Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

In my day job I work in the ultimate customer service business, medicine. Ever listen to how people address folks on the providing side of the customer service continuum? Do you ever stop to listen to yourself, or think about how you will sound before you speak? Fascinating. In North America we are moving ever more swiftly to an economy that is majority a service economy; we don’t really make stuff so much anymore, we help people use stuff someone else made, or provide assistance based on a knowledge base or skill set. Listening to people on the receive side of the customer service equation is fascinating.

I’m prompted to this line of thought by three interactions at my day job, SkyVision. Three individuals not so much requesting a service but demanding it, doing so with a tone that implies not only a deep sense of entitlement but also a deeper lack of regard for the individual who will provide that service. Both in tone and content, the to-be-served make it clear to the service provider that he or she is there to serve only them. In fact, the server’s only reason to exist is to serve, as if the to-be-served were some kind of different, superior version of the species. It’s quite loathsome, actually.

I spend every waking moment of each working day on the “serve” side of the equation, whether I am at SkyVision plying my profession or CrossFit Bingo coaching. Having achieved some measure of expertise in both it’s very rare that I am on the receiving end of this type of behavior, but it does happen. More often is the case that it is someone lower on the org chart who gets this. The receptionist, phone operator, or check-out person who gets this “lower life-form” treatment, not the doctor or business owner.

Life can be hard for these front line people in a service business. There’s not only a “customer is always right” mentality on the other side of the interaction but also a sense that being a customer who will get what they want is as much a human right as Life or Liberty. That’s what it sounds like, anyway, if you are off to the side listening. No matter how frustrated one might become from a service situation gone wrong it’s important to remember that there is no continuum in the relationship when it comes to the inalienable rights, nor is there any evolutionary hierarchy across that desk or over that phone line. Being served if you are the customer is not a right at all, not even one up there with the pursuit of happiness. Server and served both have the right to life, liberty, etc.

In a funny little side note, the more effort I (and my partners and staff) make to be better at the whole customer service thing, the less tolerant I am when I am on the receiving end of poor customer service. Actually, I should be a bit more specific on this point: I am much less tolerant if I am being served by an organization that openly preens about its excellent customer care but won’t deliver. Heaven forbid if I detect a cynical lack of effort, either institutional or on a more personal level, when the expectations that I’ve been led to have are mis-met because of this. The harder we try and the better we get at providing an excellent customer experience at SkyVision the less likely I am to choke down indifferent service or a lack of effort when I’ve been lead to believe (and paid for) something extraordinary. The difference, though, is that I initially engage with the expectation that all I have to do is be polite and kind to those folks charged with taking care of me; my first shot across the bow is not to treat them like serfs.

Danny Meyer, the great NYC restauranteur, is probably closest to correct when he says “the customer is not right all of the time, but mostly right most of the time. A customer [only] has the right to be heard.” How you express yourself when you are on the “receive” side of the customer service experience is not only an important measurement of how you value the person across from you providing the service, but frankly is probably also a predictor for how likely you are to be successful in being heard. It’s instructive that none of the three SkyVision clients who made difficult (bordering on unreasonable) requests in an unpleasant manner were accommodated because doing so would have required an extraordinary effort which may not have been successful in any event. After being treated a some sort of sub-human primate, who would make such an effort?

Sorry, no pithy statement to wrap this up. In the end we all want what we want, and we all need to be heard. It helps to look at the person on the other end of the service divide as if you were looking in a mirror. Would you say that, like that, to the person in front of you then?