Garda Gotta Get it Together

The phone rang a couple of days ago. A woman introduced herself as M. ___ from Garda; she was calling to do a background check for one of my students who had given my name as a reference. Now, I have been contacted by this firm before, so I know that what follows is not the normal way in which they conduct their affairs, but I also know that I will no longer recommend their services to clients.

So what is it that has my Customer Service Excellence hackles standing at attention?

When she asked how I knew the young women, I explained that I had been her prof. Ms. M. from Garda responded with a challengingly-toned, “So, she didn’t work for you?” The tone of the question threw me off a bit so, for a moment, I thought I might have been thinking about the wrong person. After a little back and forth, it turned out the call was indeed about student “K”.

At that point, she asked: “So what were her responsibilities to you?”

I reiterated that I knew “K” as a student so she didn’t have responsibilities to me beyond classroom participation and hand-in assignments. At that point, the Garda Gal starting talking to me as if I were mentally-challenged and didn’t understand the whole process.

I really didn’t appreciate it. Nor, I’m sure, would the bank client on behalf of whom she was conducting these interviews.

When I pushed back a bit to try and explain that it was a different situation that the traditional employer relationship, she said in clipped tones, “Yes, but I still have to ask the questions.”

From the way in which subsequent questions were posed, Ms. M. made it clear that she was pissed off with me.... which resulted in me giving shorter answers than would normally have been the case.

Not wanting to hurt my student, I said nice and appropriate things, but it was not the normal way I would give a reference for someone I believed would indeed be an asset to their client.

Not good for my student – and not good for the bank, either as they may miss out on a good candidate as a result.

If I were using this as a teaching case or training example, what lessons would I convey? A couple that come to mind:

• Due diligence is critical when selecting a third-party firm to represent your company in any way. If their employees don’t treat people the way you treat your customers and employees, then you should not work with the firm.

• It’s important to do a good job of training and monitoring the people who represent your company to the public – especially when they are not on your direct payroll. You have the right to request random recordings of the calls, or to listen in from time to time.

• Create separate guides for the various types of people in your target audience (in this instance +90% of the questions could have been identical).

• Structure your discussions guides/ interview questions in such a way that enables the interviewer to choose a different line of questions if necessary, based on the previous answers given.

• It’s as important for your staff to be well-versed on the way you want them to handle out-bound calls as they are on how to handle in-bound queries.

There are other things to have learned from this example, of course, but those of the ones that stick out.

If you’d like to chat about this further, please feel free to leave a comment of drop me a note. JMC