It
was 9:15 on a Friday night when I got a tearful call from our former
babysitter, who is now a college student. Lacey’s job this year is to
care for young boys who attend an after school program at a near-by
Karate school. Lacey was in tears over an incident in which two young
boys, a purple belt and a black belt, got into a vicious fight at the
school. The boys, who are trained to only use their karate skills in
class, drew blood and ripped clothing in their altercation. She
disciplined them by taking away their Karate belts for a week –
stripping them of their rank, so to speak. This was a policy that she
and her boss, the Karate school’s owner, had agreed on at the beginning
of the year. The next day, the mother of one of the disciplined boys
stormed into the school and loudly confronted Lacey about her
irresponsibility and lack of control over the boys. “How dare you take
away my son’s black belt!” she roared, shaking her finger in Lacey’s
face. Then the mother complained to Lacey’s boss about Lacey’s
behavior.
Later,
in a meeting to discuss the incident, Lacey’s boss told her she was
wrong to take away the boys’ belts, even though he acknowledged giving
her that authority, and said she should have been “nicer” to the
mother. Lacey resigned on the spot.
We’ve
all been told, “The customer is always right.” I appreciate the
intent of this phrase – the customer always deserves respect, courtesy
and your best professionalism. However, I disagree with the literal
interpretation of this guideline. In this story, the customer was not
right. Her son needed to experience the natural consequences of his
behavior, and just because a mother complains is no reason for a school
to get wishy-washy about discipline policies. The karate school’s owner
could have handled the incident differently, perhaps in deferring a
conversation with the mother until he could speak with Lacey, or by
politely explaining the school’s discipline policy and why it is a good
one for not only her son but for the safety of all the students.
Everyone lost in this game – the boss lost a good employee, the mother
lost an opportunity to teach her son about responsibility, and Lacey
lost what could have been a good job.
As
managers and practitioners in customer support centers, we deal with
similar situations often. What are the lessons we can learn from this
incident, and how do we apply them to our business?
First,
policies must be defined and communicated to your customers and your
employees. In a support center, policies are usually encoded in a
Service Level Agreement. Do you have a Service Level Agreement? If
not, creating one must be your first step. How to create a Service
Level Agreement is outside the scope of this article, but there are many
resources on the internet to help you. Do your customers know and
understand the policies that are covered in your SLA? What good is an
SLA if your customers aren’t aware of it? If you don’t have an ongoing
marketing plan for your SLA, you must create one and get the word out to
your customers. Remember, if you don’t set service expectations and
limitations through your SLA, your customers will expect you to provide
everything – immediately!
Secondly,
assume the innocence of your employees until they are proven
otherwise. This is the basic tenant of our USA legal code (the
defendant is innocent until proven guilty), and a best practice in
business management. If you get a complaint about one of your
representatives, I suggest you follow these steps to rectify the
situation:
- Acknowledge the customer’s emotion, but don’t convict the employee. Assure the customer that you’ll look into the matter and correct any mistakes. You might say, “I’m sorry you’re feeling so strongly/angry about the situation, but I need to investigate the situation further before drawing any conclusions.”
- Investigate the situation by talking to the employee. See it from his/her side. If you have a recording of the interaction, listen to it and draw your own conclusions.
- Ask yourself these questions: Was the employee following a policy that we have set? If yes, was the employee enforcing the policy correctly or incorrectly? Is this a training opportunity for the whole group? Or does the policy need to be revisited?
- If you believe your representative could have handled the situation differently or you’re not sure what really happened, set up a coaching session with your employee to discuss and role-play a similar scenario. I’d employ the “3 Strikes” policy – until you have three instances of poor performance, you need to give the employee the benefit of the doubt about their handling of the situation. Put that employee on a more frequent schedule of quality monitoring until you are assured of his/her ability to handle difficult customers. Of course, if this is a recurring problem with that representative, you must invoke your company’s progressive disciplinary program.
- Without blaming the employee, get back to the customer and resolve the issue. You could say, “It appears that we handled the situation incorrectly, but I will do the following to fix it…” Note the use of “we” and “I”. By saying, “We handled the situation incorrectly”, you acknowledge that any interaction with the customer is a reflection of the entire company. By using “I” during the resolution, you assure the customer that a real live person will be responsible for solving the problem.
Two wrongs do not make a right. Follow these guidelines to ensure that when the customer is wrong, you do the right thing!
reference-kr consulting
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