Jason Falls: Are your policies killing customer service?

In 1999, four academicians penned a diatribe against big business called “The Cluetrain Manifesto.”

The book ushered in a new era in consumerism and technology soon helped facilitate that power-to-the-people drive.

Markets are conversations. Conversations are human. Corporations cannot participate in conversations unless they are human.

If they don’t act that way, they will die. These (paraphrased) theses populated “The Cluetrain” and the era of big business, big companies and big marketing was about to crumble.

If “The Cluetrain” teed it up, social media drove it 310 yards down the middle of the fairway.

Blogs, social networks and the like are the communications manifestation of the average Joe and Jane taking back the power in the business to consumer equation. Today, customers relish in being heard. And not by your company, but by anyone who will listen. And there are lots of people willing to do so.

But if you or your company are scrambling to monitor and/or participate in social media because you’re afraid a customer might say something bad about you online, you’re missing the point.

The point is not that a single customer has infinitely more power than he or she did before the advent of the web. The point is that you should be treating your customers differently in the first place.

Case In Point

My wife’s rear passenger tire blew out last week. She took her not-yet-two-year-old Subaru Forester to a Louisville Suburu dealership, the only place that has ever serviced the vehicle. They told her they would have to check with Subaru to see if the tire was covered under the warranty.

Unfortunately, my wife couldn’t leave the car because I was traveling and she had two children to pick up from school, get home for dinner and the like. The dealer’s service folks told her they would call when they heard from Subaru and my wife drove my two children away in a car using a spare tire.

By the time she told me of the incident the next afternoon, Subaru still hadn’t called back. I didn’t care a bit about the warranty or what Subaru had to say about the incident. I was furious they let her drive my children around on a spare tire for two days.

Customer Service Mistake Number One

The dealer prioritized who would pay for the tire over the safety of its customers. In their mind, the $150 or whatever it wound up costing was more important than putting a woman and her two children in a vehicle with four safe tires. When I called to point this out and demand that they fix the tire first, I was told they would have to order the tire and it would be Monday before it would be done. This was on Friday.

Customer Service Mistake Number Two

They prioritized policy and procedure over solving a customer’s problem. I didn’t count exactly but there were at least a dozen Subaru Foresters on dealer’s lot that day. Any one of them could wait on the replacement tire. I was assured they, “Can’t do that!” Okay, there are half a dozen tire retailers within a mile of the location on the area’s busiest commercial strip.

They were following procedure and policy. They weren’t solving the customer’s problem, which in this case, unfortunately involved protecting the customer’s safety.

The Company Reality

Policies and procedures are there for a reason. The dealer’s lawyers will gladly tell you why they can’t or shouldn’t take a tire of another vehicle on the lot. I’m sure they could make a case that buying a tire retail from Big O or similar is worthy of risk mitigation-through-policy as well.

And the front-line service department employees (God love ‘em) are only doing what they’ve been told and ensuring they protect the company and their jobs. I don’t blame (or envy) them.

But we live in a new world and companies, their customer service and, yes, their legal advice, needs to change.

The Consumer Reality

Companies are, to borrow a phrase, “Trust Agents.” We buy from companies we trust. When you prioritize the company profits and earnings over customer service and satisfaction, your profits and earnings suffer.

Know anyone in the mortgage world? Ask them.

“The Cluetrain Manifesto” wasn’t a wake up call to corporations everywhere that the customer is angry and will now write that anger down so that Google can index it. It wasn’t a declaration that customers are revolting and yes, the revolution will be Tweeted!

The Cluetrain Manifesto, though it begot social media, had nothing to do with social media. It had everything to do with Enron, Arthur Anderson, Halliburton and more. It had to do with your company and how it treats its public. It had to do with you and your perspective on them, too.

Forget that the consumer now has a platform from which to sing your praises or your faults. That is focusing on the effect, not the cause. If you’re worried about people talking badly about your company online, it’s probably because deep inside you know there’s bad to be said.

Take a look at your company’s policies and procedures. Do you check to see if you’ll be paid before committing to a customer’s need? Are there risk-mitigating legal loopholes that routinely frustrate your audiences? Perhaps it’s time to take a look and see what you can do to be more consumer-centric.

Or you can keep your blinders on and take a chance they don’t have an audience.

NOTE: The dealer had Mrs. Falls’s tire fixed by end of business on the Monday in question, and under warranty. No Falls were harmed in the writing of this column, nor the events described here-in. Void where prohibited.