Management, Human Resources, and Life in a Customer Focused World

If you run a customer service organization and you have heard “the system won’t let me” from your agents, think about whether you’ve given your agents enough empowerment and/or whether the systems are what are keeping you down.

Service Untitled » The system won’t let me. – customer service and customer service experience blog

The writer of the Service Untitled blog pointed out some of the pitfalls of that particular word. It’s quite true. Consider what your customers hear when someone says “the system won’t let me”. I know what I think. The first two things that come to my mind are:

1. They’re lying. The policy is just that they don’t want to help people and so this is a good, easy excuse.
2. Their system team needs to do better. A system should NOT be what causes the customer service agent to not be able to help the customer.

If your policies are what’s dictating that the customer can’t do it, don’t tell the customer it’s the system. If it’s the system that’s causing the problem, don’t have your agents tell the customer’s that. Have your agents say “Let me find out what can be done and I’ll get back to you by XXX date/time”. And then find out.