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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

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Does the Right Hand Know What the Left Hand is Doing?

Posted on August 28, 2012 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

In many large companies, no, the right hand does NOT know what the left hand is doing.

I had 2 web chats and a telephone call with three different individuals with the same internet service in the past week and got 3 different answers. The last answer was best, so I went with that; it will make me more inclined to “answer shop” next time I have a question or need. That creates more work for the company I call, but they’ve brought it on themselves through their inconsistency.

In the article Time Warner should rethink its approach to customer service, something similar occurs. The writer tells the story of a customer who received a letter that told him to call TWC because the discounted rate period was about to expire. So the customer called and was told that TWC couldn’t do anything until the period expired. So why did they tell him to call in the letter?

When Time Warner was questioned about all the issues that the customer had in multiple communications with TWC, their response was “These two agents had other options for better customer service and need additional training.” Nothing like blaming the employee…but the root cause was not the employee. It was the company.

More than any other company, customers have brought up TWC as an example of a company with poor customer service; it’s the long waits; it’s the technician who cut one person’s cable when trying to disconnect their neighbor’s cable; it’s the inconsistencies; it’s the 4 hour windows for appointments or the long resolutions to problems. The occasional good customer service stories we hear about TWC relate to their social media monitoring of customer service issues, so they’re apparently pretty responsive to Twitter complaints.

But for any larger company with issues, consistent issues are not usually the fault of the employees. It’s the fault of a company without a cohesive strategy focused on customer service. It’s about a company that’s too compartmentalized. It’s about a company where the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

Get consistent with customer service by first getting the whole organization on the same page.

Read our New Book – “Ask Yourself…Am I GREAT at Customer Service?” http://www.amigreatat.com/

Listen to our latest podcast episode of “Stepping Up Service” on The MESH Network at http://themesh.tv/stepping-up-service/

Interested in improving your company’s customer service? See more at our new website! http://www.cssamerica.com/