Uh-oh. Looks like we forgot to celebrate National Customer Service Week.
Every year, the first full week of October is dedicated by Congressional proclamation to customer service “professionals” around the country.
In the days and weeks leading up the Customer Service Week, managers and supervisors in call centers, retail stores and other customer-facing organizations around the country are busy thinking of creative ways to motivate and inspire tired and grumpy employees to improve the way they interact with customers.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell which came first, the grouchy agent or the nasty customer. I’ve interacted with a lot of customers in my day – most of them making airline complaints – and can tell you first hand that a lot of people don’t deserve good service. But it’s a professional’s job to deliver it regardless of the customer’s manners. Keeping those employees pumped up and energized is the whole point of Customer Service Week.
I recall years of having to come up with ways to motivate employees in my former airline complaints department. As a marginally-profitable airline, we had virtually no budget for this sort of thing, beyond a nebulous and grossly underfunded line item called “employee retention.”
It’s hard to put together a week’s celebration for 100 people on $150. Casual dress all week? Check. Match the name to the baby picture contest? Check. Pot luck on Friday? Check.
Now what? Thank God for attrition; at least the shtick was new to 50 percent of the people.
Let’s face it, customer service is an oxymoron.
- Cost cutting and call center outsourcing have left customers frustrated by wrong answers, mistakes and unintelligible operators.
- Although some service-oriented companies are repatriating call center jobs, real employees who take pride in their work and have a vested interest in their company are a rarity. For me, it’s a treat when a call is answered and it doesn’t have that telltale delay that sounds like I’m talking to someone with two Hawaiian Punch cans and a piece of twine. I almost become giddy.
- Early retirement packages designed to reduce salary expenses of more senior employees and overall headcount have resulted in fewer experienced workers. I know of some airlines that were forced to backfill by hiring new employees — untrained and at the bottom of the pay scale — to make up the difference.
- Employers are asking employees to do more with less. United Airlines, for example, recently announced it is reducing flight attendant staffing to the minimum number allowed by the FAA. United is not the first airline to do this, but it means each attendant will have less time to respond to individual customer needs. Other airlines have reduced the number of airport agents assigned to each gate. What used to take two or three people (say, to board a wide-body jet), is now done in some cases by one person, with relief called in only if things get too ugly.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had two significant service issues, one with an airline, and the other with a large retailer of electronics.
Delta Air Lines changed the schedule to my upcoming flight and the new times were not good for me. They fixed the problem with one telephone call, no escalation to a supervisor, and they did it apologetically and with a smile.
Kudos, Delta.
BestBuy, on the other hand, was the polar opposite. In the course of trying to solve one thing, I was hung up on, given wrong information three times, sold the wrong “this will fix it” product twice, not called back as promised, even by a manager, had the brief scare of a missing data backup disc, and had to escalate my problem all the way to their corporate headquarters for resolution. Badly done.
I suspect Delta — not BestBuy — remembered to celebrate National Customer Service Week.
