If Your Company Goes Bankrupt, Don’t Blame Covid-19.
By: Julia E Hubbel
Tags: Covid 19, Customer Service, Business, Transitions, Quarantine

If Your Company Goes Bankrupt, Don’t Blame Covid-19.

It might be that you were stupid and made poor decisions. Or not.

Warning, rant coming. But I’m going somewhere thoughtful with it. Well, sort of. I think.

“Due to Covid-19…”

Bloody HELL. If I hear this inane, mindless, foolish, ENDLESS opening salvo when I am placed on hold one more time I committing hari kiri.

As if we didn’t know, first (although the Administration et.al. sure doesn’t, may they cough their way to hell). And then, what’s really ripe, is that now every single reason for poor service, poor training, bad business practices on the face of the planet seems to get blamed on Covid.

Nope, dope. In so many cases, Covid stripped the varnish off your fake wood footlocker and now we can see it’s particle board. On top of that it’s rotting.

From the stumbling, bumbling, ridiculously awkward processes now imposed on folks by a local medical facility (which do little to nothing to impose social distancing) to the worst hold times on the planet, we customers are seeing how mediocre service really is. Probably always was. Because folks who didn’t know their shit to begin with can’t lean their chairs back to get Bob, who does know his shit and who used to sit next to you, to do your work-and his own- all day.

No Bob? Now we know you’re an idiot.

On the other hand your star performers, those you didn’t dump unceremoniously because look, Covid, are completely overwhelmed because so many of them are doing the work of four people because, well you laid off so many, and because, well, Covid.

In response to a piece I just did today,

Jim Roye penned a story that is so very indicative of this I got his permission to share it in full. I have done some very minor editing but nothing that changes the story:

... I just went through something similar yesterday.

The back tire on my grandson’s bike went flat. Needs a new tube. Shouldn’t be a big deal to fix.

The largest bike shop in the greater Boston area just happens to have a location two towns over It’s less than five miles away from home. So I check their website. They say I can buy online and pick up curbside. PERFECT!

But they don’t list any tubes on their website. The site does say “We carry thousands of items that aren’t on the site in our stores! Call us if you don’t see what you need!”

So I call. I get a lovely five-minute rundown about their response to COVID and how easy it is to shop on their website for any of the thousands of items they carry. Then the system finally switches over and connects me to the local store. And I get another message saying that while the store is open, they’re so busy they can’t answer phones at this time. It ends with a “You can always shop online using our website…” line as I hang up.

OK then. Strike two!

I’m going that way later in the afternoon anyway. I’ll swing by and get the dang tube. So sure enough, two pm yesterday I pull up in their parking lot. I get out of my truck, mask up and head for the door.

On the door there is a sign saying that they aren’t open to the pubic due to COVID and if I need anything I should feel free to order via their website….

I ended up going to a nearby Tractor Supply store, picked up a tube patch kit and came home and ordered a tube from Amazon. I guess the local bike shop doesn’t want my business. They won’t be getting it in the future. (author bolded)

Folks, if you’re this thoughtless about your customers, then you don’t need to be running a business. You need to find a mail room job.

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

If I asked for a story like this from all my readers, my computer would crash.

We are in a watershed moment to find out just how many folks are running outfits that shouldn’t be in business. People are at the helm when they suffered too many concussions without a helmet.

Here is a piece from Forbes which points out who benefited from Covid:

Those are obvious. However you didn’t have to be in the beer biz to avoid going bust.

You simply needed to consider what people needed, how to make it easy for them to get it and pay for safely and conveniently.

Above all, and nobody has done this yet, kindly consider the fact that this entire nation is sick and tired of being on hold for an hour or more to speak to an incompetent, bored, pissed-off rep whose kids are screaming, whose dog is barking, and she doesn’t possess the sense Sam Hill gave a newt to help you solve your problem.

“Your call is important to us.”

Here is our collective response:

Screw your long hold times and your poorly-trained, overworked, exhausted, bubble-gum-chewing reps.

Hire more of those 30+ million folks who need work. TRAIN them. PAY them a decent wage. CUT the hold times. Because we’re going to remember who failed, and when we are back out in force at some point, we will speak with our feet and much-reduced wallets.

Finally, have the simple common decency to put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Like Jim’s story, above.

How? By simply asking yourself, if I were a customer of my own company, what is my experience?

This is the single best possible time to play Undercover Boss with your company. Good people learned critically-important, life and company-saving lessons by being on that show. They found out who they had hired (thank you) and who was buying from them (thank you). You do not get that kind of information avoiding the awful truth.

Covid is a right sheep dip in the awful truth for a whole lotta folks.

Photo by Judith Prins on Unsplash

So to that, folks, whether you own a bike shop or the brew pub or Boeing, find out what being a customer is like right now. AND find out what being a beleaguered customer service rep is too. I’m not without mercy, but I am without patience. For corporations which do not invest in helping those people establish some kind of reasonable schedule, professional equipment, decent work hours and enough reps so that they can breathe between diaper changes are, kindly, cretins.

I could say Amazon but I won’t. Just saying. Cretin. (kindly he did figure out how to get folks what they wanted, so long as you don’t count his front line employees, but that’s another article).

Cretin.

Did I just say that?

Try calling in. Try reaching someone. Try giving that person, after your arm has gone to sleep, a typical issue. See what happens. If you’re horrified, honey, get off your ass and fix it. Just saying. Because quarantine is a fine time to figure out where the cracks are in your corporate foundation, big or small, macro or micro.

You cannot ask for better feedback.

Jim’s story is classic. Just, classic. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had this kind of thing happen. Wanna talk about the new normal? This is part of what it looks like.

When you stop monetizing people and start humanizing their experience as both employee and customer, you might learn something, as did the better of the Undercover Bosses. They got heroes’ treatment. Why are we handing out hero buttons for doing what we should be doing in the first place?

But that’s just me.

For my part I am watching those stories about who protected jobs (VF Corporation, for example, with 50k employees worldwide, did not lay off anyone. Kindly. Can you say leadership?) Who continues to push the D&I goals at at time when Covid becomes an excuse to say it’s not the time. (VF is doing that, too.)

Yeah it is.

I am watching those stories about which companies, large and small, redirected their product lines to help save lives. Compassion, anyone? Yes, of course they’re making money. You have to in order to stay in business, but when you take into account the massive costs to retool in midair, that argument doesn’t hold much water for me. But that’s just my take.

I am watching those corporations who go public with foolish BLM support statements to get the PR but don’t have the backbone to put that PR into action. There are so many ways to get this done I don’t have room to list it all.

Transition is by definition the single best time, a time of utter chaos, to take a long hard look at what is not working and Bloody. Well. Start to fix it.

Want some ideas? Please see this:

So I watch this, and I look for those folks committed to good work, taking care of their employees, focusing on fixing what’s broken both in their companies and in society, and doing their level best to listen to and respond to their customers.

They have earned my business.

The rest, Jim and I, and I suspect a great many others, are taking a walk to fix our bikes elsewhere.

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

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