International Process and Performance Institute

A friend of mine, in curmudgeonly fashion, told me his story about a recent experience with an Internet provider gone amuck.  Almost everyone has their own tech support war stories.  I've heard a lot of them and have quite a few of my own to tell.  However, his experience has a surreal twist that begs sharing.

My friend's story starts when he called the tech support department at the Internet service provider to get some help in restoring his service.  After a number of false diagnoses, it was determined that a critical component to his particular service was turned off because according to their system, he was not paying for that service.  His protests and proof to the contrary, with recent paid invoices showing charges for the service, were no help.  My friend was not going to get his Internet connection back for a couple of weeks and that was that.

He had already investigated alternative providers because of similar shenanigans with this provider and decided to order the new service.  It got interesting when he tried to cancel his service with the old provider.  When he told the customer service representative he wanted to cancel his service, they told him he had to speak to the “Customer Loyalty Department.”

Yep, this company has a Customer Loyalty Department.  Doesn’t that sound impressive for a company to have such a department with such an auspicious name?  Can you speculate as to this department’s charter based on that moniker?  Now, let’s return to the story and see what they actually did for my friend.

The fellow from the Customer Loyalty Department (referred to as CLD from now on) asked what the problem was, what they could do to fix the problem, and still keep my friend’s business?  The CLD guy was very good at offering different ideas in the attempt to solve the problem and very persuasive as well.  Interestingly enough, he offered solutions the Tech Support department either couldn’t or didn’t offer.  Ultimately, the CLD guy was able to get the service up and running for my friend that very day, not the two weeks he was told earlier in the day by Tech Support.

This brings up all kinds of questions in my mind, as I’m sure it does for you.  For example, what does the CLD have that Tech Support doesn’t in order to solve customer issues and why?  Why does this company need a Tech Support Department if the CLD is much more effective at resolving customer problems?  Why wouldn’t they simply route all support calls to the CLD?  What company wants to frustrate their customers that they would force them to suffer an ineffective department before turning them over to the department who could really help them in the first place?  Better yet, what company would think after all the hassle, ineffectiveness and wasted time (when an easier and simpler solution was available), customers would actually stay for more of the same?

My friend, smart cookie he is, said this: “The loyalty department solved my immediate problem but the whole experience has left a bad taste in my mouth… Loyalty is not a department, it’s an attitude.  And if that attitude does not permeate all customer service experience, the department is a lost cause.”  My friend makes an excellent point!

This is the classic example of companies treating the symptoms rather than root causes.  They are adding additional overhead and non value added processes in an attempt to mitigate the upstream broken processes.  This obviously has additional ongoing operational costs to the company, which are likely justified by the success in saving a few customer relationships, if only temporarily.  I challenge this justification in that the resources could more effectively be used to solve the root causes of the problems, thereby eliminating the ongoing costs of continuing to mitigate the problems; and without risking the customer relationship in the first place. 

The company in this example is not alone in their approach.  Many organizations including banks, credit card issuers, insurance companies, cable and satellite providers and so many others use this approach.  These organizations may feel successful because they perceive they are saving customer relationships, and sometimes it would appear so.   From where I’m standing, it looks much the same as paramedics who run over someone; then patch them up and expect to send them happily on their way.  Right…  That’ll work…

Customer Loyalty is created when everything about an organization is focused on understanding what outcomes help their customers feel successful, then doing everything in their power to create those successful customer outcomes.  Any organization which treats customer loyalty as an afterthought is totally off target.  Consider what is really going on next time someone says to you: “I’m sorry, I can’t cancel your account; you need to speak to the Customer Loyalty Department” (or whatever they’ve called it).  The paramedics just ran over you…