A freelance customer service consultant Nuno Henriques raises a question in the Customer Service Professional Group: Do you think it’s a good idea to transfer upset customers from the agent to supervisors? And it opens a floodgate of comments (125 and still counting), which, I am sure, would have surprised Nuno himself.
More than 50 customer service professionals at various levels of functional hierarchy, consultants and thought leaders have voiced their opinions in more than 10,000 words covering various topics. Robert Bacal, joining the discussion more than half way down the line, tells us, “there is more to it” and Tom Clark, joining even later has rightly said: “The reality is that the question may be simple, but the answer is not.” He, of course, explains why but my latest comment provides the gist.
Yes the answer is not simple. Many companies in the world can rightfully claim to have the wherewithal for delivering good customer service. And yet, it is not uncommon to find that even well-meaning, highly customer-centric companies fail to deliver the promised quality of customer service at the operating level.
Schizophrenic Behaviour
Like Helen Dewdney—a very active participant in Nuno Henriques discussion—I also don’t give up easily if I find that I have been wronged by a company. The ‘agents/supervisors’ of seven highly reputed but erring companies displayed the fine art of lip service and evasiveness but chose not to see through the real problem. Escalated in each case right up to the top management level my complaints were satisfactorily resolved but I was simply amazed by the incongruity of behavior at various levels of hierarchy. This behavior which I later termed as schizophrenic, defied any logic and I decided to undertake empirical research to explore: why and how does organizational schizophrenia germinate.
- Where does a disconnect take place between intent and implementation; between policy and practice?
- Why do mission/vision statements and internal policy directives fail to inspire the front-line employees to act purposefully?
- Does this phenomenon represent a cultural diversion within some parts of the company?
- What is the root cause for an organisation to behave in a schizophrenic manner?
As I had expected, the answers to the vexing questions did not lie in the company policy or business processes. The VOICES of the respondents to a targeted empirical research revealed that gaps between policy and practice occur more because of the behavioral rather than systemic reasons. I intend to share these findings over aperiod of time at Linkedin Plus. However, the research findings with all their ramifications have been put together in my second book Organisational Schizophrenia: Impact on Customer Service Quality (SAGE 2013).
Obsessive pursuit of profit maximisation by a company can result in a cultural churn and loss of objectivity. Unless protected doggedly company’s core values get diluted leading to ambiguity, indecision and loss of initiative. That is when “organizational schizophrenia” creeps in with a fairly negative impact on organizational performance in general and on quality of customer service in particular.
’Many companies all over the world are beginning to accept that ‘maximizing shareholder value at the cost of negating long-term customer relationship is an inherently and tragically flawed premise’ and that it is time we abandoned it[1]. In an interview in March 2009, Jack Welch—who was once considered the embodiment of the idea that a company’s sole aim should be maximising returns to its shareholders—said, “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.”