It recently became clear to me that one of the people I've seen regularly in online forums related to customer experience is, to be blunt, a complete ass. That's a bit coarse, perhaps, but sometimes euphemisms fail to adequately express the degree to which a person is unpleasant, arrogant, obnoxious, etc.
Not that this is anything new - such individuals have been among the most active participants in online discussions since the days of USENET - and the problems are well known: the disinformation they spread damages the credibility of online sources of information, and the manner in which they interact with other participants brings conversation to a complete halt.
What does strike me as new, or at least worth remarking, is that this behavior is coming from someone who wants to be regarded as an expert in online customer experience. I don't expect there can be much debate over whether supporting a positive customer experience requires dealing with people (customers, specifically) in a polite and respectful manner. A firm that seeks to hire service providers would do well to screen candidates for having certain personality traits and qualities of character: being personal, having good manners, showing respect for others, and the like.
Nor do I think that the medium should make a difference. If anything, the professionals who design an online user experience must not only have good people skills, they must also practice those skills through the awkward and indirect channel of a computer interface, which limits the number of tools at their disposal.
The analogy that comes to mind is e-mail: it's far more difficult to interact with people via e-mail than in person because subtle cues such as tone of voice, expression, and gestures are not available to express yourself and gauge how the other person is reacting. I'm leery of people who blame the channel for the problem. When someone claims that "Bob's a nice guy but he comes across as a jerk in his emails" it's more likely that Bob is in fact a jerk, who has much more experience concealing his true nature in face-to-face conversation.
The same is true, I suspect, of customer service and user experience in the online channels: I don't expect that a person who is arrogant and offensive when engaged in a direct conversation, one to one, has the right personality and skills to determine what is acceptable in customer experience online. They can learn to refrain from being offensive (which is to say, how to refrain from being themselves), but they do not truly understand how to interact with other people in a non-offensive manner. It just isn't in their nature.
That's not to say that they are incapable of doing the job - just that they can't do it with any integrity. It's like the salesman who treats customers politely on the floor and then trash-talks them in the break room. It takes a lot of effort for him to restrain and conceal his true nature. Moreover, nobody can fully restrain themselves all the time. Sooner or later, their true colors will shine through in an inappropriate situation.
When a salesman slips up in a conversation with one customer, the dignity of one customer is affronted. When a user experience or customer service professional does so in designing an online interaction, he damages the brand or company's relationship with large numbers in a very short amount of time.
Ultimately, it seems to support the notion that certain personality types are a good fit for certain professions, whereas others are clearly not. When it comes to user experience and customer service, a practitioner needs to be good with people - and conversely, a person who is abrasive and offensive is obviously a misfit for this profession.
No comments:
Post a Comment