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Article : When a Smile is not a Smile...

"A person who pretends that they care is not the same as a person that does care."

Herein lies the customer care industries biggest problem. You want the customer service representative that, genuinely, does care about the customer. You want the customer service representative that will sprint the extra mile, preferably shoe laces tied up, but willing to trip up in making the effort. You want the customer service representative that when the customer is satisfied is looking for the cherry that makes them delighted.

This is the customer service representative that sees a human being - not just a customer; that sees a human being who wants to be happy and stress free - not just somebody to make money from; that sees that delivering them happiness and peace of mind is the best way to make money from them - and with the customers blessing. These people are the customer service representatives that you want… and most of the time do not get.

Except, you already do have them. Stand atop of your desk and look out over the work floor and you will see a room possessed by magnificent customer service representatives. Every single last one of them. You don’t know it, and for some reason (call it a planetary slumber) they don’t either. Perhaps it is too true to be seen in the glaze of fluorescent lighting, but your workforce, unbeknown to most, actually really do care about the customer, they have just forgotten, that is all.

Hopefully this is music to your ears (and good music too, like Meshuggah or Radiohead, not Ibiza anthems or boy bands crooning from high stools). But how to make them care? You could CC them into a warm fuzzy… but this can work against you as much as for you. You can lure them with a bulging bonus and a quarterly prize draw to drive the companies monster truck for the next 3 months (a real example from my time in a contact centre, although, it may have been just a 4x4…). You could even Go Totalitarian© and attach electrodes to their nipples… But then you’d have to relocate east, with that whole kettle of fish about foreign contact centres looming over you etc.

The problem is that none of this makes them care about the customer. Instead they push themselves into as much pleasantry as possible to try to seem like they care, get stressed under the pressure of faking themselves for a nine hour shift, and then snap, crackle and pop at a few customers, and either leave their job mid-shift on a ‘toilet break’ or get the sack. Either way, this is all very damaging to business. You need, and the customer care industry needs, representatives that genuinely do care about the customer. So, how are we going to make this happen?

Well, human beings are naturally altruistic. Altruism also happens to make us feel good. Most of us do what we can, when we can, for other human beings, and we like how that makes us feel about ourselves. Some of us even endeavour to do volunteer work for the simple enjoyment of altruism. Now, if serving other people makes us feel so good why is the customer SERVICE sector not populated by the shiniest, happiest people in all the land? I mean, these are people who get to serve other people ALL DAY LONG… and get paid! The early morning birds - or cars - that awake us to a 9 hour shift at a call centre that day should be a good thing! ‘Call centre work rules!’ should be graffiti scrawled across red-brick campus walls… But isn’t. Why not? No, seriously, why not? A bit of help here? … Please?

Ok, so I am not quite sure why it is that temples aren’t being built in honour of customer service, but I do know that, at least metaphorically, it is very, very possible. The ingredients are there, cut neatly on the work surface, and it is altruism that is going to bind and nourish this recipe. Your customer service representatives DO CARE ABOUT THE CUSTOMER because your customer service representatives are human beings and they do care about other human beings and they do enjoy caring about other human beings. And to be quite frank, very few of us do justice to ourselves when interacting with others.

What is needed most of the time is just a little bit more awareness. Awareness leads to empathy and empathy will frequently find a nature within us that is very different to the one sans awareness. For a heavy but clarifying example, if we knew that a loved one were to die tomorrow then there is very little that they could do to upset or anger us… and yet, we do not know that a loved one will not die tomorrow. So, what gives? Simply put, what gives is that we just don’t think about that, if we did then our behaviour would accord instinctively, but we don’t and so we don’t.

Now, thinking about the customer. It is true that there is a certain breed of customer out there that have been observed and classified (sometimes tagged) as ‘difficult’. They are the ones that do not seem to grasp that, actually, the problem that they have most likely did not originate with yourselves, and you are just the unfortunates with a target painted on your foreheads. But this doesn’t matter! This flight is under your control! Because, with a little thought, like that of the preceding example, you will see that beyond your prevailing perception that, actually, this customer, like all human beings, probably has a very good reason for behaving with such total and utter disregard for you, and if you knew that reason (money problems, family issues, low self esteem etc.) then you would most likely feel compassion for the customer and indeed really want to help them out and ease a bit of their suffering.

And this is what I mean when I say that every one of your customer service representatives genuinely does care about your customers. We all care about each other. The problem is that sometimes we forget who we are and become too distracted in our own problems of the moment to remember that this customer, however difficult, is another human being, who like ourselves only wants to avoid suffering and be happy. Remembering this not only makes for harmonious and supportive human relationships including fantastic customer service, but also makes for our own happiness as we too delight in the beauty of altruism.

Customer service is just human interaction, and like any human interaction can be heart warming, stimulating, meaningful, rewarding and educating experience. We can learn a lot about ourselves through this constant and varied interaction with other people (a variety of interaction that customer care offers more than any other industry), and we can adjust and grow accordingly. We may lose our patience with an obnoxious customer, or find our tolerance tested by a customers heavy regional accent, but each challenge presented can be embraced as a remarkable opportunity to learn and grow as Human Beings Who Really Do Care and Know It™, continuously expanding our patience, our tolerance and our empathy… Not just to become better customer service representatives, and not even just to enjoy more considerate and productive relationships, but most importantly to be happy within who we are. 

Today's Tip of the Day - Utilize Time & Money Saving Tools

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Published: Thursday, July 2, 2009

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