Open the Door, Let Us In
It was meant to herald unparalleled customer satisfaction. The optimal customer service menu would quickly, effortlessly respond to every customer complaint, problem, issue, question, whatever those bothersome idiots came up with. Bliss, bliss, bliss, everywhere you looked.
All you had to do was buy the right package, hire the right organization to install it and train a couple of human beings to make sure that it ran perfectly.
That was the idea anyway.
To mollify old-fashioned managers who insisted customers be able to access human beings at the organization, vendors would enable a default option. A customer could hit a sequence or the 0 on their phone and a human being would respond. It might take awhile, because other inconvenient humans might be on the line already, but ultimately, the customer could speak with a person. In words. They might even have a conversation, make small talk about weather or baseball or holidays while solving the customer issue and making the world a smoother-running, happier place. This was a win-win relationship where service ranged from automated to personal — as the customer required.
We customers, the regular people out in the world using your products in our own idiosyncratic stupid ways, knew that we could go directly to work with someone if we really needed to. The comfort, the respect, the peace of mind that resulted are impossible to overstate.
We truly did not want to speak with you if we didn’t have to. We live busy lives — and our days are filled with lots and lots of products and services and work and people like family and friends, lovers, colleagues, never mind our pets and hobbies. Yes, we’re very similar to you. Knowing that we could handle our own issues gave us power, confidence, convenience.
Then it went too far.
The entire customer service experience devolved to call centers, customer service menus, on-line portals to the mothership for the organization. Anyone anywhere could help themselves — and keep costs down for the company — as long as they knew their product codes, terms, and widgets inside and out. Win for the company, sometimes win/sometimes lose for the customer.
Slowly, but steadily, the ability to speak with a human deteriorated — if, indeed there was any way to contact a human being directly from the world outside the organization. Why waste precious time talking with a person when they were perfectly capable of taking care of their problem on their own? Why in the world was it taking those dumb customers so long to learn the proper sequence and terminology required to navigate our perfect system?
Why are customers such a pain?
I’ll tell you why.
Customers are dumb.
They’re dumb because you think they’re dumb, build your perfect systems to barricade yourself behind efficiency, effectiveness, cost savings, and customer satisfaction metrics that have nothing to do customers nor satisfaction.
When you accept that customers are people, too, and understand that customers are the ones who buy your product and use it and have problems that they want you to help them solve, then we’re talking.
Relationship with your customers goes both ways: customers are only as dumb as you decide they are and what you decide determines what they decide you are.
However, the customer holds the ultimate power to leave the relationship and find another one that works for them.
Don’t be dumb.
Build a way for a person to speak with a human being. What’s more, make sure that the person who represents the voice of your organization is informed, courteous, speaks well, and has the resources and authority they need to solve problems.
While you’re at it, make it easy to reach you. Let it be a big button, an immediate option, a direct way to get past the hairy menu to the core of the issue.
If you don’t, rely upon your dumb customer to find someone else who will help them. There is always someone else — do not think you have any idea what the customer wants and needs unless they tell you directly. And even then, trust that they are telling you what they need to tell you so they get what they want. No one anywhere is the only way to get something done.
Customers may be a dumb, costly necessity in your world — but in the real world, they’re in charge of you.
