Is kindness a realistic customer service strategy?

(MoneyWatch) COMMENTARY My recent post about the importance of empathy in customer service was met with overwhelmingly positive comments and e-mails from readers, reassuring me that most agree that human connection is the most important element of this aspect of doing business. It reinforced my hope that more businesses will re-evaluate the way they handle service and ensure that humanity is always at the core.

Then I read a Harvard Business Review post that made me wonder if the value of kindness is really as much of a no-brainer as I had thought.

The post itself was wonderful. It used an "extreme service" story to reinforce the value of kindness, empathy, and human connection in customer interactions. The piece was about an airline employee taking some creative initiative, and (rather mildly) bending -- perhaps even breaking -- some rules to rescue a customer who was about to miss a flight.

What made me shake my head incredulously were many of the reader comments that followed. At this writing there are 106 comments on the post, and as one should hope most support the employee's willingness to bend the rules on behalf of the customer. But a shocking number of them are actually critical, and even derisive. The criticisms run the gamut from reasonably arguable to completely inane, but the majority fall within one of three contentions, all of which I think miss the point:

The customer put himself in the position of needing to be rescued by not leaving himself enough time. Probably true; I am a frequent flier, and being early is at the top of my list of travel tips. This guy may well have created his own problem, and if he had missed his flight as a result of poor planning, he had only himself to blame. Still, we're all human, we all screw up, and the airline employee chose to help a person in a bind. That his predicament may have been his fault is irrelevant to the real story.

The airline agent was unfairly selective in going out of her way for one particular customer. I think the idea that the employee was "selective" in who she helped misrepresents her intentions. More importantly, so what? The bigger picture is that she demonstrated the spirit and initiative of someone who genuinely just wanted to help someone else. That she realistically can't go to similar extremes for every customer is, again, a moot point. Her actions and attitude demonstrate that she likely would if she could.

The agent broke rules to help the customer. Yes, she did -- and may have been disciplined for it. But again, this argument misses the moral of the story: It's not about what the employee did, who she did it for, how she went about it, or even if her specific actions were technically "wrong." It's about the fact that she put a simple and true, well-intentioned desire to help before everything else. She decided, as the saying goes, that in that instance it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.

The thing is, while some of the critics' points may be factually correct, their comments demonstrate the self-defeating tendency of so many people and businesses to not see the forest for the trees. Even among the commenters who did applaud the story, many qualified their approval by suggesting that kindness is not a realistic, scalable, or sustainable "business strategy." To me this is myopic cluelessness writ large.

As the post author, private equity executive Jeffrey Rayport, made clear:

"Like all case studies, this is but a single data point. But it leaves me wondering what any business might stand to gain if it oriented its associates to look out aggressively for opportunities to perform true acts of kindness for their customers."

Critics of this view completely miss the point. It is not about the specific story Rayport recounted, nor it is it even about business strategy in the literal sense. The post doesn't suggest that corporations publish "how to be kind" training manuals (being truly kind can't be taught any more than can being humorous, or artistic, or tall). What it talks about is the value of building a company culture around a core of simple human decency, and -- while not condoning serious rule-breaking -- encouraging and rewarding people who care enough about others to do whatever they can to make them happy. Putting attitude first.

Given the choice between a by-the-book, "them's the rules" customer service yeoman and an empathetic, creative, human-focused employee who takes some minor off-the-menu liberties to help people, I'll take my chances on the kind rebel every time.

[epetruk]

Great blog Michael. I agree that it's not who, why, and how this particular employee went out of her way to be kind to someone in need, but the fact that she did go out of her way to be kind, risking criticism and even a possible repremanding. From my perspective, this is good for business! Like you said to @damianwoods: Kindness is always an attitude, ideally a culture, but never a process.

Companies that want to maintain a competitive advantage need to start hiring for attitude and training for skill rather than the other way around. Genuine kindness, empathy, and a sincere interest in helping customers cannot be learned or faked, and that's a differentiating factor when deciding which business to give your money to in the future. In the long run, when you increase trust, you decrease customer churn, increase efficiency, and much more.

However, this sort of treatment is something that needs to be consistent, even though it's fantastic that this particular employee went out of her way to make her customer's day. Trust is a very difficult thing to build up, but is also very delicate and can be shattered in an instant. It's like a broken mirror; you can patch it up, but you will always see the cracks. And it's beyond easy these days to share a bad experience...and those are the ones that usually stick in someone's mind (rather than the positive experiences).

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It is is skeptical that within the standard operating and procedures of any business that you would see 'kindness' as a mandate. However I would contend that the unspoken opportunity to show kindness is reserved for the lingo "manager's discretion." Within the retail arena this term is utilized as a practice when a customer's actions although outside normal store protocol doesn't infringe the store ability to conduct business. (i.e. exchanging a return when the customer doesn't have a receipt or when the timeframe is outside return policy).

[hessmj]

Thanks for the comments.

There is much to be said about all of this, and endless variables of situations. But if you had to narrow it down to once sentence, I think it would be:

Kindness is always an attitude, ideally a culture, but never a process.

If the people, attitude and culture are right, everything else can easily fall into place.

[welcomeredge]

Michael, I love your blog and I guess these days it's not so unusual for there to be controversy about almost everything and anything. I totally agree with Shep that as a general rule, too many companies don't provide their frontline associates with enough freedom to make customers happy, which sometimes means bending the rules. What is often missed in viewing the interaction is that when a frontline associate makes a customer's day a bit easier and hassle free, it makes the representative feel better too. I realize that there are some customers who take advantage of the system, but the vast majority are just people who are looking for help, whether it's in a personal or business setting. Richard Shapiro, TCFCR @richardRshapiro

[hessmj]

Thanks so much for the kind comments. At the end of the day, it really takes two things to enable this kind of service:

1. People with empathy and an actual (not "instructed") desire to help

2. A business environment that gives them the freedom and resources to do so.

This may be a slightly simplified view of it, but really not by much.

Thanks again

[hessmj]

Excellent comments, thank you.

The only one I for which might throw in a bit of debate is "losing money." there are times (and I've seen many) where losing a bit to help a customer can pay back in spades over time. But agreed, we shouldn't make a habit of losing money if we can avoid it ;)

Thanks again

[ShepHyken]

When it comes to helping the customer sometimes you have to go outside of the "norm" and get creative. If it doesn't hurt the customer, break the law, lose money, set unreasonable precedent, consider doing it. Sometimes we have to balance between the company and the customer. But, part of our job as people focused on the customer is to solve problems. So, solve them. And if it works, share the solution with the rest of your team.