What is the Point of Customer Service?

Noting that I’m "the customer service guy," a colleague e-mailed me the transcript of a support chat between his friend and a representative StubHub online event ticket service.

"You’ll definitely get a kick out of this," he declared.

While I certainly found the chat relatable—it mirrored the countless, frustrating chat conversations I have had with incompetent support personnel—I definitely did not find it enjoyable. That a paid customer service agent could treat a customer so poorly—and represent his brand so badly—in this so-called "age of the customer" was not a source of gleeful comedy. It was a source of grave concern about whether progress is being made to transfer the philosophical concept of customer-centricity into legitimately better experiences.

More broadly, it made me question how today’s businesses—and their agents—even define the purpose of customer service.

After listing soccer tickets on StubHub, the aforementioned user noticed that they were displaying improperly on the corresponding seating chart. While the seats actually possess a clear, unobstructed view of the game, the seating chart gave the impression that they were behind the goal (and thus subject to obstruction). Insofar as the user finds seating in that section to be considerably less desirable than that in which his tickets actually existed, he worried that the visual error would hinder his ability to complete the sale.

From the onset, the representative only responded with generalities, impersonal commentaries, excuses and arguments. She disputed whether seating charts can be used to accurately indicate the event experience. She noted that venue floor plans are subject to change based on the actual game/event. She stressed that data comes directly from the venue. She contended that because these seats were not explicitly identified as having "obstructed views," there was no way buyers would worry about that possibility (regardless of what they saw on the floor plan). She even debated his interpretation of the seating chart and questioned whether the presented angle was as undesirable as he suggested.

From the standpoint of a debate, some of her points were applicable and worthwhile. Some were irrelevant and absurd. None, however, reflected an appreciation for the user’s concern or an accountability to resolve the issue. None suggested a desire to remedy the situation.

None, therefore, had any business in a customer service environment.

Signposted by her refusal to depart the realm of the generic, scripted and argumentative, she ultimately brought the call to an end before a resolution had been achieved.

In her eyes, she had communicated all there was to communicate – and there was no reason for the call to continue. It did not matter that the customer was not only communicating a demeanor of dissatisfaction but outright declaring the issue unresolved. It did not matter that she did not confirm his intent to end the call. She, as the individual responsible for serving the customer, somehow felt she possessed the unilateral ability to decide when the call had reached its end.

The frustrating scenario was of immense personal familiarity – and not merely within the context of live chat. Over the years, I have witnessed many interactions—in a myriad of channels—reach premature ends because the agent’s investment in the call had prematurely expired. Whether he felt nothing could be done, felt he had done everything he could do, felt he had exceeded the time he could allot to the call or felt that the customer was no longer deserving of assistance, the agent acting based on unilateral motivation. He was not basing his decision on cues or comments from the customer; he was basing the decision on his own needs.

In essence, the agent employed to serve customers was instead making a self-serving decision.

Impacted by imperfect humans interacting with other imperfect humans within the confines of imperfect systems, customer experiences are inherently doomed to imperfection. Mistakes will happen. Inefficiencies will emerge.

But the mistake present in the StubHub interaction—and in the countless similar ones I encountered—is not a product of unavoidable imperfection. It is a product of a fundamental misalignment between the meaning of customer service and the iteration of customer service being offered by countless businesses. It is a sign that the "age of the customer" has not yet fostered an age of customer centricity.

From the individuals they hire, to the way they train them, to the culture they foster, to the processes and procedures they implement, to the empowerment they offer, to the way they measure, every facet of a business’ customer experience approach needs to be built to serve customers. When an element of the customer experience produces ambiguity or even dispute about the business’ fundamental objective, the service being provided will naturally recede into a more problematic, damning realm of imperfection.

Imperfection in pursuit of excellence is inevitable. Imperfection created by pursuit of the wrong end is unacceptable.

Leaders, when crafting big picture customer service strategy, always begin by thinking about the aim of your strategy. What end are you trying to achieve? To whom is your work most accountable?

If the respective answers are customer satisfaction (or loyalty, advocacy, etc) and customers, you are on the right track. From there, be sure every element of the strategy (including the agents who actually handle the interactions) servesthat end. Know the interactions are not complete until the customer feels they are complete. Know success is not achieved until the customer demonstrates satisfaction with the performance.

Know that the customer experience—and specifically the customer service element of that experience—is a framework designed to most productively deliver for customers. If it is distracting from that end, let alone yielding a different outcome, it is a flawed strategy.

When crafting a strategy in accordance with the right view of customer service, here are some points to consider:

Do not implement rigid parameters: The parameters created by rigid processes, taut scripts and "efficiency metrics" might fundamentally seem like they are in the best interest of the business, but they are absolutely not in the best interest of the customer experience.

The "job" associated with each interaction can only be defined by the specific intricacies of the customer’s issue, sentiment and desired resolution. Suggesting that an agent could somehow "complete" his work by going through the entire script, exercising the standard set of procedures or reaching a maximum call time is therefore fundamentally unworkable in a customer-centric environment.

Customer sentiment is the agent’s only "progress bar," and it is only via that progress bar that an agent can determine if his work is complete. Introducing a series of tasks or restrictions blurs the agent’s vision of the progress bar, confuses the intent of the call and damages the customer experience.

Do not vilify frustrated customers: Even in a sincerely customer-centric environment, there comes a point at which customer rudeness becomes too much to handle. If it comes to directly prevent the agent from successfully locating and delivering a resolution, it cannot necessarily be justified under the "customer is always right" mantra.

That point, however, is not an easy one to reach. Contact center leaders need to assure their agents are cognizant of the emotion associated with each interaction. That emotion, often resulting from a bad experience, can materialize as anger or frustration. Instead of conditioning agents to approach that anger as "rudeness," they need to stress that it is the center’s job to turn that anger into happiness. Belligerent customers are not necessarily awful people; some are belligerent because of the service they are receiving.

To hold that emotion against them – and prematurely bring calls to their ends – is to not only ignore the business’ responsibility for that emotion but to increase the ill will customers carry towards the brand.

No contact center supervisor should expect his agents to endure vicious disrespect. A customer-centric supervisor does, however, recognize that he and his agents might be responsible for producing the disrespect and thus must be accountable for remedying the matter.

Position customers atop the hierarchy: The dynamic within the customer service function is an unusual one.

On the one hand, agents are employees. Their salary is paid by their employers. Their performance is evaluated by their employers. Their career development is controlled by their employers.

On the other hand, agents are employed to serve customers. Their success of their efforts, therefore, should logically be determined by customers.

Understandably committed to their jobs more than they are to the purity of customer service, employees will naturally behave the way they believe their employers want them to behave. They will do what they think their bosses—their workplace bosses, not their idealistic customer service bosses—want them to do.

The result is a faulty perspective within contact centers. Agents should be exclusively serving customers but make the most concerted, direct effort to serve the perceived needs of their workplace leaders.

To overcome this, businesses need to communicate that the customers, indeed, are their bosses. They need to cement the notion that an agent committed to his customers is the type of agent to whom the business wants to remain committed. Action that cannot be justified as customer-centric, meanwhile, should be written off as similarly oppositional to business interests.

Empower agents: Talk is cheap. Agents in virtually all contact center environments are exposed to rhetoric about customer centricity, but they will ultimately take their cues from the reality of the center in which they operate. If they are not permitted to give meaningful compensation to disgruntled customers, they will know the business does not meaningfully value customers. If they are not permitted to break script when dealing with a unique issue, they will know the business does not care about getting to know customers on individual levels.

In order to assure agents know why they are there, businesses have to let them do what is needed to support that objective. They must allow agents to think critically, independently and flexibly when interacting with customers. They must condition businesses to believe that the policies, scripts and systems that exist are not reasons to say "no" to certain customers but tools and guidelines to help agents more loudly say "yes."