Is Good Customer Service Only for Good Customers?

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Having finally reached the bar at a popular New Haven club during the ever-chaotic Harvard-Yale weekend, my happiness turned to repulsion as I witnessed the conduct of the patron next to me.

After presenting a coupon for a free drink, the customer collected his beverage and went on his merry way. He offered no "thank you" to the bartender who mixed a complimentary concoction. More importantly, he neglected to leave any sort of gratuity—an essential component of American bar etiquette and one that should get amplified when using a coupon or pass for a free drink.

Sensing the bartender’s (justifiable) frustration, I muttered an apt, un-publishable word to describe the customer and pulled out a dollar bill to cover the other customer’s egregious lack of gratuity. Though it did not hurt that I was now standing next to a very attractive girl whose favor I had no objections to currying, my action was entirely spawned by my disgust over the fellow customer’s behavior.

In recognition of my "cover," the bartender comp’d my original drink order and also provided a free round of shots. (Not wanting to be a hypocrite but also not wanting to be tacky, I ordered another drink and made sure to tip him well on that one)

Upon leaving the bar, I thought to myself, "This is why one should always tip."

This weekend at Qdoba, I noticed the server was about to fill my Naked Burrito with black beans rather than the requested pinto beans. I caught his attention before he actually poured any of the black beans into the bowl but likely not before some of the bean "juice" dripped onto the rice. His gut reaction was to toss the rice-filled bowl and try again, but I aggressively insisted he not do that. It would have been a waste of food, and it would have required he acknowledge an "error" that had no victim and was absolutely not a big deal.

And yet, I have personally seen many a customer react in the opposite fashion after witnessing that kind of mistake.

In recognition of my "chill"-ness, he noted that he would give me a double portion meat for free (and, in fact, threw in about four times the usual amount of meat).

Upon leaving Qdoba, I thought to myself, "This is why one should avoid being a jerk to waiters, cashiers and customer service reps."

In both examples, I acknowledged the living element to the customer experience. No matter how much we believe financial transactions dehumanize the relationship between customer and merchant, at the end of the day, the reps who serve our food, service our televisions and fix our clogged drains are, indeed, people. And like most people, they reciprocate positivity and generosity. If you, as a customer, conduct yourself with respect for their needs, they are likely to return the favor.

To me, the idea of fussing over something like a mistaken drink order at a crowded bar or a plate with the wrong kind of hot sauce at a crowded Mexican restaurant is egregiously silly. I’ll definitely pursue corrections and "restitution" in the event that the error is meaningful, but I never do so with a sense of disdain or entitlement. As such, I like to think of myself as a "good customer."

But the more I pontificate my virtue as a customer (yes, I have an ego problem), the more I question the logic of my earlier conclusions.

That customer service representatives will react favorably to "good customers" is an unavoidable reality; "give a smile, get a smile," after all. Unfortunately, when it comes to the execution of customer service, that really should not be the case.

Though I contently accept the burden of being a "good customer" in order to facilitate a healthy customer service interaction, the reality is that the burden belongs solely on the shoulders of the brand and its representatives. They, after all, are in the business of serving customers—it is a business for which we, as customers, typically pay.

The customer, meanwhile, is not in the business of pleasing the customer service representative. He may want to, knowing it could lead to some perks (as it did in my earlier examples), but he has no obligation to do so and should thus not be faulted for a failure to do so.

There is no reason an organization cannot reward customers who are especially-friendly and gracious towards representatives. In fact, some customer experience professionals outright advocate giving the best possible service to the best breed of customer.

But even in showcasing such gratitude, the representatives still have to be mindful of delivering an optimal experience for all customers.

No matter how excitedly he serves a good tipper, a bartender cannot, however, turn a cold shoulder to the customer who tips poorly or not at all: he must grin-and-bear-it, doing everything possible to create the best possible experience for that customer as well.

Thanks to notions like "the customer is always right" and "every customer is our most important customer," the idea that a service representative should create a stellar experience for even the "bad" customers should come as no surprise in 2012. Customer experience management is not simply about crafting a satisfactory relationship with the nice customers; it is about a fundamental, organizational commitment to wowing in every customer interaction.

There is also another, less preachy and clichêd perspective all customer service representatives need to consider: who exactly defines customer value?

Someone like Peter Fader would believe it perfectly acceptable—and, in fact, advisable—to consider customer value when determining how to customize an experience for a particular individual or segment. To these thinkers, customer-centricity is, in fact, about providing that tailormade, optimal experience to those customers who will bring the most value to the organization.

Note, however, that the agent in that conception of customer-centricity is the organization, not the individual customer service rep. If a customer is deemed particularly valuable to the organization, it is okay to build an enhanced customer experience for that particular customer.

In my earlier "good customer" vs. "bad customer" debate, the agent is not the organization itself—it is the customer service representative’s feelings. When the aforementioned bartender and food server determined me to be more worthy of an elite customer experience than other patrons, they were thinking about how courteous I was to them and not necessarily about my value to the overall organization.

My willingness to be nice in customer interactions can be a product of various motivations. It cannot be assumed that I am doing so out of loyalty to the organization itself, and it certainly cannot be assumed that I am more likely than an "entitled" customer to brag about the great experience to friends, boast about the awesome customer service on Yelp or begin buying a larger basket of goods at a greater frequency.

As a result, my demeanor alone cannot be used as a signal that I am a particularly valuable customer, and it is thus not necessarily in the organization’s best interest to go out of its way to please me. In fact, it can easily be argued that attempting to wow the more abrasive, obnoxious customers is the more intelligent strategy—these customers, clearly jaded by the concept of customer service, might be more likely to notice and trumpet their "standout" experiences.

I, meanwhile, am clearly chalking some of the positive experience up to my demeanor rather than the organization itself, and therefore might be less inclined to celebrate the brand’s customer-centricity. In my mind, it wasn’t necessarily that the organization cared about the abstract "customer"—it was that a certain rep recognized my willingness to be a good soldier.

As a person and a member of society, I have a hard time reconciling the behavior I often see from fellow customers. The most trivial, honest "mistakes" routinely set people off to such an extent that you would assume the clerk, server, rep or cashier had murdered the customer’s entire family. Gratitude is rarely demonstrated for anything but the most elite, unparalleled customer service. Customers, for lack of a better term, can be absolute brats.

Unfortunately, the perspective we have from our side of the counter cannot be the one shared by the absolute reps. They, as representatives of a brand, cannot let such personality and appreciation judgments factor into their attitude, demeanor and resulting service. They must think of the brand and only of the brand, and if the brand mission would not dictate the delivery of middling service to rude customers, they must put their egos in check and avoid that pitfall.