It’s not my job

Early one morning, on the island of no customer service, we encountered a service rep from a major air conditioning company. It was not an unusual encounter because we have come to expect the same level of service in the last eight years we have been forced to deal with these lackluster organizations.

Our air conditioner had been blowing warm air for several days and we made an appointment for a service rep to visit Thursday morning. Thursday came, and the company rescheduled for Friday. On Friday, the service rep checked the unit and told us that it wasn’t working and there would be someone out on Monday.

Monday came and another service rep arrived, and he had no clue that someone was already out last Friday. He was just told to stop by. After hooking up his device to the outside unit, he declared that the compressor was broke and it was leaking Freon. They would prepare a quote and it would have to be repaired another day.

Six hundred dollars was the quoted price! And, they refused to work on it until the amount was paid up front. Ouch!

After the initial shock wore off, their take-it-or-leave-it offer was grudgingly accepted and the work began on Tuesday morning. As it was being completed, we asked if they were going to look at the inside unit. It was dirty and made some funny noises in the past. It would probably take 10 minutes to check the unit out and either clean it or see if additional work needed to be done on it. Silly us—we thought the service would include making sure that everything was operating properly before the service reps left. But true to the nature of businesses on the island of no customer service, the service rep told us that he could not look at it because it was not on the quote.

A call was made to the main office to ask “permission” for the “service” reps to service the inside unit on the same day—for an additional $45. The answer was “no.” It would have to be scheduled for yet another time.

We have come to accept mediocre service, and we are usually not disappointed. Organizations that are particularly poor at service have trained their employees to make inane statements like: “It’s not on the contract!” or “It’s not my department!” or “It’s not my job!” This is because organizations have policies and procedures that force employees to only act within a narrow scope of work. Any deviation outside those rules will carry heavy consequences. We would venture to say that the rep who worked on our air conditioner would get in trouble with his boss if he had done anything outside of the contract. He may have even been told that any additional service requires a separately scheduled appointment so that an additional site visit charge can be imposed on the customer.

Whatever he was told, he definitely would not touch the inside unit and risk reprimand from his boss for violating the sacred policies of the organization. In essence, this poor rep had been emasculated from doing what he probably felt would be the best or right thing to do in that situation.

The buzzword for giving employees the authority to make decisions outside of the policies and procedures of the company is called “empowerment.” We don’t hear or read as much about empowerment; however, its basic premise is still valid today. Empowerment allows an employee to make a range of decisions to better assist the customer. Rules are important, but they cannot possibly cover every situation. The more a company attempts to have a rule for every encounter, the more stifling the environment becomes. Too many rules do not allow employees to think, and without creative thought, the company will stagnate and diminish into a lifeless, robotic shell of a business.

The company may look good and have the latest high-tech devices, but it will lack the high-touch that builds customer relationships. Larger corporations are plagued with this low-touch disease that causes people to avoid them. Their imperial directives are passed down from the grand Pooh-Bah, and the serfs are expected to not defy the RULES…because there are unspeakable consequences.

Employees who deal with a large number of customers frequently know the solution to most common questions and problems. If you give them the power to deal directly with some of the more routine issues, more of their time can be spent handling the more unique situations. When a service rep parrots back, “It’s not on the contract,” it tells us that person is working in an organization that thinks short-term, does not value long-term customer loyalty, has too many stifling rules, or a combination of all of the above. The chance for the air conditioning company we mentioned earlier to create long-term, loyal customers is about as good as a snowball’s chance of surviving on Saipan.

(Rik is a business instructor at NMC and Janel is the owner of Positively Outrageous Results. They can be contacted at: biz_results@yahoo.com)