Is it wrong to try to sell a customer something after he calls to complain about a service issue?
Twenty-five years ago in The Right Thing column, I wrote about a recently settled strike between telecommunications workers and their parent company. One of the items I focused on that could have added to the workers’ discontent was what seemed to be a disconnect between the company’s values statement and the behavior it insisted on from its customer service representatives.
Among the values the company indicated it held dear were “integrity, respect, imagination, passion and service.” But, I noted at the time, the company requested that its customer service representatives end each call from a customer with the question: “Did I provide you with outstanding service today?” Not a bad question, I guess, but it often placed representatives in the position of asking the question after they’d spent time with a customer who was calling to complain about an issue that might not have been resolved in the call.
As I wrote back then: “Having just calmed an irate customer, a representative offering such a response -- clearly tied to Verizon's core value of service -- could set him off again. The request was cited by strikers as one cause of stress.”
It would have been far better to give customer service representatives the discretion to ask the question or to dispense with it if it seemed clear to them that it might exacerbate their efforts to help a customer.
A recent experience with a cable service provider – a different company from the one I wrote about years ago – triggered my memory of this column.
After receiving a monthly bill that was higher than typical but which had arrived on the heels of a notice from the company that my bill would actually be going down because of the discontinuation of a service, I called the provider to see if they could explain the discrepancy. After about 20 minutes on hold and then another 20 minutes talking to an initial representative and then another half-hour talking with someone in the “loyalty” department, I still didn’t have any clarity about the discrepancy in the charge.
But as we were finishing the call, the last of these representatives told me of this great offer they had on computer tablets for customers. He wanted to know if he could sign me up for one. I asked him if he was really trying to sell me something additional after I had spent an hour unable to get a clear answer about the charges for what I already received. “I understand,” he said (not for the first time in our conversation, although it was pretty clear he didn’t understand what the issue was or what caused it), but again asked if I’d like to buy the tablet at a special price. I declined and hung up.
Twenty-five years after my initial plea to companies not to put their customer service representatives in the position of having to work from a script or to close even the most frustrating calls by upselling more services, they are still at it. The right thing, however, would be for companies to knock it off unless they want to continue to place their representatives in stressful situations and to leave their customers wondering if they want to continue to do business with them.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
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