I’ve written on several occasions (and many others I’m sure I could dig up) about how it’s your responsibility as a brand to take care of your Customers, not just to give them excuses.
Sometimes when I lodge a criticism of a policy or process with a brand, I’m given an excuse in reply. When I call requesting something or bringing something to light, what I expect (well, maybe there’s my problem!) is that the brand, in response, will take to heart the trouble their systems and/or policies present to their Customers and see it as an opportunity to fix the issue, not a reason simply to explain why they have those in place…even if they’re softened by a heartfelt expression of regret that I have to endure them.
As I’ve said before I don’t care that you care. I’m not contacting you looking for sympathy or understanding. I’m not one to simply enjoy griping for no real reason. For me, it is about the nail! So don’t treat it simply as a gripe-session.
Then again, when they respond with some sort of reasoning as to why their policy or procedure or process is what it is, now (since I’m a problem-solver), I’m somehow in the mix of fixing it myself. “Well, have you all considered this instead? What if you did that as a work-around? Why am I, the Customer, the one who has to think of these solutions? Am I getting paid here?”
And that’s sort of the point: When I call a brand and start off with something that’s not going properly or that a rule of theirs is somehow getting in my way, I explain the experience I’m having and the reasons it doesn’t work for me. So very often the immediate reaction is to explain why they have the rule that they do.
Well, okay, but so what? What I really mean when I ask “Why?” as a Customer is usually “Why the hell not?” I.e., I’m showing you that the decision you made, your ostensible solution…the choice you made in response to whatever your excuse is…needs to be improved upon.
I don’t have to gainsay the reasons for your stupid policy to suggest that there’s probably a better way to handle what led to its implementation. When some people hear the question, Why?, they seem to think that a straightforward simple answer lining out the historical background should suffice. Well they’re wrong. “Why” isn’t the last question that should be asked…it’s merely the first.
I wrote a while back about Chesterton’s Gate, the concept that we shouldn’t blindly tear down our systems simply because we don’t like how they’re built or we find them inconvenient or inefficient. There’s a reason things are in place. Granted, if those reasons are what we in the military call OBE (“overcome by events”, they no longer obtain), then by all means, have at it. But we must do so deliberately and with an eye on satisfying those requirements that led us to the less-than-ideal currently bad system we have. But that also shouldn’t be an excuse for inaction.
When someone asks you, “Why’s that?” your response would (and should, naturally) be to explain what conditions resulted in deliberate choices having been made. (Um, were they deliberate choices? A topic for another day.) But then the discussion should immediately open to other possible mitigating methods. How else might we address this concern? Is there a way of ensuring against catastrophe (if that had been our original impetus, for example) that doesn’t make everything else so impossible to accomplish? It takes curiosity and creativity, but all too often, most brands lack those important characteristics. And they don’t steel their front-line employees with any sort of empowerment to look into alternatives either.
So the frustration continues because of a cultural shortcoming: Brands think that “Why?” is the end (or at least near the end) of the procession of improvement steps, when in reality, it’s really just the beginning. Sure, tell me why. But then let’s explore solutions to that.
