Are You Really Glad I’m Here? (Craig Douglass On Consumers)

Have you noticed? Things have changed. The reason is the public health and global economic fits and starts created by the COVID-19 pandemic and its variations. From personal relationships and leisure activities to physical and mental health, jobs and politics, lives have been changed.

Pew Research, in a yearlong series of panel research queries notes, “Both the negative and positive impacts described in these responses cover many aspects of life, none of which were mentioned by a majority of Americans. Instead, the responses reveal a pandemic that has affected Americans’ lives in a variety of ways, of which there is no ‘typical’ experience.”

One of the “aspects of life” we have noticed is the nature of customer service and how employees of product and service companies are engaging with consumers. And it’s not good.

Whether it’s someone responsible for frontline reception, wait staff, retail associate (once called clerks) or a general customer service representative, behaviors, conduct, manners and simple etiquette have suffered greatly.

This is not a general indictment of the service-related community — because some enlightened companies have recognized the staffing challenge as an opportunity to differentiate themselves by focusing on helpful consumer engagement in what would otherwise be a commodity business. They are exceeding perceived customer expectations, which should not be hard to do since expectations have taken a nosedive. We just don’t seem to expect excellence the way we once did.

Where to begin? A good place to start would be to identify what a company’s responsibility is to those it hires to serve customers, whether in person, online or on the phone. That responsibility is focusing on the salient characteristics in a service employee, and then training them to effectively employ those characteristics. Aside from product quality, recruitment and training as an interchangeable corporate responsibility are key. Very little good can come from a customer’s experience without them.

What is good customer service? HR departments have many definitions. One, as we suggested above, is to exceed expectations. This assumes you know what those expectations are. We’re not sure that communicates customer service to a would-be hire. But asking a potential service employee to define what their definition is, or relate a story of themselves as a customer, might bring the concept home. How about asking them to express a real-life situation at a store or restaurant, or on the phone with a service rep, or making an online purchase? Seems to us you would get an idea of what they think good customer service is, because we are all consumers.

So if defining good customer service by the business for the business is where to start, what’s next? The service staffer absolutely has to know what the company sells, what the product’s or service’s features and benefits are, and how those relate to the culture and the setting. Management must train them.

Does the wait staff know the full menu and how each item is prepared? Do they know the proper way to set and service a table? Does the retail associate know where all the items are in the store, how they’re priced and how they’re made? Does the phone or cable representative know the technology and how to problem-solve or refer to the right person who does? And are all these folks trained to listen, show interest and work at understanding rather than being understood? If they don’t know, it’s a failure of management.

(By the way, customers are not “guys,” and the proper response to “thank you” is not “no problem.”)

The benefits of training accrue to the company. A good customer experience delivered by a well-trained staffer (properly paid) builds consumer loyalty and trust. And in a world with ever-increasing choices, customers can be put at ease about making a safe decision and having peace of mind that repeating the choice they previously made is one they can count on.

Offering good customer service to those who are getting out more (well-masked, we hope) may give them permission to further discontinue their isolation. If you really mean “We’re glad you’re here!” then your employees should act like it.

Craig Douglass serves as executive director of the Regional Recycling & Waste Reduction District in Pulaski County.