How thick skinned can we get?

Being a Lean Six Sigma consultant for almost my entire working life, I have always been hyper sensitive towards shoddy customer service. It could partially be blamed on my insatiable thirst for authentic real world anecdotes to drive my ideas home during my consulting escapades! I recently faced two such experiences that have prodded me to write about this topic and its impact on customer and the business.

I had opened an account with Chase Bank shortly after moving to the US. Chase was a natural choice given that they were conveniently located at a stone throw distance from my school and they had an ATM inside the school campus. My tryst with Chase began on a not so unusual note with a fairly simple account opening procedure. The banker who helped me open the account was a pleasant mannered South American, who was friendly and eager to please. The process seemed simple enough despite the fact that I was an expat without a Social Security Number. My nightmare began a couple of months later. It started with my debit card being abruptly blocked without my knowledge. When I called up to demand an explanation, I was told that it was due to a document that I had failed to submit. On probing further I realized that I had indeed submitted the document but they had misplaced it. The issue was not resolved right there; instead, they cancelled my debit cards and reissued them, thus leaving me in the lurch without access to my money for well over a week. Close on the heels came another untoward incident. One day when I was out running some errands, my debit card again refused to work. This time I was told that there was a much more serious issue. They wanted me to submit an additional proof of residence due to changes in bank policies. I hurriedly submitted a letter to that effect attested by my school authorities. They got back to me in a couple of days stating that the content of the letter was inadequate and that I should redraft the same. Despite submitting a new letter in the requested format, my account was shut down without my knowledge or consent. They chose to mail me the check instead of handing me the money at the branch. When I demanded that the check be handed to me at the branch, they cancelled the original check and promised to reissue the new one at the branch in a couple of days. I was never told that there was a mandatory waiting period before they could reissue a check and that it would take more than 2 weeks for me to get the new check issued. So I was left with no money again. This saga has been going on for almost a month now and the last time I checked, they had misplaced my check and were carrying out an “investigation” to find out it whereabouts!! Their callous attitude has thoroughly disgusted me!!

The second episode occurred with Continental Airlines. Since I am exceptionally tall, I have to beg borrow or steal for an emergency row seat every time I fly (for the sake of the precious few extra inches of leg room). I had booked myself on a single layover journey from Phoenix to Mumbai and there was no way I was going settle for a non-emergency row seat. First of all I was disgusted by the fact that the airline tried to profit by selling emergency row seats; I had to cough up well over $200 just for the “special” seats. Immediately after paying up, I received an e-mail message stating that I was allotted a non-reclining seat on my Phoenix – Newark leg of the journey. This was never indicated to me at the time of purchasing the seat! When I hurriedly tried to rectify this situation by going back to the website, I could no longer reach the link that would allow me to alter my selection. Worse still, when I called up the airline, I was put on hold for over 15 minutes and after being bounced around like a ping-pong ball, I was told by a rude voice that I had called up the wrong department and that I should call the web support team instead. The persistent sod that I am, I called up the web support team only to hear a recorded voice that told me that all the agents were busy and that I should call them up sometime later! By this point my patience ran out and I finally gave up with the hope that I should be able to make amendments at the airport, which was never meant to be. I didn’t find much respite at the airport either and ended up flying on the non-reclining seat. This seat had such an awkward contour that not only did it not allow me to sit comfortably but also completely prevented me from catching a wink of sleep during the entire 5 hours flight! This was indeed a welcome beginning to a well deserved vacation!!

These experiences have set my six sigma mind in overdrive once again. Several questions pounded my mind. So why did these organizations screw up? Was it so difficult to fulfill my needs? Were my needs so completely out of the ordinary? Were these people never made to realize the importance of good customer service? Is it so difficult to be sensitive to customer needs? Why do these people act like the customer is the greatest enemy to the organization and a serious impediment to their work?

While we all agree that superior customer service is the holy grail of modern day management, then why do we see so many companies missing this point completely? I have come to believe that customer focus is not just about a one-off heroic act of service but is a consistent behavior engendered by a message of customer devotion reverberated at all levels. It is a habit that needs to be interwoven into the cultural fabric of the organization. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with the country or region the organization operates in. One would be tempted to think that being in a country like USA where laissez faire is at its best is reason enough for an organization to be highly flexible and customer friendly. But that is not the case always. It is but driven by several other vital factors such as entrepreneurship and leadership at all levels, top management’s demonstrated commitment, reward & recognition systems, and most important of all, honesty & transparency with the customer.

Any organization which has over the years grown to be thick skinned and insensitive towards the customer needs has to engage in some serious soul searching. It needs to ask itself a few vital questions in order to find it’s bearing once again: How connected is the organization with the customer? Are the processes tuned purely for internal efficiency at the cost of customer service? Has the person serving the customer been sensitized to the pain the customer has to endure? Does she ever put herself in the customer’s shoe and ask the question: “Is that the way I would like to be treated when I am at the receiving end of the service?”

Training the employees goes a long way in engendering such a thinking, attitude and behavior. Like the old adage goes, thoughts become actions and actions become habits, it is very essential for the leadership team to nurture such habits among employees by recognizing and rewarding them. There also need to be clearly communicated consequences for bad customer service. The first step for which is have an efficient and transparent two way communication mechanism with the customer. I am reminded of one such attempt by an organization, a local Apple dealer/service provider in India who had proudly brandished a signboard stating that the MD was eager to hear the customer’s feedback and had his e-mail address printed on the signboard. But when I did write to him about a service failure that I had experienced I never heard back!! Such attempts only indicate a lip service, what is really needed in a clearly demonstrated customer oriented behavior, and a walk-the-talk attitude which has to start at the top and percolate at all levels of the organization.

So is there really a panacea for bad customer service? Maybe not, but then it isn’t rocket science either! By sticking to some of these fundamentals, any organization can be a customer centric organization, and earn the love, respect and loyalty of its customers.

1. Be accessible
2. Listen to the customer
3. Put yourself in the customer’s shoe
4. Be honest
5. Be responsive & transparent
6. Measure performance
7. Give real-time feedback to employees
8. Reward favorable behavior
9. Reprimand unfavorable behavior
10. Set the right expectations
11. Be consistent
12. Become process focused
13. Strike the balance between customization and standardization
14. Make customer service everybody’s KRA, starting from the CEO
15. Link performance bonuses with customer satisfaction