STOP! 5 Customer Service Mistakes You're About to Make

The good thing about customer centricity? Customers do not simply have to take you at your word. Each interaction is an opportunity to vividly demonstrate your commitment to the customer. Each interaction is an opportunity to prove that your rhetoric is not a hollow attempt at brand marketing but an honest articulation of corporate philosophy.

The bad thing about customer centricity? Customers will not take you at your word. Each interaction comes with an obligation to vividly demonstrate your commitment to the customer. Each interaction comes with an obligation to prove that your rhetoric is not a hollow attempt at brand marketing but an honest articulation of corporate philosophy.

Whether due to poor training or a philosophical misalignment with the true nature of customer centricity, far too many organizations fail to uphold their obligation and thus fail to seize their opportunity. They routinely epitomize reality’s cruelty: words are meaningless if not mirrored in action.

The worst part is that many customer service blunders—those errors that reveal a business’ inability or unwillingness to make good on its supposed customer centricity—are easily spotted and easily avoided.

Here are five very damaging—yet very avoidable—mistakes you and/or your call center agents routinely make. Stop making them and put yourself on the path to customer service excellence.

1) You’re going to tell the customer how to feel

When it comes to customer service, nothing comes across as more hollow than the statement that you "completely understand" the customer. Anyone with even a hint of business experience or communication ability sees right through it. The goal should be to show that you understand rather than to say it.

But businesses frequently make an even bigger mistake; instead of reiterating the customer’s state of mind, they ascribe a state of mind to that customer. They tell him how he is supposed to feel. They tell him whether or not the harm of a customer experience mishap is significant. They tell him whether or not he should expect a restitution, let alone complete resolution.

In a customer service interaction, the only perspective that matters is that of the customer. The agent’s personal assessment of the issue is meaningless. If the customer feels he is greatly suffering, it is the agent’s job to accept that mindset and respond accordingly.

If someone says he needed a product to arrive today, treat it as a fact that he needed the product to arrive today. Determine what you are going to do to get it to him. If someone says the product is not working the way he anticipated it would, treat it as a fact that it is not working the way he anticipated it would. Determine how you are going to remedy the situation.

Customer service is about supporting and satisfying the customer. To do that, you have to know—and act in accordance with—how the customer feels.

2) You’re going to pass the blame

Sure, it probably was not your fault. Maybe there was a fire at your business partner’s distribution center. Maybe the customer ordered the wrong product. Maybe the in-store sales rep misled the customer on the product.

It does not matter.

The role of customer service is not to report on failures. It is to correct them. While businesses should rely on diagnostic information to prepare for forthcoming customer experience issues and improve internal processes, it should not predicate customer interactions on that information. Customer interactions should be geared towards understanding why a customer is dissatisfied, determining how best to remedy the situation and then actually offering that resolution.

3) You’re going to state a policy

Customers would not be calling for support if the status quo were perfect. They would not seek assistance if the means of achieving the desired solution to their issue were wholly self-evident.

As such, they are not calling to hear that there is nothing that can be done. They are not calling to receive a reiteration of the corporate policy stated on the website. They are calling to receive a personalized solution to their unique problem.

In all likelihood, they know the policy does not normally work in their favor. That is why they are calling; they want to appeal to a human agent’s sense of customer-centricity. They want to compel the agent to find a suitable work-around to the policy. They want to drive the agent to offer satisfaction.

Saying that something "cannot be done" because of "a corporate policy" or because "my boss won’t allow me to do it" is not an acceptable customer service communication. It is simply a statement of the problem.

Customers already know there is an issue. They care about receiving support, and they are relying on your business to determine and execute the best strategy for offering it.

4) You’re going to let the customer disconnect on bad terms

Philosophically, no sympathy should be afforded to businesses and call center agents willing to leave a customer service issue unresolved. In reality, few businesses are truly in position to give every customer exactly what he wants. And no matter how much sense doing so might make from a big picture perspective, few businesses are going to get there any time soon.

The inability to deliver on that ideal is not, however, an excuse not to deliver whatsoever. It is not a justification to leave a customer dissatisfied.

No matter the vitriol of the customer’s demeanor or excess of his desired resolution, businesses must commit to creating an engaging, satisfying support experience. They must demonstrate that they value the customer and that they can be trusted to respond to problems with the best, most valuable resolution possible. Calls might end exactly as customers want, but agents should never let a call end before giving the customer as close to what he wants as is humanly possible.

That means working to ease the customer’s frustration. That means looking outside the box to find solutions that almost meet the customer’s criteria. That means ending the call with reassurance that the business believes the customer was right rather than with an argumentative case for why the business is not to blame. That means being as sincerely upset by a failure to deliver a resolution as the customer was by his failure to receive it.

5) You’re going to let the experience end with the call

No, not every customer service interaction necessitates an in-depth follow-up. All, however, need to be recognized as pieces of the overall customer experience puzzle.

All call centers must possess a complete, 360 degree view of customers. When a customer contacts the business again—regardless of channel—the specifics of his previous interactions should be easily available to the agent handling the interaction. The agent should be able to quickly know the customer’s history with the business and use that knowledge to drive an enhanced experience.

All call centers must also leverage insights and feedback from interactions to improve processes. Whether the experience is ultimately good or bad, it contains valuable knowledge that can strengthen how the business staffs, develops, markets and supports in the future. If agents do not feel encouraged, empowered and/or incentivized to share candid feedback and customer insights, they will allow calls to end when the phone line disconnects. In doing so, they will allow the business to continue underperforming, under-delivering and "under-satisfying."