Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Everyone is Doing the Best They Can

Everyone is doing the best they can right now. Maybe not as well as they did yesterday or will do tomorrow. Just the best they can right now. Nobody's perfect. Demanding perfection is abuse.

Think about how we treat our customers. We never tell customers they are wrong. Because, of course, customers are always right. And if somehow a customer wasn't right, it wouldn't be their fault, it would be our fault! And if we insist that they are wrong, they will just go find someone else to work with. We always assume customers are doing the best they can. We are willing to do things their way, our way, whatever works. We will give it another try, come up with a different plan, whatever it takes.

It is not our job to figure out what is wrong with people. It is our job to help them.

2 Comments:

Blogger Sue said...

I had some trouble last night with Dish Network. I did not feel like they were treating me as a valued customer. Basically I was told I was wrong, and now I have to go further to get the issue resolved.

But another part of that is, "Were those custormer service reps I talked to doing their best?" It's another way to look at the whole encounter.

7:16 PM  
Blogger Marianne said...

Thanks for posting, Sue!

The customer is always right, of course. If they can't give you exactly what you ask for, they can still figure out how to get you what you want. Instead of telling you what they can't do, they can take on your problem as if it is their own and help you solve it.

Whether other customer service reps would have done better or whether those same reps have done better in the past or will do better in the future, what would happen if we assumed that they were doing the best they could at the time? Then we wouldn't be mad at them. We would just let them know that what they are saying isn't going to work for us and take our problem/opportunity to someone who can help us, either up the chain or at another company.

There is a good reason why they acted like they did, even though we don't know what it is. Most likely that reason has something to do with the message they are getting from management about how to solve problems and how to treat the customer, which is an even better reason to go up the chain and let them know that what they are doing is not working.

7:29 AM  

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