THE CUSTOMER SERVICE QUADRANT: A SURVIVAL GUIDE

THE CUSTOMER SERVICE QUADRANT: A SURVIVAL GUIDE

James R. Rosenfield

January 2004

In our 21st Century economy, customer service is what matters most. The rich countries no longer make or move things. Muscle work gets farmed out to the Third World. Here, everyone services someone else, whether you're an ad agency, a creator of web sites…or a health care professional.

Two recent hospital experiences, involving my wife Freddie in Paris and my mother-in-law Dorothy in New York, gave me lots of chances to ponder service interactions. Hospitals are filled with them, minute by glacial minute, most of them tedious, some nerve-racking, and a few terrifying.

In any customer service environment, we are potentially at the mercy of others. It's a standing joke that we're held prisoner by our cable companies, who promise to come on Tuesday between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM…and then don't show up at all!

Transfer this to a hospital: You can walk down any corridor and see flashing lights calling for a nurse, as the nurses chit-chat at their station. I honestly don't know how to interpret this. Very possibly, experience says the patient's sense of need has to be weighed against the realities of fatigued nurses supplying care, and ignoring the lights is a form of triage. All I know is the nurse has control of our comfort, and the doctor of our destiny. It behooves us to scope out what kinds of creatures we are dealing with and to act appropriately. That's how to take control. We are at the mercy of others, in reality, only to the extent that we are complicit in our own victimization.

What kinds of creatures are we dealing with, then? They exist in a quadrant that looks like this:

NASTY/INCOMPETENT	NICE/INCOMPETENT
NASTY/COMPETENT	NICE/COMPETENT

Everyone wants NICE/COMPETENT, and recoils in horror when greeted with NASTY/INCOMPETENT. Both of these categories are easy to spot and deal with. The other two parts of the quadrant are more problematical.

NASTY/INCOMPETENT is the least pleasant part of the quadrant, but not the most difficult. These people might as well wear neon signs flashing "I am mean and clueless!" They are not subtle. You simply must rid yourselves of them and find someone else. (There is always someone else, with the important exception of closed environments such as airplanes.) Do it politely, though, so that you don't exhaust yourself with confrontation. In my experience, the NASTY/INCOMPETENT always backs down.

Why are NASTY/INCOMPETENTS here to plague us? How do they survive? It's because all institutions, from banks to hospitals, are irrational, and handle irrational people in irrational ways. It can be argued that there might be management/labor agreements making it difficult to fire people, but surely the NASTY/INCOMPETENT can be transferred to a place where she will be less damaging, and perhaps more productive. I stick with the fundamental insanity of organizations for my explanation.

Once you get beyond that, though, the question has to be addressed in philosophical/ psychological terms. NASTY/INCOMPETENTS exist because human nature is perverse. They exist because certain people are frustrated, unhappy, sociopathic, sadistic, ad infinitum. My wife once needed an MRI. The clerk processing her said "I was in Vietnam, and getting an MRI scared me a hell of a lot more than anything I went through there!" Imagine how that made poor Freddie feel as she entered the machine! That level of stupidity and/or sadism should be rewarded by immediate termination.

We needed to bring a doctor on the plane with us from Paris to California, in case there was an emergency en route. The doctor had to carry syringes. Airport security doesn't like needles these days, so we obtained permission through all the right channels prior to our arrival at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Didn't matter. Everyone tried to grab his needles every inch of the way, increasing our already considerable stress, until finally the captain of the Air France 747 gave his personal permission. In fairness, the security people probably fell within the NASTY/COMPETENT area, since they were sort of trying to do their job, and they are not empowered (not should they be) to be flexible.

Well, the flight was OK, no medical problems. The Air France flight attendants were very good about seating us all together: An oxygen tank had been bolted in front of our seats in case of a breathing emergency, and the doctor needed to be next to us. Some shuffling occurred, and it was handled well. (NICE/COMPETENT).

The flight crew rested on its laurels after that, and became NASTY/INCOMPETENT for the entire flight, 12 hours of numb agony. To ask for anything was to ask too much. This was in Business Class, where you think you'd be entitled to a modicum of attention, especially traveling with a sick person.

As we flew over the Rockies, the doctor reminded the flight crew that my wife needed a wheelchair on arrival. They simply did not respond, and did not care. Finally he and I hounded them enough that they took the path of least resistance and called ahead. This is what you have to do in closed environments. Elsewhere, the more effective tactic with NASTY/INCOMPETENTS is smile, be assertive, be patient and FIND SOMEONE ELSE!!! Hounding NASTY/INCOMPETENTS can work, but you can do it only once. It costs you all your chips.

We were indeed met by a nice woman with a wheelchair. Struggling through the dreadfully long journey from the exit gate to immigration (Los Angeles International Airport was designed by people who don't like other people), we moved right to the head of a line. Wheel chairs are good for that! We needed the doctor to stay with us, because the idea was to keep Freddie in his sight, in case something bad happened.

But…we were in the U.S. passport line, and the doctor carried a French passport. The first Air France ground person said it was impossible to get the doctor through the U.S. line, politely enough (NICE/INCOMPETENT). Remembering the rule, "There is always someone else," I found the someone else, who smoothly led all three of us through the U.S. line.

Getting back to hospitals, where the quadrant becomes all-important, I was lucky to be dealing with two world-class places, the American Hospital in Paris and Sloan-Kettering, the premier cancer treatment center in the world, in New York. Most experiences were in the favorable parts of the quadrant. The emergency room aspects were just about 100% in the NICE/COMPETENT area, and so were almost all of the doctors. The less favorable things became most dramatically evident in certain routine tasks, particularly taking blood samples or introducing intravenous devices.

Medical people are either good at this or not. It's both a talent and a skill. You might have noticed this yourself at your annual physical. I saw several NASTY/INCOMPETENTS get visibly frustrated when they couldn't find a vein. They blamed the patient, if you can imagine, causing her unnecessary pain and stress. You are not responsible for the size of your veins, are you?

I also saw several NASTY/COMPETENTS do a perfectly fine job, but without any warm fuzzies or reassuring comments. And I saw a few NICE/INCOMPETENTS bond immediately with the patient, and then completely screw up the task.

NASTY/COMPETENT and NICE/INCOMPETENT are the trickiest parts of the quadrant. NASTY/COMPETENT is far preferable to NICE/INCOMPETENT. I would venture to say that the road to perdition is strewn with NICE/INCOMPETENTS skipping in front of you, blissfully unaware of the havoc they wreak. Alas, you can't help but like them until it may be too late.

Basic lessons? Whether it's critically important (e.g., hospitals) or merely quotidian (e.g., dealing with your bank), do the following five things:

1) Make your assessment.

2) Treasure the NICE/COMPETENT, see if there's any chance of making this person a permanent part of your life as a customer (or patient, if that's the case).

3) Tolerate the NASTY/COMPETENT for as long as you can, because this is the second best part of the quadrant.

4) Get rid of the NASTY/INCOMPETENT. Smile, smile, smile, but be totally assertive. If you have to, hound, hound, hound until you get someone else, but don't do that until it comes down to the endgame (or if you're in a closed environment). Remember: they always back down.

5) Keep your critical faculties keen in identifying the NICE/INCOMPETENTS, and find a replacement, even though you might feel bad about hurting someone's feelings. You're not. And even if you are, it doesn't matter.

By the way, all is well with our patients, thanks to the quick diagnosis and excellent treatment Freddie received at Paris' excellent American Hospital, and that Dorothy continues to receive from the world's best specialists at Sloan-Kettering.