This book was written in 2011. Not a lot has changed, and to nobody’s credit, it doesn’t even need updating. Customer service is very like sales; it’s the same game, whatever the environment. This is a less-than-idealistic view of the subject. Some will get it, and some won’t.
Introduction and a bit of general cursing.
Ah, customer service. The lambs are prancing in the meadows as the sun shines, and scantily clad nymphs are playing harps as the rivers of gold flow majestically to executive Lotus Land.
Like hell.
The rabid dogs are raging in the industrial wasteland, and the undead are filing lawsuits as designer suit-clad urine samples stab you in the back while the sewers overflow, usually all over your desk.
If you’re in management, you believe it when you see it, not before, and you don’t buy any bull about anything until it’s audited and someone’s signed off on it.
In customer service, you’re a bit less idealistic than that, if you’re thinking of having a career in management, a life, and other little details.
About me: I have 20 years experience in customer service, at the bottom of the coal face, and this book comes from the heart.
I’ve dealt with people in just about every state of mental misery as a result of customer service situations.
I’ve supervised people trying to do their best in customer service with baying accountants and foaming at the mouth lawyers raging at them.
I was a frontline phone inquiries clerk in a government agency which was getting sued on the basis of phone advice.
So I do know what an aggressive client base is. They don’t say it with guns; they say it with lawsuits and anything else which is expensive and time consuming.
I also know what goes wrong in customer service, and why it happens.
These days I’m a professional writer. The legacy of my customer service days is that I don’t expect anyone to read non-information, or cutesy crap about “good outcomes”, and “empowering” any damn noun in a text.
There are quite enough insults to humanity in the world of management science without me starting up a few more.
This book is about a business mindset which has to change.
Lousy customer service is trashing the business sector. It’s costing billions.
The standards of business practice which are tolerating poor customer service are also tolerating:
- Dangerous legal situations, each one worth any amount in damages.
- Lost business because some idiot won’t spend time with a client, anyone’s guess what that’s worth.
- Extremely expensive marketing, sabotaged from day one by hopeless service to clients.
- Disconnected warning systems, because customer feedback isn’t being heard. This makes headlines on a daily basis.
This is nothing more or less than a slopfest.
Also to the point, this is supposed to be business.
Businesses are paying for the privilege of a business culture which has never really been taught the importance of customer service.
Worse, a sort of cultural fungus of issue evasion has developed. The wrong sort of legalisms have been allowed to fester.
The business equivalent of Candida albicans (thrush) is a mentality where the people paying the money that drives the business don’t matter. The result is a nasty, costly, rash, and some very uncomfortable, often risky, business and legal situations.
How many avoidable situations with clients have you seen? Things that never needed to happen, that used up incredible amounts of time, very expensively, and achieved nothing? Maybe even cost market share, or lost it completely?
If you’ve been alive sometime in the last 50 years, it’d be quite a few.
How much money do you feel like losing because you don’t have any real grip on your customer situations?
When does “out of control” become “out of business”?
When does “manager” become “manager with albatross around neck”? So- By the light of a few burning management consultants, read on.