One cost of rebelling against company culture
Seth Godin contends that pretending to care can avoid or reduce customer irritation.
Reading through two of Seth’s examples, I was struck by how incomplete Seth thought his idea through.
First stop, an expensive sporting goods store that prides itself on service. I bought some skates, paid and then asked the security guy (the one with all the shelves behind his desk, where people check stuff they bring in) if I could leave my stuff there for ten minutes while I ran an errand.
“No, I’m really really sorry,” he said, “but we can’t take responsibility and I’ll get in big trouble if I do. I know it’s a hassle for you…”
What this does for me, is keep my irritation level low, but .. here is a place that the employee, the security guy, knows, for dead-certain-sure that the company has a bad policy, one that irritates customers and causes ill-will. Only the company hasn’t invited the security guy to share the insight, or doesn’t see that this is a problem. Perhaps the company line is “They made the purchase now move them out the door before they can snatch something they didn’t pay for.”
Second, the security guy aims the blame up the ladder. His boss, or the procedure manual are at fault for the irritation. Sure, we can sympathize with the security guy, he gets stuck telling people what he cannot do. But he stirs my need to complain - and lets me in on inside information, so I can likely get my complaint closer to someone that could fix the problem.
Only, the company doesn’t care. Or the security guard would feel cared for. His explanation would make sense to him and to me, or he would understand that a package is a package, and check it in. I mean, if I just bought the skates, then watching the things should be no different than a pair I bought down the block just before I entered. So the company doesn’t care, but the guard has now aimed a complaint into the company structure. A complaint that clearly violates company culture.
The result of the security guy’s kind explanation, is to penalize the company. The company would never have known, directly, about an irritated customer. But now there is a document trail, likely someone to be blamed (hopefully not the security guy). Indirectly the company culture of not caring has to be affecting sales - most likely costing customers and reducing repeat business. But the indirect cost of not caring doesn’t show up on anyone’s annual review. Complaints probably do.
The point of the traffic ticket is almost as bad. Identifying that there is a distinct point when writing the ticket cannot be stopped, and even deriding the court system (”will probably waive the ticket if you complain”) devalues the system, and again identifies a starting point for someone to request a reasonable change in procedure. The traffic ticket person looks good, and the person getting the ticket might not feel as bad, but the ticket writer has bad-mouthed, by implication, the police department.
For instance, while NYPD is proud of their ’swarms’ to practice and respond to terrorists, why not require meter-minders to stand by and salute, or loaf, or whatever, but pause and wait for all sirens and official vehicles - just to acknowledge that the delays might be delaying someone returning to their parked car. Otherwise you might as well tell parking ticket patrollers to write the ticket 10-15 minutes, or 5 minutes, or an hour, or whatever, before the time expires. Then let the person getting the ticket try to get the court to provide relief.
As I see it, pretending to care is deceitful. Nothing good can come of it. The company really needs to care. The company has to care about itself, how it does business, how it manages employees, and how it treats customers. Then if a customer gets irritated and complains? The complaint is likely to fix a problem. The company will welcome the complaint, celebrate fixing a problem, and continue cheerfully on. (OK, so we call this Pollyana-ish company Starbucks, or Walt Disney Company or something bizarre like Sesame Street. It could happen!)
The security guy and ticket writer? If they pretend to care, they will come to care. Unless their organizations begin to care - these two caring individuals will become bitter about co-workers that don’t care for the customer. Managers will be seen to not care about co-workers, and our two carers will care about that. And the company will lose the security guy, or fire him. And the customers? Still putting up with uneven service and lowered expectations.