Customer Empathy matters

Listening to NPR on my way to work today, there was a very interesting segment on Europeans who are moving to India to supplement the demand for call center workers.  It turns out that the demand for call center workers in India is outstripping the supply of trained Indian workers, and that many firms believe they need to supplement the Indian workforce with teams from the native countries, to train the Indian workers on specific languages, customs and cultural attitudes.  This story was interesting on several levels.

First, we know that capital and knowledge cross borders, and we know that people cross borders but generally in the other direction.  It was an article of faith that these jobs have gone to India and will never be seen again.  In this case people from the US are moving to India to help with these call centers.  Opportunity creates demand anywhere and everywhere.

Second, even in an era of complete globalization, people want to be serviced according to their expectations, languages and cultures.  I think that the transfer of Germans, French and other European workers to Indian call centers is not about the CAPABILITY of the Indian workers, but about the difference in cultural norms and languages.  Call center workers in India are fully capable of providing customer support, but may lack the cultural knowledge to provide a total customer support experience expected by the customer.

What's interesting is that as trade barriers fall and we interact with firms and individuals from just about any time zone or location, we increasingly find that people want low costs but excellent customer service that's attuned to their needs.  Whether that customer interaction is based on a call center in India or on a website, consumers demand personalized service.  As the era of mass customization dawns, and as globalization increases, we as consumers are demanding not just products that are configured for our needs, but customer service and customer interaction attuned to my specific needs.  It appears that where customer service and customer interaction are involved, technology is more of a hindrance than a help.  We all want exceptionally personalized service.  The conundrum is - the more globalized our markets, the more we've demanded customized attention and personalized service.

So, what's the most valuable skill an employee can offer to a firm - any firm?  The ability to understand a customer's problem and interact with that customer in a way that is personalized for that customer.  This is actually a skill set that just about everyone in your firm must have, since the walls between a customer and a business are rapidly breaking down.  With the internet and low cost telecommunications we can reach anyone in any firm, and we expect a firm to identify the right person to solve our problems.  On any given day, a person with a problem may speak with a customer service representative, a marketing person or even a person in accounting or finance.  Every interaction the customer has with any of these people sets the expectation for the firm as a whole.  Face it, everyone in your firm is in sales, and everyone in your firm is in customer support.

Next time you decide to hire someone, you might want to add to the list of requirements customer empathy and interaction skills, and good listening skills, because that person may be the one who determines whether or not your customer returns.

Comments

[Al]

Worked as a local hire for an IT provider in China for several years. Our main competitive advantage was that we could deliver our services to multinationals in English - for which we charged a premium price. What's interesting is that as more multinationals move out of their comfort zone, that also creates niche markets where you can pretty much monopolize the market if you speak to their culture. In turn, this filters into the local competitive market, and soon, the local companies are able to compete or conversely the multinational has localized to the extent that specific cultural fluency is no longer relevant - in theory I suppose.

I never saw a "true" joint-venture multinational that was able to really embrace the local culture. Usually they were just at loggerheads. This statement applies the same to German companies in China as to Japanese companies in the US incidentally.

What's interesting when working as a vendor to a joint venture customer is that your competitive advantage is the ability to talk to both sides, and to coordinate your efforts internally to negate/mitigate the fact that the two customer cultures have almost no real interaction and may be working at cross purposes.

That, incidentally, requires some special people. Usually the kind of people who have already moved to the host country for personal reasons, and can function as a bridge between the cultures - because of their natural inclinations. They're usually not the kind of people who get recruited in their home country.

So you not only need people in your company that can talk to the customer, but that can coordinate across cultural boundaries w/in your own organization...

[Glenn]

Jeffrey,

You write that the most valuable skill an employee can offer is, "The ability to understand a customer's problem and interact with that customer in a way that is personalized for that customer."

I'd like to respectfully amend it to read, "...in a way that consistently meets or exceeds the customers' expectations."

The bottom line is that the business owner, and the customer, want results.

Great post! I'll be reading....

Regards,

Glenn

[Mike]

I agree with you on the need for empathy. In fact I've listed as one of the key competencies I look for when hiring new IT employees.
http://mikeschaffner.typepad.com/
michael_schaffner/2006/12/critical_skills.html
[broken into 2 pieces to show in the comment - you'll have to cut and paste both them together]
Chistopher Koch at CIO magazine also has an interesing discussion on this. http://blogs.cio.com/node/607