Episode 212： 19 Customer Service Mistakes to Avoid
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, Pat Rubin talks about the 19 common mistakes businesses make with customer service and how to avoid them. Pat Rubin is a former customer service rep and has been in the trenches with over 20 years of customer service experience.
Transcript
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30 seconds. One time for the underdog. Ignition sequence start. Let me see you put them up. Reach the sky, touch the stars up above. Cause it's one time for the underdog. One time for the underdog.
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I'm Pat Rubin, your host of Valuetainment and today we're going to talk about the 19 customer service mistakes to avoid.
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Here's the first one. I've been on hold for 15 minutes. Have you ever said that? You've been on the line for 15 minutes. No one's answering you.
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They're not even giving you an option on callback. I've been on hold for 15 minutes. Then they answer the call. The second one.
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So this is not the right department. Let me try to get a hold of somebody that can help you. Okay, great.
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Well, it's also not my department. Let me try to get a supervisor because they can approve this.
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Well, who can really help me out? Why are you transferring to four different people?
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Which leads me to the next one. Tell me if you've experienced this one before.
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So the person that transferred me to you, did they explain to you my frustration or the situation I'm in?
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No. So you mean to tell me I have to explain it again for eight minutes? Yes.
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Here's the fourth one. You know how you talk to somebody and they're monotone?
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You don't care. You're not really trying to do customer service.
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You said the product's going to do you over-promise and under-delivered.
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Number six, the competitor said they'll do it better than you, but you don't do this.
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So for instance, a company will say, well, we don't do it that way.
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I bought it from you and this size is very tight.
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I'd like to be able to exchange it for a half size bigger.
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And the lady happened to be used to working at Nordstrom's back in the days.
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Number seven, late responses on electronic messages.
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You try to get back to somebody, takes a week, five days, three days, two days.
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And last but not least, here's what's last but not least.
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You literally have to go online and type in, you know, such and such company's phone number
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and you still cannot find one, you know, because they choose not to do that.
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Now, if you're the business owner, yourself watching this, you have to process these eight
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different common complaints and say, man, how do I address every one of these things
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and train my employees, my staff, my customer service, myself, so we don't go through this.
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I've been on the customer side end and I've been on the business owner side end and I've
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been on the side that I am the customer service.
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So I'm the guy running the business, teaching my customer service reps how to do it better
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and I've been on the service of trying to deal with customers and I was ticked off half
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the time dealing with them and I've been the customer.
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So I'm giving you the experience, been in every single aspect of it and I've been frustrated
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at every single level of it, which leads me to the next one.
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19 common mistakes businesses make with customer service.
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Here's the first one, lack of training on how to handle issues.
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Somebody comes in, they'll hire you and then they'll say, well, you know, here's the booklet
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It's like being on the airline and they say, is everybody here willing and committing to,
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you know, opening and following the guidelines in case we have an emergency landing?
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How often have you grabbed that thing and gone through it?
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That's how some companies treat customer service.
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You're role playing all those common eight objections and you're role playing, role playing.
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If they say, I don't know what to say if they say this.
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That is all part of their training, mistake that companies make.
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So you try to argue with the customer, which by the way, you are never going to.
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The moment I dropped off my car, I left my iPhone, you know the earpods.
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But the case you charge, I left in the middle, right console.
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And I went, I went to my flight, I called in the Denver International Avis Airport, called
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They put me on hold for 60 minutes and 39 seconds.
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Secondly, I called their lost and found department.
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I went through every one of the five numbers to pick that thing up.
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The only one that they answered, the only one that they answered was option number one,
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And the person that answered said, I need to speak to the supervisor.
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When I called Avis directly and I spoke to them, I told them my situation, I got transferred
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By the way, every single one of the people I dealt with, I have every single one of their
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names, except for one person, every single one of them made an excuse about why I'm the
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And they said, well, sir, our policy is the same as everybody else.
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I will never use Avis again, because to them, everything was justification until I finally
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So I'm not going to give the names of the other people that I messed up, but I will give
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Supervisor, she gave me her employee ID number.
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She said, Patrick, would you mind if I call that number to see if the mailbox is full or
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She calls, puts me on hold, comes back two minutes later.
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She says, Patrick, I called twice, and you are right, the mailbox is full.
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The only person that didn't argue, that didn't make an excuse, that didn't justify, the only
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And so you hear so many companies that want to do that.
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And by the way, I've done it before as a customer service guy, working at Bally's before we
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So all I'm telling you right now, sometimes with the business, if the customer's making an
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You just need to deal with them, see what you can do to improve that situation for them.
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Number three, lack of accessibility to customers.
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What do I mean by lack of accessibility to customers?
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Sometimes I complain, if I talk to you for 20 minutes, I'm done.
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But I can't get a hold of you, so the frustration is building up, and building up, and building
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up, and building up, and building up, and building up, and then boom, you get a negative
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And you could have simply called me to be able to fix that.
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Number four, not willing to call an audible that may go against your protocol.
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You'll hear businesses that'll say, well, sir, we'd love to do and help you out with
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How often have you experienced something like this?
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Well, I understand it, but it's not just our protocol.
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And then you talk to a supervisor, it's not part of our protocol.
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Look, recently, the Eagles beat the Patriots in a Super Bowl where nobody thought the Eagles
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You know, the great one, he won the MVP 40 years old, it's just destiny, he's going to
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It's a play that a coach came out with in college.
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And they have shown this play on Facebook over and over again.
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Where the quarterback goes behind the other, not the center, the other offensive line, and
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it tricks everybody, the ball comes to the running back, and then the other guy runs back.
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And that was the touchdown that helped them win the New England Patriots.
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Because sometimes you've got to call an audible.
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Because this situation here, you need to go above and beyond to make this customer happy.
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No, no, it is out of our protocol, so I'm not willing to change.
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Number five, not coming through on your customer service.
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If you say to a customer you're going to do something, you kind of got to come through for it.
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Number six, lack of organization on customer complaints.
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If you're running a business, you've got to have some kind of a CRM or some place where
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you make notes of the complaint that the customer made.
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So the complaint that this customer made is under the existing complaint of this customer.
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This person was very frustrated with that, that, that, that, that.
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And maybe your supervisor, or maybe you, and saying, this person complained about something
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And that threat is being shared as well and documented so you know.
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Maybe we need to have a training opportunity for this to teach the other customer service
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I called so many different people and I'm a principal guy and I didn't like that.
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I don't need, I told the guy, I said, listen, I'm not expecting you to give me my money back.
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And I gave you a shot and you didn't come through and three different people gave me the runaround
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75% of my experience, three out of the four people gave me the runaround.
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You don't want to give the runaround to your customers that you're dealing with.
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This is the whole sending the copy-paste scripted message to people.
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I hope we made your day better and ta-ta-ta-ta-ta.
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Hopefully you'll have a better opportunity the next time we do this.
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This sounds like a very scripted message that you just gave me rather than actually telling
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When you're speaking to them, thank you, please, request, I understand.
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People like to be so, thank you for doing business with us.
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Listen, John, I want to share something with you.
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Thank you in the first place for giving us a second shot.
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And I'm disappointed with the fact that we couldn't come through.
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Having said that, can you tell me a little bit more about your experience so maybe we can
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But to talk to them, yet at the same time, use thank you, use request, use please, use
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I understand, hear them out until you can finally find a way to make it better.
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Look, there are certain customers you have that are true believers.
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You always got to take care of your true believers.
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If I've been a customer of your gym for 22 years, you better take care of me.
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Because I've been telling a lot of people in that 22-year period, imagine how many times
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Every single time somebody asks me where I'm going to work at, and I say 24-hour fitness,
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I am doing free marketing for you for 22 years.
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If I get a credit card that says, been a member of Amex since 2006, that's loyalty.
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Number 11, not willing to take ownership immediately.
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By the way, you've ever gotten to an argument with somebody, and this is what they say.
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You say, I can't believe you said this, and you made me feel like shit, and I just cannot
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I took ownership rather than, well, you also, pa, pa, pa, pa, pa, pa, and then, pa, pa,
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Can you, I'm sorry the fact that I made you feel that way.
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Can you tell me a little bit more about what caused you to feel this way?
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And then you take it from here, frustration to level nine, to level eight, to level seven,
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to level six, to level, has it ever happened to you?
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I started like this, and then Dana calmed me down, and I came here, and then we're talking
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And then I'm thanking her on taking care of me, and I gave her love, because you just took
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Number 12, it's assuming, meaning you are assuming that you know what the customer went through.
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So you'll hear a customer service, sir, I get it.
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Why don't you ask me questions, and let me explain to you exactly how I feel.
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Next one, number 13, this is simple, but it's something, it's so frustrating when a customer
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I literally will walk through my office, and just look at people that have bad attitudes,
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You're going to feel when somebody has a bad attitude over the phone.
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So what was the reasoning for you going to Breckenridge?
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You know, you go to Zappos, and the love you give to Zappos is, they talk to you.
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There's a conversation that you've been had with them.
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It's not just like, let me get off your phone over there ASAP, because we have to meet
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That's why Zappos sold for a billion plus, and a lot of people made money with it, and they
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did what they did, because it was a relationship-based business.
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Speed on talking to a supervisor, to have a supervisor call them.
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Customer service nowadays, this may be unfair to the businesses, but today, customers are
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Maybe 20 years ago, if there's an issue, there was no email 30 years ago, maybe you've got
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You have no idea how many businesses I respond to, and they don't even respond back on Twitter.
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The speed is so slow for them, and they think it's okay, but there is a reason why some of
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these bigger companies competing at a bigger scale, and some of them are not.
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I may be intense right now, but a lot of energy I'm talking to you.
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This is definitely not the tone to be speaking on these calls that you're having, or customer
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So tone, you can teach the tone to your reps when you're speaking to them.
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If I constantly undermine my staff for not doing the right thing, then it's always like,
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they're also like, man, I don't want to take responsibility out, because if they talk to you,
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So something like, listen, I understand what you're saying with John.
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John is actually one of our better customer service reps that we have here.
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He's been with us for six and a half years, but please tell me.
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You know, Bobby, you just spoke to somebody that's very good at what they do, but I'm sorry
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Could you tell me a little bit more about what happened?
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You're still not undermining everybody that's there.
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You're still empowering them for them to be able to make some of the bigger decisions.
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I had a conversation with one of my reps today.
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I said, listen, if you speak to somebody and you feel it makes sense for you to go out there
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and buy them a $50 gift and send it to them, do you need to come and just ask me, can I
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You don't need to ask me about something like that.
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I felt here I can give this customer a $50 discount rather than have it come to my supervisor
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You have the ability to give this much back with this many customers.
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And last but not least, this is the last mistake companies make is one, they don't audit calls
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So years ago, I worked at Valley Total Fitness and I worked at three different clubs, three
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One was Culver City, one was Hollywood, and one was Chatsworth.
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The thing I loved the most about Culver City was the following.
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So everybody who was selling, guess what we can hear?
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We could hear if somebody was misrepresenting a gym membership and saying, this is month to
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month, don't worry about it, you can cancel it in two weeks.
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So we would hear each other and all of a sudden somebody would say, hey John, what you just
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said, that was great, but you can't say that again because they can't cancel a week from
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Then all of a sudden I would sit there and I would listen to a guy named Molina, Danny
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I'm like, wow, what he said right there was so beautiful.
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And then when they bought the membership, I love that.
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And then I would see another guy named Joe Race.
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And I was learning from the guys that were doing very good.
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And my tracking, because my boss, Cisco at that time, was listening to me.
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He was constantly telling me, hey, David, try this.
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When I moved to Hollywood, everybody sold in private offices.
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I like customer service to be in an open area with desks right next to each other where
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everybody can hear one another because good can teach good and bad can get caught and filtered
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out quickly or adjusted quickly before it turns too ugly.
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And all of a sudden, you know, got a person here that said something on the phone to a
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Now you're getting a lawsuit or complaint from that you got to deal with.
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So in order to do that, you got technology now.
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You can have somebody's job that their entire job is to listen and monitor and do all those
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But I'm assuming you have less than 100 employees.
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If you have less than 100 employees and a department's being ran by 20 people or 10 people, that's
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easier for you to track in an environment like this.
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And once you get to thousands of employees, you'll have the technology to help you do that.
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So now, the reality part of it is this is going to increase the value of your business.
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It's going to increase the amount of referrals.
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It's going to increase the amount of people sharing their experiences with you.
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And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.
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And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,
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