In 2008, the president of Brazil signed a decree (number 6.523) that defines customer service standards for companies operating in that country. According to Michael Maoz, of Gartner.com this is not necessarily is a good thing. He does not believe it will improve how Brazilian customers are treated.
Whether it works or not, I like what the Brazilian president has done. Not because I’m a big fan of regulation. (I’m not.)
I like this because it puts the issue of customer service out in the open. It makes it a priority. It says, the way people are treated is important.
You can argue that companies should be left to set customer service standards on their own. And I agree. The problem is, most do not. And if they do, they rarely tell their customers about it. (Most organizations that have published their customer service standards on their websites are government agencies.)
If companies created customer service standards that were meaningful to their customers, published them and then met (or exceeded them), there would be no need for a law like this.
What do you think? Do we need laws that regulate how customers are treated?
Kevin,
What Brazil is doing is definitely interesting. I don’t think that you can regulate something like customer service. I am curious to find out what the regulations are.
Customer service is all about perceptions and service is all in the eye of the beholder. I bet it is safe to say that you have different expectations for service since you live it, breathe it, love it and that you look at all service interactions differently than an average consumer. As a consumer advocate deeply engrossed in customer service, I know I find myself doing this.
I strongly believe that all organizations should have customer service standards and that those standards are shared internally and externally. There are organizations out there that do publish those standards and also live up to those standards. Marriott, The Ritz Carlton, Good Shepard Hospital and even my local grocery store come to mind.
There are organizations that post the standards but you would be hard pressed to find an employee that actually knows what they are let alone lives up to them. American Airlines, Princess Cruise Lines and US Bank come to mind.
And then there are those organizations that don’t publish them because they know they will never live up to them so why even bother.
Thanks for sharing the news about Brazil!
Kelly
I too am not a fan of regulation. But some regulation is need and warranted — maximum time an airline can keep you sitting on a plane without food and water comes to mind.
In a competitive environment, things like poor response should be eliminated on their own. But those of us who’ve been on hold with a company for 30 minutes or more know that’s not always the case.
What Brazil regulated is interesting — maximum time allowed to wait on the phone, mandatory response times, timely handling cancellations, etc. Since this happened a couple years ago, it would be interesting to see the business and economic affects today.
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