That’s the premise that the writer of Purpose Built has in one of his blog posts.

There’s a line in the post that strikes completely true. It has held true at the majority of the companies that I have worked for, interviewed at, consulted with, and talked to over the phone.

“I don’t engage with customers that is the (insert department name here) problem.”

On the face of things, this isn’t a huge issue. You support the networks. You fix bugs. You manufacture the products. You . That’s what the Customer Service department is for! That’s what the Call Center is for! That’s what … the “chosen ones” are for.

The problem with this attitude and perception is that organizations who view things this way take a very narrow focus on things. Everything thing that you do “directly impacts their opinion and experience with the company.” (taken from the same blog). I love it. It’s simple, yet truthful. Your network keeps the customer’s up and running; your bugs prevent the customers from having a perfect experience; your product is what the customers buy; etc etc and … etc.

You.

Did you know that?

Customers such as people currently trapped away from home in foreign countries are much more difficult to handle. With the ash spewing forth from the Icelandic volcano, there is not much that anyone can do to go above and beyond … is there?

British Minister Gordon Brown disagrees. Rather than standby, he has gone above and beyond. “The UK sent three Royal Navy ships yesterday on missions to rescue thousands of Britons stranded by the European flights ban.” (FT.com, 2010)

Yesterday, I was walking through a local grocery store. Walking may be a stretch — I was hopping on one foot, pushing a grocery cart and hobbling along with a crutch to support my leg. For me, there was no real other way to get around. Employees of the store and customers alike watched me with amusement (well, it IS funny to see honestly), but there weren’t any offers of assistance. After about ten minutes of this, I paused and was looking around for a product. A seemingly random stranger stopped and asked me, “Do you need some help?” My response was no, but thank you .. Even though it’s agony for me, I’m one of those people that would rather not impose on others if at all avoidable. Her response was, “Alright. Please let me know, though. I work here and would be glad to help you out.” This was a woman who, on her off time, thought enough of her customer service to offer to help someone who appeared to be struggling in her store.

Even if you’re not in the position to seemingly do anything, think about it. What can do you do to help bring something to the table that may be outside of the norm, yet could make a true impact on your business’ customers. It’s important to realize that your action, or inaction, directly reflects on the organization in which you work. Maybe you can use your Twitter account to respond to a customer complaint that you saw. Perhaps your Facebook network has a complaint that you can try to address. Perhaps you overhear some one complaining about your company at Starbucks.

Whatever the case may be, think about how an unexpected action may reflect on your organization …

The vast majority of customers we spoke with made the task pleasant and enjoyable.

This is a quote from Tom Vanderwell while he was doing surveys with people at a store’s checkout line.  It applies to every thing you do, honestly.  The majority of your interactions with people are pleasant and enjoyable, but a single bad apple tends to make your day gloomy and dark — forcing you to consider that the rest of the day might suck! This, however, isn’t the case.

In his post, Tom gives a great suggestion:

Each time you have a pleasant, friendly customer – jot down a hash mark or write the customer’s name on your sheet. When one of those negative customers comes along, look down at your sheet and refresh your memory of all the pleasant customers you’ve talked with.

Unless you’re in a truly horrid job and dealing with truly horrid people, I guarantee that you will begin to realize that your day isn’t really that bad.

If you present or use powerpoint for anything (training, business pitches, customer quality reviews, etc), please read both of these.  They’ll help you out significantly.  Some of these I’ve been guilty of, but I certainly make an effort not to fall into any of these traps too terribly often.

My personal failure is “Failure to rehearse“. I  always feel awkward rehearsing, so tend to wing it a bit too much.  I’ve been working on that thought!

My personal pet peeve is one of the ones that QAQNA’s writer, Tom Vander Well, has as well - “Reciting bullet points“.

Come on, people.. I learned how to read when I was little.  If all you’re going to do is read what is on the slide, just email it to me. Save both of us some time!

Basically, his point is that a company with a physical dress code expects that their employees adhere to it. Coming to work in shorts and a T-shirt when the dress code is slacks and a button down isn’t acceptable.  In the same vein, a company can expect a certain voice “dress code”.  An example of this might be using slang when the company wishes to portray themselves as professional or not including certain phrases that are required by the organization.  The first would equate to the earlier short vs slacks example while the second would be more like wearing a uniform or certain color to work.

I’ll have to use this in the future .. it’s a good way to explain something to an agent that simply doesn’t want to follow the defined guidelines.

Here’s a few that I want to stress.

• Having customers hear your kids playing in the background

Working in a noisy area or with the TV on is distracting and no way to excel. A quiet workplace is the key to success when working from home – it is essential for concentration and for receiving business calls. When customers can hear kids, dogs, TV and other noises in the background, they most likely will assume you are not devoting your full attention to your work. If your customer can hear the noise, there is a good chance that your supervisor could hear the noise as well. A good home office sounds just like a good office environment – silent.

• Using “ancient” technology

Frequently losing Internet or phone connection while working from home will prevent you from doing your job and ultimately lead to losing it. Most companies that allow you to work from home will have specific technology requirements to ensure that their applications function effectively – not adhering to these could be grounds for termination.

• Not understanding the definition of multitasking

Doing laundry or other household chores while on the clock are not perks of working at home. Work time is work time and should be dedicated to professional duties. Mixing personal and professional duties will lead to unfocused work, unsatisfactory performance and a potential job hunt in the near future.

• Spending your work time shopping online

Just because the boss cannot walk by your desk at any moment and see what you are working on does not mean you don’t have to work. When working from home, it is important to be able to prioritize and work efficiently. Goals still need to be met and dedicated work time should be spent doing just that … work.

• “Showing up” late or consistently “leaving” early

Just as your co-workers and supervisors expect you to arrive on time in an office setting, they expect the same when working from home. Responsibility and dedication are extremely important. You must be able to motivate yourself to keep on schedule to succeed when working from home.

To me, the rest are common sense and even apply to a standard office job. Things like “Don’t mouth off to a customer” should be logical and a part of your professional career.

Working from home, as an employee, is a luxury that shouldn’t be abused.  The company is hiring you to do a job effectively, so do that.  Be professional.  Those that don’t? They’re the ones that make life difficult for the rest of the people that want to work from home.. they’re the ones that make the managers go “Why should I?”

The biggest pitfall that companies doing this need to be aware of is something that I’ve also noticed in the last three places that I’ve been where this type of brainstorming session has been put to use.

Identifying 10 priorities to improve and then only hitting 10% of them.

It’s great to have some major goals.  That’s the point. But if your list of goals is unattainable because you’re trying to do to much with the resources available, you’ll simply be compiling the exact same list next year … and the year after … and so forth.  Pick the top three priorities that need to be done.

If you get them done before the end of the year, have a second meeting — there’s no rule that says you can’t optimize your priority list more than once a year.

If you don’t get them done, you need to look at whether the priorities are actually priorities or whether you’re simply putting them up because they “might look good” if they were accomplished.

Having a list of priorities and things that really need to get done because they are the “worst” of last year means that they really should be focused on.  Get them done.  If you don’t, not getting them done will end up on the “worst” of the current year — morale will suffer, your priority list will simply cease to have importance, and you’re just wasting everyone’s time.

If you’re asked the question, answer it with fault that can also be perceived as a strength (perfectionism, focus, control, etc) and explain how you’re working on controlling / bettering it.

I’ve got a membership to theladders.com and they write articles every so often. One of their latest articles has to do with the weakness question and how to improve it. I thought it was quite insightful. Due to it requiring a membership, I won’t copy the entire thing here but if you’ve got one, you can read it in their Ops ladder career advice section.

The writer, Rob Sullivan, suggests that interviewers ask the following question instead.

“Someone who doesn’t know you well doesn’t like you. What are five adjectives he or she might use to describe you?”

Once the interviewer has the answer, then ask…

“Now, let’s imagine you are on a team with a new person at the company. You notice there’s some tension between the two of you. You also realize that this person would probably describe you as …[insert their list of 5 adjectives]. How would you handle the situation?”

From an interviewer’s perspective, I think that this would be quite interesting and more insightful than a regurgitated Q&A. The advantage to the pair of questions is also that you’ll also be more likely to surprise the interviewee which tends to get a more direct and truthful response.

If you’re the interviewee, he suggests that you answer the question of “What are your weaknesses” with your answer to the above question. For example, in his case, he’d say:

Sometimes people who don’t know me particularly well get the wrong impression and see me as intense, angry and sometimes even aloof. Even though people who know me well would never use those words to describe me, I know I can come across that way at times. For this reason, I am taking steps to be seen as more kind and approachable – like being the person who smiles and says hello to strangers.”

What would you do or say?

To the technician in the blog post above, it meant nothing. The person was simply an object to be worked on, as though he were in a factory and the child was nothing but a generic “widget”. There’s a difference — if you’re in a factory, then you don’t deal with customers on your constant stream of objects. If you CHOSE to work with customers, then come on… DEAL with it. YOU made that decision. YOU should have the courtesy to actually do what it is that you’re supposed to — help the customer.

“If you have the customer’s phone number (from a voicemail or a callback request), put it into your system and see if anything comes up. If you have their email address, look it up. If you have their name, see what you can find.”

Phenominal.

“Once you’ve found the customer’s account, see if there is anything obviously wrong with it that could be causing a problem. Check to see who they are. When did they last call? The goal is just to glance at the screen and get a basic idea of who this customer is and what their story is about.”

Perfect.

If you’re going to call the customer back anyway, take the time to know who they are. This is very important and really quite simple.

As a story of a situation where this has not happened, I have a company that delivers water to my house. The only reason I am still with them is because their water is some of the only water that I can actually drink (I hate water… but it’s good for you!).

They are supposed to deliver to our house every 2 weeks, take the empty 5-gallon jugs of water and replace them with new ones. It doesn’t sound too hard to me. The problem is that since the beginning of the year, they haven’t hit one delivery date. I call up the next day and ask for a new delivery. About 1/2 the time, I get water the next day. The other 1/2, I have to call up a SECOND time. And so forth — sometimes it takes over a week to get the water that should have been there on a pre-scheduled, every 2 week basis.

So! Lately, I’ve gotten completely irritated with it and have been escalating to their route representative. I did that 3 months ago. I talked to him twice, but it didn’t get resolved. So I escalated to their Central Texas area manager a month ago. The way this works is that the contact center sends my information over to him by email and then he calls. When he called me, he didn’t know what I was calling about.

He should have asked for information if the call center didn’t provide it. He should have known exactly how many times I’d called up before, exactly what it was I was calling about, and what he was going to do about it.

To make things worse, they missed my delivery three weeks ago again. So I called up once more and escalated to him a second time. He called back — and left a single message saying “I guarantee you’ll have water tomorrow, thank you.” Come on!? That’s the best you can do after you’ve already talked to me? Ridiculous. But fine. I’ll accept that your service sucks, your water’s good.

Well, that was the case until this Monday. When, for yet another time, they missed my delivery. 2 delivers, 2 escalations.. don’t you think they’d get it right? Now, I’ve escalating to the Vice President level and am waiting for a call back. I wonder if he’ll call and have no idea who I am, why I’m calling. Granted, he was supposed to call yesterday — and didn’t. I called their call center again and they’ve said I’ll get a call today. If not, I guess I’ll go talk to their area President.

Well, I rambled some, but the idea is still the same. If you have a customer with a problem and you’re calling him back, at least know why they called and why you’re calling them back — if not more than that. More than that, as Service Untitled said, would be a great experience.