The Habits of Amazing People: Own it! Take Personal Responsibility

The Habits of Amazing People: Own it! Take Personal Responsibility

“Never duck responsibility. Make absolutely sure it stops with you.”

How many times have you been on a call trying to get an issue resolved, and the response is, “It’s not my fault”? The answer you get might be in the form of, “I did not service your AC unit,” or “I did not set up your phone plan, so I cannot help you” … I don’t know about you, but that annoys me to no end! As soon as I hear the words “I cannot help you,” I mentally check out and my frustration level goes through the roof. If we want to be successful in customer services, we must find out what is wrong and make it right.

In Shep Hyken’s Be Amazing or Go Home, he explains that this habit does not focus on who is to blame. As a customer, we do not care who is responsible for an issue. We just want the issue resolved. If you have the worst IT department on the face of the planet, I do not need to hear that. I want to know what the next step is. As part of being Amazing, ask yourself how you think your customers want to be addressed. Put yourself in their shoes. Learn from that experience to create that Amazing experience we would all want.

To create the experience, you need to be accountable. Please do not use the blame game or the ”not my job” motto, but instead be responsible for the service you offered in your company’s name. With our business structure of Holacracy at ArcherPoint, we have a lot of room to work with customers to provide this amazing customer experience. We use this to provide the best customer service experience we can inside of our ArcherPoint business model.

If you do not blame, but instead take accountability to get a customer back on track, you can provide a customer service experience that you would be happy to receive yourself. Most of us have called our cell phone company. About a year ago, I put my mother on my plan. When this happened, the associate at the store accidentally removed my husband’s number. We had gotten back home (45 minutes away) before we realized what had happened. I called the store, but the associate who helped me was gone, and I got a young kid that told me I was going to have to drive back to the store to get this issue resolved, but that we would have to wait until the next day because the store was closing.

This was not a good experience. I hung up and immediately called back. The following associate I spoke with remembered us and said if we drove to the store right now, they would stay to get us fixed. While I was not happy about driving back, the associate’s willingness to stay late to help me resolve an issue went a long way in me getting over my frustration over having to make that drive.

If this associate had not responded the way he did, I would not have renewed my contract when it was up. The next day, the associate who caused my issue called and gave us one month free for George’s number. This is a perfect example of fixing the issue and then taking the extra step to make it right…turning a bad experience into a better one.

There is no blame game in getting a customer back on track. They do not care who broke it; they want it fixed. We are responsible for reviewing the issues and getting them resolved in a timely, efficient manner. Taking responsibility is about making sure you treat a customer like you want to be treated in an often-stressful situation.

How can you ensure you avoid the blame game? Share your thoughts with your company and with us; then contact ArcherPoint to learn how our customer service offerings can help.

Read more of the habits of amazing people we’ve discussed:

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