Procedures and Customs

There was a discussion about procedures in customer service where I was deeply concerned about some of the responses in the thread, but felt it would be inappropriate to comment at length at some of the problems I was seeing in the context of the discussion - and so:

The question that drove the thread was whether procedures are detrimental to providing good customer service. Most of the responses seemed to indicate that people in the customer service profession see them as a good thing, as a way of ensuring that employees do what is necessary to provide adequate service to the customer. On the surface, that seems like a good intention - but when you think about it, it's quite appalling:

Taken at face value, it shows a lack of trust, perhaps even contempt, for the front-line employee who interacts with the customer. Several of participants, customer service practitioners, seemed to fully subscribe the premise that the employee who serves the customer will not know how to perform even the most basic tasks unless there are procedures to give them detailed instructions that they must follow to the letter.

But more to the point, none there seemed to acknowledge that the effect of procedures are not to control the employee, but to control the customer: the employee is merely a proxy, acting for his company, to deliver service. And in that way, any procedure is a company's attempt to inflict procedures upon the customer - because in interacting with an employee who is following a script, the customer must follow the same script in order to get the service he desires.

I don't subscribe to the notion that prescribed interactions are wholly detrimental to customer service - if the goal of the procedure is to actually provide (rather than deny) service, and if both parties (employee and customer) are aware of them. For example, the pattern of behavior when taking a meal in a restaurant is well established, and a comfortable routine for the customer. The staff does their part, I do my part, and the experience is familiar and comfortable as a result.

It's also rather interesting that there is an entirely separate word for the standard procedures in situations like this: they are called "customs" - and it's likely no coincidence that the word "custom," "customer," and "accustomed" all derive from the same root - because it is, or should be, the very same thing.

Procedures only seem to come into play when something goes awry - to handle an interaction that is not usual and familiar. They also are used when a firm wishes to deviate from customs, hence must require its employees to behave in unnatural ways, which in turn requires its customers to behave in unnatural ways - which is to say, both are required to behave in a way that is awarded, usual, and uncomfortable, and which defies intuition and common sense.

Going back to the restaurant example, a restaurant might institute a procedure that the waiter may only bring a check to a customer who stands in their chair, perhaps intending to avoid uncertainty as to when the customer was ready to leave and relieve the awkward ambiguity over who is paying for the meal. Customers wouldn't understand this requirement and would likely be frustrated by the situation: once it's explained to them, they might be willing to comply, feeling a bit asinine but reluctantly accepting it as necessary. It likely would not go over well, even when they understood what was required of them.

The same is likely true of many things for which companies feel the need to establish procedures - if something were intuitive or required common sense, establishing, writing down, and training employees (to manipulate customers) to comply with it would be entirely unnecessary.

With that in mind, likely the best course is to get out of the mindset of attempting to control your customers by establishing procedures, and instead attempting to understanding their expectations, with some consideration as to how to handle situations where things don't go as expected ... or more often, to empower the employee on the front-line to adapt and serve the customer when the company (often a committee of people who have no customer contact) is wrong-headed about what those expectations are.

Instead of handing employees a set of procedures to memorize and follow, empowering those who provide service requires a firm to educate them on the customs that already exist in a given service situation, provide them with guidance as to how to solve problems that might arise, and authoroize them to make the decisions necessary to tailor service the customer.

If your goal is to provide excellent customer service, that should make perfect sense. If your goal is anything else, you're likely not cut out for the customer service profession.