metric | Customer Service Solutions, Inc.

Home  /  When Metrics Mask Reality – 7/16/13 TOW  /  metric

Don’t Harp on the Customer’s Mistake - 6/24/25


Seth’s daughter, Sarah, had missed some swim classes, and Seth remembered that the aquatics center had several make-up classes available late in the summer.  So Seth pulled up the class schedule on his phone, found one that worked on his and Sarah’s schedules, and planned to attend a session Read more

Create Customers for Life - 6/17/25


Veronica has gone to the same automotive service shop for at least 20 years.  She bought a new car about a year ago, and this is the third car she’s brought to the shop instead of taking her car to the dealer where she bought it.  She’s had three Read more

Don’t Turn the Customer into the QA Department - 6/10/25


Roberta received a form with information filled in by the company after her conversation with the account rep.  Roberta just needed to review the information, fill in some of the blanks, sign it, and resend it in order to set up a new account. She noticed that the effective date Read more

Imitate to Improve - 6/3/25


Oscar Wilde said that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”  Now this doesn’t mean that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery.  Nor does it mean that great impersonators such as Rich Little, Dana Carvey, or Frank Caliendo are always offering flattering portrayals of those that they imitate. Wilde’s Read more

How the Customer Perceives a Truth as a Lie - 5/27/25


You’re the customer, you’re asking about an unused item that you’re returning, and you hear the employee say: “The refund process takes 7-10 days.”  You’re thinking: “Great!  I can get the refund check as early as a week from today!”  The reality is that the company means that they’ll Read more

Tell Customers What’s Next - 5/20/25


In most businesses that have been around for a while, how a process was originally designed is not how it currently operates.  Sometimes this change is referred to as “practical drift,” where the actual process moves further and further away from the documented steps over time.  Maybe the changes Read more

Questions to Guide You to Empathy - 5/13/25


“If I was him, I would do ABC…” If you’ve ever heard somebody say this - whether it’s a friend or acquaintance, whether it’s some TV reporter or podcaster - you may get as frustrated or as annoyed as I do. I get annoyed because we are not that other person. Read more

Negate the Nervousness - 5/6/25


The customer needed a loan, so he walked into the bank, but he was a little nervous.  He knew that launching his business would be easier if he had some working capital, but that’s about all he knew.  He was anxious because he didn’t know what to expect in Read more

Don’t Rush to Resolve Quickly - 4/29/25


The customer is angry, so you use the CSS LEAD technique as designed.  You, listen, empathize, accept responsibility, and deliver on a remedy.  But it doesn’t work.  The customer is still upset, and maybe even a little more frustrated than when you started…why?! If the use of this technique fails, Read more

Energy v. Apathy - 4/22/25


I asked a couple friends who are much more scientifically-oriented the question: What is energy?  I didn’t mean E=MC2.  I meant physiologically, what is energy? They described a lot of things that sounded really good, yet far too advanced for my non-medical mind. Part of the reason why energy is of Read more

•••••

When Metrics Mask Reality – 7/16/13 TOW

Posted on July 16, 2013 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment

Michael has the pleasure of knowing a board member for a nationwide retail chain. Michael thoroughly enjoys knowing this gentleman on a personal level and learning about his perspective on business.

Since Michael has been a customer of the business, one day he decided to ask the board member how the board feels about their company’s customer service. The board member’s response was “Oh! We’re doing great! We just passed our biggest competitor in the national ratings, and our metrics on the store customer service are generally trending up!”

Michael was somewhat astonished at the response, since this company has a reputation for horrible customer service. Since Michael hadn’t been to his local store in a few weeks, he thought that maybe they had improved.

So that weekend, Michael needed to buy a certain type of flower that his wife was requesting – a white wave petunia. Not wanting to make a 20 minute round trip without knowing they had that type of plant, Michael called the store first. After going through 5 menus on the phone system, Michael selected the right option (or so he had hoped) and was transferred to the nursery; he hung up after the phone rang for the 18th time with nobody answering.

He then hopped in his car to go there anyway as it was getting late in the day. When Michael entered the nursery area, he immediately walked up to the cashier and waited behind the only customer in line. Since that conversation was taking several minutes, Michael walked to the flower pots and began looking for the plant. There Michael saw every petunia known to man. . .except a white wave petunia.

So he went back to the cashier, and when the cashier was done helping the customer, Michael asked for help.

“I’m just a cashier,” responded the employee. “I don’t know what those are; why don’t you go ask an employee back in lumber?”

“Where?,” Michael responded.

“Back in the back quadrant over there; they’re over there,” the cashier replied.

Then Michael went to the ‘back quadrant,’ but there were no employees around.

Michael left without a white wave petunia, without a good feeling about the store, and with the definite suspicion that this board member had never shopped at his own stores.

Metrics can look good, but the experience can be bad.

Trust data to a point, but verify what the experience is like in reality. Experience your business like a customer would experience it.