In Small Biz, There's No Small Stuff

When it comes to customer service, take a tip from a good police chief: The small things can be just as important as the high-profile ones

by Keith McFarland

Last week I called customer service at a major national retailer. After navigating the obligatory automated telephone routing system, I was given the option of leaving a message (with the promise of a returned call) or of holding for the next available representative. Since I had already sent the company three e-mails that had gone unanswered, I opted to hold. After about two minutes, the line went dead.

Guessing there had been some kind of phone service glitch, I called back, made my way through the prompts, and the line went dead again. I did this two more times before I finally gave up and called a competitor. "If it's important, they'll call back," appears to be this company's philosophy on customer service (BusinessWeek.com, 6/1/07).

It is amazing to me how frequently this kind of thing still happens. Companies in crushingly competitive industries spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising, but still can't seem to find the time to answer the phone when a customer wants to buy something from them.

Focusing on High Profile Issues

I have come to see these scenarios as more than just annoyances; they are often signals of a critical failure of leadership. In these organizations, we can only assume that senior executives feel they can't be bothered by such trivial matters as customers reaching customer service—they've got more important things to do—like prepare budgets and meet with analysts.

Similar to company executives who are too busy to worry about whether the phones are getting answered, police chiefs in New York City used to focus their attention on the "big" issues—like managing City Hall and the media, and on big crimes such as murder and robbery. Until, that is, William Bratton was appointed police chief of New York City in 1994.

Influenced by sociologists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, Bratton focused his attention on petty crimes like jumping subway turnstiles and spray-painting graffiti on rail cars. The policies initiated during Bratton's tenure are credited with a 39% decline in serious crimes and a 50% reduction in homicides. What was the connection between petty and serious crime? It turned out that many of the same people who were jumping turnstiles were also robbing and shooting people once they got on the train—so arresting them for these petty crimes kept them from committing more serious ones.

Little Things Aren't Little

But in Bratton's view, something even more important was happening. Bratton believed that when police fail to prosecute crimes like turnstile jumping and graffiti spraying, it breeds "fear and disorder" in neighborhoods and opens the door to more serious crimes. By enforcing these kinds of rules, Bratton restored order in New York's unruly subways—which in turn strengthened the community's resolve to not tolerate crime.

Like turnstile jumping and graffiti spraying in a New York subway, it's the little things in business (like answering the phone) that will largely determine how employees behave. They may not "breed fear and disorder," but they can breed apathy and complacency. The company with the automated telephone system that makes it practically impossible to talk to a live person is sending a clear signal to its employees that customers don't matter. Executives who make commitments to employees and then fail to follow through are essentially teaching employees to be true to their word only if it's convenient.