WatTF? - Jim Murphy

I love Ali’s customer service framework used at Well.ca.  I think customer service is a very misunderstood concept.  I’m amazed how common the push back I get from people in service roles (which is EVERYONE) thinking customer service is about ass kissing - and that’s something they don’t like to do.  Thinking that good customer service is somehow bowing and scraping and being subservient to your customer is doing you and your customer a disservice.  To me customer service is about goal alignment

If my goals as a service provider are aligned with yours as a service consumer then good customer service is much more likely then if I view our relationship as adversarial - yet it seems that’s the normal case.  How many times have you asked someone in an obvious customer service capacity a question and are greeted by blocking and avoiding tactics instead of aligned effort at resolution?  This is often not the fault of the front line staff but a broken business process, with those responsible for its implementation and potentially fixing it tucked safely out of the way of reality.  If you’re tired of bad service or and/or are tired of fronting for a bad business process lets start looking upstream at the business culture and management practices that make this prevalent.