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The Retske Report
Customer Service. Good is Not Good Enough
By Gene Retske

“Winning,” said legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, “is not the best thing, it is the only thing.”

I always loved this axiom. It focuses squarely on result of an effort, not the process by which you get there. It is a no excuses, take-no-prisoners approach. There is no BS, no “well, I really tried hard, but . . “, no “maybe next time.” Successful people and companies don’t “try”, they commit. That is a critical distinction. We will look at this in greater detail in a minute. Successful companies understand that if the final result is not perfection, all the good intentions and hard work along the way don’t count.

Now, businesses are facing more intense competition than ever before in history. This is especially true in telecommunications, where the actual difference in products may be minimal, and the customer perception will drive the competitive advantage, or disadvantage, if you do it right.

So, how do you do customer service right? Well, if you cannot answer this question right now, go back and re-read this starting at the beginning again. You have to win at customer service, as the Coach said. It simply is not good enough to “try really hard” or do all the right things, or any other process oriented method. You have to win at customer service to survive in business, especially telecom, today. If you don’t, you will fail, guaranteed.

Let me give you an example of how this works. First, I have to apologize to my former colleagues at BellSouth. I use them often, perhaps too often, as examples of how not to do things right. But, they earn it, otherwise I might pick on someone else. We had significant rains here in South Carolina last week, and some flooding occurred. The second telephone line I had installed for business calls was a victim of the flooding, and the noise on the line made it impossible to hear anything at all. I called repair (obviously using the other line) and reported the problem on Monday.

The automated system gave me a Friday commitment for repairing the line. This is a long interval, and when I managed to press enough buttons to get to a live person, they politely explained that there were lots of problems and that Friday was as good as they could do. Fair enough. They even apologized for the delay. Good customer service, so far, even given the extraordinary conditions.

In fact, they did come out on Friday as promised, and fixed the line. So, what am I bitching about? Here is where it broke down. On Thursday, I got a call from a live person, reiterating that a repair technician would be out the next day, Friday, to fix the noise making it impossible to hear anything on my newly installed line. Still don’t see the problem? Guess where they left the voice mail message? All of you that guessed they called the contact number I gave them, give yourself one demerit.
They called on the line that had so much noise I couldn’t use it! And, left a voice mail, to boot. What did the person calling think? To make matters worse, I tried to access the message, and of course the noise disrupted the line enough that all I could hear was, “. . . . llSouth . . . .repai. . . . line . . . day”. What! Are they still coming? Is there some other problem? Will my line be fixed? Who can I call?

Back to our original premise, that if customer service is not outstanding, it is not good enough. In my BellSouth example, I was given a exceptionally long interval. This was still alright. The explanation was reasonable and logical, and the personnel did apologize for it. So, I grudgingly accepted it. But, then, they stupidly left me a message on the broken line. And, that was after they insisted on getting a cell number when they took the report, so they could get in touch with me.

Now, many of you are going to say, “this is just one person’s error. You cannot hold BellSouth responsible for it.” Stuff happens.

But, au contraire. I can, and do, hold them liable for the ridiculous act of a single employee. I have the moral right to. I am a customer. What did the late Coach say about this? “... winning is the only thing.” Do you think, if a Packer safety missed a tackle allowing the winning run to score, that Lombardi would have said, “Well, it was just one person. We did real well otherwise.” If you do, you will write “Winning is the only thing” 1000 times on your blank order forms. (If you have this attitude, you will have lots of these lying around.)

How, you may ask, do you put enough procedures, process and practices in place to assure that you will never, ever fail to give good customer service? You can’t. It is impossible. You cannot solve this by structures. You cannot fire everyone who makes a mistake. You cannot think, work, or motivate yourself out of a customer service problem. You have to lead your way out of it. You have to deal with the people that work for you.

In high school, I worked in a grocery store, where there was a strict rule that employees had to park their cars in the very back of the parking lot. Everybody violated this policy. The store tried getting license plate numbers, watching employees coming and going and all sorts of other tomfoolery, but it all failed.

Want to know how the store manager finally fixed this problem for good? He gave up his assigned spot in the front of the lot, and parked his car in the back of the lot, where all employees were supposed to park. It worked. Before he did that, it was a game to see if you could beat the system and park where the manager parked. After he began parking in the back, you looked very foolish if you parked in the front.

He fixed the problem by leading, not telling or ordering, his subordinates around. He found a way to win, by breaking an established norm. This is how you make customer service the number one priority. You make sure that all levels of the company from the lowest to the highest, put customers first. It is not as easy as it sounds; you cannot just say that customers come first, you have to live it.

That’s it. Then you will win.