I recently had the wonderful opportunity to interview Brian Hamilton on Amazing Business Radio. Brian is the chairman of LiveSwitch and an entrepreneur who has started, built up, and sold numerous businesses. At the end of every show, I ask, What last nugget of wisdom can you share with our listeners?
He shared an amazing answer:
“The enemy of customer service is pride.”
As he shared what he meant by this profound statement, I knew it was going to be something I would write and talk about.
If you’ve been following my work, you know one of my favorite concepts is The Customer Is NOT Always Right! Let’s use that as a starting point to understand how pride can be the enemy of customer service.
When we’re taught (or told) by the boss that the customer IS always right, and one day a customer makes a statement that isn’t right or accurate, we have conflict. Or maybe the customer is argumentative. We have been taught and told – maybe even ordered – to treat that customer as if they are right. But they are not. For example, what happens if you have a liberal 30-day return policy and the customer comes to return the item on day 60, insisting they were told the store had a 90-day return policy? Can you see the conflict? They are clearly wrong, and that conflict is where pride kicks in and gets in the way of good customer service.
For some, it’s hard to put pride aside and empathize and sympathize with the customer’s errant point of view. While we may not directly tell the customer they are wrong, we say something that