My daughter returned from Europe this week. Unfortunately, one of her bags did not show up on the carousel. We went to the baggage office to track it down. The cheerful clerk discovered that the bag was due in on the next flight a couple of hours later. “No worries,” he said. “We’ll have it delivered in the next four hours.” Twenty hours later, it finally arrived.
When we are providing service, it is always tempting to give an optimistic estimate of task completion. In today’s world of immediate outcomes, this has become especially true. Yet when we do this, we can start a chain reaction of frustration and disappointment. The customer is disappointed by the missed deadline. The customer service agent she calls is frustrated that he or she has to deal with a situation caused by a colleague. The organization is disappointed and frustrated by the service rating it receives.
The solution? Provide a bit of information and temper the optimistic promises. Perhaps Gary, the baggage agent, could have said, “I’m terribly sorry about this. Delta handles about 45,000 bags per day. Only about 3 out of every 1000 are mishandled. Unfortunately, your’s was one of them. As much as I would love to say that you’ll have it in the next few hours, I don’t want to disappoint you a second time. You can track the bag on-line and follow its progress to your home. My apologies for the inconvenience.
The empathy alone will diffuse the majority of concerns. The vast majority of customers understand the volume of orders or packages being handled in a business and will accept the long wait time if they think it’s more accurate. Will there still be the occasional angry customer? Of course, and there’s not a lot we can do to assuage their emotions.
But each customer service provider has to make the personal decision to implement this practice. The way to encourage is through training and a clear message that it’s okay to commiserate with the customer. In other words, tell them it’s okay to empathize, but never over-promise and under-deliver.