Customer Service and Influence

A colleague and sometimes trainer, Sergio Perreira of MAPA Consulting sent several of us a newsletter article on customer service. The article makes excellent points on recruiting the right people for the job—people who actually care about customers, as well as achieving consistent service, keeping the “right” employees satisfied on the job, and actually consulting with customer service staff before making business decisions that affect them.

This article got my friend and colleague, Elaine Turcotte, who is Barnes & Conti’s Operations Manager as well as our customer service wizard thinking: what could we do as customers to get better customer service? Specifically, how could we use influence skills and behaviors as customers? 

Elaine challanged me to think about my most recent interaction with a tech support representative. Keep in mind that I look forward to interacting with tech support about as much as I look forward to a root canal. My most recent interaction, however, was particularly nightmarish. 

One of the uninterrupted power supplies at our Berkeley office kept sounding the alarm. On top of the annoying “beep, beep, beep” from the server closet, the power supply was also shutting down our email and database servers. I’d already done everything the manual suggested. It was time to call tech support.

I had two support: email or web-based live chat. The situation was critical enough for me to brave the live chat. I had a clear goal: to convince the person that the equipment was malfunctioning and get  credit towards purchasing another device (the warranty had expired). All I needed to do was explain the problem, and briefly summarize everything I’d done to diagnose it, using the clearest, most unidiomatic English possible.

The representative typed his greeting to me in charmingly clumsy English. I think I was communicating with Bangalore again. Its a good thing, communicating in unidiomatic English. I patiently typed up the saga of the alarm, the shut downs, and the steps I’d taken to troubleshoot the device.

Then came the dreaded, “May I ask you to try one thing for me?” Alright, one thing. I contacting a pair of hands at the office. Bangalore typed, I retyped, the office tested and typed, a typed, and Bangalore replied. This sequence occurred again. And again. And step by step until Bangalore had repeated the entire troubleshooting sequence I had done, and then some! A word to the wise “one thing” must be Bangalor-ese for “the entire @#$!&% set of protocols that appears on the representative’s computer screen.

After 45 minutes of type-retype-reply-type-retype-reply, Bangalore said: “I believe your device has a fault” and gave me the necessary code and information to get credit towards a new device. 

Did I achieve my goal? Certainly! But did I get good customer support? Hell no! The interaction should have taken five minutes, not forty-five! The representative didn’t listen to me, and I had to go through the entire set of protocols before he would concur. So how could I have influenced him to receive better customer service?

It’s usually best to start with Receptive Influence, so I probably should have tried to identify with him (Influence Behavior: identify with other), “I understand you just may be under time pressure, and I am as well.” Then maybe switch to Expressive Influence with a suggestion (Influence Behavior: suggest): “Can we possibly do this without going through all the troubleshooting steps? I’ve already done them.” After that I could have referred to what I hope our shared goal is (Influence Behavior: refer to goals and benefits) to end the interaction quickly with customer satisfaction.) “We both want to solve this as quickly as possible.”

Of course I have to acknowledge the possibility that none of this would have worked; Bangalore could have been under strict orders to stick to the protocols. But perhaps it was worth a try, no?

So let me put the question to you, our readers, and especially to those of you who have been through Exercising Influence. What influence plan could you come up with for a better reaction? You can even post your plan in the comments, if you like. I can’t offer your much in the way of incentives (Influence Behavior: offer incentives), except to see your name in large type on this blog. However, if there is enough response, I’d like to run a weekly or twice-monthly influence situation for our readers to ponder.

—Joel Kleinbaum