Phil Kessel shares his thoughts on the request to come up with an "I hate my customer" story:
"Hate my customer story,".......candidly we rarely had one to fit this story. Why? As the Pearle Vision Territory Vice President - East, and later Vice President of Pearle Corporate Stores, we had a culture that emulated from me to our teams in the stores and supervised by the regionals that every customer counted. If the customer had an issue, legit or not,....our position was to ensure she or he left with their concern happily resolved. Net-net, our posture was how can we make it right,....I value you as a customer,... and by taking the high road, we were rarely "kicked in the teeth" by a customr. So, if a customer matter did get past the field and reached my desk, I listened, and made sure we gave her or he what they wanted (always with empathy, always with fairness) and issues were resolved. You make "raving fans" when you as a business do not let yourself get on the defensive.
I questioned Phil and asked "what happened in your early career that gave you the perspective to be so customer focused?"
From earlier career days at US Shoe Corporation in their softlines retail businesses, we learned early on to actually place our internal customer (our associates / our teams) first. Hence, when you prioritize your staff as being first, you then get high care and passion for the hapiness of your external customer (the one who is actually paying for the product and services). It is all rather simple with a net - net end game approach to create "raving fans" from the external customer.
Phil is so right. There are many definitions to the word "customer." The first of those being our employees. Happy employees make for happy customers.
So - is there a time when you've "hated" an employee? Oooohh, this could get ugly.
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