Misalignment

During my time in college, I worked for a summer sales company that sells satellite TV service. I worked in the customer service department answering phones and talking with customers about problems they had with the service, etc. There were multiple misalignments in this particular company; I am going to focus on one here. According to the CEO, their strategy was to distinguish themselves from other satellite retailers by being honest with the customer and providing exceptional service. The CEO recognized that in door to door sales many dishonest things occurred, and he prided himself on wanting to be different and be customer oriented. However, the systems in place in the company didn’t provide sales reps a lot of incentives to be honest in their sales. For a couple months, we did customer verifications on the phone with every customer to ensure that each customer understood exactly what they were getting, but after a few months it was decided that the verification took too much time and that it wasn’t needed. Also, sales representatives were paid on the basis of sales made; nothing in their commissions was based on customer satisfaction with the product. So, while the CEO seemed to talk a good game, nothing in the actual systems in place provided incentives for sales reps to be honest or to put the customer first. It was all about making a sale at all costs.

As an employee in customer service talking with upset customers all day, I know firsthand the pain that was caused by this misalignment. We were constantly getting calls from customers who complained that they were lied to or that they didn’t get what they were promised by the sales rep. The supervisors and managers usually would side with the sales reps on problems, assuming that “they wouldn’t just lie to the customer about that.” However, the fact that these problems kept occurring seemed to suggest that the sales reps weren’t being completely honest. Even in situations where it was obvious that the customer was right, the company would try their best to weasel out of refunding money, etc. Because of this, I didn’t quite know how to handle situations where customers were upset, especially when I felt the customer was right. The CEO always talked big about being honest and helping the customer, but I knew that part of the blame would end up with me if a customer ended up cancelling because of something they were promised and didn’t receive. Basically, the misalignment created confusion for me and other employees. We didn’t really understand what our function really was and what was expected of us.