The seven sins of service

With as many service businesses as there are today, and with the service revolution well underway, one would think almost all businesses would pay close attention to the quality of their service. Yet that is far from true. In a majority of service businesses, mediocrity is the norm. Many of them get by with little or no real attention to the customers experience. They leave the matter of quality largely to chance, and as a consequence they get mediocre quality. It is a simple fact that, in businesses as well as in life: “The pursuit of mediocrity is always successful.”

If you look at the things we service consumers complain about, you can see that there are only a few things that really bug us about the services we try to buy. The same few themes appear over and over. If you examine the complaints customers make to, about, or against service businesses – perhaps your business, as well – you will see they tend to fall into a few basic categories.

After studying a lot of information on customer dissatisfaction, I identified seven categories of complaint factors, which I call the seven sins of service.

1. Apathy: A just-don’t-give-a-damn attitude on the part of the customer-contact person, or an impression conveyed to the customer expressed in terms of what comedian George Carlin describes as “DILLIGAD”, or, “Do I Look Like I Give a Damn?” Many counter-service people get this way when they get bored with their jobs and nobody is reminding them that their jobs are to serve rather than stand behind the counter.

2. Brush-Off: Trying to get rid of the customer by brushing off his or her need or problem; trying to “slam dunk” the customer with some standard procedure that doesn’t solve the problem but lets the service person off the hook for doing anything special. An example is the department store clerk who is standing around waiting for the end of the shift who says, “This isn’t my department,” when a customer asks for help in finding something.

3. Coldness: A kind of chilly hostility, curtness, unfriendliness, inconsiderateness, or impatience with the customer that says, “You’re a nuisance; please go away.” It still amazes me to find that so many restaurants carefully select the most moody, depressed, hostile person they can find for the hostess-cashier job, making sure the customers first and last moments of truth are good ones.

4. Condescension: Treating the customer with a patronizing attitude, such as many health-care people do. They call the doctor “Doctor Jones,” but they call you by your first name and talk to you like you’re four years old. They don’t think you’re qualified to know what your blood pressure is – the doctor will take care of everything.

5. Robotism: “Thank-you-have-a-nice-day-NEXT.” The fully mechanized worker puts every customer through the same program with the same standard motions and slogans, and with no trace of warmth or individuality. A variant of this is the smiling robot that gives you a permanent “star” smile, but you can tell nobody’s home upstairs.

6. Rule Book: Putting the organizational rules above customer satisfaction, with no discretion on the part of the service person to make exceptions or use common sense. Banks are famous for this; they usually do everything possible to eliminate all traces of human thought and judgment, with the result that no one is authorized to think. Any customer problem with more than one moving part confounds their system.

7. Runaround: “Sorry, you’ll have to call (see) so-and-so. We don’t handle that here.” Airline people have made this into an art; the ticket agent tells you the gate people will take care of it, and the gate people tell you to see the ticket agent when you get to your destination, and the agent at your destination tells you to have your travel agent take care of it.

Life has only so many plots, and if you observe long enough you’ll see almost all of them acted out sooner or later. For a personal exercise, pay attention to the service episodes you experience for about a week, and see how many times you get less than satisfactory service. When you do, see which of the seven sins of service you’ve been subjected to.

If you manage or work with service people, discuss these seven sins of service with them and see what you and they can do to make sure they are not guilty of them.