small my world is. In my world so far, Google stands out as an epitome of what’s needed to promote good customer experiences.
Notwithstanding other problems people might have with Google, why does its search-engine service usually work better than we are receiving water supply from some of our municipalities? What is it that Google is doing right that so many organisations inundated with unacknowledged customer support queries are failing to do?
Answers may not be too far off. If companies could do the basics right, this could transform them to become what is making Google the envy of many companies. The basics (at least in my small world) include hiring good people and fostering simplicity, maintaining a quality assurance orientation and continuous investment in product development to keep it relevant.
I’m not surprised why some small companies fail to grow and become defunct. Their customer service can be described as burying their heads in the sand like ostriches when called for support, hoping the problem would somehow disappear if customer calls are ignored. As a generalisation, their behaviour explains why small companies have a bad reputation of unreliability, hence the reluctance by potential customers from doing business with them.
Invest in your company’s future by treating people with respect, taking their concerns and correspondence seriously by acknowledging and acting on them. That way, your company’s bank balance would, likewise, have some respect sustainably.
