Employees are not the cause of customer dissatisfaction
Many organizations that want to improve service to their customers attack the problem on the side of contact employees. Train them, train them to communicate effectively with customers, predispose them to serve the customer well…
All these measures are based on the assumption that the problem is with the employees. Is it so?
According to a study conducted by TARP Worldwide, the attitude and mistakes of customer contact employees are responsible for only 20% of dissatisfied customers. Another 20-30% of cases of dissatisfaction are due to mistakes made by customers themselves, wrong expectations or the misuse of products. But…
What is the main cause of customer dissatisfaction?
About 60% of customer dissatisfaction is due to products, processes, and marketing messages that are delivered as planned, but contain nasty surprises.
This means that the problem is in what employees are told to do or say.
The same study reveals that the majority of employees go to work desperately wanting to do a good job, but there are messages, decisions, processes that they must follow, which are not satisfactory for customers.
An employee who feels unable to satisfy the customer (due to factors beyond his control) becomes frustrated.
This is demonstrated by the following question, which I received some time ago from a contact employee, and depicts this reality in all its dimensions:
"How to handle the situation with the client when the response to your request depends on a third party and it is negative?"
Nobody likes to work in a place of tension and conflict. The employees who deal with customers on a daily basis, what they most want is that this relationship be friendly, rewarding, and they know that for this they need to satisfy their need. They do what is within their power, but so often they are conditioned…
Work in the deep layers of service
All this allows us to conclude that the solution cannot be limited only to these employees. If you don't work in the deeper layers of your service, there is no way to achieve a satisfying result.
These deep layers involve interpreting customer expectations, helping to create realistic expectations regarding the service they will receive, designing a service that responds appropriately to their needs and expectations, and making everything work as designed, articulating each process, and all the actors who will make the final result possible.
Oh, and also, of course, to make the employee who is in charge of that final contact, able to deliver the service with the quality required for that moment of truth. Thus, it will be the finishing touch of a team effort, in which all members of the organization participate, oriented towards the final recipient of all their efforts: the client.
Based on this coherence, we can expect substantive, sustainable changes that will allow us to offer a solid and consistent service, to win the long-awaited customer loyalty.
