Category: Corporate

Soylent Green May Be People but Corporations Aren’t

Not many things feel less sincere than an apology from a corporation. It’s true in PR, and it’s true in customer care. It can be tempting to hide behind the safety of your company with a lot of “we” language — placing the blame on the impersonal behemoth. It’s especially tempting in customer care because whatever has gone wrong for the customer probably is not your fault, and may not even be in your control to fix. But, part of making that connection with the customer is apologizing to and sympathizing with them.

This doesn’t mean you should only ever use “I” instead of “we” in your communications to customers. In fact, there are a lot of times when you’ll be speaking as the company, and that’s totally fine. The key is to pinpoint those moments when you can build a personal connection with the customer. It seems like a little thing, but it can have a huge effect on how a customer perceives their treatment.

For example, take a look at these two delayed shipping emails:

Email 1: Unfortunately, we will be unable to ship your order until next week due to inclement weather in our area. We anticipate shipping your order by Wednesday, January 17th. You will receive an email with tracking information when your order has shipped. Please accept our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.

Pretty cold, right? And why can’t this big “we” ship my stuff out on time, anyhow? Amazon always ships my stuff the day I order it!

Email 2: I’m so sorry! We’re having a bit of weather here and as a result our shipping schedule has gotten backed up, but we should be back on track early next week. I took a look at your order and it should be going out Wednesday (January 17th). We’ll send you an email with tracking information when it ships. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s anything else I can help you with, and again, I am so sorry for the delay!

It’s still the corporate “we” who has made the decision to shut down shipping, and who will be sending the package and tracking info…but now I have a buddy there who is looking out for me, who actually feels bad that I’m not getting my package on time. I mean, I totally understand that things happen. We’re all only human, right?

Putting a human face on when a screw up or delay happens not only helps the customer feel like someone at the company is looking out for them, but also reminds them that the company is made up of people just like them, who have their back and will do their best to make their customers happy.

 

Rebuilding a Customer Care Team: Ramping Up

This is the first in a special series dedicated to rebuilding a single customer care team. The info in these posts will be less generalized than the regular posts here, but I thought it was a great opportunity to show you how I put into practice all the things I talk about here.

I’ve just been handed a  customer care team that is in need of rebuilding. Ratings for this company’s customer service are quite low, and I’ve been asked to reverse that. I’m really excited about this opportunity, and excited to have you join me on this journey.

So, first step: I’m making lists. I have a list of things I need (programs the CSRs use, information from various departments that I need to be able to give the CSRs, training on some things so that I know what the CSRs are up against). I have another list of questions. Some of these are for the CSRs, some are for various other department heads, some I’m going to have to find out who to ask. A third list is a draft for a PP deck that I’ll be presenting to the team as a starting place (and which I will share here in the next post in this series) for our new policies and procedures.

That third list is super important. I’m going to be meeting with the team this week, and they haven’t had written policies governing the department up to this point. I’m going to change that right from the start. But I’m also going to emphasize that if we find these policies aren’t working for us, we can revisit and revamp them.

In addition to the internal policies, I’m also going to be developing some procedures for the CSRs to follow. Currently, each CSR has their own way of processing a return, making a recommendation, or fulfilling a request for information. Unfortunately, this lack of uniformity means that things are slipping through the cracks. It also means that when it’s time to expand the department, there’s no training manual and worse, each current CSR will be teaching conflicting methods for handling tasks.

Unfortunately, one of the issues this team has is a tendency towards rigidity when they feel their autonomy is being threatened. I’m going to have to continue to emphasize that policies and procedures are living documents, subject to change as needed. Hopefully, we’ll quickly get to a point where they’re able to understand when policy can be flexible and why we need structured procedures in place.

Maybe not quite that flexible.

This week’s goals:

  • Get all software installed
  • Meet with team to introduce policies
  • Meet with individual team members to set goals and hear concerns
  • Meet with other department heads

Small Changes, Big Results

I read an interesting article the other day on the importance of being customer-centric as an organization. The article makes several strong points, especially emphasizing that if you are going to be customer-centric as an organization, as you should strive to be, you absolutely must have the buy-in of senior management. If you don’t, it’s unlikely that you will be successful in creating, much less sustaining, a customer-centric culture.

If you have senior management’s blessing, great! Go forth, be customer-centric, and reap the rewards! But what if you don’t? What if you suspect that you are going to have to drag your organization kicking and screaming into this new way of thinking? Should you just give up entirely on being customer-centric? Of course not!

You can start with some small changes in how you provide customer care. It’s easy for CSRs in a company-centric culture to be apathetic or even to position themselves in opposition to customers. Remind your CSRs that your department’s goal is happy customers. Their job is to be on the customer’s side, to make the customer feel that they have a voice with the company. That doesn’t mean giving them everything they ask for, but it does mean sympathizing with their problems.

Another thing you can do is ask to be included in planning sessions for other departments. Remember, you are the voice of the customer. Bring that voice to those meetings. That doesn’t mean you get to decide what every department does, or that you can just come in and magically everyone will buy in to your philosophies and ideals about the customer experience and becoming more customer-centric, but it does mean that when there are questions about what will serve the customer best – and there will be – you’ll be there to answer those questions.

As you attend more of these planning sessions and demonstrate that you have the best interests of the company, the department, and the customer in mind, you’ll become a trusted member of the team. Eventually, you’ll have enough of a voice to be able to steer things in a more customer-centric direction.

It can be hard to get established companies to radically change their orientation from company-centric to customer-centric. Change is scary, especially a fundamental change in underlying company philosophy. But not all change has to be big change. Small changes add up over time, and before senior management knows what hit it, your organization will be well on its way to a customer-centric culture.