Brian the Education Geek writes an occasional blog with observations about life, geek stuff, politics, and just whatever strikes his fancy.
Ever go to one of those training seminars for work? The kind that they have at hotels and last like 2 or 3 days? I've only been to one, back in '94 or so, called—get this—How To Deliver Knock-Your-Socks-Off Customer Service. Had a cute little logo of a pair of feet with the socks flying off and everything. Aww.
I didn’t mind going, mind you; it got me out of the office for a couple of days, and they had the good taste not to have it at one of those horrid downtown hotels where you have to drive around for half an hour looking for a place to park. And for the most part, it was pretty much as expected, just a bunch of Powerpoint bullets on what customer service means and what you would do in this or that situation. There was one thing they said, though, that actually stuck with me:
Everyone is in customer service.
Meaning that whatever it says on a given employee's business card--accountant, IT manager, teacher, whatever--that employee is in customer service. That employee has a customer base, consisting of the others inside and outside of the company who depend on them, hence that employee is in customer service.
It sounded pretty hokey at first, but since then I've often thought of how much more efficiently a company or government entity could function if they would take on this philosophy.
Pretty much every company or organization out there has a customer service department of some kind. It might be a full-on call center, or it might be the desk receptionist in a small business, or it might be the outsourcing company in India or Bangladesh. Anyone who holds a position in that department is considered to be “in customer service,” whether its someone who takes the phone calls, someone who goes out and works with the customer to get the problem solved, whatever. These folks are in customer service to serve the company’s customer base, i.e. the people who pay the bills. The company probably has many other departments—billing, marketing, fulfillment, executive management—and conventional wisdom says that the people who work in those other departments are not in customer service, because they don’t have customers per se.
That’s conventional wisdom. Now lets look at the benefits of taking this broader view of customer service.
Lets pick a random department of a company as an example, say the accounting department. The lead accountant has the daunting task of balancing the books every month. Does this involve dealing directly with the company’s customer base? No. But there are a lot of people in the company who need the lead accountant in order to perform their jobs. The company’s executive management—the top brass, if you will—depends on the lead accountant for information on how much money is in the company’s budget, so that they know whether or not they can kick off that new project they’ve thinking about. The department heads of each of the company’s departments count on the lead accountant knowing how much money is in their budgets as well. If the company uses an auditing service to periodically audit the accounting department, then the auditors need the lead accountant for accurate, up-to-the-minute information on their accounting practices.
The point of all this? The executive management, the department heads, the auditors—these folks (among others) are the lead accountant’s customers. They’re the people who the lead accountant serves, and that’s what makes them the lead accountant’s customers. Therefore, the lead accountant is in customer service!
This may seem like an oversimplification, but it’s not. Practically all businesses with 20 or more employees companies have accountants (or at least accounting services), and all accountants have customers who they serve. Their job titles may differ from business to business, but they still depend on the accountant to do their job, and that makes them every bit as much a customer as the people who actually pay the company for their goods or services.
The same goes for the IT department. This is a much simpler example, because pretty much everyone in the company needs the IT department for something. Department heads need IT to develop computer systems for their information processing. The marketing/advertising department needs IT to maintain the web servers through which they advertise the company’s product or service. And of course everyone with a computer needs IT for computer maintenance and for tech support when things go wrong. All these folks are the IT department’s customers, and just like the company’s paying customers, if they don’t get the service that they need, they won’t be able to provide the company with the things that the company needs. If a paying customer doesn’t get the service they need, they take their business elsewhere, which deprives the company of the customer’s money. By the exact same token, if the IT department’s customers don’t get the service they need, they can’t do their job, which deprives the company of their effectiveness. (Example: it’s pretty hard to create that meeting agenda if your word processor isn’t working!) One of these scenarios is just as bad for the company as the other, but most companies seem to only recognize the first one, the loss of paying customers.
I could go on and on with examples, but the bottom line: everyone has a customer base, regardless of their role in the company. That customer base consists of the people in the company who need them to get their own jobs done. No matter how low on the totem pole an employee thinks they are, someone else needs them. Often.
You may be thinking to yourself, “Fine, Edugeek; so what? I probably won’t be able to singlehandedly get my company’s top brass to adopt the philosophy that everyone is in customer service, so how is all this relevant?” Well, it’s relevant in how each of us does our job—or more specifically, how each of us interacts with our own customer base. If we all adopt an attitude of performing good customer service, whoever the customer, then the idea that everyone is in customer service will take care of itself. Here are some pointers:
If someone contacts you, get back to them. If you get an e-mail message from someone, reply immediately. If you get a voice mail message, call them back. If the person is asking a question of you or they need something from you, reply to them right away and let them know that you either have what they need, or that it will take time to get them what they need. Try not to leave them hanging if you can possibly avoid it, because when someone asks something of you, it’s usually because there’s something they have to do or some information they need to provide—and it’s contingent on your answer. Oh, and if you’d prefer that people contact you via e-mail rather than by phone, let them know that. Make an outgoing message (OGM) on your phone that says something like “For faster response, please e-mail me at ____.”
If someone asks you a question, get the answer yourself. This sounds obvious, but it’s all too easy to reply to a question with “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask ____.” When you do that, you’re basically giving that person the runaround, in their own office! You expect for someone to get the runaround when they call a state or local government office or something, but it shouldn’t happen in their own office, among their own co-workers. If someone asks you something that you don’t know, say “I don’t know; let me find out and get back to you.” Then go ask the person who you think might know, get the answer from them, and relay it back to the original person. Yes, that’s a lot of work on your part, but what you’re really saying to them is, “Your quest for this answer ends here; you can count on me to get you the information.” Now the answer may be more involved than you can easily relay to the person, especially if its in an area that you don’t know much about; in cases like this, you can say “OK, I asked Jane and she said _____. But she could probably give you a more detailed answer.” Nothing wrong with this; you still did the leg work, and you reaffirmed to the person who asked that you can be counted on to get them what they need, in the form of an answer or at least a referral to someone who can better help them. That’s what they really want, after all, just like it’s what you want when you need information.
Don’t tell yourself stories about people. This applies more to people who are in the actual customer service department than it does people in other departments, but to some extent, it holds true everywhere. For example, if someone needs something from you, don’t say to yourself “What a lazyass, why can’t he do it himself?” Because what you’re doing is telling yourself a story about the person, in this case telling yourself that the person is lazy. But in most cases you have no idea whether or not the story is true; you’re mostly telling yourself that story just to reinforce to yourself why you shouldn’t have to do whatever it is they’re asking you to do. In this example, yes the person may just be lazy, but there are a lot of other possible explanations as well. Maybe they need this thing from you because their computer isn’t working at the moment. Maybe getting this thing requires a key, or a system access password, or some other resource that they don’t have. You don’t know, and as in life, there’s nothing to be gained by assuming the worst. Now if someone asks you for something over and over again, at that point its time to show them how to get whatever it is they need, or its time for you to get with their supervisor and let them know what’s going on, or however you want to handle it. But in general, give a brotha or a sistah a fair shake; they’re your customer after all!
Be liberal with praise and gratitude. This isn’t really anything that you didn’t learn in kindergarten, but thank people when they do something for you. Many people know to thank their friends and their family when they do something nice for them, but don’t know to carry this attitude over with them at the workplace. Similarly, when a co-worker realizes some kind of achievement, like getting a degree or certification, give ‘em props. Publicly. There’s a lot of negative energy floating around these days, so its important to be a source of positivity if you can.
Follow up. This is closely related to getting back to people, but it’s more of a long-term thing. Like whenever I take my car into the shop and they work on it, about a week later I get a follow-up e-mail message, asking how things are going since the work was done. That’s what a good customer service rep does, and it’s a good thing to integrate into your own behavior at work. If you provide an answer or if you’re otherwise a resource for someone, follow up with that person and make sure that what you did or what you gave them was really what they needed and that it really helped them. This is a particularly good idea if you answered a question for them or gave information, because it serves as a verification for you that your answer was really the correct one, or that your answer wasn’t correct and the correct answer is ___, or that your answer was correct but also could have included ___. That’s how you make yourself an effective resource for your customers, whoever they may be.
There are probably numerous other good habits that you can adopt that would give that good-customer-service quality to your work; feel free to name some of them them in the comments section. Your customers will thank you!
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