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Being polite is not the same as being nice

I would like to meet Mr McMillan and shake his hand. For a while now I have been trying to work out why some customer service situations feel better than others. You know when you have had bad customer service. But sometimes the feeling of having what - on the face of it - is good customer service is not great. And I think it will be because some people don't know the difference between being polite and being nice.

I was watching one of the TV programmes based in an airport and wondering at the way a young lady handled a passenger who was being denied travel because he was drunk. She told him that she was not letting him travel because he "appeared to be" under the influence of alcohol. She did not sound or "appear to be" judgemental. She was stating a fact. She has a difficult job but the safety and comfort of passengers in the air was her primary concern. And she was nice about it. She cared about this man and the state he was in. Sadly he became abusive and the police had to intervene.

In that same programme a young man's elderly mum had missed her flight. We never saw her but as far as I could make out the son had dropped her at the airport in good time and left her to check in but somehow she didn’t make it before check-in closed and was denied travel. She then called her son and he came back to the airport ranting about the treatment she had had. The representative from the airline explained the conditions of flight were that she checked in within the time required and the lady had not done so. The son did not seem to know this and the rep printed off the terms and conditions to show him. He caved in, sheepishly took his mum home and brought her back the next day accompanying her through the check-in process. That situation was handled equally as politely as the first but it did not feel so good. There had clearly been some confusions, the son wanted to protect his mum and probably felt a bit of a fool for not taking her as far as he could through the process but the airline rep did her job but did nothing to make him feel better.

I know it is hard to deal with customers in a bright and smiley way all of the time just as I know that customers are sometimes deliberately difficult. Andrew McMillan said: "You can usually tell very quickly if people are suitable for customer facing jobs. They have a natural warmth about them, an interest in other people, an enjoyment in interacting with customers." I am wondering how their recruitment process works. I expect that training their recruiters will be just as important to allow them to spot those core qualities.

On a personal note I recently spoke with my cellphone provider to change my handset and contract. The lady I spoke with chatted to me throughout the whole process. I had expected it to be straightforward if a bit tedious. But it was not so. By the end of our conversation we had learned what each of us were doing over the weekend and she had helped me choose a better (and by the way cheaper) contract for the type of usage I had.

Is there anyone out there who works for John Lewis and is willing to share with us more about the recruitment process?

Jackie Cameron
www.consultcameron.com

HR Zone, 24-Apr-2008
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jacqui van loen , 19 May 2008 @ 13:23 PM  a different way to recruit jacqui van loen I quite agree, why are some customer facing people nicer than others? Can you really tell during face-to-face interviews if the candidate who tells you they "love working with people" really does? I have found that during interviews people come across as being nice and warm but once into the job they become unhelpful and even moody. Perhaps it is the way we recruit; most companies recruit for customer service employees with a bulk standard interview, but as we have experienced this rarely works. Perhaps it is time to spend a little more on recruitment in order to save in staff turnover and customer complaints. By this I mean give psychometric tests to candidates to make sure their personalities match the person specification. Once you have assessed the candidates your interview becomes more valid. You can easily see strengths and weaknesses and importantly you can tell if the candidate is "pulling the wool over your eyes". There are thousands of psychometric tests on the market and they don't have to cost the earth and what you spend on getting the right person for the right job, you can save in your company's reputation.

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