Yesterday I was talking to one of my neighbors, Jack, who shared an experience he had with his cable company. It seems he had a problem with his cable service so he called their customer service group, or at least that’s who he thought they were. I won’t mention the company by name but we all know them. After going through what he called seemingly endless prompts he finally got to a real person.
Jack said he was quickly told that he should have listen closer to the prompts because he had reached the wrong department. He had the problem, and now it was becoming his fault. Fortunately, he was connected to the correct department. After explaining his problem for the second time he was told how to fix it and did so. Everything was fine, his problem was solved. However, the story is not over yet.
The technician with whom he was speaking continued to talk sharing with him that had he read the operators manual, he wouldn’t have had to call them at all. Funny he shared with me, he thought that was what they were there for. Again it was his fault!
Jack continued to tell me that when he explained that he had tried to find the solution in the trouble shooting section of the manual, he was told that they were not in that section. The technician said the people who wrote the manual (“they’) didn’t have a clue how to write it clearly. At that point Jack was thinking nobody in this company had a clue at lease a clue about to deal with customers. He had pushed the wrong prompt, if he had read the manual he wouldn’t have had to bother them. Again it was his fault. Finally, the people within the same cable company didn’t have a clue about writing an operators manual so that department was at fault too.
As a customer, Jack could care less who was at fault, he had only wanted his problem solved and perhaps some respect along the way. Have you ever experienced anything similar to this? Even though Jack’s problem was fixed, two days later a dish was installed on his roof. Another amazing thing was that I had previously spoken to their VP of Human Resources. The topic of our conversation was how blaming and making excuses, a lack of accountability, can destroy customer confidence and relationships. The VP assured me that they had no need. Talk about being out of touch with reality. We all need to understand and practice personal accountability. I wonder how many other neighbors heard Jack’s story. Please explore Personal Accountability and the QBQ! by using the QBQ drop down tab above.