With Customer-y Kindness, Everyone Wins
They are the gatekeepers who stand between us and the things we want. They are clerks, salespeople, customer ser vice reps, the folks on the other side of the counter or the other end of the phone. They have more power than most of us would like. The power to make our lives easy or hard, our errands pleasant or tedious, and getting through our to-do lists a breeze or a bad scene. Around the holidays, when we have more to do and they have more of us to deal with, it’s easy for them to feel like the customer is always wrong. So the kindly gatekeeper transforms into Cruella Deville.
A friend of mine was moving his family into a new house and setting up the basic ser vices. All was going fairly well until it came to the phone. He was attempting to set up three lines, one for him and his wife, one for the kids, and one for the Internet and fax machine. While speaking to the customer ser vice representative, he ran into a roadblock. The woman told him it was going to be three weeks before he could get his ser vice going. She read him something out of the “rule book” and refused to budge or bend one bit. Worst of all, she seemed to enjoy the power she had to disappoint and inconvenience him.
When my friend said that he couldn’t possibly wait that long, the rep became angry. “Look, Mr. Smith, that’s the best we can do—take it or leave it.” My friend tried again, this time using a more personal touch. He said, “I’m sorry, and I know you have a tough job. It’s just that I have three small kids, and it would be dangerous to not have phone ser vice for three full weeks. Is there anything I can do to speed it up? Most of my friends have ser vice within a day or two.”
For whatever reason, this explanation made the clerk even more irate and defensive. She dug in her heels and said they would be out there to install the phones as soon as they could. Long story short, three and a half weeks later, the phone ser vice was turned on.
What could my friend have done differently? The best remedy I have found is to speak to the supervisor of a clerk in scrooge mode. The last time I did this, here is what I said: “Thank you, Mrs. Jones, for taking my call. I have a serious problem, and I’m so grateful you’re here to help me solve it. You see, I’m having a surprise party for one of my children, and the plan is to have all the kids watch a movie at home at the end of the night, but our television isn’t working. I was told by your employee, who I know is doing her best, that there was no way to get the problem fixed in time. I’m hoping, since we still have four days to go, that you can find a way to make it happen. I’ll rearrange my schedule around yours and will be a grateful customer if you’ll work with me on this.”
What I was doing, other than being honest and polite, was giving the supervisor a reputation to live up to. My specific words aren’t as important as the way they created some rapport with the supervisor so that she would be on “my” side.” In this instance, it worked like a charm—a cable guy was out the very next morning and had the problem fixed in thirty minutes.
Sometimes you’re not so lucky. But remember: most supervisors have supervisors of their own. As long as you can keep your cool, the rest is about rapport and patience. Rapport is a very powerful tool, not as a form of manipulation but as a way of connecting with another person. Once that connection is made, the person you’re working with will do everything in his or her power to help you. It’s just the opposite of what happens when someone gets mad at you for having an edge in your voice or for expressing any frustration whatsoever. If clerks suspect that you don’t respect them, forget about it. And really, considering the number of turkeys that clerks encounter in a week, shouldn’t we respect them from the get-go?
Practice a little customer cheer and you’ll increase your chances of being satisfied—rather than scrooged—every time.