The Problem Customer (Part 2)...Newsletter

Expectations
We now turn our attention to the notion of what meeting expectations is all about for customers. Customers don’t come in to the library for products alone (or services alone). They have in their minds an expectation that includes a holistic set of experiences that may include everything from how they’ll be treated, to what the state of the copy machine will be to whether they’ll find what they’re looking for, etc.

Key to avoiding disappointment with customers is the validation of “expectations” the customer has developed for the library. If those expectations represent activities or services the library never set out to provide, a dissatisfied customer is almost inevitable, no matter how much “customer service” library staff attempt to offer.

In workshops I conduct everywhere, I ask for examples of “expectations” customers have that Libraries never intended to fulfill. Examples offered are almost always led by things like “Babysitting”, “Everything is free” and “I want it now”. Who led the customer to believe those expectations were legitimate? At the end of the day, in my view it isn’t the director, board or staff...it is the insidious influence of the “Customer is King” philosophy. It leads us down a path that makes us do things we later regret and...even worse, we can’t get out of. Because we have trained the customer we will do these things on demand. And, once committed to a practice and reinforced customers are very good at holding the Library accountable for it. This pattern of expectation “creep” leads us to an understanding the development of expectations is something that can’t be left to chance or random acts of customer service. In fact, I’ve coined a rule for the notion of Customer Expectations and it goes like this:

When it comes to expectations you have two choices only:

Therefore, unsurprisingly enough, one of the first steps toward avoiding Problem Customers is to train customers in what expectations they may legitimately have for the Library (change the expectation). We covered some of that last time when we discussed the blanket policies about behavioral expectations for customers and for staff. But let’s move behavior to service policy. What services will the library deliver at what level, on a consistent basis? (Meet the expectation).
Once those determinations are made, customers may be retrained to expect that level of service. Then standards may be developed and staff trained against those standards. It sounds simple, but its very difficult given a customer that has been trained to be able to make unreasonable demands in the form of unpublished expectations.

While we won’t go into the process for making that happen here, (that is a subject for the Customer Service/Customer Servant topic-coming soon) I hope I have persuaded you the logic of how failing to train the customer in legitimate expectations can lead to disappointed and ultimately “Problem Customers” .

Summary
To recap what we’ve discussed so far, we have suggested the Library as an organization must operate with a dynamic tension (parity) between all four human elements of the enterprise (owners, customers, employees, suppliers). Secondly, we have suggested policies which reflect that parity, first in the form of blanket behavioral policies and secondly in the form of service policies which begin to define what the customer may legitimately expect.

When Something Goes Wrong
Dealing with the issue of something going wrong is facilitated by having a published set of service standards, realistic customer expectations and staff trained to provide consistent levels of service. Part 1 and Part 2 up to this point have essentially provided the rationale behind this statement and some direction on how to go about it. The next step has practical application: How do we avoid turning Customers with Problems into Problem Customers?

Who’s Right?
Who is in the right is probably less important than how the situation is handled. So, we will begin to describe the process for dealing with a Customer with a Problem and describe where the “fork in the road” will come based on the determination of fault with a strong bias toward the “tie goes to the runner” (customer) in place.

The first element of the review must focus on the communication between parties. To insure good communications we incorporate several elements (some suggested by Deb Ziegler in her Customer Service Standards for Kent District Library):

Once we all understand the problem, let’s make some effort to determine who is responsible...not at fault. If the customer says the Library promised to have the materials on reserve available on Tuesday and the promised materials weren’t there, we presume the Library made an error. We don’t need to give the customer a lie detector test.

On the other hand, if the customer lost a book and admits he lost it, or at least admits he checked it out, it may be reasonable to assume the customer is responsible for the book.

For the rest of today’s edition, let’s presume the customer was wronged and the staff person recognizes it is likely the Library made the error. (We’ll explore how to handle the situation when the customer is in the wrong in a future edition).

The Three Rs (Recognition/Recovery/Redress)
Fundamentally, one of the most significant tools library staff can use to avoid the development of Problem Customers is to effectively respond when the Library or a staff member have made an error. Amazing amounts of resentment build up in customers very quickly when staff or managers of a Library refuse to acknowledge they made a mistake or refuse to make a problem right.

Recognition
Having gone through the interview process noted above to “discover” what the problem is, the Library staff person is now in a position to formally “recognize” the problem and begin to address it.

The first indicators of recognition are “care and concern”. Service providers who evidence scant concern for customers in the face of a company error rarely achieve subsequent satisfaction even if they fix the problem completely and promptly. The fact is that if you don’t care, customers aren’t going to fully forgive the incident...almost no matter what you do.

Care and concern includes recognition the customer was inconvenienced and genuine regret over that inconvenience. Additionally, concern should reflect an acknowledgment over that customer’s lost time and effort, which, in fact, can never be recovered regardless of any subsequent efforts.

In effect staff’s recognition of the problem through a demonstrated care and concern for the customer and their inconvenience goes a long way toward setting up the customer for a satisfactory resolution to the problem.