Year: 2005

Training Beyond Customer Service

It’s interesting the effect that pressure has.

I’ve been bouncing around some ideas related to customer service in my head for a few months, but it was not until I HAD to write them down in the form of a paper for a conference that I was pushed to form them into some coherent whole. Of course, that was easier said than done, especially when I realized that I was working with some compound insights. In other words, I had insights that I had been using for some time, that have themselves been assembled into compound insights. But I had never written the original insights down… so I had to go back and lay the groundwork, and this I found somewhat annoying, although necessary.

Make sense? 🙂

One idea I finally had to explain is how little customer service training in the Caribbean is directed towards generating a particular customer experience.

If anything, I would say that our front-line staff in the Caribbean is only trained to follow the “right” process, and little else (with notable exceptions). What does that mean, exactly?

It simply means that as a customer, over and over, it seems as if customer service representatives (CSR’s) are only expected by their managers to say and do the required actions that they have been told to say and do. CSR’s are quite satisfied when they have done so, and seem to have either an ignorance of, or indifference to the experience that I and other customers are having.

I recently noticed this phenomena with three companies in different settings, and for the sake of competitive fairness, I’ll use three companies that offer services in the same industry – Digicel, Cable and Wireless and TSTT (Trinidad’s monopoly telephone provider).

As mentioned in a prior post, I have been waiting for basic fixed line service from Cable and Wireless here in Jamaica from Aug 8th, and as of today, Sep 27th, I have not received service. When I call to complain/beg/cajole, which I do almost every other day now, I receive a uniform response – “We don’t know.” That is the fixed response that my wife and I have gotten to every question that we’ve asked. There has been not a single show of concern, regret or apology.

I can tell by the response that they are “following the party line.” We’ve also tried the tactic of asking for a supervisor, only to be told that “they are just going to tell you the same thing.”

Once, I did get through to a supervisor, who told us that he’d check into it and call us back. We’re still waiting almost 4 weeks later.

In Trinidad, TSTT, in which Cable and Wireless holds a minority stake, has an awful habit of taking down their network for days at a time. It’s an amazing piece of monopoly-driven behaviour that has generated significant ill-will among Trinidadians who, from all indications, are even more eager than we Jamaicans were to bring in cellular phone competition. This is due to start in early 2006, which is not a moment too soon for most Trinis.

The joke is that with a likely and immediate drop in revenue on the near horizon, TSTT’s customer service remains painful to experience. When TSTT introduced GSM service I was told by everyone who switched over ( i.e. lured by false promises) to hold on to my old TDMA service. Three years later, I was being told the same thing, except that at this point, my TDMA phone was falling apart. I was forced into an upgrade, and had to make three trips to TSTT to get a new chip and a new number (transfers of old numbers were “backordered’ and would take weeks to accomplish).

I happened to go on a day on which “the system was down” and when I returned later that day, I was told by 3 CSR’s that I recognized (they were casually strolling around Trincity mall) that the system was still down.

Undaunted, I went up to check for myself and was told that the system was back up. About fifteen minutes later, the 3 CSR’s casually strolled in and started taking customers from what was by now a considerable line of people. They may have been on a sanctioned break for all I know, but the truth is that they must have been idle for several hours before that break due to the system being down. They were oblivious to all around them…

And, to add insult to injury, the entire cell-phone system went down for two whole days starting the day after (this occurrence is inconceivable to us in Jamaica).

Digicel, for its part, came to Jamaica as a breath of fresh air and has been able to capture over 50% of the cellular phone market in just three short years. Their trademark has been a combination of better pricing, better service and wide availability (going to a Cable and Wireless office used to be seen as one of the worst evils imaginable).

Lately, however, Digicel customer service operators have clearly been “trained.”

Every conversation with a Digicel CSR goes something like this:

“Can I have your name please?”

“Francis”

“Mr. Francis, thank you for calling Mr. Francis, how can we help you today Mr. Francis?”

“My voicemail cannot be reached”

“Mr. Francis, I’m sorry to hear that Mr. Francis, and let me see what the problem is Mr. Francis.”

While I’m exaggerating to demonstrate the point, the effect of the CSR using my name over and over again in this unnatural way makes me think I’m dealing with some kind of machine, worse than any I encountered while living in the U.S.

But this is only annoying.

Clearly, Digicel, has also trained its CSR’s to keep the phone conversations short, and they might even be measured on the amount of calls they accept per CSR.

How did I arrive at this conclusion? Well, in each case that I’ve called, I’ve had to struggle to keep the CSR on the phone, and to prevent them from hanging up on me before I was finished asking my questions, and long before the issue was resolved.

Throw in a “Mr. Francis” here and a “Mr. Francis” there and the conversation is comical:

“I would suggest that you call back later Mr. Francis, and I’d like to thank you for calling Mr. Francis, and have a nice….”

“WAIT, I’m not finished yet!!!!”

“Yes, Mr. Francis?” (in an exasperated tone)

“How do I know that I’ll be able to fix this next time I call? What will be different then?”

“Well Mr. Francis, perhaps by then we will have a solution, but I’d like to thank you for calling Mr. Francis, and hope that it gets resolved next time Mr. Francis, and have a nice…”

“WAIT, Hold on, I’m not finished yet!!!!”

And so it goes, on and on — with me desperately trying to keep them on the phone, and them rushing to get off.

The thing that Cable and Wireless, Digicel and TSTT have not understood is that their employees were probably trained to be “good students” or what we in Jamaica would call “nice students.” In other words, they are very-well trained to follow orders and follow procedures. You cannot get through our Caribbean education system, with its do-or-die examinations at different levels, without being proficient at following sometimes mindless routines.

In fact, Caribbean slavery and indentureship were all about doing as little work as possible under duress, and just enough to avoid punishment. In Barbados, (where my observation is that this behaviour has reached an apogee,) I’ve heard this called “malicious compliance.”

The employee is trained to follow the rules, and does so, against what I believe are some of his/her natural instincts.

Thankfully, there is a new standard of customer service that is more appropriate for Caribbean customers – training in producing a particular customer experience (also called a “branded customer experience”).

This approach takes much more focused effort to both define the experience, and to train employees in producing it. The definition requires senior management involvement, and for the benefit of Caribbean employees be put into song, verse and script in order to get the definition across. The experience might be as simple as “Customers feel cared for in every interaction” or “Customers are able to get on with their day as soon as possible.”

One benefit of focusing on a particular experience, is that is puts the employee squarely in the world of the customer, so that instead of wondering whether or not their boss will be mad at them, they focus their energy on how to produce the desired customer experience.

Clearly, the CSR’s that I encountered from Digicel, C&W and TSTT did not care about my experience, as they would probably say that that was just not a part of their job. Their job was to follow the instructions they had been given (as good students would) and to do as they were told.

The fact is, providing a particular customer experience takes more than following the rules, and in many cases the rules that work in places like North America do not work here in the Caribbean (and even have the opposite effect). Instead, it takes a different level of awareness of what’s occurring in the customer’s world, combined with some ingenuity to determine how to provide it given the business constraints that the company must operate within.

The good news is that the Caribbean has no shortage of people who are tuned into the experience of others, and an over-abundance of ingenuity… if only these could be combined in some unique ways we could go well beyond dealing with people who are just “following the process” and come to know our companies by the quality experiences that they offer.

I’m in the midst of a series of short-hop flights from KIN-ANT-POS-BGI-ANU-KIN (see a list of acronyms used at the end of this blog.)

In the past, I’d sworn to myself that I would never fly BWIA again, after some piece of bad treatment on some flight that I now can’t remember. This time around, I couldn’t bear to either face the cost and time of flying through MIA to get to POS from KIN. The connections are long, and the whole day of flying is deadly.

I didn’t want to fly AirJa to BGI, and then make another connection to another airline (LIAT, Caribbean Star or BWIA,) as my experience was that the extra connection to another airline just did not make it worth it. So I resigned myself to giving BWIA another try, and as I checked in I began to remember what I disliked so much.

The first annoyance was BWIA’s ultra-strict carry-on policy, which always results in me having to check my luggage – the same luggage that I carry-on to every other plane I fly in North America. For that size aircraft, they are the only carrier that insists that carry-ons be checked, and the way that they do it consistently seems to disregard the fact that a business traveler and frequent flyer have different needs than the casual vacationer. BWIA seems not to distinguish between the two in any way, and seems unwilling to make any kinds of concessions for its most valuable passengers (who fly the most often and pay the highest fares).

When we got to Antigua, which was just supposed to be a short stop on the way to POS, we were told that a flight attendant had burned her hand badly on the flight to Antigua, and as a result could not perform her duties. Therefore, the flight would have to be discontinued, as they could not find a replacement. Thus began a 4 hour delay.

Of course, people were complaining. How could the absence of a single flight attendant cause that much disruption? Why didn’t they offer some people free tickets and an overnight in Antigua in exchange for giving up their seat on the plane and making the flight legal? Why didn’t they have backup crew – could no-one on the island step in?

I cussed to myself, and reminded myself why I don’t fly BWIA. I quickly made some alternate arrangements so that I would only need to fly to BGI on the way back.

When I turned up at POS for my next leg to BGI a couple of days later, the absence of a line at the check-in counter warned me that something was awry. I was told that they were sorry but the flight was no longer stopping in Barbados, and instead that I was checked into the following morning’s flight to BGI (without my knowledge.)

I was sputtering with the shock of this news at all of 7:30 pm.

The CSR’s did not even begin to apologize, or try to make amends, which made my blood start to boil. They also started to get into what might be called “blame the victim” by asking me if I had confirmed (“Yes”), given a contact number (“you tell me“), made the reservation a long time ago (“No”).

I eventually asked them a pressing question – “Was there another flight going to Barbados tonight?” That yielded a reluctant “Yes, there’s one leaving in a few minutes on LIAT.” I rushed over to LIAT with a transfer in hand (OK, it was at the same counter, just 25 yards away). By the time I really started rushing, I was there.

I ran through immigration and the check-points, and to gate 13 – which had a small number of passengers, and no staff in sight. It was delayed.

Thankfully, they were still keeping to their schedule, and I made it to BGI that night, albeit an hour late.

I contrast this with a horrible delay that I had the prior week travelling with Air Jamaica from Fort Lauderdale. The 8am flight had mechanical difficulties, which were not resolved by parts that were sent up from Jamaica, and we were finally included on a flight that left at 10:30pm that night, which resulted in a travel day of some 20 hours total from bed to bed.

The contrast comes in the way the Air Jamaica staff dealt with the problem. They had several problems themselves, in this case in getting the word out to the customers on the latest developments. But the feeling I had was that the staff cared, and one agent cared enough to sit around for a couple of hours with the passengers in the lounge commiserating and demonstrating a remarkable willingness to be the butt of Air Jamaica jokes.

That was something else, and the laughing and hilarity that ensued helped make the day feel that much shorter.

At BWIA, I was left with this uneasy feeling that the staff just did not care, and were not willing to be responsible for anything. Although both Air Jamaica and BWIA are losing money every day, and are both up for sale by their respective governments, Air Jamaica’s service consistently seems to be at a higher level in some ways that I can’t define very well.

My hypothesis is that Air Jamaica is a major carrier for European and North American tourists to the island, while BWIA carries mostly Trinidadians and other Caribbean islanders. The feel of the service at BWIA is that it is more friendly than professional.

The difference between friendly and professional service, however, is that a friend represents only him or herself, whereas a professional represents a company. Friends are free not to care, but a CSR is paid to care, and is obliged to provide service regardless of their mood, or how they feel about the person on the receiving end. To that end, BWIA’s service is good when things are going well and that friendly feeling prevails. It quickly turns distant and unfeeling, however, when things go badly and this is where the other airlines are generally better.

Interestingly, I’m writing this entry aboard a Caribbean Star flight from BGI to Antigua. That by itself is pretty mundane, but the interesting aspect of this trip is that I am the only passenger on a 32 or so seater.

To be more accurate, I am the only revenue passenger – there are 3 employees of the airline on the flight also. There is one (female) flight attendant working, another one travelling and two pilots travelling. To my disappointment, they have not yet broken out the champagne and fillet mignon… perhaps I am cramping their style? I made a joke that they now had to hide the scotch…

I made the mistake of asking if there was anything else, at the end of an offer of refreshments – I had a choice of 4 kinds of cream filled biscuits, and 4 kinds of juices, in addition to water. Not even soft drinks are carried on these flights apparently… However, the flight attendant assured me that on the longer flights they carry sandwiches. She must think highly of these sandwiches as she suggested that I take a longer flight to find out what that kind of service was like… Hmmm…. That one had the spare pilots and flight attendant laughing.

Acronyms used

ANU –Antigua

GAIA / BGI– Grantley Adams International Airport

POS – Port of Spain

KIN – Kingston