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How can we make employees go the extra mile…?

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Bruce Temkin wrote today about how contact centers need to redefine their purpose; their raison d’être and that made me think about an interaction I had with a kind of a contact center.

I am in the process of applying for a Ph.D. in business administration. This means I have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy. Because I am applying to a number of universities I need to make sure I follow the specific rules of each university. As an international student, the number of forms I need to fill and rules I need to comply is just enormous and I admit that I constantly get confused. As a client in this situation, I can attest that it is very easy to determine if a website is truly user friendly or not.

Anyway, in one of the applications I had a specific problem with one form which I wasn’t sure if I need to fill out or not. I sent an email to the Ph.D. admission office and got a reply. The reply said something like: “We think we know the answer, but we are not sure. You should contact the graduate admissions office”. I could not understand why they could not give me a straight answer, but I sent an email and the correspondence to the graduate admissions office. The reply said something like: “We don’t really know. You should contact the international student office”.

Think about how many service failures you can spot in this scenario. First, the fact that I could not even be sure by reading the instructions on the website. Then, when I approach someone who should be my contact point, he passes the responsibility back to me and points me somewhere else. This somewhere else turns out to be the wrong place and points me to a third place.

A few days ago I wrote about standing out as a manager after being inspired by a Jon Gordon blog post. It was so easy to stand out here. How would I have felt if the first representative wrote an email to me saying: “I was not sure of the answer so I contacted the graduate admissions office for you, turns out, it is the international students’ office that is responsible for this. Their answer is X. ” Honestly, they are working for the same organization. Shouldn’t that be clear? Isn’t that the obvious answer as it involves seeing me as a human being?

I am interested not only the fact that as a customer I feel like I did not receive adequate service but especially in the question what in the environment, culture and structure of the university makes employees refuse to give adequate service? What could these people managers’ have done to make sure that the reply will satisfy me? What is needed to make sure people go the extra mile to stand out?

I am not sure I have the answers. I know that an approach of Next as Seth Godin describes it today is part of the problem. I am guessing that rules have something to do with this approach. And I am guessing that these employees don’t see their service as a true calling.

What do you think?

Elad


Tagged: Bruce Temkin, customer service, human connection, Jon Gordon, Managing people, Seth Godin, Standing out

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