Here's What Experts Say Is The #1 Way To Improve Customer Service

Customer service leaders are constantly trying to improve service. A new report from OneReach asked 63 industry experts to weigh in on what companies can do to get started.

It was an honor to be asked to contribute since "Where do I start? is a challenging question for many customer service leaders. I've tackled this topic here before with an action plan for taking customer service to the next level. 

My take is the first step in any journey is to select a destination. For customer service, this means defining outstanding service by creating a customer service vision.

Not all experts agree with me. The OneReach report is valuable because it provides a variety of different perspectives. It's interesting to see that 63 experts had 11 different ideas for where to get started!

On a side note, this report is also a great list of customer service experts to follow on Twitter!

Below is an infographic that summarizes the results. You can read an overview on the OneReach blog or download the full report.

Do you enjoy reading this blog? Sign up below to receive each new post via email. 

How Customer Service Problems Quite Literally Get Moldy

Some service failures are hard to believe.

It's not just the problem itself. It's the fact that employee after employee either fails to notice it or fails to fix it. 

Here's an example. This picture was taken in a small market and deli. Just in case the color throws you off, these are Valencia oranges.

Notice the mold on the two oranges at the top of the picture. Disgusting. It shouldn't happen, but it did. The real question is why?

I explored several potential root causes in my book, Service Failure. They range from apathy to employees being so focused on their individual tasks they fail to see the big picture. 

There's one big reason that stands out at this market: management.

Here are a few more observations about the market with the moldy oranges:

  • There were at least five employees on duty when I spotted this.
  • I told the employee behind the deli counter who shrugged and did nothing.
  • I had to tell a second employee before someone took care of it.

This reveals a few things. 

One is that at least some of the employees on duty didn't believe the fruit bin was their responsibility. Either they chose to ignore the problem or their lack of care caused them to miss it. It's a manager's duty to instill a clear sense of responsibility amongst employees. 

Another issue is inattentiveness. The oranges had clearly gone unchecked for several days. It's a manager's role to make this attention part of the procedure. Somebody should be checking the merchandise.

I've written about this before. In one instance, multiple employees missed an obvious problem because none of them were paying attention to the big picture.

Another one was about an inexplicably dirty hotel room. The comments from hotel professionals were particularly interesting.

It's easy to write-off problems like this. It couldn't happen to you, right? Perhaps not. But, the best customer service leaders are constantly checking just in case.

Customer service managers should ask themselves a few questions. 

  • Do you have any moldy oranges in your organization?
  • Are employees on the lookout for these sorts of problems?
  • Do people know what to do if they see one?

The Strange Effect of Surveys on Consumer Behavior

The survey equation seems simple.

You ask a customer a few questions. Their answers help you spot problems. You then use their feedback to improve. If all goes well, customers become more loyal and sales go up.

It's applying feedback that's been a sticking point. Many companies don't. One study suggests that only 10 percent of companies use survey data to improve service.

It turns out that a survey has influence, even if you don't use the data.

A 2002 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research determined that the mere act of surveying customers increased sales and loyalty. Here's a summary of what the study's authors found.

The Study

The research was conducted by Utpal M. Dholakia and Vicki G. Morwitz. They separated customers at a financial services firm into a test and control group. The test group took a customer satisfaction survey while the control group did not.

Dholakia and Morwitz then used actual customer transactions to identify any differences between the customers who were surveyed and those who were not.

 

The Results

Two conclusions jumped out.

First, the surveyed customers were much more likely to open new accounts with the financial services firm.

Second, the surveyed customers were much less likely to defect. 

The Implications

It would be a mistake to just assume you can launch a survey and watch sales soar. 

There's a bit of nuance here. For example, the study was conducted in 2002 when surveys weren't nearly as constant as they are now. It's entirely possible the study would see different results if it was conducted today.

My guess is the survey itself isn't what's driving consumer behavior. My hypothesis is there are two parts of the survey that are really making the impact.

The first is the act of story telling. 

Customers relive their experiences when they complete a survey. Retelling their story through a survey can make strong feelings (good or bad) even stronger. And, like so many stories, the details change and become exaggerated over time to create a stronger narrative.

The second part is a survey can demonstrate that a company actually cares.

It was probably easier to do that in 2002 when surveys were less common than they are in 2015. The big take away should be that if companies can show customers they care then customers will likely reward them.

Why You Should Stop Being So Eager to Please

Customer service professionals are naturally eager to please.

They want to make their customers happy. It's what fuels them. My research suggests it's the biggest thing that motivates employees.

This eagerness can also cause service failures. 

There's such thing as being over-eager. Too much eagerness can cause people to stop listening and jump to conclusions. It can also lead to an employee telling little lies in an effort to make a customer feel temporarily happy. 

Here are three examples of how being over-eager can lead to poor service.

gungho.jpg

Less Listening

Our brain naturally detects familiar patterns. It recognizes a few details and then instantly completes the picture. We use this skill constantly. In fact, you're using it right now -- it's how we're able to read written words.

This same function can get us into trouble.

Let's say you're trying to help a customer solve a problem. They start describing a situation that you've heard a hundred times before so your brain instinctively stops listening and the solution flashes into your brain.

Unfortunately, your brain mis-recognized the pattern. Even worse, you missed important details when the customer continued talking while your brain shut off listening.

We can detect and override this instinct if we're working slowly and methodically. It becomes a lot harder to do when we're under pressure to work fast.

That's where an over-eager desire to please causes problems. It's an internal pressure to work quickly.

 

More Assumptions

Less listening can lead to more assumptions. Here's an example:

Two couples were traveling together. They arrived at their hotel and attempted to check-in. The front desk agent assumed they wanted adjoining rooms since they had booked their reservations together.

An over-eagerness to please caused the agent to jump into solution mode. Rather than confirming the couples' room preferences, she assumed that's what they wanted.

She scanned her system for two adjoining rooms that were both clean. There were none. Dejectedly, she told the couples they'd have to wait another two hours before they could check in. 

What the agent missed was there were plenty of clean rooms that weren't adjoining. The couples never requested adjoining rooms and it wasn't really important to them. The agent's over-eagerness caused her to miss this critical opportunity and instead caused a service failure.

 

Prolonged Misery

Nobody likes to deliver bad news.

Customer service professionals who are too eager to please will sometimes tell small lies to help customers stay temporarily happy. 

  • They'll say, "maybe" when they know the answer is "No." 
  • They tell a customer they'll look into it when they know it won't happen.
  • They'll say "I'll get right on it" when they know it will take awhile.

These over-eager pleasers don't lie maliciously. They just have a hard time sharing the truth. Unfortunately, these little lies create unpleasant surprises in the long run.

It's a much better policy to tell the truth up front. Customers might not be as happy right away, but they'll be less angry over time. It's the classic under promise, over deliver approach.

 

A Little Less Eager

Being eager to please isn't inherently a bad thing. Just be sure you aren't so eager that you miss out on the opportunity to actually deliver.

The Right and Wrong Way to Serve Retail Customers

Retail is one of those places where sales and customer service intersect.

The primary function for most associates is helping the store sell product. They do that by providing customers with services, such as answering questions or helping them find a particular item.

How associates approach their dual role can make all the difference. There's definitely a right and a wrong way to do it.

My wife and I recently experienced both ends of the spectrum on a shopping trip. We wanted to buy two new couches for our living room. Here's what happened.

Image courtesy of Urbane Apartments

Image courtesy of Urbane Apartments

The Approach

Bill approached us the wrong way. 

He saw us looking at a couch and immediately descended upon the scene like a price hawk. A price hawk assumes that everything is about price.

Bill's opening line was "We're having a great sale on that couch right now." This was a huge turnoff since (a) Bill hadn't even said hello and (b) we had many questions to answer before deciding on the right couch.

Brian at Living Spaces approached us the right way.

He walked up to us with a big smile and introduced himself. He then asked if he could help us find the right couch. It's a big store and we had lots of questions, so we gladly accepted his offer.

 

Questions

Bill made things complicated.

It wasn't all his fault. The brochure for the couch we were looking at read like a code book. You could select six different options for the arm, six more for the legs, and three for the pillows. There was an intricate chart where you cross-referenced the code numbers for various options to see the final dimensions and prices.

It seemed to take a bit of higher math just to answer our most basic question. Will this couch fit our needs? Bill literally had to spend several minutes running the numbers.

Every other question we asked turned into an unnecessary symposium on furniture design. We learned plenty of things we didn't care about. It was tough sifting through all the irrelevant details to learn what we did want to know. Questions like "Will it last?" shouldn't require a college course on furniture design.

Brian made things easy.

He clearly knew his product, but he also used a simple one-page sales sheet for each couch to answer our basic questions. He immediately addressed our key concerns:

  • Will it fit in our home?
  • How long will it last?
  • How's it made?

Brian's answers were clear and direct. He also asked us a lot of great questions to get a better understanding of our needs. This allowed him to narrow down their huge selection and only show us the couches that were most likely to be right for us.

 

The Zone of Hospitality

Bill was focused on the sale. He gave us his card and left us to serve another customer as soon as it became apparent that we weren't ready to buy.

Brian was incredible. He practiced the 10 and 5 rule without breaking stride. At 10 feet away, he'd smile or give other customers a non-verbal acknowledgement. He'd greet customers verbally when they got within 5 feet.

Brian still remained attentive to us the entire time. He stayed with us and answered our questions until it became apparent we needed some time to think about our options. He then politely excused himself but told us he'd be available if we needed anything else.

 

Conclusions

We haven't bought a couch just yet. 

There are a lot of decisions to be made such as color, style, and delivery time frame. We're getting closer. When we do decide to by a couch, we'll be sure to go find Brian at Living Spaces.

Three Questions to Ask Before Adding A New Service Channel

Customer service channels were simple in the good ol' days.

There were three big channels when I got started:

  • In-person

  • Phone

  • Mail

Later, fax came in handy for business-to-business communication. Email eventually started catching on and then, boom! It's suddenly become a channel arms race.

Your might be tempted to add a new customer service channel in an effort to keep up. Before you do, I want to let you in on a little secret.

Your customers don't really care about channels.

What they do want is a seamless experience. So, before you invest a chunk of change in the latest channel craze, make sure you can answer these three questions.

Question #1: Is there enough demand?

Let's set aside in-person service. For contact centers, there's a new big three for customer service channels:

  • Phone

  • Live Chat

  • Email

Parature's 2015 U.S. State of Multichannel Customer Service report reveals these are by far the most preferred channels. It also helps to have a robust customer service website since the majority of customers go there first when looking for help.

Adding a new channel to the mix can take a lot of resources.

You'll need invest in the right technology, hire and train the right people, and create procedures to tie it all together. Oh, and you'll need someone who actually knows what they're doing to manage it all. That takes time.

Let's say you're thinking of adding SMS (text) support. It's probably not worth it if only one or two customers per day want to send you a text. On the other hand, you've got a pretty strong case if your daily volume is 100.

You also need to understand whether an additional channel is adding new contacts or diverting contacts from a different channel. For example, a 2015 Zendesk report revealed that implementing live chat typically draws contacts away from other web-based contact methods.

 

Question #2: Can you serve your customers effectively?

There are a few things to consider here.

One is context. Some channels are better suited than others for certain applications. Let's look at email as an example. It's great for simple, low urgency inquiries. It's terrible for complicated, high-urgency matters. This is especially true since the typical company takes one day or longer to respond. 

Capability is another consideration. 

You might be itching to add live video support because you've heard it's so great. Then you start looking into what it actually takes to make it happen. You might face some significant technology, staffing, and infrastructure hurdles.

Companies sometimes worry about their customer's channel preference. But, here's a secret. Your customers aren't really committed to their preferred channel. 

A 2012 study by CEB found that 84 percent of customers prefer a seamless service experience over using their channel of choice. They want a fast resolution on the first contact with minimal effort. Only 16 percent of customers were steadfastly committed to using their preferred channel.

 

Question #3: Can you serve customers in a way that's consistent with your brand?

A lot of companies have service channels with multiple personalities.

Social media provides a common example. Customers of some companies have learned that they'll get faster, friendlier, and more helpful service by Tweeting their complaint rather than calling.

Here are a few barriers to consistency:

  • Silos - different channels owned by different departments

  • Vision - no clear definition of outstanding service

  • Priority - some channels are given more resources than others

Things get even trickier when service interactions move from one channel to another. Customers expect a seamless experience.

For example, think about a typical airline passenger and the channels they use:

  • Website: book the ticket

  • Mobile app: check in

  • In-person: gate agent, flight attendant

That's assuming they don't have a problem. The channels can expand rapidly if there's a flight delay or another issue:

  • Phone: call to re-book

  • Twitter: vent frustration about the delay

  • Email: contact the airline's consumer affairs department to complain

One passenger experiencing a flight delay might use six or more channels. A lack of consistency in service quality across those channels can be frustrating.

 

Getting It Right

Dense Lee Yohn gave this excellent advice in her book, What Great Brands Do:

Great Brands Ignore Trends

Her point was that companies can easily lose their way by chasing the next trend without giving much thought to execution. The best brands focus on being good at doing a few things really, really well.

That philosophy applies nicely to choosing the customer service channels you'll support. It's far better to have a few well-supported channels than many channels that aggravate your customers.

You can learn more about managing multiple channels by watching this short video.

Why You Need to Serve More to Sell More

A sales pitch can feel like a slap in the face.

This one did. It was a mailer from a car company advertising great deals on their new models. Apparently, the customer service department hadn't told the folks in marketing about my unresolved complaint.

Now they wanted me to trade up and buy a new car. Instead, their sales pitch confirmed my decision to never buy from them again.

Read this post if you'd like to avoid doing the same thing to your customers.

Bonehead Marketing

One of my college professors referred to this sort of advertising as Bonehead Marketing. It's marketing done with little thought, effort, or strategy.

The car company isn't the only organization to try selling when they should've been serving. There are plenty of other examples:

A cable company steadily increased prices year after year. This eventually drove customers away. The cable company only offered deep discounts when customers threatened to leave.

An insurance agent bought his practice from another agent. He never bothered to contact his new customers until he received cancellation notices. These customers were leaving for another agent who was much more proactive.

A magazine didn't offer a way for customers to contact them if they had problems receiving their subscription. It was a cost-saving move, yet the magazine had to offer increasingly steep discounts to entice subscribers to return after their subscriptions lapsed.

 

The Sales - Service Disconnect

There are several reasons why companies might experience a disconnect between selling products and serving customers.

Here are just a few:

  • Departments are organized into silos that don't communicate
  • Customer service isn't truly a priority
  • Revenue collected is easier to track than future revenue lost

Let's look closer at each one.

The car company clearly suffered from a silo problem. They never would have sent that mailer (several mailers, actually) if they cross-referenced their customer list with a list of unresolved complaints.

Customer service also isn't a priority at the car company. They send customers ridiculously detailed surveys after each interaction. What they don't do is respond to upset customers or act on any feedback that's not shared in one of those surveys.

The last one is the kicker. The car company can tell if I buy a new car. The dealership will record the revenue from the sale and the manufacturer will note I'm a repeat buyer. But, how can they tell if I don't buy a new car?

Lost revenue is a much more difficult metric to track. Tying that lost revenue back to a specific service failure is even more difficult. Executives are under pressure to deliver financial results, so they naturally default to what looks like a more direct path.

 

Saving Future Sales

It's dangerous to assume a customer will buy from you again. Here are a few things you can do to avoid that trap:

First, focus on lifetime value instead transactional value. Chris Zane does a great job of covering this in his awesome customer service book, Reinventing the Wheel. Here's a quick overview:

Transactional service looks exclusively at the value of the transaction. For example, my complaint with the car company revolved around a major repair that was required when the car had less than 40,000 miles. 

The transactional cost was several thousand dollars. The four-year warranty period had expired, so the car company wasn't legally obligated to compensate me. They saved a lot of money in the short run by denying my claim.

Lifetime value considers how much a customer spends over their lifetime. Here's the future revenue the car company is missing out on:

  • One or more new cars
  • The annual maintenance revenue for those cars (I was using their mechanic)

Companies can also save future sales by being proactive. 

  • Surprise customers with a small loyalty discount so you can avoid a steeper recovery discount later on. 
  • Contact customers to see how they're doing rather than contacting them exclusively when you have something to sell. 
  • Spend some money to fix problems that drive customers away rather than spend a lot of money trying to lure customers back.

Finally, corporate departments need to coordinate their efforts. Blindly sending un-targeted marketing campaigns to unfiltered databases is reckless.

(Side note: there's no excuse for sending a direct mail piece addressed to a deceased relative who never lived at the recipient's address. I'm talking to you, New York Times.)

A better approach would be to use customer service data to create better targeted marketing campaigns. For example, you could create specific recovery program for customers who all experienced a particular problem.

The bottom line is the sales will be there if you take care of your customers. Those sales might disappear if you sell when you should be serving.

 

Scandal, Not Service Failure, Does In United's CEO

Last week, United Airlines announced the resignation of their CEO, Jeff Smisek.

Untied's press release stated that Smisek's departure was connected to an "internal investigation related to the federal investigation associated with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey."

This scandal sounds like it will be a juicy one.

A story that ran in U.S. News and World Report suggested that United may have given preferential treatment to David Samson while he was the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. United opened a direct flight route between Newark, New Jersey and Columbia, South Carolina while it was negotiating over projects at Newark Liberty International Airport. The airport is managed by the Port Authority and Samson has a summer home in Columbia. 

In February, the North Jersey Record described the route as "The Chairman's Flight." The story reported that there was very little passenger demand for the route. United discontinued the route on April 1, 2014, just three days after Samson resigned from the Port Authority.

It's understandable why a scandal like this would lead to resignations. What's curious is that it took a scandal.

Service at United Airlines has been dismal under Smisek. 

He was the CEO of Continental Airlines when United and Continental merged in 2010. Smisek became CEO of the combined airline. Continental's American Customer Satisfaction Index rating plummeted from 71 to 64 during the first year of the merger. The combined airline (United) is now at 60. It's one of the worst ratings in the industry. 

Their operations record is also unimpressive. Here's data from the latest Air Travel Consumer Report from the U.S. Department of Transportation:

  • 9th ranked among U.S. airlines in on-time arrivals. 
  • 5th highest percentage flight cancellations. 
  • 1st highest percentage of delays due to causes within the airline's control.
  • 2nd most consumer complaints.

United's board of directors clearly doesn't prioritize service. If they did, they would have moved to replace Smisek much sooner.

In the end, it took a scandal to force a change. 

Oscar Munoz was appointed as United's new president and CEO. He was previously the president and chief operating officer of CSX Corporation. However, Munoz isn't entirely an outsider since he's been on United's board of directors since 2010.

So, here's the big question now: Will Munoz be able to make an impact on service quality?

Why Good Service Reps Need Training (And Bad Ones Don't)

Many people have an interesting reaction when they learn I'm a customer service trainer. 

They'll tell me about an awful customer service experience. It's inevitably some company with a bad reputation. Then they'll say, "You should talk to them - they could really use your help!"

These people mean well. Unfortunately, I'll never be able to help those companies. Training isn't the answer for bad customer service teams.

That's why I only work with teams and organizations that are already good at service. This post explains why.

Why Bad Teams Don't Need Training

Let's start by looking at what training can, and cannot do.

  • Training can help an employee develop new knowledge, skills, or abilities.
  • Training can't compel that employee to actually use knowledge, skills, or abilities.

Training also can't fix the myriad of other problems that lead to poor customer service. Here are just a few causes of poor customer service that have nothing to do with training:

  • Defective products or services
  • Unfriendly policies
  • Unhealthy incentives
  • Rotten workplace cultures
  • Ineffective leadership
  • Emphasizing the wrong metrics
  • Lack of empowerment
  • Lack of tools and resources

Most bad customer service teams have plenty of these non-training problems. Unfortunately, training can't make a significant impact until these problems are fixed. I once did some back of the envelope calculations. Training is only responsible for 1 percent of service quality. 

There are other problems with trying to train bad customer service teams.

One is leadership. Managers of poor-performing teams often believe that the training will somehow fix their people. These managers assume they don't have to be a part of the process.

Unfortunately, this hands-off approach actually reinforces bad habits, rather than helping employees build new ones. That's because how and when you apply what you learn in training has much more impact on learning than the training itself.

Finally, there's the Dunning-Kruger problem.

Researchers Justin Kruger and David Dunning discovered a phenomenon where the less someone knows about something, the more they overrate their abilities.

That's right - employees on poor performing customer service teams typically think they're awesome! 

I've run a small experiment many times where I ask employees to rate their customer service abilities on a scale of 1 to 5. Then, I ask them to rate the team on the same scale. 

Here's the inevitable result:

  • Individual Average = 4
  • Team Average = 3

The math just doesn't add up. On average, these customer service employees think they're personally better than the rest of the team. 

It's hard to train a group of people that thinks that way. So, I don't even try.

 

How Training Helps Good Teams

Good teams generally do well on the non-training factors that contribute to outstanding customer service. That's part of why they're good.

Good teams also have an insatiable desire to continuously get better. That's another reason why they're good.

So, where does training fit in? Two ways:

  1. It helps employees developed advanced skills.
  2. It reminds employees to use the skills they already have.

Here's an example of how that works:

A client of mine is absolutely crushing it when it comes to service. They're CSAT scores are awesome, they've used service to save tons of money, and they've won so many awards it's getting embarrassing. 

They've done a lot of things right to get there:

  • They have a customer-focused vision
  • Leadership is committed to the vision
  • Employees are hired for commitment to the vision
  • They constantly work to improve products, services, and policies
  • Customer service is a never-ending topic of discussion

Despite their great results, this client still hires me to do an annual refresher version of my customer service training program. We've been doing it for the past six years.

Part of the training always focuses on new skills. The team is always looking for ways to get an edge. One year, we worked on techniques to make wait times more bearable. They immediately used the training to address a nagging problem and improve CSAT.

The other part of the training reviews basic skills. Studies show that we forget nearly half of what we learn in training after just one week. Practice and application can help, but over time our knowledge gets rusty. The refresher training provides valuable reminders to everyone.

The annual refresher training has become one part of how this client keeps their edge year after year.

 

Are You Ready For Training?

It's easy to look at customer service training as a remedial step. I hope this post will help you think about it as more of an advanced move.

Once your team is ready for training, here are few resources to help you out:

Inside the Arby's Customer Service Blow-up

An Arby's in Pembroke Pines, Florida made national headlines last week after a customer was allegedly refused service because she was a police officer.

The public backlash was swift and severe. 

There was a small protest, a call for a national boycott of Arby's, and an apology from the Arby's Chief Executive Officer. A manager at the Arby's was fired. Another employee was placed on temporary paid leave.

Police officers put their lives on the line every day to protect and serve our communities. They deserve our respect. This is a terrible customer service story.

It's also not entirely true.

The customer, Pembroke Pines Police Sergeant Jennifer Martin, was never refused service. That small, but crucial detail, has gotten lost in the media hysteria. 

There's still plenty of lessons to be learned here. This post is a breakdown of the situation. 

Image credit: Arby's

Image credit: Arby's

The Incident

Sergeant Martin entered the drive thru line at the Arby's on September 1 and placed her order with an employee named Kenneth Davenport.

She drove around to the window where Davenport took her credit card. The Arby's manager, Angel Mirabal, then approached the window and told Martin (in reference to Davenport), "He doesn't want to serve you because you are a police officer."

Mirabal handed Martin her order, but the incident made her uncomfortable. She was particularly concerned about the condition of her food, so she decided to go inside and request a refund.

There doesn't appear to be any disagreement about this much of the story. It was documented in an informational offense report that Sergeant Martin filed with the Pembroke Pines Police Department. It was also corroborated by Davenport in an interview posted by the CBS affiliate in Miami.

Neither Martin or Davenport ever state that Martin was actually denied service. She paid for her food and received her food. 

Martin's report stated that she felt Davenport was slightly rude to her when she placed her order. She chalked it up to a problem with the speaker system since she was also having trouble hearing him. She understandably became uncomfortable when the manager said that Davenport didn't want to serve her because she was a cop.

So, why didn't Davenport serve Martin? He told reporters that he was busy serving other customers. "I just couldn't take her order. So, I asked my manager for help."

It's the manager that's really at the center of this incident. A reporter asked Davenport, "You weren't involved really, were you?"

"Not at all," Davenport said. "I just couldn't take her order at the moment."

Davenport claimed that Mirabal's statement was a joke. "We don't hate cops," said Davenport. "We don't hate anybody. We were just trying to get people out of the drive thru."

It seems clear that Martin received poor service. And, it's understandable that she was uncomfortable with the situation. She asked for a refund and then documented the experience.

What came next blew it up.

 

The Fallout

Accounts of the incident began popping up on Facebook later that evening. Here's an example:

Tonight one of my fellow officers was refused service at the Arby's located at 11755 Pines Blvd, because she was a...

Posted by Courtney Veski Bryson on Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Notice it claims that the officer (presumably Martin) was refused service. 

The next day, the Pembroke Pines Police Department issued a press release. The opening line of the statement is telling:

The Pembroke Pines Police Department was made aware of an incident that occurred on the evening of 09/01/2015 where one of our uniformed officers was denied service at a local Arby's (11755 Pines Blvd) due to being a police officer.

There's an obvious discrepancy here. Sergeant Martin's report clearly indicates that she paid for her food and received it, so she wasn't actually denied service. However, the official department statement says she was denied service.

I emailed Pembroke Pines Police Chief Dan Giustino to ask about this discrepancy, but he did not respond.

The Broward County police union issued a statement the same day calling for a national boycott of Arby's. It also called for the manager to be fired. 

Their statement stretched the truth even further, stating "a uniformed police officer was refused service by a manager at the drive-through window."

In a press release posted on Facebook, Dade County police union president John Rivera expressed his indignation that an officer was refused service. He called for the employees involved to be terminated.

There was even a small protest outside the Arby's:

The media took the story and ran with it. 

It was covered on local and national television broadcasts. The USA Today used the headline, "Arby's Apologizes After Employee Refuses to Serve Police Officer."

All of this hinged around a false claim that an officer was denied service. 

 

Reaction From Arby's

Viral service failures like this are difficult for companies. This incident involved two employees at one Arby's. That restaurant is one of over 3,300 Arby's worldwide. 

To their credit, Arby's reacted swiftly.

Their CEO, Paul Brown, called Pembroke Pines Police Chief Giustino to apologize. Their conversation evidently cleared the air and satisfied Giustino since his department issued another press release stating the issue was now closed. 

The company then announced that uniformed police officers could eat for free at Dade-Broward metro area Arby's on September 4.

Finally, they quickly concluded their internal investigation of the incident. The manager, Angel Mirabal, was terminated. Kenneth Davenport was placed on temporary paid leave.

There was an interesting statement in that press release. 

We ultimately found that the crew member in this case was not involved other than to attempt to remedy the situation.

Arby's own investigation correctly placed the blame on Mirabal, not Davenport. It was Mirabal who made the unfortunate statement. It was also Mirabal who was in a position of leadership and needed to set a better example.

So, why was Davenport placed on temporary paid leave? That part is unknown. A request for comment from Arby's went unanswered.

 

Lessons Learned

I'm left with two strong opinions based on the statements from Martin and Davenport.

First, Martin had every right to feel uncomfortable with the service she received. Mirabal's statement to her was reprehensible. I find no fault in her decision to request a refund and write a report about the incident. 

Second, Davenport is a victim of hysteria. He's a 19 year-old fast food worker who has been unfairly cast as a villain in the national spotlight for something he didn't do.

There are also a few customer service lessons here:

  • Small service failures can lead to a big mess.
  • Your employees represent your brand.
  • People will exaggerate to make small issues seem big.

It's that last lesson that really sticks. 

Take out the false refusal of service narrative and you're left with poor service and a stupid statement from a manager. It doesn't warrant press releases from the police department and two police unions. It certainly doesn't make national headlines.

The incident sounds far more egregious if an officer was refused service.

That's why this all comes down to Mirabal. He was the manager. He had multiple opportunities to prevent it. He didn't.