(Published March 23, 2009)
In HR, our employees are our "customers." While we try to provide the best customer service possible, did you ever stop to think that in some ways, the customer can determine the kind of service they get for themselves?
I took a call from an employee who was trying to get in touch with a former co-worker. The man he was trying to reach, "John Baylor," is no longer employed by us, but because he does occasional consulting, he is still listed in our directory. The caller was convinced that getting in touch with Mr. Baylor was going to be as simple as my transferring the call to anyone in the HR department who had been here for "an extended time."
Another employee called to find out why her dental insurance had been cancelled. Upon investigating, it turned out that it was cancelled because she filled out her enrollment form incorrectly. We use an in-house form that covers health, dental, and vision benefits all on one. The form is very clear to me, and no other employee has ever had any trouble interpreting it. But this employee had assumed that the form was for medical only; despite the fact that the dental plans were spelled out by name, she decided that she was turning down a dental rider to her medical plan. After all, she already had dental coverage!
Now, in the first instance, the caller ended up with no information at all — not because I refused to help him, but because he hung up on me while I was attempting to ascertain how I could locate someone who knew Mr. Baylor. I had put the caller on hold while I checked a couple of databases and inquired of a colleague who has been with the university longer than I have. (The colleague, who has been here 14 years, had never heard of Mr. Baylor.) Evidently, either the hold time, or the fact that I would not (he did not seem to comprehend, could not) immediately transfer him to an employee who would instantly have the information he wanted, was unacceptable.
In the second instance, the employee accepted the fact that she had made an error, explained how it came about, and asked how we could fix it. She waited patiently while we did the appropriate research. We determined that the processor "should" have called her to confirm that she really did want to cancel the dental coverage and reinstated her coverage.
There's no question that the second caller got better service than the first did — not because anyone was unwilling to service the first caller, but because of the way he went about his request. First, his question should not have been directed to us, but to the department where Mr. Baylor does the consulting. Even Payroll would have been a better choice than HR since, presumably, they have a current address to send his 1099. But when I offered to transfer him to one of these locations, he refused. He had made up his mind that anyone in HR could help him, and by golly, he was going to get his help from HR if it killed both of us. He had also made up his mind that it was only a matter of my transferring the call to "anyone who has been here an extended period of time," as he told me more than once. His mindset was so solid that nothing could get through.
There's nothing we can do to change the mindset of someone like my first caller. I was able to do some research after the fact and, had he called back, I think I could have gotten him his information. That is not to say that we would have given Mr. Baylor's contact information without his permission, but I believe we could have found someone who knew how to contact him, called him, and left the caller's information for him to make the contact himself, if he wanted to. But he never called back, and I'm left with the realization that sometimes, despite being billed as the best place to go for your answers ("When in doubt, ask HR" — we all know that drill!), we can't help an employee who will not let himself be helped.
Catherine Bannon is an HR consultant in Marshfield, MA (catherine.bannon@gmail.com). Bannon worked for 10 years in HR management before starting her consulting practice.
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