When the Customer is Not Right
by Kristin Robertson, KR Consulting, Inc.

We’ve all been told, “The Customer is always right.” While I appreciate the intent of this phrase – the customer always deserves respect, courtesy and your best professional behavior – I disagree with the literal interpretation. In the real-world, the customer is NOT always right. There are times when the customer is wrong and as a manager in the support organization, you’re going to have to handle situations in which you’ll need to console the customer and support your support rep or risk losing both.

Realize this, if you support only the customer in these situations, you’re going to lose some good support reps. If you support only your reps, you’ll do nothing to ensure your company’s relationship with the customer. So, what to do?

The first thing to do is define and communicate your policies clearly to both your customers and your employees. In a Support Center, policies are usually encoded in a Service Level Agreement (SLA). Do you have an SLA? If you don’t, then creating one is your first step – and a necessary one. How to create an SLA is outside the scope of this article, but there are many online resources that can help you. Do your customers know and understand the policies that are covered in your SLA? Your SLA isn’t worth much if your customers aren’t aware of it and the details. If you don’t have an ongoing marketing plan for your SLA, create one and get the word out to your customers. Remember, if you don’t set service expectations and limitations through your SLA, your customers will expect you to provide everything – immediately! I’ve included a template for a simple SLA, please click here to download.

Next, assume the innocence of your employees until there’s proof to the contrary. This is the basic tenant of our legal code (the defendant is innocent until proven guilty), and a best practice in business management. If you get a complaint about one of your representatives, you can follow these steps to rectify the situation:

1. Acknowledge the customer’s emotion, but don’t convict the employee. Assure the customer that you’ll look into the matter and correct any mistakes. You might say, “I’m sorry you’re feeling so strongly/angry about the situation, but I need to investigate the situation further before drawing any conclusions.” Don’t get caught up in the emotions of either party and remain rational.
   
2. Investigate the situation by talking to the employee. See it from his/her side. If you have a recording of the interaction, listen to it and draw your own conclusions.
   
3. Ask yourself these questions: Was the employee following a policy that we have set? If yes, was the employee enforcing the policy correctly or incorrectly? Is this a training opportunity for the whole group? Does the policy need to be revisited?
   
4. If you believe your representative could have handled the situation differently or you’re not sure what really happened, set up a coaching session with your employee to discuss and role-play a similar scenario. I’d employ the “three strikes” policy – until you have three instances of poor performance, you need to give the employee the benefit of the doubt about their handling of the situation. Put that employee on a more frequent schedule of quality monitoring until you’re convinced of his/her ability to handle difficult customers. Of course, if this is a recurring problem with that representative, you must invoke your company’s progressive disciplinary program.
   
5. Without blaming the employee, be sure to get back to the customer and resolve the issue. You could say, “It appears that we handled the situation incorrectly, and I will do the following to fix it…” Note the use of “we” and “I”. By saying, “We handled the situation incorrectly”, you acknowledge that any interaction with the customer is a reflection of the entire company. By using “I” during the resolution, you assure the customer that someone is responsible for solving the problem.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Follow these guidelines to ensure that when the customer is wrong, you do the right thing!

About the author
Kristin Robertson, President of KR Consulting, Inc., is a consultant to the Help Desk and Technical Support profession. She helps companies increase the efficiency of their support center, save money, and increase their customer loyalty. As both a consultant and trainer, she has worked with companies such as 7-Eleven, Southwest Airlines, Hewlett Packard, Prodigy Communications and CompUSA. Kristin can be reached at 817-577-7030, or krisrob@krconsulting.com.