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EDITORIAL vs. The Reality by Peter S. Felknor We hear an
awful lot of talk about customer service these days, but for the most part
that’s all it is—talk. We call just about any business
and are treated to a long, boring menu of “choices” that are required listening,
rather than being granted the simple privilege of speaking to a human being.
Large corporations send their employees off to lengthy workshops on how to
better serve this mythical customer instead of consistently integrating respect
for clients into their corporate culture (as did that new American pariah, Sam
Walton). Even government has gotten into the act: some states have substituted
“customer” for such time-honored terms as “taxpayer” and “licensee”—while the
new “customer” is usually pining for the days when he was a mere taxpayer.
What went
wrong? Customer service has been
commodified. It is
increasingly seen as something a business acquires,
like a better ISP or a new office building. The problem is that real customer
service has never been a commodity. Too many businesses see no irony whatsoever
in subjecting their clients—some of whom may be first-time callers—to a lengthy
telephone menu, while at the same time spending thousands of dollars sending
their employees to “customer sensitivity training.” With an obsessive focus on
the bottom line, it is often forgotten that good treatment of customers must be
a primary mission of the company, not something that can be contracted out or
“fixed” through pricey seminars. I called
Wal-Mart this morning. Guess what? The phone was answered by an actual real
person (her name was Linda). Sam Walton may be gone, but the corporation he
left behind retains his legacy of direct customer service. That just possibly
may have something to do with the fact that Wal-Mart is the world’s largest
retailer. Food for
thought. [UPDATE: Just
before we went to press, Harvey Mackay released his editorial
Lost in the Earplug Economy in which he
expresses many of the same concerns. Don't miss.
— ed.]
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