By David Saxby

What is a service sin?  It’s behavior that drives customers away.

I have considerable experience with cold calling telecoms and posing as a customer to see how I’m treated and, believe me, service sins do occur. 

Let’s take a look at the eight most-common sins of customer service.  Are your employees guilty of committing one or more of them?

Sin No. 1.  Apathy:  This is the "I don't give a rip about you or my job attitude" sin.  Many employees get this way when they're bored with their job or if they’ve lost sight that the reason for their job is to serve the needs of the customer.

Sin No. 2.  Brush-off:  Some employees use this sin to get rid of customers by transferring their calls.  This causes the customer to tell their story over and over until they become so frustrated they want to scream.

Sin No. 3.  Coldness:  This sin is much like apathy, only worse.  Impatience, curtness, hostility toward customers or co-workers – that’s coldness.  The body language of this person shouts, “You're a nuisance; go away!”

Sin No. 4.  Condescension:  A patronizing attitude is the hallmark of this sin.  Common examples include not using a customer's name during the dialogue; using industry jargon or acronyms rather than communicating in clear, understandable language; and communicating at a different level than that of the customer.

Sin No. 5.  Robotism:  "Thank you, have a nice day, NEXT!” That’s robotism and that kind of treatment makes customers feel like they’re nothing more than a number.  While it can be frustrating answering similar questions and providing similar information for hours on end, customers should feel as if they are the employee’s first caller of the day.

Sin No. 6.  Rule Book:  With this sin, employees feel they have free license to use company guidelines as excuses for not providing service even when they know the rules are flexible.  When employees thumb through their mental rule book, customers hear negative phrases such as, ‘That’s our company policy.’”

Sin No. 7.  Runaround:  Don’t want to take ownership of the customer’s problem?  That’s easy.  Send the customer on a wild goose chase.

Sin No. 8.  Tune Out:  This sin occurs when an employee fails to focus 100 percent on the person who is speaking.  This sin creates a number of problems, such as judging before you've heard the person out and not asking questions to verify that you understand what was said.  Other problems include not giving appropriate responses and interrupting with your answers before the customer has completed his or her question.

So what can telecoms do to eliminate these sins?

Make everyone part of the customer service improvement team by involving them in finding ways to eliminate your company’s service sins.  Managers should ask each member of their team to make a list of the sins they observe during a one-week period, omitting names of the people who committed the sins. 

Bring everyone's list to a staff meeting and, as a team,  rank the service sins, with No. 1 being the most frequently observed.  Then brainstorm ways service can be improved to eliminate the sins.  The sins will begin to disappear by merely raising everyone’s level of awareness.

No utility wants to think that its employees are capable of unforgivable customer service infractions such as the ones I have described.  One way to find out if this problem exists is to do a telephone survey of customers who have recently interacted with your utility.  Ask them how they feel they were treated.  Another approach would be to mystery shop your business.  Hire an outside party to call in and pose as a customer.

You may or may not be happy with these results, but there is one thing for sure – You need to know.

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David Saxby is president of Measure-X, a Phoenix, Ariz.-based measurement, training and recognition company that specializes in customer service and sales skills training for utilities. He can be reached at 888-644-5499 or via e-mail at david@measure-x.com. Visit the Measure-X Web site at www.measure-x.com.

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