I wrote recently about a pretty rough experience I had with a digitally-based company.  The long-and-short of it was that a technical glitch (which is inevitable for an online company eventually) was compounded by a horrible recovery effort.  Eventually I had to escalate to the executive level in order to get my solution.

At about the same time, I was also going through another escalation (also executive… I can hear you already, “Okay, Karen.  Settle down.”) with another legacy brand for another issue I was having with them.

In that previous article, I alluded to the concept of relationships with brands not necessarily being hugely damaged by glitches or issues, but rather the way that the recovery can either make or break a Customer’s perception of your brand.  Sometimes, it’s said, a good recovery from an issue can improve a  a brand’s image above where it otherwise would have been without the issue in the first place.  That’s a concept many brands have embraced, and (although neither of the two of whom I speak here really do) many excel at the recovery function.  That’s not a reason to deliberately sabotage your Customers’ initial experiences just so they can see how great it is to deal with your Customer Care organization.  It’s best to “No be there,” after all.

But the escalations got me to thinking about these two issues in particular.

In the end, I got what I needed from each brand.  Neither was a huge issue, and, once I spoke with someone with the authority and attention to deal with it, from there recovery was pretty straightforward.  That it took an executive escalation didn’t do much for my perception of the brand; quite the opposite.

If only for the efficiency of it (here comes by Process Engineering), I was disappointed by all that it took to make something that had to be done one way or another finally get done.  That was a waste for me and for the brand.  In the end, the fixes were easy.  But why should it take an executive escalation to make it happen?

Now, I know how executive escalations work.  No, it’s not the CEO’s private team of ninja Customer Care agents sitting in a room down a corridor behind a bookshelf in the office, access to which is gained via pulling down on a sconce on the wall.  They’re just a sub-section of the same Customer Care organization otherwise populated with people who are not given the authority or knowledge of how to do what you want to get done.  Their procedures differ as well, as they take on just a fraction of tickets and issues because their job is to offer actual personal attention to their profile of tickets and walk them through to the end.  But in the end, they probably are—perhaps even physically, but definitely organizationally—sitting right next to other agents who are only allowed to read scripts and, well, escalate.

Partly I go through the escalation effort because I know this, but also, it’s because I’m a CX guy myself (and I’ve covered that dynamic before).  So, in the end, even if it’s just so I’ll have another topic for an article, I’ll go ahead and push through to such measures.  But I’m different.

What about all those other Customers?  Those who take the “Sorry, there’s nothing I/we can do for you,” as the final answer?  They shrug their shoulders and move on.  Maybe they harbor resentment, maybe they “never come back here again!”  Why do brands give up like that?  There’s clearly a path to a solution, but if the Customer doesn’t persevere, they’ll never get there.

What’s more, there’s a failure in the system in each of these problems.  You can blame your Customers all you want for their own issues, but at the end of the day, it’s your responsibility as a brand to locate and correct ways in which your systems are troubling your Customers.  When you tell them, basically, tough luck, not only are you doing obvious damage to your brand right there and then, you’re also likely missing an opportunity to highlight ways in which you can improve your own processes or policies.  That sort of insight can have huge positive impacts on your long-term prospects by positively impacting all your Customers, if you’re willing to hear it.

In both of these escalation instances, I offered to the person helping be a bit of thought on how their systems negatively impacted the experience I had and how, if they had empowered their front-line agents with the exact sort of thing they just did for me, it would not only have made my experience better, but would have directly saved them resources.  I’m not sure in the end if either of them took that to heart, but I do feel that, since it was a special team (albeit, not the CEO’s own private assassination squad or anything that dramatic), perhaps they’re more inclined to share it with those who have authority to make improvements; and perhaps it’s likely to land better coming from them as well.  Then again, another opportunity to make things more efficient is to listen to your front line as well!