Do Your People Follow the Letter of the Law?
Saving the baby and the bath water
Last week, I attended a Dan Pink event in DC (hosted by Michelle James). Somehow the conversation turned to call centers and Dan made an interesting and funny observation… Imagine dealing with a company via their call center, getting great service and expressing how you felt about it, only to receive a standardized (robotic) response from the person on the other end. It might go something like this:
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You: “Thank you for helping me, Mary. You did such a great job of solving my problem and I’m really impressed with how you went above and beyond.
“Mary” (in an unnatural/scripted tone): “Is there anything else I can help you with today? Was I able to answer all of your concerns to your satisfaction?
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Knock, knock! Anybody home?!? With one or two little sentences, Mary could have possibly taken your “10” experience down to about an “8.” Bummer.
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This observation had me think of just how often we deal with people who are following the letter of the law, rather than the spirit. I’m certain that a call center with these types of scripts as in the above example intend to create a satisfactory (or better, hopefully) experience for their clients. Trouble is, too often we teach our teams how to handle situations in an if/then manner. We’ve dumbed it down to an algorithm and algorithms can be performed by computers (which many call centers have gone to, unfortunately).
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But here’s the thing. I feel that, by and large, we’re looking for — even craving — a human experience.
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What are you looking for, when dealing with a company either in person or via phone, e-mail, social media, 
or otherwise? I’m looking for [Read more…]
or otherwise? I’m looking for [Read more…]
