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I'll spare you the details, but an exchange I had this evening with a customer service rep for a US corporation has led me to conclude that working for a US corporation makes you dumber. The longer one works in this environment, the dumber one becomes. At some point, one reaches a critical mass of dumbness that one is no longer capable of figuring out that it's time to leave, and thus one is doomed to a lifetime of being dumb. In fact, I believe there is an exponential relationship between the number of years that one works for the corporation and the cumulative dumbness that accrues.

This is not a rant against customer service reps. It is a rant against the procedures, protocols, rules, and regulations that prevent reps from solving 90% of the problems that customers encounter. In my case, the customer service rep was prohibited to verbally offer a refund when in reality I only needed to refund one part of a purchase of a bundle of services in order to purchase another service that met my needs.

Hah, then I'm a genus. I new it.

If they would empower customer service reps with the ability to make customers happy, there would be far less defections. Unfortunately, most companies don't value or respect these people and as a result they end up being screeners for these companies, at which point most customers already have alternative plans in the works.

planet pujolsian wrote:If they would empower customer service reps with the ability to make customers happy, there would be far less defections. Unfortunately, most companies don't value or respect these people and as a result they end up being screeners for these companies, at which point most customers already have alternative plans in the works.

This was one of my favorite things about Apple. You were generally supposed to hold the line where they said, but you were free to exercise judgement. As an employee, this makes you incredibly happy.

planet pujolsian wrote:If they would empower customer service reps with the ability to make customers happy, there would be far less defections. Unfortunately, most companies don't value or respect these people and as a result they end up being screeners for these companies, at which point most customers already have alternative plans in the works.

I think many managers might be afraid to admit that the entry-level staff know more about their jobs than the managers. Truth is that this is the nature of management. You go from being a focused expert to more a generalist, which means yielding expertise, and thus power, to someone typically younger.

Over the past 18 months I have had the opportunity to manage two different groups of entry-level/customer-facing staff. It is pretty humbling to realize that you know a lot less about the nuts and bolts of the role than the staff, but it also makes one realize how important these roles are. As a manager, I spend most of my time trying to help my staff see how their work impacts the broader picture, and giving them the tools and skills to be more productive and helpful to customers. It has made my life a lot easier by viewing my staff as partners and assets, rather than disposable.

I could write a book on this.

I think many managers might be afraid to admit that the entry-level staff know more about their jobs than the managers. Truth is that this is the nature of management. You go from being a focused expert to more a generalist, which means yielding expertise, and thus power, to someone typically younger

This is absolutely true. I know for a fact that if a couple mangers in my department were thrown in front of a computer and asked to do what I do they would sit there w/ a dumbfounded look on their face.

In fact I went through a training class w/ one when we were learning some new systems and she was a complete idoit and had trouble doing some of the most minor things, it was pretty pathetic.

I agree with every aspect of this thread.

Couple of years ago I was working with one of our international dealers who felt she was overcharged for 1/2 doz items they bought from us. Our customer care rep basically told them it was their responsibility to prove how they'd been overcharged. Took me 2 weeks of digging but turns out that one of our spec tools was buggy and wasn't factoring the exchange rate correctly. So I cost my company $3,300, but got a really nice note from the client. Pretty much made my review that year for customer orientation. Most of our customer care reps are willing to at least question the corporate line but they don't put a whole lot of effort into it.

Perhaps I am just a 40+ year old romantic idealist who could never hack the corporate scene, and am an object worthy of Mark Twain's derision, but I honestly think many corporations invoke procedures and policies designed to keep customers ignorant or uninformed about their options, choices, and rights. It is as if something in the corporate DNA makes them fear customers, and resort to trickery to separate customers from their money, and keep it that way. I have encountered this with Citibank, RCN, Home Depot, among others.