Out to market: Would you like customer service with that?

At the world’s most valuable company - Apple - your customer service is personal. Their employees are free to show their personality, and deliver the business brand in their own way. They can guide customers through issues, and offer solutions. They’re empowered to interact with customers person-to-person. Their shops are always busy — really busy.

Genuine customer service is a surprise. It is so much more than a polite and friendly greeting. It’s when someone respects you as an individual, puts your needs ahead of their business process, and takes as long as needed to ensure you achieve your outcome.

Then there is the “customer call centre”; the home of scripted customer interactions, protection of the "system", and making every interaction as clinical and efficient as possible. It’s more pleasing to the accounting and legal department than it is to customers.

Scripted conversations may be fine when we are buying a burger, but they are annoying and rude when the product or service requires a commitment from us, is related to our life-style, or is a matter of privacy. Too often, companies make following their script more important than a genuine person-to-person engagement with their customers.

In the retail shop of a telephone company recently, I was politely informed that I would “need to contact customer service”. After my minor protest, the friendly employee dialed the number, and then handed me the phone.

I pressed “one” for existing account enquiries, then “two” for billing enquiries. I entered my account number, and then my call was placed in the queue. It was very important to them and it may have been recorded for quality purposes. I listened to the hold messages while I was standing right in front of their employees, and looking at their company logo on the wall.

Bizarrely, none of the employees thought this was strange. It was the company culture: Around here “we just sell, and customer issues are not our responsibility”.

Why don’t more businesses follow the lead of the most valuable company in the world?

Is it really more cost effective to channel every customer issue through the "issues" team and force a scripted interaction? Although those interactions may provide a customer solution, most do not provide customer service.

It’s a pity, because as a system for retaining customers, an engaging customer service culture is hard to beat. It’s how they created the worlds most valuable company.

Andrew Seinor is a business performance agent at The H Factor.