Customer Service Anyone?

If you think you are not in customer service you might want to think again. Whatever it is you do – you do for someone. And that person is your customer.

We get so caught up in what we do – make widgets, clean sewers, enter data into a system – that we forget that there is a reason for doing it. If you have completely lost sight of why you do what you do, you have my sympathy. But maybe this article will help you find a reason for going to work every day.

Sometimes our sense of “customer” is lost by the proximity of another person. If you sell shoes the customer is clearly the person sliding their size twelve tootsies into the delicate sandal in your hands. If you work in accounts receivable in a large manufacturing plant it might be more difficult to identify the customer. It is not necessarily the person who owes money although they are clearly the customer of the organization – and yes, they have needs that those in AR must acknowledge. But perhaps the “customer” is really the manager who needs the monthly reports in order to initiate collection procedures.
It is entirely possible to have more than one customer and for those various customers to have varying needs and legitimacy of need. The loudest voice is not necessarily the most important.

We get conflicting messages. It has to be quick. It has to be right. It has to be low cost. It has to be high quality. Stop listening to the voices and listen to yourself. If you have been on the job for more than a year you might already have a pretty clear idea of what is important. You may have stopped focusing on that important thing because someone, somewhere else has repeatedly told you that something else is more important. They’re wrong – you know it. But the proximity of that voice has allowed you to stop doing what is important – if only to stop the noise.

Let’s look at a simple example. You know that the next department needs what you produce in order to meet the needs of the next person along the line. When you started the job you were told that the most important thing for you to do is have your product, whether it is a widget or a report, ready on time. And so for the first little while that is what you tried to do.

But every time you met that goal you heard things like – there is an error on line seven, there is a spelling mistake, the widget should be shinier. It doesn’t take long for a smart person like you to refocus on producing the shiniest widget possible.

Several months go by – or maybe a year – and then someone tells you that you make the nicest, shiniest widgets in the entire company but you are way too slow. Now you are confused. When you were fast you got negative feedback. Now that you are slower you hear good things and once in awhile there is a little squawk about being faster. Obviously the fast thing can’t be very important.

This is the time to stop. Find the person who receives the widget and ask them why they need it, what is most important and how can all of the important needs be met? Ask them to rank the importance. If shiny is nice, is it more important than fast? If you cannot do both, which should go. If both are critical then you need to reexamine the process and determine how to make shiny widgets quickly. Maybe you have been putting a red stripe on them which doesn’t serve any purpose (but it has always been done).

It is entirely possible that the next person along the line will not know what is most important – that they have lost sight of the purpose and need. Enlist their help to get to the bottom of the mystery. Seems simple. So why do we avoid asking the question? The main reason is that we are afraid that what we secretly believe is true. The work we do has no value. We fear that if we make inquiries someone will notice and we will be done. If someone wants to pay us to do busy, useless work, we reason, we should shut up and do the useless work.

But I have never found that fear to be founded on fact. Sometimes, in fact often, this process of discovery will uncover useless procedures or tasks – like the red stripe on the widget, or making three photocopies of a six part invoice. But take heart. I have never seen it result in an aha moment when the company discovers that they don’t really need widgets at all. What will happen is that we will rediscover the importance of the work we do.
Stop waiting for the organizational feedback loop to give you a signal. Find your customer and ask what they need. Find ways to make that happen. If you truly understand what you do – and recognize and believe the need – you can’t help but take pride in your work. By internalizing the process you take ownership and will find ways to do what you do well. You don’t need the board of directors to set a policy. You don’t need the president’s stamp of approval.

Take back your job. Identify your customer and provide the service and product they deserve.