This is a guest post by Lara Khouri, founder of there is no spoon, a boutique people experience and change leadership consultancy. It is the first in a series of guest posts and podcasts featuring the contributors to Punk XL.

In my new life as a customer experience consultant and trainer I’m asked to do a lot of customer service skills training. And I’ve noticed that there are some customer service teams that just aren’t worth training. Don’t get me wrong, they tend to be lovely people and endeavour to do their best every single day. Regardless of whether they’re being yelled at by a customer or the customer is blaming them for something that’s just not their fault, call after call, customer after customer they maintain a positive attitude and they do their best every single time.

Despite all of this effort, they’re still not worth training.

Because the truth is, most of the time, it’s not the customer service representatives that are the problem. And so more training is not going to solve anything.

The bigger problem is that agents are often not given the tools they need to be able do their job fully or they are being asked to operate in an environment that doesn’t make it easy for them to succeed.

So, whose fault is it?

It depends.

Take for example the situation where I was dealing with a client that was notorious for late payment. As a result, I included a penalty clause for late payments in my client service agreement. This was rejected by the client’s legal team who told me “we do not accept late payment fee as per our policy”. However, what they didn’t offer was a mutually convenient and viable alternative.

And, whose fault is that? Who’s responsible for that policy or that decision? Who decided that that was fair and appropriate? Was it finance, legal, governance, risk or, even, someone else?

Or, here’s another example. This one concerns a utility provider that I use. A few years ago I had a very big problem with their service and I would call their customer service helpline almost every day. After a couple of weeks of calling and not getting anywhere, I decided to visit one of their offices. When I got there a lovely lady explained to me that despite the fact that I had called the customer service helpline very many times, the CRM system that they, the on-site customer service representatives, use and the one used by the helpline customer service representatives are different and they don’t talk to each other.

Again, whose fault is that? It’s definitely not the fault of the customer service representatives.

Or, a final example. This one concerns an organisation I used to work for where, one time, a customer called the helpline after making a purchase. The customer was told by the customer service representative very confidently, adamantly even, that the company did not sell the service that the customer claimed they had bought and that the customer had been lied to and cheated out of a rather substantial sum of money.

Alarmed the customer sued the company for misrepresentation of their service, fraud and theft. More than that, the organisation was barred from making any further sales until the situation was resolved.

How did this happen? The customer had bought from a regional office and the customer service representative was based out of the company’s HQ. However, there was little coordination or communication between HQ and the regional branch offices.

Whose fault was that? Again, it’s definitely not the fault of the customer service representative.

So, to all the service and experience leaders out there … before you request or approve more skills training for your customer service team, ask yourselves if that’s really what’s needed.

In my experience, 9 times out of 10, it isn’t.

Expecting the customer service team to solve all the customers’ issues without first setting them up for success or figuring out and fixing the root causes of the main problems that customers face is the customer experience equivalent of putting a Band Aid on a bullet wound.

And we all know how that ends.

This is a guest post by Lara Khouri, founder of there is no spoon, a boutique people experience and change leadership consultancy. It is the first in a series of guest posts and podcasts featuring the contributors to Punk XL.

About Lara

Following a successful corporate career with blue-chip UK-headquartered multinationals, Lara, a “people person who gets process”, began her mission to make our world a happier place.

She founded there is no spoon, a boutique experience creation and change leadership training and consulting service provider, on the values of “passion, positivity, and putting people first”.

Focusing on the big picture while always keeping an eye on how all the elements must come together, Lara’s approach is built on giving people the knowledge and tools they need to achieve their goals.

She is a founding member of Women in CX™, a certified Co-Active® Coach, licensed MapsTell Guide, a mentor with Regent’s University London, a customer-centricity awards judge, and a sought-after podcast guest, keynote speaker, and contributor to various CX and EX initiatives around the world.

Check out thereisnospoon.consulting, send Lara a WhatsApp message and feel free to connect with Lara on LinkedIn here.

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash