No, You DON’T Understand

I was listening to The Nerdist podcast this weekend, Chris Hardwick had Jen Kirkman on and they were talking about customer service. Evidently Jen Kirkman LOVES customer service as much as I love good follow up. They had a great conversation about customer service with some great points, take a listen if you’re in customer service. There were a few points worth repeating…

Here’s the deal – you don’t always know how someone feels, so don’t lie. Hardwick mentioned how he had a device malfunction and then break and he was being charged for it by his service provider. When he called to get it taken care of the customer service rep said “oh man, I totally understand, I’ve been there.” Really? Please don’t lie.

Good customer service is about being a real person. YES relate to the customer, but don’t make something up. “Wow, I’ve never heard that one before” is OK to say – “let’s find a manager and get this figured out because I know none of these questions I’m supposed to ask you are going to do anything and will only make you angrier.” WHY don’t companies empower their employees to do this?

No one says anything nice about Comcast, except my dad. He believes he’s found the secret – he goes to the store. He walks in, he gets helped faster than if he was on the phone, AND the real human in front of him is always competent and has the power to fix any issues he’s having. This has happened ZERO times for me on the phone with Comcast. WHY?

Your front desk admin, your call center, your help desk team: Give them the power to be a real person, to acknowledge and be honest when they don’t have the answer. Don’t put me on hold for 10 minutes while you Google the solution, I did that you idiot. Tell me you need to research it and when it’s figured out you’ll call me back. (And obviously then call me back!). Educate and train your team so that they do have the answer, and they can help and really think instead of just following a script that leads to angry customers.