Diary of a Customer Service Revolutionary

Introduction

I’m writing this diary in case I need to remember. We started this revolution almost a year ago, and I have a feeling that this year is important. We’ll either be able to pull this off, or we won’t. Either way it might be useful for me (and maybe you) to have a detailed and candid account of what we did and didn’t do right.

Since this is my first entry, I should probably fill in the back story. I’ve worked with this national chain (Company X, or CompX) for ten years. It used to be highly regarded, but it’s not any more. I think it’s because we’re not very good at taking care of our customers. It’s not that we don’t want to. We say we have a customer focus, we have a customer service training program, we make it easy for customers to give feedback, whether via 1-800 numbers, or our website. I mean, we do kinda care. But it’s not a huge priority. And I don’t think we’d know what to do, even if we did decide to make it the priority.

All this doesn’t make us bad. Well, maybe it does, but we’re not much worse than everyone else in the retail sector (some are a lot worse than we are).

But I don’t want to work for a company when the highest praise I can give it is “we’re not much worse than everyone else”. I had a choice: I could either leave, or I could do something about it. I decided to do something. I like the people I work with, that’s the main reason I stayed. Although I feel no loyalty to the company, I do feel loyalty to them. I felt I owed it to them to try to make things better.

And I also feel that I owe it to myself, and to my family. I want to be part of something good. I want to be proud of where I work. I want to provide for my family, and have a good time while I’m at it. And I want my kids to be proud of me. I want them to know that when I go, I’d left the world a better place, even if it’s just a tiny part of a big world. And I hope that when they get older, they too will feel some obligation to give something back to the planet that bore them.

So last year, I spoke to my boss, KT. He’s a regional manager, and I’m his assistant. One of the reasons he made me his assistant was to handle complaints for him. My predecessor, bless her, was not much of a “people person”. I used to hear her arguing with customers, and just shook my head in amazement. I didn’t say anything, didn’t feel that it was my place to say. KT eventually lost his patience anyway, and took advantage of one of CompX’s many reorganizations to reorganize her out of the job, and me into it.

Having been in the front lines of CompX for many, many years (8+ by then), and having worked in strategic management in a previous life, I just knew that we had to do a better job taking care of customers. But I didn’t go out and just say it. I felt I had to establish some credibility first. After a few months on the job, KT started telling people things like, “you know I used to have to deal with dozens of complaints a day, but ever since I gave CS the job, you know how many I’ve had to deal with all these months? Two.” I figured I earned the right to speak up.

I told KT that we have to do something about customer service. Since it’s not a focus for the company, we’re going to have to do something about it ourselves. He asked me what I had in mind. I said I thought the first step was to establish the standards. What do we expect of our people? How do we want them to behave towards our customers? I wanted to start with behaviors, and not with fuzzy things like vision, mission, or even values, because I did not want this to be about words, I wanted it to be about action. Values are very important, but you can’t measure them. You can do that with behaviors.

I said I wanted to define those behaviors, but I didn’t want to dictate them. I wanted the people in the stores to be involved. I suggested that I hold a series of conference calls, brainstorm with the teams, consolidate my findings, and report back to him.

KT told me to go ahead.

posted by CSR @ 7:53 PM