Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

Directors and Management often see customer relations as the affair of a ‘Complaints Department’ whilst they get on and run the business – which is a form of warfare carried out against the irritating habits of customers seeking fair treatment, a fair deal or equality of relationship.

Salespeople often see customers as an unruly, disobliging and dishonest source of commission.

Support staff accept that they are paid to (try to) cope (on a good day) with unreasonable, whinging, stupid, ungrateful customers who just won’t be told. Administrators see customers as dunces who must be forced to follow the rigid procedures developed for the convenience of the supplier (an endless nuisance to the customer).

Technical people often see customers as stick-in-the-mud know nothings to be loftily put in their place by the use of elitist techno-jargon.

Production people ignore customers entirely because otherwise they would get in the way of how they want to run the place.

Finance people treat customers not as people but as reference numbers with obligations required to fit processes.

Unkind comments? Not at your place? Great! But anti-attitudes like this abound all over the commercial spectrum. You do business with your customers – not despite them! Customers pay the wages for everyone, not just the salesforce.

Personally, I think that all my people truly believe in good customer relations, if only because of the many compliments I receive. But I could be wrong! There is always a penalty for poor customer relations. It plays its way out over the weeks and months ahead when people – and those they influence – simply avoid your firm.

Why Try?

“Why should I be nice to someone who slags me off?” says one of your people. Well, that’s not an unreasonable question. Let’s try to understand the psychology of people who grumble – or worse, complain.

Believe it, complaining for most people, apart from the psychotic few, is a very stressful thing to do. Apart from whether the problem itself has made the customer angry, having to pump oneself up enough emotionally to have this ‘confrontation’ makes people short tempered. So people dealing with customers must expect them to be upset and angry.

Let’s analyse the language:

The customer says “That’s not good enough!” quite probably with some expletives thrown in for good measure.

For a start, the person handling the call probably didn’t cause the problem themselves, someone else did. Why take stick for that? Well, because that person is part of the team and happens to be the one taking the call. Feeling part of a customer sensitive team is a vital element in wanting to and being able to deliver sensitive, constructive customer relations but, by ‘team’ I don’t just mean the Customer Service Department. I mean the whole organisation.

Too many organisations operate Customer Support (you can see the language varies a bit) as a quite separate entity from the operations of the business. They are in their own sterile ‘bubble’ charged with keeping customers from ever speaking to the people in Operations who have normally caused the problem in the first place. That’s not how it is supposed to work – but it is convenient for the business that doesn’t want to deliver good customer relations, it just wants to shut customers up for as low a cost as possible.

Empowerment Pays:

The problems facing staff members are: knowing that no-one wants to hear what the problem was; that they can make no changes in the way the organisation operates; that they cannot set out to improve things for future customers so that particular problem will never recur. They simply try to ‘win’ discussions with customers and give them anodyne replies in accordance with ‘the rules’. Is it any surprise that those people simply don’t believe in customer relations? They do what they are told to do and get paid for that. Think of your own experiences. Think of how often you’ve been ‘put in your place’ by someone. Think how you detest being forced to talk to ‘Customer Service’ because you expect not to have the problem resolved.

Tech. Support Is ‘Customer Service’ Too:

The ideal model of a Technical Support Department is that the phone never rings. The trouble is that most people who operate one expect the phone to ring in proportion to the number of customers. The missing bit is that if the people on Help Desk have no involvement in making changes, then they cannot prevent the same problem recurring fifty times a day. The basic rule should be that the moment you deal with a customer problem, you put in place changes so that problem will not recur for that reason. Staff with power are highly motivated to be helpful. People without power hate having to deal with cranky customers and simply try to fob them off.

Can You Believe It?

As just one illustration, I once purchased an accounts package from a high profile, very well known software company. Amongst many problems was the fact that occasionally if you added up the pence charged for the various items on an invoice, the total would be different from the total shown at the bottom. What! Unthinkable on an invoice. Together with other more peculiar problems, that system cost us hours and days of lost time; we had staff in tears; we pleaded for help (but we could only talk to Customer Support who couldn’t help). It took about a year for the supplier to put the problems right. It took about two months to get a reply from the Chairman’s office. No, he was far too august to reply himself – but a Director did. Eventually, we got back exactly what we had paid for the package. Not a penny in compensation; not a tear shed. Now tell me how that company views customer relations?

Every Customer Is A Consultant:

The drive for continuous improvement will come from your customers – if you let it and if people’s arrogance doesn’t get in the way. Believe me, the customer is an expert in your business. They may not know how to make grommets, or how to merchandise goods, or how to write software – but they do know what they want from you. “As customers, we don’t want it your way; we want it the way that suits us”. “And we will tell you, if you want to listen and providing we see you want to do something about it”. One of the problems with people in many companies is that they just don’t want to be told, especially by a customer. No-one’s going to get anywhere with customer relations until they recognise that customers are valued assets, not dumb milk cows for money.

What’s The Lesson?

Customer relations is a strategic understanding, not a departmental name. Most people in most companies don’t think about their responsibility for developing good customer relations, because they simply don’t see it as their job. The problem is the good old whip and trident management style which works fine in a seller’s market and costs a small fortune most of the time. The trouble is that you can’t see the cost from a simple item on the P & L. Most of it is hidden in the cost of losing business and winning new business. Existing customers cost much less to keep than new customers cost to win.

And you? Can you truthfully say in your heart of hearts that you believe in the value and need for everyone in the business to help to build good customer relations? If not, then watch out for the competitor who will figure that out first or the person competing for your job who knows that is how it’s done. Customer relations is that serious.

Today’s News: Sadly, despite all the hype, my new site The JF Consultancy will not launch next Tuesday as planned: We are almost ready to go but our graphics expert, Bill Jeckells is poorly, so we have some cosmetic work still to do. Bill, we wish you a speedy recovery.

We anticipate needing an additional week, but I will keep you updated - the wait will be worth it, I promise

Tomorrow: A w/e off! Yep, really, that doesn’t happen too often - wherever you are, have a great weekend and I will be back here on Monday - JF