The CX Blog

Customer Service as Spiritual Practice?

Hmmm–I have to admit, this post on The Customer is Always Right made me a tad nervous. As Maria Palma, the author, notes, the issue may make lots of people nervous as spirituality is so often conflated with religion and such.  But she’s quick to note: she’s talking about connections between humans, about helping, and adding value to someone’s day.  Here’s a snippet:

So what does spirituality have to do with customer service?

My answer to that is:  Everything.  Every communication or interaction with another person is a moment when your spirit connects with that person.  Every connection, no matter how short or long it is, has an effect on your life and their life.  As someone who works in customer service, you have the opportunity to inspire your customers.  This is your chance to make a difference in someone’s life.

She wrote this post a while back, before Thanksgiving, and this is, after all, the time of the year for looking inward and taking time to reflect.

I like the idea.  I’ve always found that a job, no matter what it is, is more interesting and fun when your heart is involved at least a little.  Palma is suggesting a lot here.  She’s suggesting that customer service reps have the opportunity to change the world–a teensy weeny bit–in the course of the connection with the customer.

That would mean hiring people who care for a living.  Who are sensitive and empathic and also operationally savvy, or at least trainable.  I’m all for that–but I have to admit, it’s a little more enlightened than most companies are prepared for.  Most companies are prepared for lining up service metrics in the time=money equation, reducing that “touch” to a number of KPIs.

It also means recognizing, rewarding, and training a set of behaviors that may not come easy to some people, or may no longer come naturally to experienced customer service agents.

But I have also worked with some companies that have taken something along the lines of the approach Palma takes–whether for self-serving brand reasons or because they recognize it’s the best path long term.

How to do this smartly and achieve both ends: simple.  Recognize that the interaction your agents are having with the customer really should be of a few types: learning, so the company doesn’t have to take the contact at all; removal, so you fix the problem and make the contact go away; self-serve so the customer doesn’t have to call.  Bill Price, who founded Driva Solutions, and who I worked with back at Amazon in the high growth years, outlines these issues in his book, Best Service is No Service. Recommended reading.

A highly evolved operational approach such as this would allow your agents to focus more on that 1-to-1 touch that can make or break a customer relationship.  All in all, I think viewing customer service as a spiritual practice is a pretty good idea!