Customer Service: The Folly of Being Defensive in Business
by Kate Nasser | 11 Comments »
National Customer Service Week starts Oct. 4th, 2010. It is a time to celebrate customers, customer service, customer service agents, technical support reps, and to highlight key behaviors for truly memorable customer service.
I will write many posts for the next five weeks in anticipation of National Customer Service Week and today’s topic is — “The Folly of Being Defensive” when customers criticize your service.
Picture It! A customer tells you that your team didn’t get back in touch with them, has been unresponsive, missed a deadline, gave them an incorrect answer, was rude and non-empathetic, or a host of other negative information.
What Some Teams Hear. You are no good. They then explain to the customer why the customer service was bad in an attempt to recover their image. Being defensive like this is pure folly. Why? It has the exact opposite effect.
What the Customer is Really Saying. Help me and rebuild my trust. The truly memorable response includes empathy for the inconvenience, attention to fixing it now, and in some cases, compensation for the inconvenience and trouble. Once you have solved the issue in question, you might provide information on how this error will be prevented in the future if it was a serious error.
The folly of being defensive in business is that it reduces trust, makes working with you difficult rather than easy, and demeans your professional image. Avoid this defensive dribble.
You will regain customer’s trust when you take ownership of your mistakes, offer a sincere apology for the trouble, and fix the errors. It sends out a cheer of integrity, caring, and professional competence. It is worth celebrating. It is truly memorable. It will echo for quite some time. It delivers progress to your business and sets you apart from the average.
What else makes for truly memorable customer service? What do you expect as a customer?
©2010 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, is widely known for transforming customer service from average to truly memorable. Her workshops, webinars, and DVDs distinguish from others in their ability to activate behavior changes in your global customer service teams. Preview Kate Nasser’s new training DVD on regional customer differences in America http://katenasser.com/training-dvds.
Hello Kate. As always, valuable thoughts here for people in the workplace who are responsible for shaping a company’s culture brand and service reputation. Trust is the answer and taking ownership for mistakes with customers in a timely and authentic (make them *feel* this is the case and you have begun) manner is best practice. Make people feel special – it feels good and makes strategic business sense. It certainly takes energy and time – it’s definitely a worthwhile endeavor.
Yep Meghan — making people “feel” how valuable they are to your business is key. The steps to making that happen vary a bit — some want more empathy, a few want to move straight to fixing it, many want both. Detect which will work based on what they (customers) are saying and forge ahead.
Thanks for your comments and insight.
Kate
Kate,
Nicely written. I don’t think I’ve ever had a CSR act the way you suggest. I hear defensiveness but I don’t hear them express that they understand my concern.
I’ve been thinking about defensiveness lately. Defensiveness indicates that failure and mediocrity is my view of the best I can do. It’s pathetic.
Additionally, I think we lose the respect of others when we are defensive. Others respect us more when we are honest with our failures and honest about the impact of our failure on them.
Success to you. I’m looking forward to your Customer Service series.
Cheers,
Dan
Dan,
I always appreciate your contributions. I found this comment of yours “Defensiveness indicates that failure and mediocrity is my view of the best I can do” — very very true. If you believe that you can do better, for this customer, you would welcome even criticism and move on to improvements.
Thanks again,
Kate
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Meghan M. Biro, Kate Nasser, Dan Rockwell, Response Learning, Write The Company and others. Write The Company said: When #customers criticize, is the way you defend it making things worse? @KateNasser knows – http://bit.ly/ahyPJz [...]
Excellent, Kate, as is your way! There is little else so trying as being in a support situation dire enough to warrant a phone call and then running into the brick wall of defensiveness. A customer who takes the time to bring a complaint is giving a gift to the company: they offer an opportunity to grow.
Tristan,
I often wonder if those being defensive really see themselves as a brick wall. Hard to believe they would continue if they saw it that way. Great picture… thanks.
Kate
In defense of defensiveness.
Kate, I love your posts and this one resonated with me. Without a doubt, you are exactly on target with your advice!
Even so, let me play devil’s advocate to explore what might motivate an agent to react this way. Especially in today’s economic environment, many contact center agents are pushed to their limits and treated more as a commodity. This translates into a daily “keep your job” exercise.
Being under that kind of scrutiny and responding to a high level of stress results in a defensive posture, especially at the agent level. It’s not an excuse, but rather the reason.
Your alternative response was spot on and should be designed by leadership into the center’s culture. When folks feel the need to defend their work, they inevitably react defensively.
As you say, Tammy, work a non-defensive response into the culture. My suggested response works well and I hope that the blog post will be used for valuable training — to change the culture.
Many thanks for your contribution!
Kate
Great post Kate. This is such a common dynamic in so many workplaces. People think they have to defend their practices instead of focusing on the client and simply listening to their story. So many conflicts can be averted by understanding that clients or customers aren’t out to get us or make us lose face, they just want to be heard.
This is exactly what I mean Guy. A practice is something that can change and get even better if CSRs and Tech support reps listen to the customer. Thanks for letting your voice be heard here at Smart SenseAbilities.
Warmest wishes,
Kate