Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Is Customer Care an unworthy job?

I am sure we have all read the books - maybe even tried it out in front of the mirror:


I am talking about Self-esteem boosting.

Does it work if you stand in front of the mirror every morning and tell you self that you are strong and beautiful when you know you are not that strong and on the beautiful scale – you probably manage a “pretty enough”. I do not know…. I leave that to others to decide.

What I do know is, if you constantly hear that the job you do is the lowliest of all jobs in an organization – you will believe it.

I work with people who are smart, educated and in every other sense have a very high self esteem. But when it comes to their job as Customer Care agents they are sure the job they do is of little value to the company and they decide to see their job as an unfortunate interlude in an otherwise fabulous career.

That is wrong.

When I go out and meet new people I am always asked “what do you do for a living?” if I answer “I am in Customer Care…” their eyes glaze over and they quickly move on to more pressing subjects such as “where do you live?” or “do you have children?” – if on the other hand I tell them I am responsible for a team of 80 customer facing professional s – I get more questions and “ahh” and “ohhs”.

Why is it that a Customer Service agent is seen as a job not worth doing?

In fact it is one of the most satisfying jobs you can have. Granted it is incredible hard and stressful – it takes a certain kind of person to multitask the entire day, to be given scripts and measurement for everything you do. Not to mention the potential that somebody will listen into or tape the conversations you have with your customers. Not many Sales reps, logistics people, VP’s or even CEO’s, would be able to work under such pressure day after day after day.

And although I am slowly changing the opinion in my team it is like turning a big oceanliner - it takes a long time...

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