It has been 15 years since I started doing customer service training, and I used to love it! I felt like I was making a change in the industry, showing people that if they serve from the heart, they would enjoy their jobs more and form meaningful connections with customers. I felt so good after each session when participants would come up and tell me they learned so much and felt it was one of the best trainings. I could even guarantee my clients that, after our sessions, their CSAT scores would go up, and their NPS would rise.
And it did!
But not for long. After three to six months, things plateaued, and it was back to the same routine. It was heartbreaking, especially when I was also a customer to some of my clients and received service that wasn’t great.
My clients would come back the following year, asking for another round of training, since the one I did previously worked wonders. This was good because… hey - $$$.
But it didn’t feel right. I began to wonder what stops people—genuinely nice people—from consistently delivering good customer service. It clearly wasn’t a skill or knowledge gap because they performed so well during simulations. Nor was it a lack of understanding of why good service mattered to them personally; they were engaged and agreeable during sessions.
So, what was it? Here are a few guesses, drawn from my own experience at the start of my career as a customer service executive:
Something happens when we are regulated by specific rules. I have seen genuinely nice, polite people who are great communicators do the complete opposite as soon as they sit in their work chairs. Malaysians are naturally friendly, but when put in a space where their job is to be pleasant, something just shifts.
Misaligned expectations - Management sometimes sets expectations that aren’t achievable. I have done training where management wanted their CS staff to build more rapport with customers. While rapport-building is common in other countries, where even the girl at the checkout counter asks how your day has been and looks like she really wants to know, I disliked this as a customer myself.
Are our expectations realistic to the culture we live in? How can we imbibe genuine Malaysian culture into the way we communicate with customers? Are our service expectations aligned? Do we have a clear definition as an organisation of what great service is, and is that communicated to everyone?
Sometimes, the processes and product and ever interdepartmental collaboration can be the root cause of bad service. People in the front line get so tired of reassuring the customers when they themselves are not convinced that their promises can be honoured.
High volume is exhausting: Sitting in one place and solving problems for 50 people a day is extremely draining—I've done it, and it is hard to keep a genuine smile.
Many people think, "I just need to solve the customer’s problem, give them the information they need, and we can all move on with our lives."
How that solution is delivered isn’t top-of-mind. The implications can be significant, but from where they sit, they don’t see it.
And here’s a big one—no matter what I do or don’t do, as long as there are no major screw-ups, I’ll still take home the same salary. So, who really cares? Apathy is one of the biggest killers of great customer service. It’s not that I don’t know what to do; it’s just too much effort to break out of my routine and change the way I do things.
All these concerns are genuine. How do we address each of these, or can we even really solve this problem? I’ll share a few ideas we’re trying out in our next blog. I’m curious, though—do you think this rings true?
Do you think this is true?
Yes !
Not really ...
Some of it is true
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