When I’m working with a group of people on a Customer Facing System, one of the things we talk about is how ‘The System’ is the business’ FACE for the customer. Customers see the company personified in their interfaces to the company, so it’s important to be consistent.

Think about people you know. What do you think about someone who acts differently to you at different times? When you’re alone over a beer, you see one face, when you’re in a meeting you see another. If a person is acting inconsistently in different situations, we call that person ‘two-faced’. If your company is acting inconsistently, you’re at least TWO faced, and maybe more. If each telephone operator in your call center responds differently with different rules, rules THEY made up for interacting with a customer, what’s a customer going to think?

A good example occurred in England on a project where I was able to monitor telephone calls coming in to agent’s desks as I studied the system. I found it was common that a customer would call and if they didn’t get the answer they wanted, they’d call again, and again until an agent told them what they wanted to hear. The agents weren’t working together, they were each working independently. Consequently the ‘face’ the the customer saw was inconsistent. Customers took advantage of that to get what they wanted. No wonder they needed help.

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