Each time you call or are transferred, you spin the wheel. Sometimes they can help you, sometimes they can’t. Most of the time, whether you are helped or not depends on which person you speak to on the phone, or the chat, or in person.

Service roulette.

Having worked with more than 150 companies in my customer experience consulting and training career, I have found that because they get nice notes and generally good customer satisfaction scores, companies think they’re doing a good job. The reality is that in most organizations, there are people who are doing a great to phenomenal job with customers, some who are doing a competent job, and those who are doing the job in a “fair” or “unsatisfactory” way. When this happens, the customer takes a chance every time he calls, texts, or comes in. He’s playing Service Roulette.

I recently played a game of Service Roulette with Xfinity/Comcast, trying to begin my “Triple Play” service. I was already a Comcast TV customer, but now was moving my internet and my phones from AT&T. (I know, which devil do I choose?). I was to get super hi-speed internet, HDTV on three TVs, one DVR and two other boxes to play recorded shows anywhere in the house. They were also going to “port” my two phone lines and rent me a router. Here’s how the game played out. We’ll mark each as “good spin” or “bad spin” on the roulette wheel.

1. After placing the order, they told me they couldn’t install everything for nine days, on which day I would be out of town. (Bad spin).
2. Got a manager who told me she would do everything she could to get me an earlier appointment and would let me know when one opened up. She never did, so I had to change the appointment to a day when I’d be home, four days after the original appointment (bad spin)
3. Technician shows up. He hooks up the TVs with the DVR and two other boxes and while installing the phones, he tells me he has an order for only one phone line, which means nobody moved the other line from AT&T (bad spin). Then after installing the internet modem he tells me that my router is a DSL router and doesn’t work with cable internet. When I tell him I was supposed to get a router from them, he says he doesn’t have one for me. He also only hooks up the phone line in one room. (Such a bad spin the wheel is coming off).
4. I go on Twitter and write, “#comcast screws up again. Don’t know y thought would different this time. Forgot to put router on order; now want to charge for coming back” #ComcastCares tweets me and gets the ball rolling to fix my situation. (good spin)
5. Next day I get a call from the “Executive Service Center” and speak to a woman who becomes my advocate throughout the process. She stays with me every step of the way and makes sure I have my appointments set. (Great spin!)
6. That night I go to watch a recording on one of the DVD players and it doesn’t work. (bad spin)
7. When my appointment day comes, the technician walks in carrying my internet router. I confirm that he will install the internet and the phone line (we’re still waiting on the other phone line). The technician says nobody told him he had to install the phones and he’s not trained to do so. After talking to my advocate, he leaves. (bad spin)
8. Second technician that day comes, makes sure the “any room DVR” system is working, hooks up the internet, and makes sure the phone line is working all over the house. Now all we have to do is to wait for them to “port” the second phone line. (good spin, for now)
9. Next day I go down to my office and find the phones in my office are not working. (bad spin from the previous good spin)
10. My advocate moves the second phone line from AT&T to me and a technician shows up to install it. When I tell him the phones in my office don’t work, he informs me that unlike the phone company, a cable modem doesn’t have the bandwidth to handle two lines in four rooms. But he points out that with 35 years of experience, starting as a communications technician in Vietnam, he will make it happen. And it does. (great spin)
11. Next day, someone in technical support calmly and patiently walks us through setting up our email and network. (good spin)

Later that week, I get a call from Xfinity asking me to rate our technician (the last one who came to the house). What am I supposed to tell them?

The call was asking about the last interaction I had, but that wasn’t the whole story. The whole story was all 11 interactions I had. My advocate would receive a 10 on a scale of 10. The last technician also receives a 10 on a scale of 10. Leaving it at that would give Comcast/Xfinity a “false positive.” Everybody else would receive scores from 0-8. And my decision about whether to recommend the company is based on everybody who touched me, not one person.

The best companies provide consistent service across the board. This takes holding people to a high standard and providing continual education and training that drives them towards this standard. It also requires people to know their stuff and be able to make decisions on behalf of customers. You can’t provide consistent service by papering over a lack of knowledge, empowerment, and experience by forcing people to read from scripts. You can’t provide consistent service by throwing people into customer situations and hoping they learn on the job or from peers.

A number of years ago, I bought a “Pro” service plan from Dell. One of the features they promised was that I would always get their best technicians. I thought that was great, but then I asked myself, “If I’m getting the best, who is everybody else getting?”

They’re getting Service Roulette. And spinning the wheel.

Steve Cohn’s new book, “It’s Not Rocket Service: Managing, Meeting and Exceeding Customer Expectations” is available on Amazon.com. For more from Steve, “like” his “It’s Not Rocket Service” Facebook page.

I’m currently working with a company undergoing a massive customer experience effort, starting from the very top of the organization and trickling through the ranks down to the lowest level and lowest paid employees. It is a valiant effort at a company which is coming back strongly after quite a few lean years. The message they want to make is clear: “Customers are the most important thing we have. They pay our salaries. They are the reason we’re here.” The company adds, “And our employees are just as important because they have a direct effect on the customer’s happiness.”

I’m conducting training in quite a few locations throughout the country. For the most part, employees have shown interest in joining the new direction, if not enthusiasm.

Yet at every stop, I’ve heard the same thing – “Are our managers taking this class?” “This is great stuff only if management is behind it,” and “Does management know what you’re saying here? Because they sure aren’t practicing what you preach.”

One woman said, “If (management) has already taken this class, then how come my manager behaved like the SOB he’s always been just yesterday?” I replied, “Because when the managers walked out of the room two weeks ago, I didn’t place my hands on their heads and say, ‘you are healed.’ And I won’t do it for you either.”

That’s when I asked for the leap of faith. Especially when the training features information about enhanced communication, recognition, and manager/employee cooperation, none of which had started to happen yet.

The truth of the matter is managers had indeed taken the class and an additional class to talk about management techniques, but only one week before they started rolling out the training to the rest of the employees. And the managers made a pledge to put the program into effect and change behaviors. But since the employees were taking their version of the program just a week, or a few weeks after the managers took theirs, there was nothing to make the employees believe that anything would change.

Except a leap of faith, which would need to last only as long as they began to see some real changes. But what if they saw the changes first? What if the things that were going to change were already changing so the employees didn’t need a leap of faith that it was really going to happen?

Rolling out a customer experience initiative takes a long-term effort, starting with the higher level executives at the top of your traditional org chart. Each line on the org chart takes its cue from the one above. If middle management sees that the executive level has embraced a customer orientation, then middle management will be more willing to embrace policies that do the same. Supervisory personnel will take their cue from middle management. If middle management shows that making a choice for what’s good for the customer over what’s good for corporate efficiency, then supervisory personnel will manage their people accordingly. When supervisory personnel show that customers are more important than process, then employees will pay more attention to what makes the customer happy than what the process says. But none of these people will do any of this if they do not see the same from the level or levels above.

Rolling out a new communication initiative to create better communication between employee and management will not work if all employees know are promises of “what we’re going to do.” When communication, such as “listening meetings,” open discussions on process vs. customers, acceptance of employee ideas, empowerment and accepting mistakes actually take place, then employees are more apt to believe that communication is changing.

Celebrate milestones in the customer experience process, praise and honor those people who have shown through their work that they have bought in, and celebrate early wins so that people know things are getting better for them and their customers.

If a training initiative connected to the customer experience initiative is rolled out, roll it out to the managers first and make a big deal out of it. Let all the managers know what to expect and let their people know the managers are taking steps to be better and to institute such a customer culture in the organization. Then, when the training is rolled out to the employees, make a big deal out of it, too. Prime them beforehand with information about how this will be of great value not only to customers, but to them.

When people know that changes are happening and things are actually getting better, then they won’t need a lot of convincing to do what needs to be done to make the customer experience initiative a success. And it won’t take a leap of faith.

Bart is a sales rep for a medical practice software company. He uses a particular IT vendor for his own computer equipment and refers his clients to the same vendor for theirs.  Bart estimates that in the past year, he referred about $500,000 worth of Dell business to this vendor.

When Bart didn’t get anywhere with trying to get Dell to replace the battery (a battery which replaced another one which died after 16 months), he went to Chris, the IT vendor. He figured perhaps they would be more willing to push the rules for him, since he does quite a bit of business with them each year. No such luck. So Bart decided that Dell didn’t deserve his loyalty anymore. He called Chris again and had the following conversation:

Bart:      Chris, do you still sell, support and install HP servers and equipment?

Chris:     Yep.

Bart:       I would like you to quote HP equipment instead of Dell on all future deals I bring.

Chris:     Really? Over a battery?

Bart:      Yes. It’s not the battery; it’s the principle. I vote with my wallet. Please understand I am not mad at you. Feel free to share my emails with your Dell rep as well so he understands.

Chris:     I will share it with him now.

15 minutes pass and Bart gets an email from Chris.

Chris:     Your new battery will ship to us and you should have it by Friday or early next week. Oh, he asked me to ask you to please bring my next deal to Dell.

Amazing how that works.

Should Bart have expected that Dell would honor the warranty even though it had expired? My feeling is “yes,” and not just because he referenced over $500,000 worth of business to them each year. It should be “yes” even if he bought one or two pieces of equipment every few years, as I do. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do.

It’s the right thing to do because life doesn’t happen by the calendar or the clock. Cars break down, batteries die, and stuff happens. The warranty period is really just an arbitrary number. When Dell (or any other company) warranties a battery for 12 months, it’s not saying that they expect the battery to last for 12 months and that everything else is gravy. It’s a way to say that the battery shouldn’t break down in the first 12 months. It could be 13 months or 15 months. But most companies tend to use years for a warranty period. It’s easy.

I think this is a case of it being a blue rule. I’ve mentioned in a previous blog that there are two types of rules: Red rules and Blue rules. Red rules can’t be broken under any circumstance. They usually deal with health, safety, legal, ethics, and BIG financial. Blue rules can be bent for the customer. This is a blue rule. I don’t know the figures, but I’m sure there aren’t that many laptop batteries that die between 12 and 13 months. Allowing the occasional customer to stretch the warranty to 12 ½ months isn’t going to result in a BIG financial hit for Dell or any major computer company. Never mind that losing Bart would also mean losing a half-a-million dollars in business per year.

TD Bank (formerly Commerce Bank) opens its offices at 7:30 AM and closes at 8 PM, which is already a larger spread than most banks. But if you arrive at 7:20 AM or 8:10 PM, they’ll let you in – they just don’t advertise it. We’ve all had the frustrating experience of arriving at a store two minutes after closing and not being able to make a quick purchase.

Why does TD Bank do this when other banks don’t? It’s because they decided that their customers, big or small, were worth an extra 20 minutes a day of service. It’s because it knows that nothing always works the way we want it to work. And people sometimes show up a couple of minutes late.

If you owned a restaurant, would you refuse to accept a coupon and sacrifice a customer because it expired the day before? It would be a pretty stupid thing to do. It’s the same with warranties.

Don’t let your rules get in the way or customer experience. You’ll lose more than you know.

After a summer of light TV watching, the problem started happening again, which told me my next-door neighbor had started watching TV again and using the switcher. This time, however, in an attempt to save time, I decided to talk to someone from the cable company’s online chat. “Jerome” came on line to help me. Let’s see if you can spot the scripted dialogue.

Jerome: Hello Steve. Thank you for contacting (company) live chat support. My name is Jerome. Please give me one moment to review your information.

(pause)

Jerome: I do apologize hearing this from you and I know where you are coming from. Let me address this concern for you in the best way I can.

(pause)

Jerome: I understand you have a concern on your cable service by having a break picture and the technician visit about this concern as well. I definitely know where you’re coming from (Haven’t we heard this line before?) and I truly apologize for the inconvenience. I ams determined to resolve your issue today and I know we can do this together. I would like to verify how long have you been dealing with this concern, please? If you won’t mind me asking.

Actually, I do mind him asking because he did tell me he was taking a moment to review my information. If he reviewed my information, he’d know the answer.

Steve: It’s got to be over a year. Have you checked my problem history? Everything should be in there.

Jerome: I am very sorry to hear that this issue happened to you. I can understand the frustration when something is not working the way it is supposed to. I am glad you came to chat. I will do my best to assist you in resolving this issue. Let me check it through the account.

At this point, I’ve already heard three actual apologies, two “I know where you’re coming from” statements and one “I can understand the frustration when something is not working” statement as well as a couple of statements saying he’ll do his best to help me. It’s been 3-4 minutes already and he still hasn’t helped me because 90% of what he has said came from pre-written scripts. Which doesn’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies.

Then, some more scripts:

Jerome: I am very happy to check this for you. Please allow me two minutes to put you on hold and check this account and get back to you after. Is it okay with you?

Steve: It’s fine (considering he told me earlier that he reviewed my account, which apparently he hadn’t)

Jerome: Okay. Please allow me two minutes to check this account. By the way, while waiting for your account to pull up, I will share a feature that you can truly benefit from. Do you know that we have Pay Direct?

Because of his scripts, he has now violated the first rule of up-selling and cross-selling – never try to sell the customer something when he’s upset and/or you haven’t solved the problem yet.

After I said “No, I’m really not interested”, he popped in another scripted statement that started with “Great! I know this will help you a lot” before proceeding to explain the program.

The chat went on like that for another 15 minutes while he used script after script and didn’t solve my problem.  Not once did I feel the empathy he had so badly tried to convince me he had at the beginning of the conversation. Finally, I said goodbye, called the customer service line and spoke to a real person who could hear the emotion in my voice and seemed to jettison the scripts.

Here’s the thing:  Customers aren’t stupid. They know a script as soon as they hear it or see it. They know a script is impersonal, doesn’t address the issue, doesn’t show empathy, and is created not for their benefit but for the benefit of the company. Remember form letters? Those were the scripts we used to send by mail. Customers knew it was a form letter then too.

Supervisors and companies need to trust their people to say the right things, ask the right questions, give the right answers, and solve the problems without scripts. To do this, these people need to be trained, trained, trained. After training them, test them on their knowledge and ability to solve problems. Then let them do their jobs.

If you don’t trust them, don’t hire them. If you hire them, educate them. Your customers will appreciate it.

Oh boy. For those of you who have not been paying attention during the past day or so, Steven Slater is the JetBlue flight attendant who had a meltdown after a flight where (it now appears) not one, but two passengers cursed him out; one, over a dispute with another passenger about luggage space, and another over being told to sit until the plane was at a complete stop. With the plane on the ground, Slater unleashed a tirade over the loudspeaker system, released the emergency slide, grabbed two beers and escaped. He was arrested later on several charges.

Now, Slater is becoming a sort of folk hero to thousands (if not millions) of people who have had to deal with surly, abusive, and unreasonable customers in their own jobs, and who have had to spend time in the increasingly uncomfortable and difficult environment that is air travel today. Like Howard Beale in the movie, Network, they’re “Mad as hell” and are cheering Slater for indirectly saying, “I’m not going to take it anymore.”

One post on the Facebook page said, “”Kudos to you, I am a former flight attendant and only wish I had the nerve to do what you did!!!!!!” And yet another — “As a former F/A, you made my fantasy come true–you just did what we have all thought about doing a thousand times! Good Luck to you! “

There’s a lot of pent up anger out there about the way we’re treating each other.

First, a few thoughts: Steven Slater is not a hero for doing what he did (even though many of us would have loved to do the same). He put people in danger.  By using the loudspeaker system, he accosted the other passengers on the plane as surely as the rude and obnoxious passengers he had to deal with earlier accosted him. Should he go to jail? I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t want him serving on my flight.

One of the reasons why Slater is being hailed as a hero is because all of us have had to deal with these passengers and fellow customers who make our customer experience more difficult and less enjoyable. As a frequent flyer, I have witnessed passengers abuse airline personnel who had the “audacity” to announce a flight delay. I’ve seen passengers argue with flight attendants over simple things like shutting off their computers. I’ve seen passengers who wait until the flight attendant passes to put their chair back in the reclining position even though the rest of us have obeyed the rules and now have this “special” passenger sitting in their laps. According to the New York Daily News, Slater commented on such incidents when he went on an aviation website in March and posted his frustrations about luggage issues, “”I hate to be a ‘bag Nazi,’ but when I work a flight, I feel if I am not, then I am letting down all those who cooperate.”

There is a growing movement in business to kiss certain customers goodbye — customers who abuse service people, demand more resources than they’re entitled to, and in general, make the company/customer relationship difficult. Such customers not only get in the way of employees trying to serve their customers, but also customers trying to get something done. The vast majority of service people and customers are polite, friendly and cooperative. As I would tell any company that providing extremely poor service should be grounds for discipline or dismissal, so I would say that a company has the right to “fire” any customer who stops the company from providing the service its other customers deserve.

JetBlue has a great reputation as a customer-centered airline, and I applaud their past efforts. And I can see why they might be a little perturbed about Slater being hailed as a hero – he is not. But once this story dies down, JetBlue should quietly inform the passengers involved (and they should know who they were from where they were sitting) that they are no longer welcome on any JetBlue flight.

I often joke that I’d love to give a course called, “How to be a good customer” but no one wants it. With some customers, it’s not funny. Just as companies should have service personnel who know what they’re doing and are polite and helpful, there is no excuse for customers abusing company employees over a service issue.  Just as I hold companies to a certain standard when it comes to serving customers, I believe customers have an obligation in the interaction too. They need to provide the same respect to employees as they expect employees to provide to them.

If three surveys (and probably more) in one year are saying the same things, why aren’t companies getting it? Do they think that the attitudes don’t apply to their customer relationships? Or have they forgotten why they’re in business? (Hint: to serve their customers)

Here are some highlights from the U.S. portion of the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, which was conducted in the U.S. and 11 other countries:

• Americans will spend 9% more with companies that provide excellent service (Strativity said 40% of customers are willing to pay an additional 10%)
• In the current economic climate, only 37% of Americans believe that companies have increased their focus on providing quality service, 27% say these companies have not changed their customer service attitudes, and 28% say that companies are paying even less attention to good service than before.
• One in five feel companies take them for granted.
• 81% are more likely to repeat business after a good service experience and 52% will never do business with a company again after a poor experience.
• 91% of Americans base their decision to do business with a company on its level of customer service.

As we also know, the internet has changed the landscape of communication about customer experiences, but here are some actual numbers from the American Express survey:

• 48% use online postings or blogs to get others’ opinions about how companies treat their customers
• 57% put more emphasis on negative blog and social networking reviews than on positive ones.

What are your customers saying about you?

Frankly, these statistics should not be surprising. All you have to do is have casual conversation about service with people you know. As a consultant in customer experience, I could write a book on how people feel about the companies they do business with based purely on anecdotal evidence. When people hear what I do for a living, they often say, “Let me tell you a story about what happened to me …”

The news isn’t all bad. Some 86% of customers say they’re willing to give companies a second chance if their previous experiences have been great and 50% of Americans say it usually takes two bad service experiences before they’ll walk away.

Worldwide, consumers in 11 of 12 countries surveyed feel customer service has become more important in the current economy (The only exception was the Netherlands. Maybe they’re too focused on the World Cup).

While we aren’t surprised, companies still can’t figure out how to claim that “Great customer service” mantle.  Maybe it’s because 80% of companies believe they provide a superior customer experience but only 8% of consumers agree (Bain and Company, 2005).

Here are some things you can do:

• Analyze each of your customer touch points. Where do you touch the customer? How well are you doing in that touch point? What can you do to improve the experience during that touch point?
• Make each customer feel that you are on his or her side. Be a customer advocate. If you’re worried about spending the company’s money, remember the statistic about how much more happy customers will spend.
• Give your people the authority to act on behalf of the customer. Companies quash this authority with everything from overbearing, ridiculous rules to providing scripts that tell customer service representatives what they can and can’t say. We have all had too many experiences where we just knew the employee would do something right for us but was restrained by management.

The numbers in these surveys don’t lie. None of these surveys are outliers – totally different from the others. They say the same thing: Customers will pay more and do more business with companies who provide excellent experiences and they will gladly spread the word about companies who don’t.  If your company’s customers are not in the first category, you’re doing something wrong.

How hard a question is that to answer? How arrogant do you have to be to not anticipate that question and prepare for it? Worse than that, how could they not be able to say unequivocally that they do?

Even if you’re a cynic and accept the idea that brokerage firms’ sole purpose these days is to make as much money as they can in any way that they can, it’s still not a hard question to answer. A brokerage firm sells financial products, offers financial advice, and facilitates investments. With each customer transaction or consulting agreement, the brokerage firm makes mucho money. If the customer is happy, he invests more with the firm or buys other financial products, making the firm even more money. If the customer feels she can trust you, she will trust you with her money, which allows you to use that money to make more money. So who is the most important person here? In whose interest should the firm be working?

Apologists for the industry, especially Goldman Sachs, have pointed out that investments are a gamble and if a client wants to take a chance on a gamble, who are the firms to stand in his way? Apparently, they have forgotten that I go to a financial “advisor” for advice based on the expertise she has that I don’t. If I want to make a stupid financial gamble, I depend on my “advisor” to let me know it’s a bad idea. She should have my best interests in mind.

A client asked me last year if I would be willing to condense my 8-hour seminar into 6 hours. Chopping two hours off of the program wouldn’t be a disaster, but it would take away some of the seminar’s effectiveness. I told the client, “I am willing to do that, but I must tell you that I don’t believe your people will get the same benefits, information and understanding that they would get if they attended the full 8 hours. If you’re okay with that, I’ll do it.”

While I felt the need to say this for a 6-hour version of the program, I would not have considered doing the 8-hour program in 4 hours. I would have told the client that I didn’t feel it would be in her best interest to remove that much content. That’s my job.

What are your customers’ best interests? Are you selling them products because you want to sell them or because your customers really want and need them? Are you twisting yourself into a pretzel in trying to explain why your latest policy change is good for the customer when in reality it is only good for you?

The week before the Congressional hearings, I laughed at the absurdity as I watched the CEO of Spirit Airlines explain why its new policy of charging $45 for carry-on bags was “good” for customers. He explained that with less bags going in the overhead compartments, people will get on and off the planes more quickly. So, he’s saying that by bringing a second bag on the plane, I am stopping other passengers from getting off the plane more quickly – it’s my fault! And because it’s my fault, I am penalized $45. He’s protecting the poor passengers who have to wait while I get my bag from above the seat. If you believe that …

The customer/provider relationship is a partnership. You provide products, services and advice with my best interests in mind, and I spend the money to purchase those products, services and advice. When you have my best interests in mind, I am happy and I continue to buy from you. When you don’t, I leave. And when you combine not protecting your customer’s interests, doing it in a shady way, and growing so big that you’re “too big to fail,” you shouldn’t complain when you’re called before a Congressional committee.

I pressed the ignition button and all the lights went off. This confused me further. So I pressed it again and the lights went back on, but again, the engine wasn’t running. I put the car in reverse to get out of the parking space, but the car wouldn’t go. I shut the car off again and decided to flag down the first Hertz employee I saw.

The employee was a young woman who got into my car, noticed that my car was in reverse and gave me a look that said, “Idiot, the car’s in reverse.” She then pressed the ignition button and the car started. Embarrassed, I thanked her, got in the car, and drove to my hotel. I thought, “How stupid was I to leave the car in reverse? Of course the car wouldn’t start!”

The next morning, I got in the car and attempted to start it again, made sure the car was in park, pressed the button and again, nothing happened. After almost 10 minutes of looking for the car’s operations manual (which wasn’t in the glove compartment) and a customer service number, I could only find a number for roadside assistance. In utter frustration, I called, vented to the guy on the other end and finally listened when he explained to me that I needed to have my foot on the brake when I pressed the ignition button. Sure enough, I did what he said and the car started.

I’m not stupid, but I felt stupid because I didn’t know how to use the pushbutton ignition, until I realized it is definitely not intuitive to know that you’re supposed to press down on the brake in order to make the car start.

I’m actually a big fan of Hertz. I find their service to be very good and I’m a loyal customer, so I offer the following advice to them and everybody else:

1)      New technologies come quickly these days. Don’t assume your customer knows how to use the new technology. I drive a 2004 car, which I like very much. I’ve also rented more than 20 cars during the past two years and this is the first time I’ve had this situation.

2)      Anticipate your customer’s ignorance. As a Hertz Gold Club member, I don’t talk to any employees before I get into the car. Since nobody would have the opportunity to tell me how to start the car, there should have been some instructions in the car. Had I had those instructions, I would have figured it out pretty quickly.  Like I said, I’m not stupid.

3)      Make sure your customer-facing employees know the products you are selling (or in this case, renting). A couple of winters ago, I found myself driving to LaGuardia Airport in the middle of a snowstorm. My rental was slipping and sliding all over the place. It seemed every time I hit the gas, the car would skid, which seemed strange to me because I had traction control (which I had never needed before). The police had to push me out of several snow banks. I called Hertz twice to ask them what to do and nobody knew what to tell me except the normal, “Take it slow, apply your foot firmly on the break and don’t accelerate too quickly.” When I had just about given up, I desperately looked for something else to do and for some reason, shut the traction control off. With that one move, my car stopped slipping and sliding.  Wouldn’t it be simpler to have a “frequent problems during a snowstorm” list available for those times customers are calling in panic?

At one of my seminars a few years ago, an attendee said, “Steve, you gotta understand. Our customers are really stupid!” After stopping myself from saying, “Actually you’re stupid,” I said, “Our customers aren’t stupid. They just don’t know what you know. And you know what? You don’t know what they know.”

We live in a world of expertise. Our customers depend on us to be experts at our business and products and to know what they don’t. Anticipate their needs by asking, “what don’t they know and what can I do to not make them feel stupid?” Your customers will thank you.

It’s no better in MBA programs. I think this is a scandal.

I’ve said for years that customer service and customer experiences begin at the top of the organization. If the culture of the organization doesn’t foster a customer-centric attitude, you can’t expect the people who deal with customers every day to take the initiative to care about customers. Our colleges and MBA programs are training our future leaders to take the reins of business and at best, they are paying lip service to the most important interaction in business experiences — the interaction of employee and customer. Students are learning about economics, systems, supply chains, processes, metrics, and all sorts of statistically based subjects, but their education leaves out the people who actually buy your products.

It’s not all bad. According to an April 2009 article posted to Academe Today, a business coalition known as the Service Research & Innovation Initiative is promoting college courses and degree programs in “Service Science, Management, and Engineering.” According to the article, “its efforts had resulted in such offerings at more than 250 universities in 50 countries. About 100 of the institutions – half of them in the United States – offer full degree programs in the discipline.” However, there are over 4,100 4-year and 2-year colleges in the U.S. (and who knows how many worldwide), so the percentage of campuses offering such courses is extremely low.

Why aren’t more colleges offering such programs? Perhaps it’s because of the inherent bias in higher education towards the academic liberal arts and sciences and away from what many would call training for a job. Just a quick look at some of the comments to the Academe Today article shows this:

“And the convergence of education and training continues …”

“What is there to celebrate about turning colleges and universities into vocational schools? To what extent will students who concentrate on this kind of ‘science’ actually get an education as distinguished from job training for middle management?”

“Calling (customer service) a science doesn’t make it so.”

Guess what? People are going to college to get a degree and an education so they can have a career (or a job, at the least). And when they get that job, they’re going to have to deal with people. In order to deal with people, you have to know how people think, react and respond in customer situations, both internal and external. At the very least, all business majors should be required to take a course called, “the psychology of customers” taught from the point of view of service, not sales.  Even when there are such courses, they are more about marketing than service. Customers don’t stop doing business with companies because the marketing stinks – they leave because the service stinks.

The problem may be that service is considered too “soft” to be taught in schools. After all, it’s about caring, pleasing, attention to detail, understanding, nurturing, humbling oneself, seeing the world through the other person’s eyes, and being nice. Management-wise, it’s about creating policies and procedures in a customer-centric way.  It’s actually more a subject for Humanities than Science, which is not to say that there isn’t a science to great customer service.

A recent post in several service-oriented groups on LinkedIn asked the question, “Which is more important in hiring, caring or knowledge?” The overwhelming response was, “Hire for caring, teach for knowledge.” Wouldn’t it be great if those graduates coming to your company have already learned about the place of caring and service in the business world?

Customer expectations drive every aspect of their relationship with you. How can you exceed those expectations if you don’t know what they are?

I can hear you now – “We know what our customers’ expectations are! We just don’t list them on a plaque or on the website.” So let me ask you, are you sure? When was the last time you asked your customers – point blank – about their expectations?

I worked with a manufacturer that sold high-end products in jewelry stores. They hired me to teach their sales reps how to get the store’s salespeople to sell more of their products. The first thing I did was interview some of the company’s top sales reps about what the store salespeople want and expect. They gladly volunteered their opinions, many of which indicated that expectations were higher than the company could deliver.

I then interviewed managers and owners of the jewelry stores that sold the products and asked them the same questions about wants and expectations. It turned out their expectations were totally different that what the company’s sales reps thought they were. This disconnect was a major factor in the store’s salespeople’s willingness to push the company’s products. I had asked the questions the company should have been asking regularly.

If you’re like most people and companies, this conversation with your customers is long overdue.

We should be asking the customer about his or her expectations regularly – once a year or more. Questions could include:

• What are five (or ten) expectations you have of your sales representative?
• What do expect when you call customer service?
• What kind of time expectations do you have when it comes to emergencies?
• What do you expect when you open a new account with us?
• What do you expect after the job is done?
• What kind of follow-up do you expect?
• How often do you expect us to keep in touch during a project?
• What will make this project (training, product, event) successful for you?
• What kind of information do you expect us to provide to you?

Additional questions should deal with particular issues depending on the product, service, company and situation.

Once you have gathered the information from these “expectations” questions, your team should get together and brainstorm how to meet these expectations, who is responsible for doing so, and the resources you’ll need.

Companies spend vast amounts of money after the interaction asking customers whether their expectations were met. It’s time we spent some time and money finding out their expectations before we worry about whether we met them or not.