I work as a freelancer (aka as contracting) in the IT industry, that means dealing with lots of recruitment agencies, some like Harvey Nash are really good but other agencies get it serious wrong. I have over a two week period spoken to 12 people at Hays Recruitment Experts to get a simple contract extension resolved. Hays is an example of an agency that really got it wrong on every occasion, but I thought it was worth sharing 10 of the customer service points Hays got so wrong.
1. Don’t transfer a call if you aren’t sure you know the right person to pass the call on to but
take details AND ensure the right person calls back and if actually calling back isn’t a common practice in your organisation check it happens.
2. Don’t leave a voice message without any contact details but
ensure you contact details are included.
3. Don’t explain why you can’t take help with a problem, but
assure the customer you will find the right person and get it resolved.
4. Don’t say you can’t commit to a time-line for a solution OR an update
but promise you will come back by a certain time AND come back even if you haven’t resolved the problem.
5. Don’t make excuses for why a problem happened, but
say what you will do to resolve the problem AND do it.
6. Don’t forget customers don’t care about nice words when they ask for action but
show you aren’t just a talking head but one who can take action.
7. Don’t expect the customer trust you will resolve a problem if you sounds like the previous 7 or 10 people who didn’t delivery their promise, but
give the customer confidence and follow-up, give the steps AND time-line for your plan of action.
8. Don’t call back after a big screw-up and try to give it a positive spin but
say sorry and briefly say what what you plan to do to prevent the problem happen again (and not why it happened – I don’t care, give me confidence it will happen again if should decide to use your service again.
9. Don’t try to explain your organisation structure, but
just use your knowledge about the organisation to solve the problem for the customers. (to be frank, I don’t care how Hays is organised)
10. DON’T try to sell when the client it pissed off with your organisation ! Don’t even think about it.
Hays failed on every single of these 10 points and for several of them more than once ! It shouldn’t surprise anybody that I don’t plan to work with Hays in the future (I actually directly encourage other to avoid Hays now – that is the outcome of repeatedly failing to deliver customer service).
Torben Overgaard's blog 