Chapter Three

Truth Number 3: It’s Not Your Employees’ Fault

When was the last time you had a frustrating interaction with a call center? Most of us can measure our answer in days. Here’s what was probably happening on the other end of the line: the person you spoke to was watching as many as eight screens at once while trying to assist frustrated customers from all cultures, ages, and levels of expertise with a growing range of product and service needs. Given typical investments in salary and training, that person was either an effective communicator without the capacity to solve technical problems, or a competent technician with limited interpersonal skills. Neither one could reliably solve your problem.

The “bad guy” in this service failure, ...

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