‘Your call is important to us…’

by Dr Raymond Perrier · September 1, 2013

One of the ironies of modern life is that, as companies spend more words talking about customer service and more time training people in customer service, the actual experience of customer service seems to spiral downwards.

“Modern customer service fails because it has become alienated from human beings.”

It is perhaps too easy to bemoan the surly, spotty teenager or long-nailed primped dame serving me at the supermarket or the caf� or the petrol station: as they sit plugged into an iPod, chatting to colleagues or filing into the middle distance, I pray that actually serving might go higher in their list of priorities.

But then if I had to do a dull repetitive job like that, for minimum wage, anti-social hours, and in the face of belligerent customers, I suspect I might also lose the will to serve (if not the will to live).

Dealing with human beings whom we can see is hard enough: both for the customer and for the customer service operator. But when you cannot see the other person, the level of alienation increases exponentially.

Call centres are a classic example of this phenomenon. I remember a time when, if I had a problem with an organisation, I would be able to go into a building and see a human being�with a name and a face, possibly someone I even recognised from being there before. I would explain my problem and the person would apologise, and either fix it there and then or let me know that if I popped in next Tuesday it would all be sorted and she would call me if there was a delay.

There are actually a few organisations left who operate in this way � by and large, retailers operating in competitive environments rather than banks or phone companies with captive customers or government departments with monopolies.

But most organisations will now send you out of the building and tell you to call a customer service number. So � from your phone, at your expense, and possibly at a premium rate � you get the thrill of calling someone who possibly does not live in the same country to explain to them (and the six other people you have to contact subsequently) the nature of your problem.

To add insult to injury�just when there is a glimmer of hope � they put you on hold (still at your expense) and tell you that you are held in a queue, but not to worry because �your call is important to us�.

How would your wife feel if every time she called you, she was put on hold and told by a disembodied voice not to be concerned because �your love is important to me�?

I� have been reflecting on this because I have had to deal with two large organisations recently, Vodacom and British Airways. Interestingly, both were situations in which the company had created a problem and then compounded it by failing to employ the basic courtesy of calling me to explain what was happening.

Instead, the problem they created was treated as my problem which I had to put effort into solving.

Companies seem to set up customer service systems without much care for whether they are actually for the benefit of the customer. Instead, they are clearly all about minimising effort on the part of the company, reducing their costs, out-sourcing as much responsibility as possible, and making sure there is no real contact with the customer.

They try to bore or intimidate you into submission so that you give up before your problem is solved; they can then pat themselves on the back because the customer must have been happy after all.

Modern customer service fails because it has become alienated from human beings: the customer is not a human but an entry in a database; the person on the phone is not a human being but an out-sourced operator who can be hired and fired with ease; the problem is not an error by a human being who can apologise and learn for next time but an �incident� with a �code� and �set of strategies� to minimise accepting responsibility or paying compensation.

How far removed this is from the Christian model of service, in which each person�s unique dignity is recognised and respected. The Jesuit saint Br Alphonsus Rodriguez, whose job was to be the community receptionist, used to rush to the door when he heard a knock (day or night) saying to himself: �Just a moment, Jesus, I�m coming.�

But every now and then a human being can work with a bad system and deliver a good result. On both sides of the equation there is an opportunity to be human, to listen to the situation and how the person is feeling, to treat others how you would like be treated yourself: in other words to respond humanly.

Yunus, the owner of Vodacom in Melville in Johannesburg did just that. This resulted in a solution to the problem which brought out the best in his staff and in me � and was actually less expensive for everyone concerned; what business people call a �win-win�.

I am waiting to see if the Byzantine customer service system of BA � or any of the other faceless organisations with which we have to deal � will allow a human being in that labyrinth to do what we are designed to do: to act humanly.