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The Secret of Lousy Service and Why it Happens

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QUESTION: Why does lousy service occur?
ANSWER: Lousy service happens because (big) companies don’t understand people OR training.

I am amazed at how many times someone in a service environment delivers lousy service. And it’s often not just lousy – add rude, offensive, abrasive, defensive, maddening, and most of all disappointing.

GREAT NEWS: It doesn’t have to be like that.

If I take the time to complain, which I rarely do anymore, the manager will always ask, “Did you get the name of the person?” Somehow getting the name of the person is important to the manager. But it is unimportant to me. I never get their name.

The manager is looking to blame someone. I’m looking for someone to accept responsibility. The manager is NEVER the one who takes it.

I have found poor service is a reflection of the company and its leaders, not just the person who delivered it.

MY REALITY: When a manager asks me for the person’s name who delivered lousy service, I reply, “Don’t yell at the person who gave me lousy service. Yell at the person who trained them.” The person delivering poor service is most likely to have been poorly trained or ill trained, or both. They’re doing what they were trained to do, and say what they were trained to say.

Or the employee will ‘modify training’ and make statements based on their ‘at the moment’ feelings:

  • Sorry about that…
  • That’s our policy…
  • I’m just doing my job…
  • They don’t pay me to think…
  • I’m just a peon…

Or worse, they become defensive, even rude, when a customer expresses frustration or anger as a reaction to what happened. Employees do that because someone TAUGHT THEM they don’t have to take gruff from a customer. (REALITY: The customer provides the money for their paycheck).

Ever get poor service at an airline? Of course you have, EVERYONE HAS. It happens because the people who work at the airlines are undertrained, poorly managed, feel put upon by their management and their leadership, underpaid, rarely if ever praised, and are exposed to constant customer complaints. They don’t like their job, they don’t like or respect their leader, they don’t like their company, and they don’t like the people they serve. Not good.

Now granted, this is a generalization, but I’m in the air enough to make the comment based on 20 years of flying experience. I get an occasional nice person. I have an occasional pleasant experience. But they are so rare that I actually go up to the person and thank them for being nice, for being happy, and for being friendly.

So let’s get back to the question at hand. Why does lousy service exist?

Who is responsible to make great service possible?
Who is responsible to make great service happen?

I always ask people in service positions, “How’s it going?” Most people respond in some negative fashion. Statements like, “Well, tomorrow is Friday!” or “I’ll let you know in two hours when I get off.” or “You’re kidding, right?”

These are losing, self-defeating statements. Statements made by people who fail to understand that doing their best, having a great attitude, and having a high sense of personal pride have nothing to do with the job. They have everything to do with who you are as a person.

Most of the front-line servers are in low-paying positions. When you combine that with our “feeling of entitlement” workforce and with training that’s all about the company, with a smattering of, “smile, greet the customer, thank the customer,” you have a perfect setting for mediocre or lousy service to occur most of the time.

About now, you want answers to this dilemma. I have them. They revolve around four words you already know: positive attitude and personal pride. But there is way more to these four words than your known definition.

Positive attitude and personal pride hold the key to your success, and they will be discussed in-depth next week.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Who or what is the cause of aggravation? Not you, of course!

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It’s Saturday night around 6pm. Early dinner for Jessica, Gabrielle, and me.

We’re sitting in Carrabba’s Italian Grill in Charlotte. We’ve been customers at this location for as long as it has been there. Seen several managers come and go, seen hundreds of servers come and go.

This particular visit was pivotal because it may have been our last. Their 10-year consistency has been compromised at least three ways: 1. New bread – lower quality. 2. New croutons – lower quality. 3. New espresso – lower quality. They used to serve the best espresso in the city (Illy). But it seems corporate decided to remove all the machines and substitute with a lesser (cheaper) brand.

Same price. Lower quality. More profit. Not good for anyone but them.

And they’re not bragging about their new low quality. I guess they figured no one would notice. I was disappointed. Not angry or anything, I just had an expectation when we entered the restaurant that wasn’t met when we were served.

The manager happened by. I asked him about the sudden reduction in quality. He smiled, hemmed, hawed, and looked embarrassed that we “caught” them. He, of course, blamed it on ‘corporate.’ I asked him for an email address to voice my concern. He promised he would return with it. Never did.

As the manager walked by our table a second time, we heard him say, “Another aggravated customer.” He was referring to some people waiting to be seated. Did nothing about it. Sad.

REALITY: When a customer is aggravated, complaining, or angry, there’s a REASON. If you’re smart enough, empathetic enough, and willing enough, you can discover the reason, help the customer, resolve the issue, and prevent the same thing from happening again.

STOP READING AND START THINKING: I’m not just writing about Carrabba’s. I’m writing about YOU. You have customers that complain, don’t you? How do you receive the concern or the complaint? How is a complaint handled? What do you do about it? How do you turn it into a WOW?

Here’s what it is – and what it isn’t:

  • It’s an opportunity, NOT an aggravation.
  • It’s an opportunity, NOT a problem.
  • It’s an opportunity, NOT a complaint.
  • It’s a chance for WOW, NOT an angry customer.
  • It’s a chance for management to convert to leadership.
  • It’s a chance to get a positive post on Facebook.
  • It’s a chance for the customer to ‘tweet’ their pleasure.
  • It’s a chance to create a loyal customer.
  • It’s a chance to generate positive word-of-mouth advertising.
  • It’s an opportunity to prevent this situation from reoccurring.

GRIPE REALITY: Defensive response is the normal first reaction…

  • Blaming others.
  • Blaming circumstances.
  • Telling the customer how to talk. (“I’d appreciate if you’d calm down” rather than try to find the reason they’re angry.) Condescending comments by “customer service” people makes a mad customer more mad.
  • Don’t defend it. No one cares about the reason or the excuse.

If you really want aggravation, complaints, and anger to diminish, here are the elements you must possess and execute:

  • Attitude of acceptance.
  • Attitude of reception.
  • Attitude that’s willing to listen with the intent to understand.
  • Attitude of taking responsibility.
  • Resilience of manager or leader.
  • Ability to respond in a friendly, pleasant manner.
  • Challenge yourself not to make an excuse, blame someone, blame something, or make some snide remark.
  • Challenge yourself to promote positive internal communication.
  • Genuine gratefulness to help and serve.

LOYALTY REALITY: Every aggravation, complaint, concern, discussion, or question posed by a customer is a huge, FREE, opportunity to improve your business by a factor of WOW – and for little or no money.

And a bit more reality: when managers and employees turn over at a high rate, it’s not the ‘nature of the business,’ it’s the cheapness and policies of the home office. When you try to milk a nickel to save a penny,when you sacrifice quality just to increase profits, you lose employees, customers, goodwill and reputation.

Me? I’ll go away with a little bit of noise – others will just go away.
You? Document the issue, the resolve, the response, and the outcome.

These are the steps: Listen. Process. Think. Take responsibility. Question. Respond. Say something positive. Do something positive. WOW.

Train that.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Competing on Service: Eleven Ways to Beat the Competition by ‘Hugging’ Your Customers

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The U.S. economy is still in a deep funk, and for many small business owners that means business isn’t exactly booming. Forced to do more with much less, the small businesses that have managed to survive and even thrive during these tough times have recognized one important factor: You can’t always compete on price, but you can compete on service. And the best thing about great customer service is that providing it doesn’t cost you an extra penny.

When your competition is scrounging for customers, you have to hold yours close, and that starts with great customer service.

Today’s small business owners need to understand that cutting costs will not save their business. Remember, customers are concerned about their own financial security. When they walk into a business, they need to feel cherished and special. They need to be ‘hugged’ by great customer service. Customers don’t expect to get bottom-of-the-barrel prices everywhere they go, but they do expect to be treated with respect.

Great customer service doesn’t just happen. It starts with employees who have been trained in the science of service.

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About the Author

Edward D. Hess is author of Growing an Entrepreneurial Business: Concepts & Cases and is a professor of business administration and Batten Executive-in-Residence at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. He is the author of nine books, over 60 cases, and over 60 articles. His work has appeared in over 200 media outlets around the world including CNBC, Fox Business News, Dow Jones Radio, WSJ Radio, MSNBC Radio, NPR, Forbes, Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, CFO magazine, Financial Executive, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Big Think, the Washington Post, and Financial Times. His book Smart Growth: Building an Enduring Business by Managing the Risks of Growth was named a 2010 Top 25 Business Book for Business Owners by Inc. magazine.

Seven Secrets of Driving Customer Loyalty – and Profits

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In these rough and recessionary times, it’s important to escape the commodity pricing wars and to find ways to strengthen the marketing backbone of your company. The most reliable and affordable way to achieve both these goals is by building a strong personal bond with your customers. Loyal customers see you as more valuable than a mere commodity purveyor, and can serve you as a powerful marketing arm, going out of their way promote and defend your company online and off – for free. Here are seven ways to get process started of building customer loyalty.

  1. Did you shine that doorknob? Research shows that customers remember the first and last minutes of a service encounter much more vividly – and for much longer – than all the rest of it. Make sure that the first and final elements of your customer interactions are particularly well engineered, because they are going to stick in the customer’s memory.

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    About the Author

    Micah SolomonMicah Solomon is the co-author with Leonardo Inghilleri of Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building a Five-Star Customer Service Organization (AMACOM Books) and President of Oasis Disc Manufacturing. His free online resource site for customer service advice is CollegeOfTheCustomer.com.

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