A Radical Thought - Why Most Customer Service Jobs Suck

Yesterday I was working intently getting my material ready to lot today when I received this e-mail message from someone at my insurance agency:

Good afternoon Chris, we have received a notice from your insurance company Wawanesa insurance that they will be doing any inspection on your home.

Can you please provide the name of the contact person and phone number so the inspector can call and set up an appointment.

That was it. I'd never dealt with the person who sent this for the entire year I have been with this insurance company. There is:

• No introduction and explanation as to why I am dealing with her now, rather than the lady I have been dealing with this past year.
• No explanation for why the insurance company wants to inspect, what they are looking for, and what they intend to do with the information.

Is it just me, or is this not intrusive? I decided to research these inspections online and I found a range of stories from nothing happening to sky-high premium increases. So naturally, I telephoned and spoke to this person telling them that unless the insurance company could explain why they needed to come in here after I had already spent $6,000 on mandatory upgrades this past year, and have already provided proof that the work was done that my answer would have to be no. 

This morning, she sends me the following e-mail response:

Was advised by Wawanesa that the inspection is required due to it's age and value. Please see attached criteria.  The inspection was not required when policy was first issued, but now that the value is over $500,000 inspection is mandatory.  

Chris if you don't consent to the inspection, Wawanesa will not offer renewal on December 9th 2017.  Please advise. 

Now, I should say at this point that our house is about 140 years old. It is in great shape for a 140 year old home, but it is in no way comparable to a newly built house. We paid $132,000 for it last year and there is no way that it would cost anywhere close to $500,000 to re-build, and even if it did, we probably wouldn't bother. We would just buy another, similar house from the dozens that are for sale in Saint John. 

So the whole thing is bogus and BS. The only thing that this will result in is laundry lists of required "improvements" that are costly and not necessary, or premium increases, and once I let them in once, it will become an annual thing. We were NEVER told about this when we got the policy last year, or at any other point until now. Needless to say, I am irate, and I let this person know it. I'm sure she is not enjoying my e-mails. But then I had a thought, about why most customer service jobs suck:

Maybe they suck, because you, the employee, suck at your job, and your suckage pisses people off to the point where they let you know it. Maybe that is the reason. 

Yes, I know, I know. There are people with low emotional intelligence that will just blow up at people for things they have no control over. Those people exist, and yes, dealing with them sucks, and is not a reflection of the customer service representative. But I would wager that these people are not the majority. 

Here's the thing: it takes time, effort and investment to be good at what you do, and you have to care. If you don't care about doing a good job, then it is pretty much a guarantee that you will suck at what you do, eventually. A CSR's job is to help people, pure and simple. In order to be good at helping people you who are buying a product or service, you have to be:

• knowledgeable about the product or service.
• knowledgeable about the company policies, the grey areas, the workarounds and you have to be able to communicate clearly to customers where you have flexibility and where you do not, politely and firmly.
• good at communicating. This includes knowing when you need to offer explanations and alternatives and not simply waiting to be asked. You have to be able to deliver bad news in a fair, respectful and compassionate manner.
• able to anticipate what some of the cost common customer concerns are, and be ready to address those concerns. If you are unable to address them to what you know would be satisfactory to the customer, you need to be able to say so upfront, and not after you have kept them on the phone for 30 minutes and peppered them with questions. 

All of this requires a skill set - soft skills. Skills that require practice and effort to perfect. The unfortunate reality is that in theory, anybody can do this job, which is why customer service jobs are usually so poorly paid. The truth of course, is that very few people can do this job well with no prior experience and no effort made to consciously develop these skills. Yet, the impression that I have, after interacting with countless CSR's is that they just expect to be able to show up, and that somehow magically, they will be good enough at what they do to not frustrate the customers they speak to. It is truly magical thinking. 

I am not someone who goes around getting mad at people all the time. I have dealt with Canada Revenue Agency auditors for clients where hundreds of thousands of dollars was at stake, and I have managed to remain calm and professional in my communications. I don't fly off the handle easily. But I have to say that I have a very short fuse when I am forced to deal with someone who just isn't helpful and just doesn't care. That is why I think these jobs suck. I think if the employees doing them would focus on being the best they could be, fewer people would get frustrated with them, some people might actually praise them and thank them, and the job would become much more pleasant to do.