“Whatever your business is, talk to your customers and provide them with what they want. It makes sense.” –Robert Bowman, CEO Major League Baseball Advanced Media
I Want To Talk To PEOPLE!
(Writer's Note: While one episode precipitated this rant I had, it was the final straw in a long life of dealing with electronic answering systems that have frustrated me to the ends of the universe!!)
I wish you all could have been here, I wish you could have seen it!!!! It was brutal and it was ugly and it all ended with me screaming to the top of my lungs . . . . . .”I WANT PEOPLE . .” I actually felt like I had transformed into Charlton Heston, the movie star of the movie Soylent Green as he ran through the streets, repeating “Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!” I know you’ve heard that line if you ever watched Saturday Night Live. But I just kept hearing this voice scream "PEOPLE" when I realized it was ME!
And I do want PEOPLE, I want people everywhere, at every business I call, at every hospital, at every merchant’s shop, every Government building, at every phone number I EVER dial for the rest of my life, every day, every time, I want to talk to a PERSON.
I KNOW this is TOTALLY POSSIBLE because I used to be one of the people—a helper of the people, by the people, for the people, I was there for every hour I worked, able to be contacted and TALKED TO about any problem, gripe, tearful request that anybody from any place on the planet needed to talk about.
And I was (and I say this every 60 years or so)—I was GOOD, no by gosh, I was GREAT at my job!!!!!!! I was so good that when anyone, anywhere DID call and they sounded the least bit testy, tearful or TERRIBLE—they were handed off to me. And just why was I so GREAT??? Because I am a Southern woman, and while we may get bashed and blamed for everything from starting the CIVIL WAR to the changing of Daylight Saving Time, we are trained from the time we learn to speak to be nice, polite, ladylike in our dealings with other human beings.
Now I must explain that while I may not be that way every single day of my life, IF you are PAYING me, I can be bought. If my pay depends on my courtesy, I can do the job. I did it literally for years, for eons it seemed. I was so good that when those needy people called and sounded in any way to be suffering from any of the distresses I mentioned, they were immediately handed off to me.
And what did I do? I talked them down, I befriended them, I listened and MOST IMPORTANTLY, I CARED about what they needed. But truly the most important thing about me was that I was a LIVING, BREATHING, HUMAN BODY, and not an ANSWERING MACHINE OR SIMILAR ELECTRONIC HAND-OFF SYSTEM.
If I could only have the money of an Elon Musk or whoever is the billionaire du jour, I would be, as my grannie used to say, a WHIZ BANG DOODLE. I would buy every company I could afford and staff it with charming people, whom I TRAINED, and pay them a fortune to be kind to the concerned, the crazed, the confused who called in.
Now, you may wonder just what qualifies ME to train my charmers, right? Well, I have an answer—because I WROTE THE BOOK. Yes, the agency I worked for vetted vendors until we found just the right ones, and we hired two professional trainers/course formulators. I was on hand to help these ladies compose a guide to answering the telephone. I was there with the Agency particulars at my fingertips, and by the way, my wit. We entitled chapters with creative captions, like “ACCENT-U-ATE the Positive” (the chapter that coached employees on how to politely ask for a repetition to a name or place spelling because it was not understood at first), or “When the BRASS RINGs” as we dealt with military/paramilitary staff who used acronyms we were not familiar with at that time. And so on, we composed chapter after chapter about how to TALK to people.
I never had so much fun in my work life. I literally told my boss that if they wanted my pay for the 2 weeks I worked on the project that I would refund it as I was so happy with what we had accomplished.
So I am eminently qualified to say that PEOPLE are the BEST ANSWER to EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE. You see, their heart beats, they have faced a mechanical system when they had their personal lives, it seemed, hanging in the balance. They emote, they sense your frustration and most will (especially if they are paid what I want to pay them) try to resolve the problem and not just hand you off to someone else.
Yes, if I could change ANYTHING in the modern era, it would be to eliminate the ELECTRONIC ANSWERING SYSTEMS at businesses. I could stand it if we left Instagram, Spotify, Alexa, TEXTING, all the things that we have had pop out of Pandora’s Box of Connectivity-- IF, and only IF I could just talk to PEOPLE when I have a problem and call their mother ship!
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I am so committed to the idea of providing good customer service that I searched for quotes of successful business leaders. They had good advice and I found plenty who were willing to spill their secret. Read on if you choose, but always remember to be kind on the phone whether you run a business, or have a need to call one.
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“Thank you for calling customer service. If you’re calm and rational, press 1. If you’re a whiner, press 2. If you’re a hot head, press 3.”
-Randy Glasbergen
Couldn't resist including this one above, I love a good joke as much as the next gal!
“To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.” – Douglas Adams
“The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.” – Jeff Bezos
“Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.” – James Cash Penney
“The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.” – Tom Peters
“Customer service shouldn’t just be a department, it should be the entire company.” – Tony Hsieh
“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” – Sam Walton
“It is so much easier to be nice, to be respectful, to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try to understand how you might help them before they ask for help, than it is to try to mend a broken customer relationship.” – Mark Cuban
“Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.” –Henry Ford, Founder Ford Motor Company
“Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of pleasures, costs nothing, and conveys much. It pleases him who gives and receives and thus, like mercy, is twice blessed.” –Erastus Wiman, Former President Great Northwestern Telegraph Company of Canada
“The more you engage with customers, the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” –John Russell, VP Harley Davidson
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” –Warren Buffett, Business Magnate