Customer service is a $92 billion industry and is outsourced faster than almost anything else as an organization grows.

Consultants make thousands per day to “teach” people customer service.

Why?

After all, customers are who we all are – humans – right?

Disturbingly, maybe not. Because when I ask people, “What is a customer?” at the beginning of all of my workshops no one ever says “a person” or “a human” or “me.”

They do say things like “someone we need to please” or “someone we have to deal with so they buy or do something.”

Would you want your friend, mother, brother, or sister to tell you that they just need to “deal” with you to get something in return? Probably not. And this is the precise problem: We have forgotten that customers are humans. 

Answer this question: How do you know that someone cares about you?

If you are like any other person, you probably started thinking about things like: “they smile at me,” “they show me attention,” “they listen to me,” and so on.

So, in your jobs, in every job, go do those things.

End of blog post.

Customer service is as simple as that. Or is it? Again, maybe not.

Take “the customer’s always right” as an example. We, in the customer service industry (which is you, if you are breathing oxygen and thinking rationally) have been falling back on this century-old axiom to describe how organizations should interact with customers. The problem, with the entire concept is simple: It is literally impossible for the customer to always be right.

Consider the empty logic by which we have trained hundreds of thousands of employees over the last century:

The customer is always right.

Are humans always right? No.

Then, customers are not humans.

Consider the word “customer.” It really is derived from the latin root consuetudinarius or custom, which means “habit, usage, made to measure or order.” Many organizations and leaders have actively decided to quantify, measure, and use those who need and want their products and services for measurable results (namely, profit) rather than serving human beings well to inspire those results.

How do you know that someone cares about you?

What do they do?

What do they say?

What do they look and sound like?

Now, think about your job, team, and organization.

What are some of those things you do well?

What could you do more of?

See, you already are an expert on customer service, just because of the fact you are a human!

Visit ZachMercurio.com for more, and to download a sample workbook.

Zach