Service with a smile? There’s more to customer service than kindness

Kirk Baird

Wednesday, May 9, 2001 | 8:25 a.m.

It used to be that customer service wasn't so much a selling point for advertising, but an expected part of doing business.

The motto, that the customer is always right, wasn't just a nifty slogan, but standard practice if businesses wanted to stay around.

But in today's world, where time is judged in minutes and seconds instead of weeks and days and the pressure to produce mounts, things have apparently changed.

Now most everyone has a story or two about bad customer service be it at a mall by an indifferent teenage sales clerk, or at a restaurant by a rude waiter.

For one Las Vegas woman it was at a doctor's office.

Diagnosed with ovarian cancer early last summer, the 47-year-old woman (who asked that her name not be used) turned to a local doctor for weekly radiation treatments.

At the end of one of those visits, the woman discussed with an office worker that she'd reached her maximum out-of-pocket expense as designated by her insurance company, and that the company would be responsible for the rest of the payments.

Another worker called the insurance company, however, and learned that the woman was still responsible for $15 co-pay for the office visit.

"(The doctor's office) called me on my cell phone in the parking lot (of the office) demanding payment," she said. "It's not as if I wasn't going to come back and see them the next week. I said, Do you always track your cancer patients in the parking lot for money?' I was appalled."

It gets worse.

The woman, a registered nurse, noticed later that she had been repeatedly billed by the doctor's office for blood work performed elsewhere. But when she pointed out the discrepancy, she couldn't get anyone in the office to delete the charges.

However, she was persistent. The woman kept calling the doctor's office and the billing service it used until the charges were canceled.

She didn't stop with her payments. While going over an itemized list of her charges, the woman noticed her insurance company incorrectly reimbursed the doctor $10,500, which she said the doctor's office had taken.

She then notified her insurance company, which promptly got its money back.

"So their poor customer service cost them $10,500," she said.

While this story may be an extreme example, it does beg the question: Is customer service what it used to be?

While there aren't many polls showing the level of customer satisfaction with services rendered, a recent Associated Press article placed part of the blame of last year's poor retail sales squarely on the head of bad customer service.

"Companies and organizations are more concerned with providing good customer service than ever before," said Doug Howardell, president of ACA Group, a Los Angeles company that works with clients on ways to improve customer-business relations. "I think every organization is looking for ways to improve customer service."

What is customer service?

"We define customer service as constantly and consistently giving your customers what they need and want," Howardell said. "Our whole premise is that it's more than just a smile and thank you, although that's part of it.

He said good service breaks down into three elements:

Having a customer-friendly process.

Having constant dialogue with a customer.

Giving the customer what they need and want.

Consumers should expect good customer service, Howardell said, and should let their feelings be known -- positive or negative -- in the same way as a parent to a child.

"What good parents do is praise good children's behavior to enforce that," Howardell said. "The rule still applies. When you get good customer service, praise it, and when you don't, tell them and their supervisor."

Dining disaster

But sometimes, that doesn't happen.

Pam Marcello, 58, who has lived in Las Vegas for more than 50 years, quit going to a favorite upscale restaurant several months ago after receiving bad service during a special dinner for she herself, her husband, her boss and her boss's mother.

"I recommended it," Marcello said. "I'd never had anything but excellent service before."

But 2 1/2 half hours of wrong and missing orders, cold food and a broken cap on her car battery (courtesy of a valet who attempted to jumpstart Marcello's car) changed all that.

Even an attempt by the restaurant manager to remedy the situation didn't help.

"He apologized and said he wanted us to come back and have dinner on him, to show us customer service was good," she said.

But when Marcello called to make arrangements for the makeup dinner for the four people, she was told the offer was only good for two of them to dine.

Marcello, her husband and her boss did go back to the restaurant. The service was better, she said, and the entire meal was complementary, but by then it was too late -- the negative feeling caused by the earlier poor service was not going away.

"They lost a good customer," Marcello said.

Complaint central

Choice -- the ability to take business elsewhere -- is usually a consumer's last option in the fight against poor service. But it's important to note there are other options.

Robin Capalbo, membership operations manager of the Better Business Bureau of Southern Nevada, said when a customer receives bad service, he or she should first talk with the offending employee -- and always in a calm manner.

If that doesn't settle anything, ask to speak to the manager or even the manager's supervisor.

"I would say in most cases if people would just sit down and talk about things then there would be a lot less problems," Capalbo said.

If, however, after talking it out the customer is still unhappy with the results, she recommends filing a complaint with the BBB, which is a nonprofit organization funded by nearly 2,500 members in Southern Nevada.

Although the organization cannot do much more than write a letter to the company, and perhaps revoke its membership if there are enough complaints, any comments go into a file and are available to consumers when they call.

Overall, she said, "consumer comments" (as the BBB calls them) are up this year compared to last, although Capalbo noted that there are also more businesses in the growing Las Vegas area to complain about.

Consumer reports

How important is customer service -- especially to a city built on tourism?

"The best investment in our future is quality customer service," said Van Heffner, whose many titles include president and CEO of both the Restaurant Association and the Nevada Hotel and Motel Lodging Association.

He said many businesses -- especially restaurants and hotel-casinos -- are relying on new ways to improve customer service, such as increasing their employee training.

For example, when the Venetian opened two years ago more than 70,000 applicants were put through several levels of screening programs designed, in part, to test the ability to work with customers.

These include a personality profile, group activities with other candidates and auditions, where would-be employees performed their job description in an artificial environment.

"We'd rather see how someone responds behind the scenes than out there," said Michael French, the Venetian's senior vice president of casino and hotel operations.

Still, as helpful as these programs may be, when it comes to getting good customer service, it may ultimately boil down to one simple truth: "Do unto others as you would have done unto you," otherwise known as the Golden Rule.

"If you want good customer service in the world," Howardell said, "start spreading it by giving it."

archive