Culture and Service Expectations

I was taken aback by an study I read that indicated that customers in the south are much more fastidious, impatient, and demanding in their relationships to service providers than are people in the north ... until I noticed that the article was referring to the north and south of England.

The situation there is much the opposite to the (eastern) United States, where the north is urbanized and densely populated than the south and people are a lot less gentle with one another - but if you flip the poles, the situation is likely the same: people who live in urban environments tend to lead more hectic lives, and are far less civil to one another, and likely carry those cultural proclivities over to their relationships with the companies that serve them.

Likely, it would be fair to say "cultural stereotypes" rather than "cultural proclivities" because the north/south dichotomy is a broad generalization. There's a dramatic difference between the personality traits of an individuals who live in Manhattan and those who live "upstate" in a less densely populated area - though both are in the north, the latter are more easygoing, congenial, and almost "southern" in the way they interact with other people.

This got me to thinking that there are a number of factors in the culture of the customer (as opposed to the culture of an organization) that have a dramatic impact on the perception of customer service. In general, the way in which a person is inclined to interact with other people in society will influence the way in which he interacts with them in his role as an employee in a business or customer situation.

That is, an impatient, rude, obnoxious, and self-centered person is going to be a difficult customer to please.   He will be more critical of flaws, less appreciative of extra efforts, and more surly and difficult in general.  Aside of individual psychology, my sense is that there are objective and measurable environmental factors that will lead a person to exhibit this personality.

The most germane factor to the study that spun up this train of thought is location - though it's not as simple as latitude, it likely is highly correlated to the population density in the locations where a person lives and works that influences his perspective: people whose daily lives are conducted in densely-populated areas are far more irritable in any situation in which they are faced with human interact than are those who live in areas of lower population density.

Age might also be seen to have an impact, though it's difficult to say whether younger customers would be inclined to be more peevish, self-centered, and unreasonable than older ones. There is the stereotype of elderly people being cantankerous and cranky, and there are no stereotypes without prototypes - and plenty of them - but at the same time, younger customers are peevish and petulant as well.

The more I think on it, the more it seems that this is more a matter of sociology than customer service - though it certainly impacts the latter - and there's likely no shortage of data on the subject based on more formal research than an individual's speculation ... so I'll stop speculating, but preserve this note for future consideration, as much of my ruminating considers the culture of the organization rather than that of the customer, which is likely as important if not more.