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3 Overused Tactics of Poor Customer Service

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 18:00:44 +0000

We hope it’s an individual and not a company-wide problem. It could be poor hiring or poor training that results in certain counterproductive tactics that account executives and customer service representatives in big companies increasingly use.

It seems to occur when companies oversell goods and services and then are unable to adequately service their accounts. The people whose job it is to interface with the customer tend to be harried, overworked, and somewhat confused.

But the message to the customer is clear. “Go away, get off the phone. I don’t have time for you, you’re lucky to get me at all. Accept my excuses and empty promises or you’ll get even less.”

Any startup or buildup company would certainly go out of business if their representatives sent this message by their words, actions, or inactions. It seems like this kind of experience is a growing danger in some buildout and enterprise companies that grew too fast, promised ongoing results, and filled their service jobs quickly but not necessarily with well-trained professionals.

Poor Customer Service Examples

Here are some of the behaviors we have witnessed from a customer standpoint:

1. Missed Deadlines

“Don’t worry. I’ll have that for you tomorrow,” is the usual promise, evidently to get you off the phone. But then tomorrow comes, and the day after, and there is no communication whatsoever. You have to call or send emails day after day until you receive what they promised. The implication is that it’s up to you as the customer to oversee them as the service provider.

This sends an “I don’t care, you’re not important to me” message. This frustrates the customer and makes them wonder why they did business with the company in the first place. But they’ve already bought the service, and now they’re locked in. The representative knows this and so there is no sense of urgency. They’ve got us over the barrel!

2. Blaming Others

“It’s not my fault, the tech people didn’t get back to me.” Or “Well, that’s what I was told.” These same representatives force the customer to go only through them for all interactions with their company. The customer is at the mercy of the representative. The representative can say anything to the customer with no accountability. This is because the customer can’t access the right people in the company to get a satisfactory answer.

“They’ve changed the rules,” is another common excuse. In this scenario, the representative blames a third-party for not being able to deliver what they promised. While it’s true that rules change, the representative is under no pressure to identify those changes as soon as they occur. Sometimes the representative only finds out about the rule change when the customer complains about nonperformance. Since the customer can only go through a representative, the customer has no way of knowing when the representative was truly aware of any rule change. But the results usually waste the customer’s precious time. Again, this demonstrates no sense of urgency on the part of the representative.

3. Avoiding Work

“You don’t need that fixed anyway.” “Me and my colleagues have decided it’s not necessary and everything works fine just the way it is.” This is a typical tactic to avoid doing the work the customer requests. Even when it’s the company’s responsibility to provide services without glitches, the representative tells the customer that the glitches are okay and don’t need fixing.

This tactic creates an argument between the customer and the representative as to the true need for the fix. The representative takes the position, “I’m the expert, and I’ll be the judge of that.” This is to mask the fact that the work was not done in a timely manner. It’s like, “It doesn’t matter that we didn’t do the work because it wasn’t needed anyway.” It’s another convenient excuse.

Conclusion

We’ve witnessed other tactics of poorly hired or poorly trained representatives working for large companies that can’t service what they’ve sold. These include emphatically stated outright errors, poor or no preparation for meetings, little or no knowledge of account history, poor coordination, and never acknowledging a mistake or a missed self-imposed deadline.

All of these tactics can occur when representatives believe they are going to get paid no matter what happens to the customer. For them, it’s hours put in and they are overworked. So, their goal is to reduce the work any way possible. We’ve seen this problem occur in top-down companies that view customer service as “complaint resolution.”

These tactics ultimately discourage the customer to the point that they feel obligated to warn others that the company can’t live up to its promises. This reputation hurts the company’s sales. But in the meantime, companies that behave like this suffer a great deal of turnover. This is because they don’t treat their employees much different than they treat their customers. The good ones who want to do a good job, and want to work for a company that lives up to its promises will move on. The turnover hurts the relationship with the customer even further.

It’s only a matter of time before these types of companies will implode from their own policies. We’re shopping, how about you?

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Prepare for the Unexpected!

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 17:00:29 +0000

“How do you handle the unknown?” This is the #1 question we hear from students. They come from over 50 schools of entrepreneurship in the US and elsewhere who have heard us speak about what it is like to start a business and become a successful entrepreneur. Many of these students are considering taking the big leap into entrepreneurship. They are naturally anxious about the uncertainties, risks, and challenges of life without a paycheck. They want to know how we overcame the fear of the unknown.

Is there some formula, procedure, or process you can just cut and paste that will protect you? Is there a failsafe way to survive the dangers of entrepreneurship? Is there just “the one thing” you need to know? In spite of the daily hype, pandering, and outrageous claims to the contrary, the answer is a flat “No!”

After we monetized our equity in the Barefoot Wine brand, we were encouraged by colleagues to write about how we did it; specifically, how we handled the unknown. The answer, in retrospect, was a set of guiding principles; some we had previously learned and applied from day one; some we learned by asking questions of others; and some we learned the hard way. There is no “just one thing!” It is a multifaceted approach to doing business we call “the Barefoot Spirit.”

A big part of the Barefoot Spirit is the Guiding Principles for Success, GPS for short. These are critical and learnable standards, attitudes and soft skills that we used to minimize risk, prepare for the unknown, improve the quality of our decisions, and reduce our need for capital.

With the information revolution and the advance of technology, we saw a whole new generation with a whole new approach to business. We saw new platforms, and new products and services. We saw the disruption of so many old ways of doing things that in the process, we may have inadvertently thrown out some classic business principles. A big mistake!

With an accelerating failure rate, loss of investor capital, and increasing inability for startups to achieve positive cashflow, it’s finally time to bring back those classic principles. When it comes to the past, take the best and leave the rest. The best of the past is a big part of the Barefoot Spirit.

When you start a business, prepare yourself for the adventure! Just like a seasoned sea captain, you wouldn’t dare go out to sea without being prepared for the unknown. You need radar, sonar, weather satellites, charts, a GPS and a sextant to back it up.

Being the captain of your “entrepreneur-ship” is no different. It doesn’t really matter how good your idea is if you run out of capital, lose your people, or lose your buyers. Just like the sea captain, you need a set of guiding principles and standards to hold your decisions up against to make better ones. You need to know how to gain the confidence of your investors, employees, vendors, and buyers.

We have identified 20 Guiding Principles for Success that, if applied, will mitigate your risks, and better prepare you for the unknown. They worked for us and they can work for you. Interested? Stay tuned as we explore them in the coming months. Like our audiences, you too may be saying, “I can’t wait to get back to my business and try the GPS out!”

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Build Trust with Timely Status Reports

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 17:00:54 +0000

There’s a new phenomenon happening that we never saw ten years ago. It is a best practice that somehow got dropped from the up-bringing, educational and training processes.

In today’s workplace, we see employees keeping vital information to themselves and not reporting it to others who have asked them for it …and need it to do or complete their job. This “sitting-on-it” style hurts everyone on the team.

In business, keeping your boss, your colleagues, and your customers up to date is essential. It builds trust in your relationships. It’s easy to say, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” but actions speak louder than words.

You must actually tell the person who asked for the information what you found out. Just because you know, doesn’t mean you can sit on the information. When you are asked to check into something, it is assumed that you will share what you have found.

You can get back to others with a comfort call, a timely update, or a status report. Or you can wait in silence until they call you and ask, “Hey, what’s going on?”

Nothing is more irritating than having to check up to see if someone really did what they said they would do, are still working on it, or dropped it entirely! Not knowing causes anxiety.

So why do so many people go dark after they say they’ve “got it covered”? The fact is, it leaves the requestors, guessing. It makes them wonder what’s going on, not just with the request, but what’s going on with you.

Are you deliberately going dark, hoping they will forget the request? Are you depending on them to remind you? Are you dropping it until they mention it again? Are you so late in your response that you are embarrassed to admit to your tardy status because you think you will get in trouble? Do you think they don’t need to know until the task is completed, even if weeks go by?

Do you realize that this makes the requesting party anxious? Their mind reels with the possibilities and it keeps them awake at night.

Whatever your excuse, it’s damaging to your company, your team, and your reputation as a professional businessperson! No news is worse that bad news.

If you get a request that is a long-term, ongoing project, give the requesting party a comfort call or shoot them a memo every few days.

Timely status reporting has so many benefits. For one, even if you’ve had no progress, it puts the requesting party’s mind at ease. They don’t have to wonder about you or question your motives. It just plain shows respect. Suspense is stressful.

For another, it says, “I am keeping you up to date, so you can trust me to not drop it.” When you demonstrate that you care about relieving their anxieties, they will see you as professional, reliable, and indispensable. When you show you care about the requesting party, they will care more about you.

In any case, do not let so much time go by that they feel compelled to ask you about it. If you keep them in the dark on a regular basis and they find themselves frequently asking you what’s up, don’t think they don’t notice. This kind of sloppiness can result in lost relationships with your vendors, customers, associates, and employers. You are jeopardizing the effectiveness of your team mates. You could even lose your job.

Show others the common courtesies you expect. Put their minds at ease. Show them you are on top of it. Earn their trust …and your own security. Get back to them on a timely basis!

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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