Being right won't pay your bills
austinlchurch.com
austinlchurch.com
Agreed. I'm going to remember this guy as the one who shoved a pop-up in my face asking for my email shortly after I reached the end of the article. Not to mention the first 2%, where he asked for my email so he could send me his business tips before I even got to read the article.
One tip when dealing with a upset customer, they will often call in angry and instantly start on a tirade of why they are upset. If they do I instantly interrupt them and ask them for account information and assure them we will take care of any issue they have because we are here to help.
It does 2 things, you dont want them to rant and build up negative energy so you nip that in the bud and they dont have to relive negative feelings. The assurance that we will take care of them instantly sets tone that no matter what their problem will be solved so you take all the stress away from the start. Telling them you are there to help in a friendly tone makes it very hard for them to express anger since you dont get angry at those helping you.
Take away the anger and leave them with happy thoughts. Once the anger is gone the rest is easy.
Edit- Also when you interrupt and ask for account information it shows that before you even have to hear the problem you are already working to solve it in a fast and effective manner for them.
Digging into details, I wonder just how much benefit comes from not just telling them "we will take care of any issue you have", but from immediately asking for account details. Instead of sounding cliché, this sends an immediate signal that they're being helped right now. And when someone is actually helping, there's nothing beneficial in being angry at them.
(Doesn't sound like your case, but people will miss that little qualifier. I mean, of course, the cases where they ask for your account number - not verify details)
The most angry I've ever gotten is with Comcast's offshore chat/call center. The reason is because they are trained to tell you that they will solve your problem, and that afterwards that it has been solved in such an emphatic fashion that only a sociopath would dare to question. Yet they do this without any actual indication that what they are doing is having any effect at all. And the worse thing is, even when you call back they act like they are listening to what you did previously, but in fact they are just waiting to interject the script where they make you jump through the same 20 hoops over and over again. In my case it turned out to be a faulty modem, so none of what they were doing had any effect at all, but in no way did they ever let on any actual information or engage in any reasoning.
I suspect the only reason hasn't replaced that call center with a voicemail tree is presumably because they need a Turing-test capable human to get the customer to calm down long enough for them to re-read step 25 from the level 1 tech support handbook.
I apologize for hijacking your thread, but I had to get this off my chest.
The company I work for thankfully takes customer service very serious. I don't mind helping them because they want their customers to be happy not be blown off or jump through hoops and that personally makes me want to help the company because its something I respect.
I usually cant stand support from a company because of many of the concepts you touched on, specially the "hoops" and support not knowing what they are talking about so I empathize with the customers.
Appreciate the post! I do love HN because the high level of discussion.
On blogs or whatever, I can be pretty blunt and harsh. With my customers, I walk a tight rope between being aggressive and being gentle almost always moderate. I'm quick to concede something to customer if the overall value proposition is still good for long-term or it's a little thing that can't hurt my image. Past that, I might try to shift blame from them or I to the circumstances of the situation while portraying us as a team handling it. Pissing them off is the last thing you want to do, though, given long-term is more important.
Author either skimmed over or didn't mention two things, though. One is that customers often talk to other potential customers. Even those you "fire" you should separate from on good terms or not too harshly if possible. They can spread word fast through other clients who are then more likely to turn down contracts.
The other issue is the clients asking too much: many do it on purpose. There's so many hustlers out there who play proper capitalist by always getting as much as possible while giving as little as possible. So, you need to determine ahead of time what's your willing to commit to, possible extras, possible compromises, and absolute upper-bounds for any given job/client. Then, stick to it and politely if people are pushing it too much. Give those types an inch, they'll take a mile: you go from profitable, independent consultant to many to practically under-paid employee of one.
Things to remember.
I don't know if it's a side effect of living in a western society, but I see people make this kind of mistake all the time in the corporate world -- i.e. assuming that behind it all there's some neutral arbiter who will square any conflicts that arise in the workplace. In reality, if you make your self look like an ass in front of the wrong person, at the wrong point in the fiscal year, it affects your bonus / promotion / etc., and you never get that back, plus it's used to factor into every reward you get until you leave that company. Definitely better to be diplomatic.
Is this western as in Europe, North America, Aus/NZ or just US?
It also applies to smaller companies; in fact, I'm beginning to believe that people are being too obsessive about pleasing the customers. For instance, the best way to get a company to respond to your complaint today is through social media. They will ignore your e-mails. They will bullshit you on the phone. But they will not ignore a complaint on a Facebook page. But why is that? An average consumer has exactly zero capability to inflict any damage to the company. They won't even lose a single sale over it, unless the company is very new or caters to a niche market.
Some companies, those in extremely competitive environments, know it all too well. In convenience stores, besides meeting tons of cool people, you can also meet tons of assholes. They don't care. They know you have to buy food anyway.
Parent was referring to being an ass in general. If you act like a dick in the workplace, it will affect your promotions, etc. People will just not think of you first when looking to shower praise.
However, it almost reads like he's saying he should have just issued the (undeserved) credit the customer asked for. Personally, I think that could be just as costly over the long term...it sets a precedent that the customer will likely leverage over and over again.
There's nothing really wrong with what he told the guy (at least, what he says he told the guy), it's just that by his own words, the way he said it came across like him being a .
When instead if he'd been able to get past his anger/offense at being questioned, he could have done the same thing but positively, like "dude check out all this awesome shit i am literally already doing for you, for free! Doesn't that actually look like you are getting a pretty sweet deal?" And so then instead of this client being like "oh well fuck me for asking I guess" he could have been like "whoa shit this guy is giving me the sick hookup, I better hire him all the time from now on forever!"
The more nuanced, hard part is to be able to effectively read (over a phone even) whether your customer is the type that has been burned by charlatans in the past and wants technical excellence first... or whether they would prefer "bedside manner" moreso (this is an area that a lot of doctors also fail routinely). Some people are extremely hard to read, and it gets more difficult the higher up a corporate hierarchy you go and for more lucrative verticals in my experience - they're all used to very strong poker faces. But few high level business decisions are made purely upon raw information, so understanding emotion becomes very important if your business focuses upon fewer customers with greater $ / customer.
All too often people fail to read the emotions behind what someone wants and tries to execute to the details of the request instead of looking for context first before touching a keyboard. I worked with a good engineer that diligently worked on problems reliably, and my customer had an issue that they really just didn't care about that much but only wanted to just send out the door for the sake of finishing it and marking it done (it's turning into shelfware, but there's... obligations / due dilligence). I had a hard time communicating that over the phone with the customer present and the customer was getting frustrated (visible but not audible) but another senior engineer figured out between the lines what I was implying between my words, drastically reduced effort on the problem being worked, and the customer was happier for it.
Happy to see that saying in there. In its sometimes hard to remember that not everyone is as logic oriented as myself.
To tie this back to the article, sometimes being right can work, but it's a risky line to push without the above, a clear understanding of the person opposite you's mental process. That being said, also as the above, I find that in situations where a business relationship can build that trust and understanding even in the face of contrary views on certain things (logic vs emotion, to draw that parallel) a far better working relationship can be established, although I have a feeling to an entrepreneurial community this is stating the obvious :)
I think the author touches on this but not specifically, "be easy to work with" is a nice umbrella that I'd add an addendum to, a hope that both parties try to give each other the benefit of the doubt and some tolerance through disagreement in the hope that the opposite party is doing the same, and eventually, you may not have to worry as much about the friction of being right. (within reason)
I understand that most people value emotional reasoning more than I do. I don't get people valuing it more than logical reasoning.
There is just so much potential danger with implicit and explicit bias. Sexism and racism tends to be more the result of emotional reasoning than logical reasoning. (Think of a jury/judge sentencing a black guy to a harsher sentence than a white guy who did the same crime. Imagine if the difference between if the justification was the black guy felt more dangerous vs a justification such as in this instant the black guy having similar prior offenses. Which justification is racism?)
That being said though, you bring up an addendum I would counter that although you're right to say there is potential danger to emotional thinking, there's potential danger to purely logical thinking as well; to bring this back to my original statement in which avoiding confronting these differences in an "easy to work with" fashion reduces the chances of moving even a little towards a middle ground to 0.
I wonder, if both extremes are dangerous, is the middle ground safe?
Yeah, I tried that in my marriage. Don't insist on being right, let the wife be happy and it'll make you happy. Instead, it made me broke and miserable and so I asked for a divorce.
With my SO, we're always aiming for "eventually right". When there is an argument, we focus on reaching common emotional ground first. Then, sometimes not immediately, we both talk the issue through calmly to determine who, if anyone, was right, and exchange appropriate apologies. The point being, it's often more important to defuse the situation first, but both of us value knowing the truth about situations, and want to be always on the same page. Otherwise someone will end up having those kinds of hurt feelings that tend to slowly rot you from inside.
It doesn't work with anyone; it takes a honest and cooperative partner to pull it off. And it takes trust. If my SO was as patient as I am, we'd end every argument in 30 seconds with full agreement about the situation, Aumann-style. She isn't, and so I sometimes have to trust that after the storm there will be the phase of reconciliation. And there always is.
Would love to see the title changed to "Being right(eous) won't pay your bills" - being right is important, letting everybody know it is a totally different thing :)
There's a slightly patronising tone to this, whether it's right or wrong: " we must Siberia educate our clients". While true, it's not the key issue. They can educate us too, and perhaps that's the take-away here. I hope to put myself in my clients' shoes every time I talk to them. That way, everything they say makes perfect sense, and we can agree a way through any issues together, as a partnership.
I don't always manage to do this effectively, of course, but reflecting on this helps me slowly, slowly improve.
Recognizing those feelings and knowing that it is time for a walk and NOT time to respond to emails is a useful skill.
Being right won't keep you out of a hospital bed
The theme is more like, "Learn to pick your battles with clients."
Even if you choose to fight, fight the right way. Being overly emotional and ego driven ("I'm right, how dare they?!") can be very damaging to a relationship, even if you end up "winning".
The key, as I'm trying to teach myself every day, seems to be to get yourself and your ego out of the picture. The advice I really loved was to picture yourself as some absurd, godlike dictator, demanding the world bend to your whim... With that in mind in mind you realize how silly you're being.
It's something I struggle with every day, but learning this kind of self control is very important to long term success.
* Try to fix everything - this will lead to burnout
* Ignore it, and just work on your stuff - this will work, but you probably won't get promoted
* Play politics and try to fix a few things through the "right channels" - this probably works, but it's really really difficult and can be soul-destroying.
* Do what you can, and update your resume - cynical, but probably the best option if you like eating food.
I mean, you're not always in a position where you can educate your clients. Sometimes doing that would be a career limiting move.
Second, time is a zero sum game. If the waiter has to spend several minutes wrestling with the POS to split a check, that's several minutes they can't be serving other tables, which if the restaurant is busy can mean a degraded experience for other diners (and of course if this leads to someone being unhappy with the service that will likely mean a reduced tip). Of course if the restaurant isn't busy and the waiter can afford to spend several minutes on this, then nobody else has to suffer, but if that's the case I wouldn't expect the waiter to balk at splitting the check (assuming they're capable of doing so at all, which as I said before may not be true depending on the POS or on restaurant policy).
A tip is fully extra incentive. The waiter is not my employee, and the social expectation of a tip is a horrible practice (imagine if we replaced the expectation with someone that wasn't financial in nature).
>And the kind of person that threatens to leave a bad tip if the waiter doesn't do something is the kind of person that probably tips badly to begin with.
This sounds kinda close to a personal attack. Not to mention there is a vast difference between threatening to not leave a tip ("if you don't split this check then I won't tip you") and what the parent post did (bringing up how refusing customer service right before a tip is given is likely to hurt the tip, never mentioning if this was a conscious or subconscious behavior change made by the tipper).
While typically irrational for the individual, anger can be rational for the selfish gene, thus be preserved in the species: angry bees are avoided by other animals even if individual bees are suicidal, thus making the suicide of an individual work for the group.
So whenever you feel the need to go on a rampage destroying yourself along with your archenemy, you should really ask yourself if you are still in control, or you are executing out a program developed 1 million years ago and designed to protect the occupants of your cave from attacks of rival hominids, even at the price of your life.
2. If a waiter spends 10 min at the POS splitting a check, other tables are being ignored and management might not like that.
Interestingly enough, a server works for three parties: guest, restaurant, and themselves.
Sucks but true. Gotta choose lesser of three evil sometimes.
http://www.zonal.co.uk/aztec-epos-solutions/
Not only does it split the bill N ways easily, it can cope with all manner of per-seat bills and shared items.
A friend of mine says typically when she splits a bill, both payees will assume the other is a crappy tipper/don't want to tip less, so they'll both tip a higher percentile and she'll occasionally get 1.5-2 times the tip money, so when people ask her to split a bill she just hears more money coming.
Purely anecdotal, YMMV, etc. etc.
EDIT: I'm curious if downvotes are due to people not wanting wait staff to get bigger tips or if it's because wait staff in my area don't gripe about splitting bills? I never expected this comment to cost me karma, but such it is.
1. Some Point of Sale systems have a limit on how to split a check. I physically cannot split a check more then 6 ways and the customer is asking or 7 ways, then what am I suppose to do? Be "nice" and promise the impossible? So now I pissed off a customer who's about to tip me because I cannot reprogram the POS.
2. The more likely scenario is when a table of 7, who just had pre-fix brunch is asking me to split a $70 check 7 ways which takes my time away from my couple who just dropped $70 by themselves.
What customers in restaurants don't understand is that tipping might be optional but my time is money. As a customer is tipping on service, I'm also providing service comparable to the tip I receive.
Waiters are really good at "guessing" how much a customer will tip and will act on that belief.
Disclaimer: I worked with a ton of awful waiters who were straight up rude to good guests. No guest should ever be treated poorly.
Ive also served some awful customers:
Some of them tipped very, very well because they wanted to be awful. I loved those assholes and always welcomed them with open arms - money's green regardless.
Some were just awful and I tried to steer clear of them.
Now as an olive branch; all guests should be treated with outmost respect and all people in the service industry should be as well
#2 isn't very convincing on it's own. Your inconvenience is not the customer's fault and does not justify being rude to them. Splitting checks is part of the job just like refilling water is part of the job, even if it takes your time away from more profitable tables.
Argument #1 happens frequently at locations that host larger parties (steak houses, for example) while almost never occurs at local pub/restaurant.
I understand your point of view on #2, however, the job is to server food for the section, not a particular table. I understand its taboo to speak honestly about this - people don't want to hear it; A manager doesn't care that you had to split a check when a table walked out; A guest doesn't care if you have a 7 top when they're ordering a $300 bottle of wine.
Everyone has particular feelings about this situation and as a server you're juggling all of your tables, expectations, emotions, and different cost/reward scenarios.
Another caveat: when a table walks in and says, prior to ordering, "Can we please split the check 7 ways?" - freaking awesome! Now I know that my notes have to be extra neat and I'm going through steps of service being extra careful to place items.
Most people ask to split the check at the end when I rushed through the entire order and my pad is a total mess and I'm trying to decipher what happened so everyone is charged correctly.
Do you have to do the splitting? Just give the table the total check, give people a few minutes work things out, and then just go around the table and ask each person what they had/how much they want to pay. That seems to be the standard procedure at most places I've been to.
If that's the case, I doubt most waiters would have issues with check splitting.
Maybe after it happens a couple of times... you might learn to predict when a party will ask to split the check, and ask when you take the orders? That seems reasonable if you can predict how much someone will tip.
If you have a 7 top, you do your best to keep yourself as organized as possible to save as much time in the end.
After a while, most waiter who've worked a bit are trying to cover all their bases all the time.
Interestingly enough, the analogy of a good waiter is a good error checking strategy: expect everything to work but check every exception anyway.
I can "guess" if you'll tip 18% or not and if I'm wrong...I'm wrong. If I assume your relationship to another person you're dining with - I might get fired...
Hypotheticals are everywhere. Usually its easier when tables ask to split a check in the beginning, then the logistics can be figured out and you don't have a situation that OP mentioned.
Bit off topic: I had a table, I don't remember how many people but it was large (7-10). One guest joins late and quickly orders her food. Since the rest of the table is already on appetizers, I rush to place the order and get her salad as soon as possible.
Once the salad arrives, I check back and, after the guest is satisfied, go to take care of a different table.
Maybe two minutes later, the table franticly calls me over and asks if there are mushrooms in the salad, to which I reply "Yes". Calmly, the gentleman to the right of the lady with the salad reaches into his bag, grabs an EpiPen and stabs her.
My manager and I look at each other and are mortified - how did this happen? I quickly start to apologize but I had no idea that she was allergic to Mushrooms. While we're freaking out, the table is as cool as the other side of the pillow - everyone just continues eating and the lady is all smiles.
Turns out that the entire table are doctors and the lady routinely forgets to mention her allergies. The gentleman, her husband, explains the situation while the lady apologizes for creating a fuss (at this point my manager is as white as a sheet).
Even though everything turned out "ok" it was certainly a scary moment. It also relates to your comment - shouldn't I ask each person that comes in about their allergies or is it their responsibility to inform me of their dietary restrictions?
Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy :)
After a while, there are certain tendencies that are exhibited by guests which can be profiled. Just like a good electrician can tell if the lines in your house are "home runs" or daisy chained based on the gauge of wire and material, a server can "guesstimate" their tip based on the customer.
I'm not saying you KNOW this is going to happen but you know if you're getting 15% or 18%+.
Now there's a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.
What about looking at the menu and approximating how much something "should cost"?
What about seeing an product on the store shelves (like a sweater) and thinking being surprised by its cost?
The practice is flawed...so are humans - Sorry, I guess.
I was trying to provide the opposite point of view. The whole, there are two sides to every story and somewhere in the middle is the truth, bit.
OP/Guest has every right to be annoyed at the service, its their prerogative.