Two Small Mysteries
Solved
September 2009
Life is a wonderful mystery and it brings such pleasure when one of
its little secrets is discovered. Recently, two pieces of the puzzle fell
into place for me.
I have always wondered why people in business do not get the basics
right – whether it is product or service performance or customer
service. Some recent examples:
- Apple billed me twice for my Mobile Me subscription.
- When I asked
American Express to sort it out, they cancelled both charges, leaving
me with no subscription at all.
- When you call American Express and GE
Money, the automated voice asks for your account number, but when you
talk to a customer service person,
they ask for it again.
- Jet Star online system to change a booking can
never find the reference number and you have to telephone the call centre.
- A woman at GE Money asked me to email some information and gave me
a direct line to call to make sure the email had been received. The number
turned out not to be direct and when I got to the “right” person
she could not access the email.
- Telecom technicians made a change to
a line so it could take broadband, but when we tried it, it did not
work.
- The technician from Horizon Pacific who came to install the broadband
and found the Telecom fault arrived 50 minutes late.
The other day I was meeting senior managers to discuss some work I had
done with their staff. At the end of the meeting, one fellow leaned back
in his chair, sighed and said, “These things are just so basic.
You shouldn’t have to think about them.” All of a sudden,
I understood why it is common for people to get the basics wrong. They
do not think about them!
What do you think an All Black is thinking if he is standing under the
high ball inside his 22? Would he be saying to himself, “I don’t
need to think about catching this ball because it is such a basic thing
to do and I’ve been doing it all my life,” or would he be
saying, “I had better concentrate on getting the basics right because
if I drop the ball we could be in big trouble? Or, how about the surgeon
performing an operation, a racing car driver entering a turn, or a ballet
dancer performing a leap? Because these people are professionals, they
think about the basics and therefore nearly always get them right. I suspect
the people involved in the examples above did not think about what they
were doing or saying and therefore got it wrong. Would you like your customers
to think of your company or your staff as being professionals? If so,
get your staff to think about how they do the basics.
The second mystery
I solved recently was why, when something does go wrong, companies put
the burden of fixing it onto the customer. In the Apple
example, I was told because American Express had cancelled both payments, I would have to go online and subscribe all over again. Naively, I have
always expected staff from the company that stuffed up would do everything
they could to put things right. In this example, I expected Apple and
American Express would work together to re-instate one of the subscriptions.
After all, the two of them caused the problem and between them they had
all the information they needed to put it right. So, why ask the customer
to start all over again as if nobody had done anything wrong? But now
I understand. Companies and their staff do not realise the seriousness
of having an unhappy or outraged, customer.
A recent issue of the Harvard Business Review reported two interesting
findings from an experiment involving customers. First, when customers
have a bad experience they want revenge. The study showed an unhappy customer’s
main drive is to punish the company that failed them. This is why, my
main strategy when I am treated badly as a customer is to cost the company
money. In the Apple example, I kicked up such a fuss a senior manager
in New Zealand spent at least six hours trying to sort out the problem.
The second major finding was customers want revenge so badly, they will
get it even if it costs them money. Now that is very interesting because
many things that irritate customers result from a company cutting its
costs, which they do to compete on price. But the customer the company
believes is reluctant to spend money buying their product or service will
happily spend money exacting revenge when they have a bad experience.
In the Apple example, I refuse to renew my subscription to Mobile Me.
To some extent this is cutting off my nose to spite my face because I
will now have to go back to using web mail, but on principle I am not
prepared to work to fix up a problem caused by my suppliers. I am not
alone, Australian research shows 73% of customers are dissatisfied with
how companies respond to their complaints about performance failures.
This is a leading cause of customer rage, which research in many countries
shows is on the increase.
Yes, it has been a rewarding couple of weeks with two of life’s
small mysteries solved. Next, I would like to understand why companies
spend money telephoning customers when customers do not want to talk to
them but do not have enough people available to answer the phones when
customers do want to talk. I would even be happy understanding why companies
spend money building their brand, and then squander that investment by
treating their customers in a way that causes such outrage they tell,
according to NZ research, at least 13 others.
Life is indeed a wonderful mystery!
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