The importance of being earnest

As the world-at-large continues to get more stressed and stretched, the divide between caring and commitment on one side and impersonal, dysfunctional inattentiveness on the other is growing exponentially. It’s everywhere in everything, ranging from personal healthcare interactions to working with a label printer.

Customer service “tells” can be obvious. A huge one is companies trying to prevent customers from talking to a live human being. Unfortunately, these companies are far outpacing those making live outreach a centerpiece of their customer service offering.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Dysfunctional AI is infesting all types of automated processes, from apps to ordering portals. When the stuff works, it can be great. Unfortunately, the number of infuriating glitches is growing right along with the anger and frustration of those experiencing them.

The importance of “being earnest” typically reveals itself early in the customer service interaction process. Here are a few glaring examples of the “have nots”:

• Technology that forces customers into an automated bucket, then relegates them to other non-personal resources when there’s a problem – trying to get folks to do their own research via often-irrelevant knowledge-base articles or FAQ pages.
• Phone trees that loop endlessly because none of the menu options match the caller’s actual problem, and pressing “0” just sends you back to where you started.
• Chatbots that answer confidently and incorrectly, with no visible path to a human – you’re left hunting for a hidden phone number or a “contact us” email that nobody reads.
• “Your call is important to us,” repeated every 90 seconds for 45 minutes – especially galling when a customer is trying to address a problem. 
• Support tickets that vanish into a void – no confirmation number, no timeline, no accountability. Customers are left to follow up on their own follow-up.
• Account reps who rotate so often that there is no continuity or familiarity with a customer’s needs.

Each of these issues are annoying and erode customer service confidence. Together, they add up to a slow normalization of not caring – very costly to reputation and ultimately revenues.

What Does “Earnest” Actually Look Like?

It’s easy to gripe about what’s broken. It’s more useful to name what works. Following are best practices: 
• Make the human easy to find, not the last resort. The best vendors don’t bury the phone number three menus deep. They put a real name and a direct line on the invoice, the packing slip, and the order confirmation email. 
• Let technology handle the routine, so people can handle the exceptions. Automation isn’t the enemy here – misapplied automation is the problem. An order-status portal that works flawlessly for a standard reorder is a genuine time-saver. The failure comes when that same portal has no graceful off-ramp for the customer whose order isn’t standard, or whose problem isn’t in the dropdown menu. The best systems are built with an obvious, fast exit to a human the moment a situation stops being routine.
• Give people ownership, not just tickets. A ticket number is not the same thing as accountability. What earns trust is a specific person saying, in effect, “This is mine until it’s resolved.” That might mean a dedicated account rep who stays in the seat long enough to actually know a customer’s operation. 
• Follow up proactively. Proactive communication that keeps customers in the loop can do more for customer confidence than a perfectly-worded auto-reply ever will. Silence is what erodes trust fastest.
• Train for empathy, not just for the script. Frontline reps who are empowered to actually solve a problem – not just read from an approved script – make a major difference. That means investing in training that goes beyond product knowledge into judgment: knowing when to bend a policy, when to escalate without being asked, when to just say, “I’m sorry, that’s frustrating, let me fix it” – and mean it.
• Deploy AI to support people, not replace them. Used well, AI can triage routine requests, surface account history instantly for a rep, or flag an order anomaly before it becomes a crisis, thus freeing up humans to spend their time on the interactions that actually need a human. Used poorly, it becomes one more wall between a customer and the person who could help them. 

None of this is complicated. It’s not even new – it’s the same relationship-first instinct that’s always separated earnest companies from uncaring ones. What’s changed is that in a world increasingly automated, dysfunctional, and impersonal by default, earnestness has become a genuine competitive advantage. The companies that honor it are the ones that will keep earning the loyalty the rest are busy losing.

Mark Lusky (www.markluskycommunications.com/mark-lusky-bio) is the president of Lusky Enterprises, Inc. (www.markluskycommunications.com), a 41-year-established marketing communications company dedicated to clients that live and breathe trust, likeability, and respect (thereby eschewing the “lie, cheat, steal” culture so prevalent today). Contact him at: 303-621-6136; [email protected].