Ken’s Cynical Inside Look at Corporate Ford Wrote:One of the most consistent misperceptions in consumer-land is that corporations full of people who care about what they do and are concerned about customer satisfaction and ‘doing the right thing,’ will be corporations that treat their customers right and will in fact have high levels of customer satisfaction.

Oh, but only if this were true. The fact is that a building full of caring employees does not a caring company make and does not by itself result in high levels of customer satisfaction.

Virtually every company I’ve ever worked with is focused on customer satisfaction at all levels of management. What’s more, they also spend lots of money to understand the customer satisfaction “environment” and to get third-party confirmation of their CS results.

But a management focus on customer satisfaction and big CS research budgets do not a caring company make, and they do not necessarily result in high levels of customer satisfaction.

Virtually every manager I’ve ever worked with is personally committed to the notion that in order to generate long-term profitable growth, their enterprise must strive to be at or near the top of the industry in their ability to create satisfied, repeat customers.

But these good intentions and these efforts alone rarely result in satisfied customers - and the reason is … [drum roll here] …. the “corporate clean hands syndrome.” [™ ZTWsquared]

The corporate clean hands syndrome is a process design philosophy intended to keep those employees who could actually make meaningful CS decisions (and spend the company’s money) out of the reach of the company’s customers. When it comes to how most corporations deal with customer satisfaction issues, decision makers are not allowed to get their hands dirty by communicating directly with disgruntled customers.

From a fiscal perspective this makes a lot of sense. Decision makers faced directly with an unhappy customer are more likely to quickly spend the money required to make them go away happy, as opposed to making them simply go away without any expense involved. There’s a good reason why unhappy customers automatically ask for the manager (a.k.a. the decision maker)…and large companies intent on maintaining the bottom line usually put processes in place to keep the two apart. Can you say “call centre.”

So the corporate dynamic is typically this: decision makers are focused on customer satisfaction in a sterile, distant, stats-on-paper, “clean hands” kind of a way … and those who actually get their hands dirty dealing directly with the disgruntled … well, they have no authority and no budget to take any meaningful action to make an unhappy customer happy.

Put another way, the company managers who create the customer satisfaction processes and budgets are rarely, if ever, faced personally with the consequences of their decisions (ie: a p.o’d customer in their face) … and those employees in direct contact with the unhappy customer are forced to use platitudes and cite the “company policy” created by distant management to explain why they really can’t do anything to make things right.

From a process point of view, their real job is to listen to the customers’ rant, give them a virtual pat on the back, say “there, there” and “tsk, tsk,” commiserate with them, be a calming influence and do whatever they can to convince the customer that things really aren’t that bad and they should really be happy --- [condescending voice] “you’re important to us and we’re really glad you called … is there anything else I can help you with today?” [/condescending voice]

And that’s why customer satisfaction usually takes a back seat to the bottom line … despite all the research findings, despite the public statements about the supreme importance of customer satisfaction, and despite the good intentions of those employees who truly do care about satisfying the company’s customers.

There … don’t you feel better now?

reldridge,Sep 7 2006, 05:51 PM Wrote:It makes me angry...

Because I'm part of it. I get vented to regularly. But myself, I am in a somewhat 'senior' position, so I only hear it after the noobs can't handle it anymore. :)

Very well written, and unfortunatley, very true.

Ryan
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