We Herd Cats

"We herd cats."

I covered my mouth and giggled. The rest of my teammates tittered with laughter, not quite believing what we just heard. But glancing back at the Boss Man during our project update meeting, we knew he was right. We are in a service business.

We are in the business of herding cats. Those finicky, picky, petty, infuriating, high maintenance, demanding, time consuming, self-centered, Your-Business-Revolves-Around-Me, penny pinching, corner cutting, change resisting cats.

Just because I work in Project Management doesn’t mean I get away from dealing with the customer. In fact, sometimes it means I’m directly responsible for how the customer’s experience goes. There’s always someone, internally and externally, who needs to be pleased as the patron. Luckily, I am the type of person who enjoys helping people and will do everything in my power to get the job done.

I just no longer subscribe to the old saying that, “The customer is always right.” Does that make me jaded and bitter?

No. The customer isn’t always right. They can be right sometimes. But they can’t be right all the time. It seems that today, the customer is a blow hard who’ll fly off the handle even if it’s their fault. The idea of customer responsibility is a myth.

In short – all cats want to be petted and pampered in an air of self-entitlement. And they think it’s up to the Cat Herder to make it happen.

I’m not saying that all customers don’t have a right to be disgruntled at times, however lately they tend to complain about the dumbest things. For instance: Part of my job is to answer a variety of customer e-mails that come in our general e-mail box. I recently received an e-mail from a customer who just APPALLED that we would not process her online payment. WE are causing her a late fee. Why didn’t this payment go through when she’s made TONS of payments on our website before AND she copied all the information for this cancelled payment from the information from her last payment?

Well, after a little research, it turns out this customer fat-fingered one of the account numbers. The payment rejected because the information SHE PROVIDED TO US, was WRONG. I wrote her back explaining the error and I think I did a very good job of it. I didn’t point fingers and scream UNCLEAN! In fact I told her an error was made and that all she had to do was resubmit the payment.

If you read her response, you would have thought I accused her of stealing money from the U.S. Mint! She proceeded to DEMAND that we take the payment as is and asked for our corporate address, the relationship we have with the company that we process payments for, and explain to her how I know FOR SURE that the incorrect account number is the real cause of the payment rejecting.

OH COME ON!!!

Who made the error? Are we supposed to reprimand the software for doing its job and rejecting items that don’t match a list provided to us by our client? And where does she get off thinking this is a personal vendetta? Yes lady, I personally went into our system…sought out your payment and screwed it up so you would have to pay a late fee. It’s like she thinks I do nothing but sit at my desk randomly selecting lives I need to disrupt.

It’s thinking like this that just irks me! Anyone in the service industry does their best to help a customer. But because the customer has been bred on the idea that they’re always right – it’s caused this new form of abuse to start cropping up!

Customer service is a two way street. If we’re wrong – we’ll take the fall. But there is some responsibility on the customer’s part. And I’m not the only one who feels this way about it. The service industry is starting to vent their feelings. Thousands flock daily to the popular website Customers Suck Website to read, laugh, and write about their worst customer experiences. But becoming aware of bad customers doesn’t end at website built for venting. When esteemed business rags like Forbes Magazine decide to give tips on dumping bad customers, you know that this is a real concern.

Just not fast enough. But I take heart that there is some just at the end of the day. Recently, a teammate of mine celebrated our division “firing” one of our clients. Dealing with this client had sucked up so much time and effort, the Boss Man decided to cut the strings. We didn’t need the business THAT badly. I guess if the Customer Service industry realized that losing a customer isn’t the end of the world, maybe the customer wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass.

Bad customers are a drain on customer service staffs. For every stupid problem we spend an hour on, it means we’re ignoring other customers who actually need our help. And causing a scene gets you nowhere! It just makes us want to get rid of you faster. Worse yet – you become our entertainment. If you work in a service industry job, you know you have an impression of the last customer to piss you off. And LOVE doing it!

A seasoned Cat Herder is willing to go to hell and back for a good customer. But they can also tell you that once bitten, twice shy. We get asked to own up for our mistakes all the time. At least do us the courtesy of not scratching up our face when you ask us to fix your mistakes.

Remember that at some point, everyone is on the other side of the counter. The next cat round-up might be yours.