No Wonder They Are Treated Like Children.

Be the Change.

When I asked the customer care managers to tell me what they considered their biggest problem, they replied, “Our supervisors don’t take personal responsibility for outcomes.” Next, I met with the supervisors and posed the same question and got the same answer, “Our reps don’t take personal responsibility.” Then I conducted some focus groups with their reps in which I heard a chorus of “we are treated like children!”

And then there were the customers. I read verbatim comments about the reps from customer satisfaction surveys such as, “She didn’t seem to care.” “I just got the runaround.” “I had to repeat myself three times before she got my problem.” Translation: The rep didn’t take personal responsibility for solving my problem.

It was clear to me that this client didn’t have a supervisor training problem. They had a much deeper problem. They were operating in command and control culture that was risk-averse.

Somewhere along the way doing the right thing for the customer had fallen off their collective radar. While the leaders spouted phrases like “customer centricity,” “Wow! the customer” “exceed customer expectations” they didn’t walk the talk. As is true in many customer service organizations, what gets measured is what gets done. Success was
defined by making your numbers (average handle time, quality scores, occupancy, etc.).

As you can imagine, there was no quick fix for this client. It took a multi-pronged approach over several quarters lead by a VP who understood that what really mattered was training her managers and supervisors to replace the existing  “firefighting” style with a more “intentional” approach; the basis of which was living a set of three core values.

For the next three Monday’s I will share with you what I consider to be the three most important core values for customer service organizations, The 3 P’s: Personal Responsibility, Positive Regard, and Proactive Resolution. These values are at the heart of my “Intentional” approach to customer care — the antithesis to reactive firefighting.

This Week’s Leadership Challenge:

• Be authentic.
• Work on purpose.
• Begin with right intention.
• Focus on the person, and the numbers will follow.
• Do the right thing.
• Treat others as you would like to be treated.
• Remember that what you expect is what you get.

In other words, Be the Change.

Barbara Burke

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www.barbaraburke.com