According to our research, the second most important factor for the customer in evaluating the service they receive is the attitude that employees demonstrate to them.
Derived from our inquiries, clients have agreed that their service attitude is measured - more frequently when they perceive that the people who serve them have a legitimate interest in solving the problem caused to them by failing to comply with previously acquired commitments.
Again, we note that courtesy and kindness do not displease customers, but what they need are solutions to their problems…
An employee with kindness in dealing with the client, or an employee with the ability to understand him (empathy) and what causes him our bad service (or what he wants to receive), but, who lacks capacity, authority, support and / or interest in solving your problem will not be able - under almost no circumstances - to spare you discomfort or dissatisfaction.
Gurus call this ability to solve problems for customers, recovery actions, as they allow organizations to regain customer trust by solving a conflict.
Thanks to these actions, companies can avoid losing customers who experience poor service that our company cannot offer, either only on that occasion or on a frequent basis. In summary, clients observe a service attitude, especially when those who serve them use recovery activities, to remedy the breach of a promise and / or when we cannot offer what the client wants or requests.
Although the company hires staff with the best possible service attitude.
A high level of non-compliance will prevent you from giving the results you need.
Causes of poor service attitude in companies:
Although in reality we know them as causes of poor or ineffective recovery, we will mention those reasons why customers complain about the poor service attitude of the employees who serve them.
It should be noted that many theories of quality in service (in the USA and other countries) are inclined to the assertion that the attitude of the people who serve customers is something personal, and that it should only be cultivated and promoted through talks motivational.
However, our projects with Mexican businessmen and clients have allowed us to find, on multiple occasions, contact personnel with an unbeatable service attitude or a sincere interest towards clients, but which, despite this, they fail to resolve their problems, or that the customer perceives that they have the correct service attitude. For that reason, we decided to investigate more deeply the reasons why:
- Although the staff has the correct service attitude towards the client, they cannot improve the service provided, nor can they prevent the client from judging a bad attitude on their part. And, although the personnel with the desired service attitude are hired, the company does not manage to channel it properly to obtain results, or it fails to provide the support so that this attitude gives results, or it fails to maintain the aforementioned attitude in the employee, or, in the latter case, it fails to retain staff with the necessary attitude.
Derived from our research, we can summarize that organizations obtain bad evaluations regarding the service attitude of their personnel, for the following reasons.
- Breach of sales or service promises. Lack of adequate and / or complete training for customer contact personnel. Lack of organizational support or support. Lack of measurement and reward.
Breach of sales or service promises
As we have seen in a previous article, compliance is the most important factor for the customer in terms of service, but we have also noticed that such noncompliance damages the service attitude that employees show to customers. The influence that non-compliance has on the lack of service attitude (either that shown by employees or that perceived by customers), we have detected in 3 different situations:
A) The client becomes more demanding. Because non-compliance generates dissatisfaction in the client, and despite being willing or open to be given alternatives to solve their problem (it gives us the opportunity to recover it), their demands are much higher for the company and for the personnel who take care of it, which complicates the recovery work.
B) More time is required of the employee to better serve customers. According to our research, a client who is upset by the promise-breaking situation not only becomes more demanding but also demands more time from the person serving them. First, the employee spends more time trying to lessen their discontent, anger, or even annoyance, and second, the employee has to verify what they can do in the company to solve the problem with the customer.
We have come to observe cases in which employees lose up to 1 hour (and even more to attend to an annoying customer for non-compliance, and the worst thing is that sometimes that hour was not even enough to solve the problem, that is, sometimes he invested the time and left the customer unsatisfied.
If the company experiences too many episodes like this, the time the employee must spend is much longer, but less productive, which can have an impact on their chance of recovery.
It may seem like an exaggeration, but when promises with customers are constantly broken, the employees of attention receive a call after sneaking others (there are times when they attend to a furious customer they warn them that there is another one waiting their turn).
Due to this large load of calls, it is verified that some clients consider a bad attitude of service of the employees towards them, because when the agreed time passed, they did not receive a call to know the status of their order or to know the solution they offered. For this reason, they called again and when they asked what you were reporting, when they did not receive an answer, they perceived a lack of attitude; But the cause is that after he hung up, he received a call from the other, also annoying, who could not hang up to solve the problem for the first one.
Employees of these companies comment with great concern that they are currently experiencing conflicts in their priorities. They do not know whether to rush the new client - despite knowing that they may perceive a lack of attitude - to solve the problem of the previous one, or attend to the client in turn even if the former perceives a lack of attitude.
In short, they worry because they know that even with their best effort, they will not be able to show the correct attitude with any of the two clients. The cause was not a lack of attitude on the part of the employees towards the clients, but rather the noncompliance was so frequent that it reduces productive time and they could not show the recovery that the client demanded.
If a company experiences a high percentage of non-compliance in its commitments to customers, the downtime of employees (and in general of the organization) increases, but dissatisfaction with the service received continues, since it takes time away from employees to recover clients. In other words, although the company hires staff with the best possible service attitude, a high level of non-compliance will prevent it from giving the results it needs.
C) Decrease your spirit to recover clients. We have also noted that working in a company that constantly fails to meet its commitments lowers employee morale by taking customer satisfaction as its responsibility. Even if an employee has the right attitude, constant complaining about noncompliance can chase away his attitude toward the customer, or they can chase the employee away from finding a more suitable organization to work for.
