Figuring out how to tell a customer “I don’t know”

I’ve always been fascinated by an almost reflexive need on the part of many technology Service professionals and organizations to dance around the truth when they aren’t sure what to do next or how to help the customer, all in the vein of sounding informed so they can keep the customer. And this phenomenon has never been more prevalent than in the world of technology – or the legal field I would imagine. Joke! Don’t’ sue me. I just had two back-to-back outstanding examples of the wrong way to do this and the right way to do this, respectively.

I recently discovered a hot water leak in my foundation. While the warmer and decidedly cozier hard wood floor is nice in February, it’s not gonna look too pretty when the foundation cracks. Last week the first plumber arrived to confirm the problem was indeed in the slab, he informed me that “…his company doesn’t fix those. Too dangerous I guess. I think it’s cuz’ people are getting sued when the foundation problems get worse later on. You’ll have to call someone else.” While I appreciated his desire to be honest, perhaps pure conjecture on his part wasn’t the best approach to take. He left with $73 of my cash and my floor was still warm.

This morning the second plumber from a different company arrived. He was a younger, portly guy with a thick Texas accent. After I walked him through the house and explained the problem we were standing in my master bathroom and he looked me square in the eye and said “Sir, I’d like to make sure I’m straight with you. I’m not as experienced in this specific area of plumbing. I know some, and I think we’ll have to … ” he went on to describe a few basic steps then finished with “… but I don’t want to give you bad advice so I’d like to call my manager and ask him to come on out here with me. I’ll call him now and be right back”. An hour later there were TWO master plumbers on my front porch.

“… but I don’t want to give you bad advice so I’m going to call my manager and get someone more experienced out here as soon as I can”

Wow. Devastating, disarming, perfectly pitched total candor delivered absolutely perfectly by a plumber.

They won me as a customer by sending someone who didn’t know how to fix the problem but had the character (or the smarts) to recognize it.

Of course neither extreme is desirable. When I was a lowly young Support Engineer, knee-high to a grasshopper, I doubt you would have caught me with a sippy cup answering every question posed to me with “I have no earthly idea how to help you. I’ve only been here two weeks, haven’t been trained much, and likely will spend most of this phone call placing you on hold while I go ask someone else. But I sure am willing Mr. Customer. …. Hello? Are you still there? Uh, yeah, sure, I can get my manager.”

Ahem, a modicum of decorum is always preferable after all!

Most of the reasons are obvious I suppose. No Service professional wants to be perceived as not knowing what on earth they’re talking about lest they are viewed by managers or co-workers as performing poorly, particularly when they are new on the job. Human nature also dictates a good deal of this behavior along with a person’s level of self-confidence, education, and upbringing. A lack of “good process” or “no training” is easy to blame, and sometimes rightly so. But most often those things are doing their job well and you can’t prepare for every scenario, after all.

I also believe that most of the time the desire to “make the customer happy” is genuine on the part of whoever it is that’s helping you. A very real and necessary component of good service and support is making certain the customer feels comfortable by conveying that a) you are listening to them, b) you are knowledgeable on the topic at hand, and c) that you have the skills, tools, and facilities to help them with their problem even when any one of the items above is in doubt. And most importantly, d) that you WANT to help them. “I don’t’ know” is just plain counter-intuitive to conveying those messages but done right it’s a winning strategy more than a losing one.

So why is that tech companies, or any company really, never take the time to develop, formalize, train or discuss the right ways and the wrong ways to say “I don’t know” and the steps to take after you’ve said it?

I’ve spent a LOT of time in young technology companies where the product is complex, the processes are incomplete or non-existent, and the answer to the question being posed is really just not known by anyone because it hasn’t been created yet. It’s a very common occurrence. I managed an outsourced call center vendor for a period of time and would regularly visit them for a few days at a time for meetings, training, process improvements, etc.. The call center vendor would offer me whatever sitting space I felt like grabbing, and I would always choose one right in the middle of the call floor so I could be in the action and really hear what was happening on calls. Every visit I would get questions on “how should we handle this?” and every visit I was guaranteed to hear a question I had to really think about, or just flat out invent the answer right then and there. The most valuable thing I got out of that experience was an understanding that small companies are not equipped to handle EVERYTHING AT ONCE. It takes time, effort, consistency, and almost a strange kind of organizational humility to pull it off.

Not knowing is NOT the problem unless it’s a persistent indication of the wrong hire in the wrong role, or an organization’s leadership being completely devoid of knowing how to implement training and reliable measurement criteria for knowledge acquisition and continuous improvement. Call quality reviews usually bring these issues to the surface, but nothing made me squirm in my seat more than hearing an otherwise terrific Service team member completely fumble what should otherwise be a very simple statement.

Arguably it should be the very first thing you teach a new employee that is going to be supporting a sophisticated product or solution, including field engineers, systems consultants, Tier 3 staff, and yes, managers. Anyone who is comfortable in their own skin will have an ease about them that makes saying those words not only ok, but even liberating. But for some of the team it can be utterly paralyzing, perhaps even damaging, and for no reason whatsoever.

Instead what most often happens? Companies welcome the new employee, hand them a manual and a laptop, and tell them to get cranking.

“…getting the entire team to spend some time crafting, refining, and ultimately agreeing on the right way to say it can be a tremendously valuable exercise.”

Customer Service and Support managers should have occasional and informal sessions on why it’s ok to not know the answer to a question and what to do about it. These talks will usually bring out gaps in process, product documentation, knowledge base articles, etc.

Clearly, these are hugely important things to take notes on and follow up with later. But it’s important to not let the conversation get too far off track. The goal is to practice the right and wrong ways to inform a customer that the next step is unclear to the person helping them, but that it’s in no way an indication the company and the rest of the Service team aren’t prepared to solve it. Try a role playing exercise where team members can’t possibly know the answer to the question posed, and watch in delight at the absolute train wreck that ensues. Service Managers be warned – you had better be very well practiced at it before you put anyone else in the spotlight. Another tack to take is to practice what you preach by saying to everyone “I’ve been noticing that as a team we’re not handling these situations correctly, and I’m as guilty as anyone. So here’s what I’d like to do” and then set up the session.

It CAN be done correctly (script it if you have to) and even getting the entire team to spend some time crafting, refining, and ultimately agreeing on the right way to say it can be a tremendously beneficial exercise. Overall, deliver it with a relaxed but confident overarching message “candor will win over the customer every time, whether it’s a plumber or a processor”.

Jay