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

Now the Flowers are Fresh and Fabulous

My replacement flowers just arrived and they are gorgeous! Not only that, they smell divine. Just looking at them and smelling their wonderful scent makes me feel happy.

I called the florist right away to let her know how much I appreciated the new bouquet – and the way she had handled everything. Callie (the woman who rectified the problem for us) seemed as pleased as me about the way things had turned out... and that as much as anything has totally restored my faith in the Flower Nook.

You can be sure that I will make sure to recommend them whenever anyone in the area needs flowers. Which just goes to show that another of the standard customer service truisms is indeed true:

Namely, that when you resolve disgruntled customers’ problems in a way that makes them feel important to the company, and do so with good grace, they will usually tell twice as many people about what transpired as they would if only recounting the bad experience.

Fixing Flowers that Flopped

Earlier today flowers arrived that my youngest had sent me for my birthday – they were a day late and more than a dollar short.

Okay, okay. I sound ungrateful. The flowers were nice (read ‘nice’ with that elongated sing song tone men hate so much that really means “good effort dear but no cigar”). Of course I called my daughter immediately and thanked her profusely – after all I was truly touched by the gesture and that she had spent so much on her strict student budget. That part really did move me. Still does.

Then she asked about the flowers themselves. I sort of hedged (okay, except for things related to Christmas gifts and the like, I have a hard time lying to my kids) and she just knew. That finely-honed intuition of hers kicked in on cue and she said, “They’re not the pink, purple, cream and white flowers I ordered, are they?”

I described the bouquet that had arrived: Fall-coloured daisies punctuated with bright purple asters. Ughh. Kat was already groaning knowing that I hate rust-coloured flowers, but when she heard the description her displeasure increased.

Why? I had described a much cheaper bouquet she had seen on the website. It appeared as though the florist has simply added a couple of clashing asters as a token response to her actual online request for spring blooms.

I’ve heard of florists sometimes sending “less-than-fresh” flowers, or less expensive bouquets when they are pretty sure the sender will never see the actual bouquet, but have only experienced such a thing once before.

Knowing that my daughter puts a lot of thought into birthdays and other occasions, I couldn’t let it rest. I called the florist to complain. I remained friendly and started with a gentle, “What I’m going to say is going to sound ungrateful, but...” and went on to explain what my daughter had intended and that the sum involved constituted a major expense for a university student.

While I was on the phone, I learned that my daughter was on their other line. Kat knew who to call because our family has purchased bouquets from this florist on numerous occasions over the years.

Long story short: The florist was upset/ embarrassed by what had happened and will be sending me a new bouquet in the morning. She has also offered to use a few extra flowers in the new bouquet to make up for our collective disappointment.

The genuine concern the florist expressed, the pleasant/professional way in which she responded to our calls and her correct (from both professional and personal perspectives) response to the situation means that we will continue to be loyal customers.

Had the response been different in any way, the retailer would have lost us as customers. Given that my mom, sister, sisters-in-law and colleagues also use this floral boutique, and that we collectively orders many, many bouquets each year, they would have lost a sizeable piece of business.

The reasons I consider the florist’s response to have been correct go beyond the potential business loss from our family:

• The Life Time Value of loyal clients (+$1500 for diapers, +$12,000 for fast-food, etc.),

• The cost to acquire new clients vs. the cost to retain existing ones (5x – 25x depending on the industry),

• The number of people that unhappy customers tell about their experience (the accepted average used to be 16, but recent studies that has increased slightly... even without taking into account public posts on sites such as facebook),

• The potential for online “retribution” when disgruntled customers air their grievances in social media forums (remember what happened to the Motrin advertisements thanks to a mom with 5,000 twitter followers)

• etc.

There are bound to be “Life Happens” moment in every business, but how you handle them can determine whether or not these moment hurt you in the long run. Hopefully we will all be able to fix our flops the way this florist did!