For novelty I like to do raw material sourcing from time to time.  Trying to find exotic materials, equipment, or services is a sort of treasure hunt.  Like everyone else, I enjoy the thrill of the hunt and the satisfaction of finding a good buy.  What is striking is the great variation in helpfulness among customer service people.  Just today I encountered a customer service rep who was most helpful (Company W), and one who was, how shall I say, a miserable and unhelpful little snit (Company A). 

I’ll do a compare and contrast.  The helpful rep from Company W listened to my recitation of requirements and offered the best fit from their extensive collection of products.  We discussed the parameters and came to a conclusion. The rep offered to send a free test sample of product which will arrive by mail in a few days.  I’ll do a benchtop test and we’ll see if it works.

The insufferable snit from Company A listened to my requirements and, because I didn’t have a specific particle size to offer, just a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Assed Guess), was unable to make any kind of suggestion at all.  Because I did not input exact information so this person could go to an specific location in the table, the entire collection of products from Company A were made unavailable to me. 

I was shopping for filter media.  I’m interested in coarse, medium, or fine.  Because Company A offered 20 products specified to the nearest 0.1 micron, and because I could not offer an exact match, the Company A snit rep was unwilling (unable, perhaps) to help me make some educated guesses as to which product was most satisfactory.  What really irritated me was that there was not a smidgeon of help.  Just silence interrupted with staccato bursts of “I can’t help you if I don’t know the particle size…” from the other end.  Sigh.

You know, I have been filtering things since the early Disco Epoch, and until just today I did not know that ignorance of particle size was a show stopper.  

Thus begins the take-home lesson. I’ve spent many hours doing customer service, so here are some observations.  Very often a potential customer does not know what they really need.  Remember, there are wants and there are needs. They’ll call with some vague notion of what they want, but it might be very superficial.  They’ll pose and swagger like they know what they want, but chances are that they are fishing for clues from you, the customer service rep.

A good customer service rep has to know a great deal about the products and their typical use. A good rep will ask probing questions that drill into the customers knowledge and begin to find patterns and show stoppers. the good rep helps the customer sort between wants and needs. 

A customer service rep is also a sales person, whether that is openly acknowledged or not. The rep should try to find the best fit for the customer from the company selection of products. But now and then, the company may not be able to offer exactly what the customer needs and should just say so at that point.  The customer will leave with a good impression of the company and may return one day with a spec that matches your products. 

The rep from Company A did a disservice to his/her company by prematurely cutting off the shopping phase of my query.  It boils down to simple ignorance and the lack of basic curiosity.  There was no offer to ask someone else nor was there an offer of a reasonable substitute. They will miss out on a sale and will never know that their loss was self imposed.