"Due to the bad connection I have to terminate this call"

“Due to the bad connection I have to terminate this call. Please call us back” was the end to a frustrating attempt to ask some questions of a bank. Not the first call, but the fourth. Whose bad connection? Mine or yours? Could you hear that this was the 4th time I had tried to call you?

Imagine if I was right in front of you and said to you “Sorry, I just don’t get what you’re saying, I’m going to have to terminate this conversation”. Rude right? Not generally something we would do. Not quite the same as calling a call centre to be told by a perfectly wonderful human that “Due to the bad connection I have to terminate this call”.

30 years ago, I get it. No way to know who I am, or what number I am calling from.

20 years ago, you may still have been able to get away with that kind of customer interaction because hey, you know, banks, silos and CRM.

10 years ago, I would have said that in general most call centres were equipped to handle such eventualities although in general, that particular “switch”, the one that enables the person to call me back, was probably not toggled to “love your customer as fiercely as you can and call them back now”.

2021. Its unforgivable that you do not call your customer back, whatever the issue. You have full view of my number and you should have a view of who I am, maybe you even have, gasp, my first and last name in front of you.

Treating your customers in such an off handed manner and with such obvious disdain is however less of a surprise than it should be because, although many organisations pretend that they have placed the customer at the centre of their business, they would actually be hard pressed to identify where the centre of their business actually is. Or, for that matter, what is at the centre of their business. Platitudes on a wall, values, vision and mission statements are all worthless when there is a disconnect between them and how you show up in every interaction.

Maybe this would be a more accurate and truthful plaque to find in the entrance to one the top 50 South African companies: ‘We strive to always tell the customer that we love them, while showing them, through our actions, that with all our heart and mind, we don’t really care about them at all, other than in their contribution to our bottom line profit for our shareholders.’

This core value would very neatly reflect my experience of “Due to the bad connection I have to terminate this call. Please call us back.”

At what point will companies start to realise:

1.   That they need to become fierce in showing their love for their customers.

2.   That a customer at the centre of your business really means exactly that and they need to experience this business approach.

3.   That your back end should not get in the way of your front end - don’t let your policies, procedures, ERP, CRM, ECM and all the other acronyms you think are critical to your survival, get in the way of loving your customer fiercely. *

Fierce. Customer. Love.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to be on the receiving end of that from a company?

* This thought is expanded upon in a chapter from my 2018 book “Swimming with Sharks – Simple Business Guidelines for a Complex World” titled “Is your customer experience dictated by your systems”. The chapter, along with the rest of the book are available at www.swimmingwithsharks.co.za

#FierceCustomerLove #customerservice #CustomerFirst #CustomerCentric #CustomerAtTheCentric #Customer