When does being human mean bad business? Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 19:59, in Labels: account management, customer service, seth godin, tomi heikkinen

Seth Godin delivers a delicious line of wisdom while he gives lessons from very tiny businesses. In his ending statement regarding customer service, he reminds that don't pretend you have a policy. Just be human.

In a world of big company customer service processes and irritating service policies, this statement is a breeze of welcomed air. Dissappointed customers want personal, understanding, friendly service. Customer service processes deliver impersonal, bureaucratic, cold service. But these "inhumane" processes haven't been created out of spite. They've been created to manage costs and to upkeep sound business.

Regarding both the obvious benefits of humane service and the reality of cost management, I wondered: Is there a tipping point where being too human leads to closing up the shop in the longer run?

I worked in a business sales organization where different account managers treated their customers differently. Our unofficial policy was be human - to a point. Some account managers were critized for how they overcared for their customers - execs felt resources were overspent on micromanaging and worrying about the whims of some customers. I'd like to point out that we never received feedback about bad service though. The execs couldn't however statistically prove that overcaring was unprofitable, as this type of account managers were among the better salespersons. Micromanagement was evident, but the management simply lacked the metrics for proving its negative impact. But clearly our organization wasn't close to the tipping point as business was good nevermind some overzealous account managers.

Customer service is about sales too. It's about managing the expectations of the customer. When the customer is unsatisfied, it is the customer service person's task to "sell" the customer a reimbursement or another reassuring action that returns the customer to a satisfied level, and hopefully even increases overall satisfaction to your brand. If the service person is successful, he customer modifies her expectations and "buys" the reassuring action.

Measuring customer service as a sales operation, could we measure the tipping point of when being too human is no longer good business? I think this is especially important to companies which have grown to a point where managing a single customer relationship requires the effort of more than two employees. At this stage, when one person, e.g. the account manager, is "being human" to the customer it no longer concerns the account manager only but will affect the workload of another employee. For example serving the extra demands of a certain customer might seem inconsequential to the account manager but put excessive pressure to a sales engineer who has to realize the (unprofitable) demands of the customer.

In the future, I'd love to hear actual experiences from businessmen about when being human meant bad business. Is there a tipping point? Or is there a best practice how being human can always or often enough be good business?