3 Common Excuses That Bruise Your Brand

Some employees who would describe themselves as solid performers actually have a habit of delivering more excuses than results.

Unfortunately, your customers don’t buy excuses—literally. The more your team members rationalize poor service, the more they’ll cost your organization in trust equity.

Does your staff use any of these three common customer service excuses?

1) “It’s against policy.” Customer service policies must make obvious sense to customers. Overly restrictive and outdated rules practically invite clients to argue with employees or rant about your brand on social media.

Set your policies around what’s best for your brand and for customer loyalty. If you must have an unpopular policy, ensure that your employees understand it, can get behind it and can easily explain it to clients. More importantly, train and empower frontline employees to overrule policies when common sense calls for it.

2) “We’re swamped this time of year.” This excuse is similar to the recorded on-hold phone message you hear from call centers: “Due to high call volumes…” Essentially, it tells clients you’ve experienced this problem repeatedly, but haven’t bothered doing anything to fix it. That’s better left unsaid. Best to simply thank the client for their patience and get on with what you can do for them.

3) “I’m not authorized to do that.” It’s a mistake to put a client at a higher or lower status than the service provider. You want your clients to view your employees as their trusted advisers.

When staff has to ask higher-ups for input, make sure they explain they want to look into this further to see they can come up with personally. After discreetly discussing the matter with a supervisor, they should report back to the client with something like, “Here’s what I came up with.” That makes clients feel like they’re dealing with an equal.

In every organization, things will occasionally go wrong that put customer relationships at risk. The key to preserving the customer connection is ensuring frontline employees are trained to recover trust.

This article is based on the bestselling book, “Becoming a Service Icon in 90 Minutes a Month,” by Hall of Fame motivational speaker Jeff Mowatt.