{"id":461,"date":"2012-02-19T16:48:09","date_gmt":"2012-02-19T21:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/?p=461"},"modified":"2015-07-05T11:46:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-05T15:46:15","slug":"overcomplicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/overcomplicated\/","title":{"rendered":"Overcomplicated"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"overcomplicated\"One of the worst things you can do for your customers is to make things overcomplicated for them.\u00a0 Take a look at the picture to the right of the school sign in Michigan (My Fox Detroit<\/a>).\u00a0 Do you think this is good “customer service” to the tax payers?<\/p>\n

I recently had a problem with my cell carrier.\u00a0 My wife’s phone had a battery problem.\u00a0 Granted, the phone was four years old but all I wanted to do was pay them for a phone and sign a new contract extending my time with them.\u00a0 The problem being we were not eligible for an upgrade on that line for 14 days<\/strong>!\u00a0 When I called customer service they told me they could upgrade me to another phone but not the one she wanted to get.\u00a0 That one would have to wait.\u00a0 So I call one of their stores and am told we can upgrade as long as it is in the same month – GREAT!\u00a0 The upgrade as coming in on the 29th, oh, wait, because it is a leap year they moved us to March 1 meaning we were not in the current month.\u00a0 Hmmmm…<\/p>\n

So, I went to Twitter and within ten minutes got a response from someone who was customer friendly and helped us upgrade the phone, pay them for the phone, pay the upgrade fee, and sign a contract.\u00a0 It took three different customer service reps and five phone calls to get approved to upgrade a phone two weeks early.\u00a0 I was literally asking them to allow me to hand them money and it took this many steps to get someone who could take care of it.<\/p>\n

This is a simple issue of over complicating an issue in an organization.\u00a0 The first person I spoke with sh0uld have had the authority to make a two week decision.\u00a0 Do your customer service people have the tools and power to take care of your customers?\u00a0 If not, why not?\u00a0 If you can’t trust them then you have the wrong people in that position.<\/p>\n

Of course their should be limits and boundaries.\u00a0 I have been involved with customer service for over a decade and some of the requests from customers can be quite outlandish.\u00a0 You must put barriers up somewhere but you have to give enough freedom for your reps to make decisions and exceptions when needed.<\/p>\n

Bottom Line<\/em>:\u00a0 Allow those that have direct contact with your customers be able to serve your customers.\u00a0 You will be rewarded many times over with happier employees and much happier and loyal customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the worst things you can do for your customers is to make things overcomplicated for them.\u00a0 Take a look at the picture to the right of the school sign in Michigan (My Fox Detroit).\u00a0 Do you think this is good “customer service” to the tax payers? I recently had a problem with my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,7,11],"tags":[54,135,136,260,422,521],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-careers","category-customer-service","category-leadership","tag-authority","tag-customer","tag-customer-service-2","tag-help","tag-overcomplicated","tag-serve","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/overcomplicated.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6qxKv-7r","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80123,"href":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions\/80123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worlddrivecoaching.com\/moveforward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}