We Love Customers, But…
As much as we believe in customer centricity and applying the Golden Rule in business, truth be told, not all customers return the favor. From unrealistic expectations to outright rudeness, customers can sometimes challenge even our most patient service experts.
To celebrate the contact center agents who need to keep their game face on day in and day out no matter the circumstance, Interactive Intelligence held a contest called Outrageous Interactions. Agents were invited to submit, well, outrageous interactions with customers. A group of judges (me included) selected our 10 favorites from among the entries. Interactive Intelligence posted the top 10 overall to OutrageousInteractions.com and invited anyone to vote on their favorite. The winner received a five-day Hawaiian vacation.
I spent a few hours reading and reviewing the entries, and I have to say that customers can be astounding. When I judged for “outrageous,” I looked for just that. I wasn’t necessarily looking for “funny.” Consequently, my top choice was the story of agent selling symphony tickets who happen to phone the Dean of Musical Studies at a large university whose son is a violin prodigy. The prospect put his son on the phone and quizzed them both about music theory, then proceeded to have his son play his violin. After an eight-minute “concert,” which the agent put on speakerphone to share with her colleagues, the prospect apologized for giving her a hard time and purchased season tickets for the symphony.
A close second was the story of the customer who kept a tech support agent on the phone for two hours as an April Fool’s joke.
You can read the 10 winning entries at OutrageousInteractions.com. I hate to admit that reading about unwittingly funny or downright mean customers is entertaining, but it is. And hopefully there are a few lessons in there, like 1) recognizing how challenging and important agents’ jobs are, and 2) remembering to be a good customer, as well as a customer-centric executive.
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Graham,
No, you definitely don't need a competition to hear about the worst service examples these day; the Web and email spread the word like wildfire. Just another reason to be truly customer centric, and to keep customers in mind when making policy, process, and strategy decisions.
Hi Ginger
My wife ran the Customer Assistance Centre for one of the Detroit Three in Germany a decade ago. Some of her stories would make your jaw drop in disbelief: (A non-customer asking for a free van because they had a large family), or make you grind your teeth in irritation (a senior manager of the Detroit Three company demanding a MERCEDES for his family because his company car had broken down whilst on holiday).
Obviously, customers have a whole range of reasonable and unreasonable expectations of the companies they do business with. That is to be expected. But many also have nothing but trouble with those same companies who have already taken their money, but then refuse to honour any further part of the bargain afterwards. That is becoming common place, but is it acceptable? Personally, I think not. And companies should expect to be held publically accountable for non-delivery of their part of the bargain.
I guess you don't need to have a competition to identify the most crass, the most egregious and the most incompetent examples of company behaviour. You just need to look at YouTube.
Compaines should NEVER forget that customer generally have many alternatives to doing business with them. A sobering thought when they have finished denigrating those very same customers.
Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager