Correcting the Five Biggest Customer Service “Blunders”: Paul Levesque’s Tips to Fix Common Retail Mistakes

By Allan Pulga

Paul Levesque, the customer service guru at Entrepreneur.com, recently offered up his Top Five “Biggest Customer Service Blunders of All Time.” But more importantly, he gave readers solutions to remedy these major miscues.

Levesque said the businesses that consistently deliver superior customer service are “places where turbo-charged employees pursue customer delight with a passion, places that ignite a flashpoint of contagious enthusiasm in employees and customers alike.” These places, he adds, avoid the following blunders:

Blunder #1: Making customer service a training issue

A big flaw in many expensive training programs is that they focus too much on behavioural conformity in the workplace, he explains. These mechanized programs “coax, bully or legislate behaviour,” he says, and can lead to employee cynicism.

Levesque’s solution is simple: “Instead of dictating what your employees should be doing to delight customers... give (them) opportunities to brainstorm their ideas for delivering delight.” Allowing employees to use their own approaches in delivering good customer service gives them the credit when their approaches succeed, thus creating a culture of employee ownership and self-motivation towards customer service.

Scapegoating never works. “Employee cynicism is the direct product of an organization’s visible preoccupation with self-interest above all else – a purely internal focus,” says Levesque. Good businesses focus outward, toward the interests of customers and the community at large.

Rather blaming employees for poor service, businesses need to re-evaluate the policies and processes that may be preventing employee self-motivation. The organization must develop a culture where employees can identify operational obstacles to good service and participate in finding ways better deliver it.

Surveys and other feedback mechanisms are important ways of learning about customer complaints. But many businesses mistakenly emphasize the negative feedback to employees and generate a feeling of witch hunting and finger pointing.

Levesque suggests doing the opposite - emphasize the positive customer feedback. Managers should be on the look out for success stories, examples of employees going the extra mile in the name of good service. Recognize and celebrate these successes and use feedback constructively rather than destructively.

“It happens all the time: Something goes terribly wrong… and a dedicated employee goes to tremendous lengths to make things right,” says Levesque. “The delighted customer brings this employee’s wonderful recovery to management’s attention and the employee receives special recognition for his or her efforts.”

This doesn’t seem like a blunder, but it is when such recoveries are the primary (if not the only) catalysts for employee recognition, he explains. Foul-ups become opportunities for employees to shine and attempts to correct operational problems become less important to them.

Celebrate splashy recoveries, of course, but be careful to uncover and celebrate employee efforts to wow customers where no mistakes or problems arise. “This makes it easier to get workers participating in efforts to permanently eliminate the sources of problems at the systems level,” he adds.

“Price becomes the deciding factor in purchasing decisions only when everything else is equal – and everything else is almost never equal,” says Levesque. “Businesses compete on the perception of value, and this includes more than price.”

Levesque is talking about the total customer experience, where such things as helpfulness, friendliness and “a personal touch” give retailers a competitive edge to charge a little bit extra.

“Businesses that deliver a superior total experience from the inside out (as a product of a strongly customer-focused culture) are typically those that enjoy a long-term competitive advantage and a virtual immunity from the kinds of headaches that plague everybody else.”