Customer Service

2-4-6-8 Who Do We Appreciate?
By Paul Herbig


Customer Service

The boss must have written the old yellow pages slogan, “let your fingers do the walking” as she is virtually never without a phone in her hand. As I watched her call several companies, I could see her get increasingly angry at the instrument. Having been through it many times myself, I could almost hear the other side of the conversation, “Dial 1 if you wish to place an order; Dial 2 if you wish to determine status of an existing order; Dial 3 if you wish to cancel an order; and on and on up to Dial 44 if you wish to speak to an operator. If you wish to hear these options again, please hit the star button.” And round and round one goes through what the mathematicians call an infinite loop of choices and options. All this, I am told, is designed to save costs by automating a process and giving the customer more power in the process. It is becoming so common I am shocked speechless when I actually get a human being on the line.

Cost-cutting measures can sometimes backfire. At a small southern university where I taught many years ago, the bean counters decided the budget needed cutting and they would save $250,000 by not offering summer classes. They actually saved over $260,000 but loss an estimated $400,000 in revenue not received due to students not attending summer classes. I often wondered how they explained all those savings to their boss. They were looking at the wrong end of the equation.

Now I am all for cutting costs when there is fat to be cut—bureaucracy is the first place one should cut (and cut and cut and cut). But I do not consider customer service a particularly fatty area. When it comes to customers, you should never be lean and mean. Companies must understand that they are here to serve the customers and not vice versa. It is only by virtue of the customers’ dollars that they exist and not, as some appear to believe, the customers exist to serve them. If anything, companies should be adding to their customer support (especially in tough times like these when their competitors will be cutting back thus providing them with competitive momentum when good times return). When customers have questions, they better be able to get answers and now, not on the timetable of some nameless telephone system, not by spending hours on the phone trying to circumnavigate a phone loop or hoping to get a human being on the other end to talk to, but now. The company that provides that service at the time and place the customer demands it will be the company that in the long run will prosper and thrive and very likely will buy out the remnants of the other, now customerless company.

One final thought. Are phone numbers obsolete? Don’t people call on the phone any more? Where are the phone numbers anyway? I search websites on a daily basis and many times fail to find a phone contact number. Perhaps the company does not want to be bothered by customers as it would only get in their way of having a good workplace. (this reminds me of a remark by a professor in a research university in Texas , “If it weren’t for the students, we could get lots of research done here.” Paraphrasing the “if only the customers would leave us alone, this would be great place to work.”) Not being bothered by customers is a sure fired way to create one’s own extinction. You have that choice: listen to customers, work with them, satisfy their thirst for your products, or find another occupation that does not require customer service: I hear there may soon be an opening for Dictators in Iraq and North Korea.