Are our Customer Relations ‘Moments of Truth’ Being Quashed by Customer Relations Policies
January 18, 2008
Jan Carlson’s seminal book ‘Moments of Truth’, about business acknowledging the authority and responsibility of Customer-facing staff for customer satisfaction that defined customers attitudes towards the company, became the lynch-pin for much of the Customer Service Policies and Training that exist in the world today. Carlson advocated the idea that customer-facing staff should be given the freedom to ensure that those people using SAS Airways should receive the service that they required at “Moments of Truth” and that their experience should influence organisational policy.
Since its publication organisations across the world have worked to identify
customer needs and implement policies and train staff to build customer relations
by building customer loyalty and recognising the importance of customer-facing
staff.
A trend that I have begun to be more and more aware of, certainly in the UK, is
the Customer Service Policy that actually inhibits the Customer. If we take as a
basic premise that all service or product providing organisations are aware of the
importance of good customer relations. If we accept that organisations spend
time and money training staff to provide identified customer needs, then how and
where have things gone wrong?
We need to explore the post-Customer Service world. We are now past the
moment when it has been realised that customers react with their wallets when
they were treated well and the fact has become, like all new ideas part of the
establishment of commerce and a central tenet of profitability. The idea of
customer-orientated competition as described by Albrecht and Zemke in their
book Service America: Doing Business in the New Economy is now main-stream
first approaches
Organisations today do not intentionally give poor service. However, they
appear to see customer relations as a done deal with little need to actualy refer to customers and the experience they receive. What is becoming evident in
developments in recent years is that in streamlining their methods of identifying
what they wish to offer customers the service element is beginning to disappear.
At this stage one must bring in to the equation today’s requirement to be seen to
be offering Choice. A full service means choice for customers. In order to offer
choice, though, organisations are beginning to limit what they offer.
Organisations have begun to search within themselves to identify exactly what
they can offer to the best of their ability. This is leading to problems.
Customers who approach these organisations with requests begin to find that
they do not fit the profile of the customer that the organisation has devised. This
means that however hard the customer may wish to buy the product or service
on offer and how ever much the customer-facing staff member may wish to help
the customer the result will be failure.
By concentrating too much on understanding the nature of the organisation and
what it can feasibly offer, the organisation actually begins to blinker itself to the
actual needs of the customer. The core product or service that the organisation
has always provided still exists but what has disappeared is the ability of the
organisation to react spontaneously and flexibly. Thus customers’ needs don’t
quite fit into their models of customer requirements.
What is wrong then is that customers are told that in order to progress they must
adhere to the Customer Relations Policy as laid down by the organisation rather
than the organisation reacting in a timely and relevant manner to the needs of the
customer. Business is therefore lost because customers will head for the
supplier who will provide them with what they want.
It could be said that this creates a large market place in which customers may
shop for exactly what they require. In reality, though, what we see is the
emergence of seemingly large market places in which to shop but on closer
inspection the requirement to have a complete and clear understanding of what
you require in order to identify the supplier who can exactly fulfil it.
When Jan Carlson took over SAS and began to implement the policies that led to
the ‘Moments of Truth’ theory his aim was to empower those down the line from
senior management to meet customers need at the time that they occurred and
to see themselves improving business, be profitable and gain loyalty. It stripped
away the bureaucracy to enable decisions to be made at the customer-face.
This immediacy is being lost by large organisations in their efforts to be all things
to all men. In laying down Customer Relations Policies that clearly define the
services or products they offer they are in reality taking away the ability of staff to
open new levels of communications and service with customers.
When Carlson implemented his policies with SAS it not only increased the
profitability of the organisation. It engendered a culture of within SAS that was
aimed at customer satisfaction. It was absolutely not a culture of asking
customers to fit into SAS’s procedures – because this is what Carlson realised
was the problem.
If we are not to lose the huge leaps of thought and mind set of the early 1980s
we need to return to a more customer focussed approach to business. There is
a need to re-empower staff to react swiftly to customer needs. This can only be
done by loosening the definitions of customer service as offered by individual
organisations.
By aiming training at ethos and aim of the organisation rather than setting
perameters of service customer-facing staff may be encouraged to be more
creative and responsive to customers needs. In turn this will lead to customers
being more prepared to share their concerns, ideas and issues to allow for
growth that increases profitability and opportunities to extend service with
confidence and competence to meet needs.
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