I love Customer Service, Customers not so much

Peggy is a young employee at an ad agency in the show Mad Men, she is visibly upset about her lack of recognition and decides to go discuss with her boss — Don Draper. She starts by telling him how infuriating it is for her to work so hard only for him to take all the credit for her ideas. He replies “I give you money, and you give me ideas”. She replies “You never say thank you!”, and he replies “That’s what the money’s for!”

Don Draper may not be the role model for being a good Manager but there is a truth in what he is saying. He is saying in the most blunt way that there is a part of the job that sucks, and it has sucked from the beginning of time and all he can do is throw cash at the problem.

I work with contact center senior leaders, and almost all of them have employees like Peggy who are saying how thankless and infuriating it is to talk to irate customers. Unlike Don, most of them can not credibly say “that’s what the money’s for!”

The harsh reality is that your call or contact center exists for a couple reasons. To solve the avoidable, and placate the unavoidable mistakes the company makes. Part of that equation will always include telling customers things they do not want to hear.

When customers are disappointed they can scream, yell, get upset and make wild demands. The employee is not allowed to match the customers behavior and is instead expected to remain calm and “smile on the phone”.

Even Supervisors feel the pinch of what we euphemistically call “escalated calls” and after decades we still don’t have a solution to this problem. It is not that we do not have tools to deal with these inquiries. The tools we have — toxic positivity, smiling on the phone and a good attitude do nothing to defuse the situation.

If I were leading a contact center today, yes I would work on reducing customer complaint but I would also do these three things:

1. Admit the Problem: My first supervisor job was in a call center. The worst part of the job was when an employee approached you and said “The customer wants my supervisor”. It was so bad that we created a training on “How to de-escalate a call”, and gave employees tools to reduce these calls. Obviously that failed because smiling on the phone only goes so far. So we created a schedule to make sure every supervisor got their share of escalated call pain, many supervisors learned to call in on those days. Supervisors around the world dread taking escalated calls even though they have more authority and skill, no wonder the frontline employee has no chance. The current soft skills training is very ineffective.
2. Invest in new Tools and Training: If Soft Skills do not work, what does work? Well there are tools rooted in behavioral science that work spectacularly well. Sales and marketing teams have been using some of them to separate people from their wallets for years. When you walk into a clothing store and pick up a Tee shirt there is a lot that is communicated subtly. They do not start by telling you that you will spend $50 on the Tee shirt. Instead you are greeted with an MSRP of $100, followed by a bargain price of $50! We can adopt very similar tactics rooted in behavioral science in customer service. I worked with a company in hospitality who reported a decline of 85% in escalated calls by implementing these tools. This is a call center training course that covers this topic and this is a good book for this as well. If you combine these techniques with technology “difficult calls” will become routine in your organization.
3. Invest in People: Working in a call contact center has changed, and you must evolve the people supporting customers. In many cases your hiring practices may have not adapted to meet the needs of the modern customer. In some cases you have a great staff who is begging for more development. Committing to ongoing training of at least 2 hours a month that is focused on “tough skills” is a must. Call/Contact Center jobs are high skilled work now and your investment in pay, and ongoing development should match the times we are in — call center training must evolve.

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