Be nice

Sometimes I read something and I think, "I wish that I'd written that." Or, "That's exactly what I thought." Haven't you?

I enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's TheTipping Point and so bought his latest offering blink. Although it's not related directly to Customer Service, some of his principles can be applied. For example, he writes about doctors being sued.

"Believe it or not, the risk of being sued for malpractice has very little to do with how many mistakes a doctor makes.... Patients don't file lawsuits because they've been harmed by shoddy medical care. Patients file lawsuits because they've been harmed by shoddy medical care and something else happens to them.

"What is that something else? It's how they were treated, on a personal level, by their doctor. What comes up again and again in malpractice cases is that patients say they were rushed or ignored or treated poorly. ‘People just don't sue doctors they like,' is how Alice Burkin, a leading medical malpractice lawyer, puts it. ‘In all the years I've been in business, I've never had a potential client walk in and say, "I really like this doctor, and I feel terrible about doing it, but I want to sue him."

Medical researcher Wendy Levinson found clear differences between the doctors who were sued, and those who weren't. The surgeons who had never been sued spent more than three minutes longer with each patient than those who had been sued did (18.3 minutes versus 15 minutes). And even more basically: if the surgeon's voice was too dominant, the surgeon tended to be in the sued group. If the voice sounded less dominant and more concerned, the surgeon tended to be in the non-sued group.

How does this apply to Service Improvement? Well, you don't have to be a surgeon (brain or otherwise) to figure it out. Customers want to deal with people they like! In other words, anyone in your company who is rude, aggressive, arrogant, dominant, or a belligerent pain in the arse is doing you extensive damage.

Customer Service is not a pretty little notion for the front-of house staff and call centre operators to play with. It is Vital to your business. It has become the most powerful marketing weapon in your business arsenal. Get rid of anyone in your company who believes in that antiquated adage, "I'm not a people person. But that's fine, because I'm just a backroom boy." Eliminate any segmentation between "Customer-contact" people and "backroom boys". Everyone in your company needs to be service orientated. It's critical to your survival.

This attitude needs to start at the top. So, if your MD is blinded by his/her self-importance and can't be bothered to connect with customers, dishing out naïve excuses like, "I'm too busy", or "That's not my job"; better still, "I'm trying to run the company", then look for another job. You'll have to soon anyway because the company will collapse.

We the customers demand to do business with people that we like, that show an interest in us, that are prepared to spend time with us, and that want to deal with us. And by people, I mean EVERYONE in the company.

 To finish off with another story from blink, the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer cast Tom Hanks in the hit movie Apollo 13. He said, "I saw this movie about a spacecraft in jeopardy. And who does the world want to get back the most? Who does America want to save? Tom Hanks. We don't want to see him die. We like him too much."

Can I be more obvious?

For more advice on customer service, visit www.petercheales.co.za