Press 1 to send your customer into a blind panic, 2 to...

Music festivals are everywhere these days, aren't they? 

I mean, where there used to be a nice patchwork of green and yellow fields, these days it's pink polka dot tents all the way to the horizon. It's as if the British countryside has developed acne. Pretty much everywhere you look, if it's surrounded by a boundary hedge, there's a music festival taking place in it. 

I dunno, kids today. (In my day all we had were Woodstock and Live Aid, and we were grateful for it.) But this month's rant isn't about music festivals, per se: it's about something that happened to a young man of my acquaintance at one. You see, he lost a load of stuff and had to call a Call Centre. 

Now despite my name, I didn't want to rant about Call Centres, because they're such an easy target. We've all had our problems with Call Centres. But I thought this story was 'specially good... because it wasn't, in the end, about call queueing or endless touchtones. It's a simple tale of talking and listening - and what happens if you don't listen to your customer.

Anyway, let's call our young friend "Jarney". Picture, if you will, a music festival this summer. The delicate scents of exhaust fumes, unwashed socks, and other less legal substances are in the air. Jarney's wandering back to his tent (polka dot) after watching some hairy bloke not seen since the 60s play drums in a "supergroup" or something. 

(Definition of a supergroup: six people who didn't want to be in the same band before, playing a song none of them wrote. Supergroups are basically singalongs with better tuned guitars. Meanwhile, back at the story...)

The flap of his tent is, well, flapping. (It's what flaps do.) That's funny, thinks Jarney. Don't remember leaving that open. And on entering his little pink polka haven, he makes a horrifying discovery:

Everything's gone!

Phone, wallet, credit cards, driver's license, the lot. Gone. Some fiend has stolen his entire life, and all the police have to go on is that he's not a fan of Hairy Freddie's 60s Supergroup.

Now I don't know if this has happened to you, but this is a serious thing when you're away from home. We never realise how reliant we are on those little magnetic-striped cards and pocket-size gadgets, do we? No, we don't. So young Jarney is suddenly an un-person. An undocumented alien. A Kafka character. He's off the database. And what's more, he's standing in a muddy field ... in yellow wellies ... outside a pink polka-dot tent.

Well, you'd feel worried too, wouldn't you?

Fortunately, unlike me, Jarney's got friends. He borrows a phone, spends some time finding out and listing numbers for reporting stolen mobiles and credit cards (another of those things none of us think about until we really have a need) and starts dialling. First up is to report his mobile phone. And he enters the Seventh Circle of Hell. Trust me, this one's an absolute corker.

Eventually, he gets through to a Call Centre agent. After some issues about not calling from his own phone and establishing his identity, conversation commences.

"Thank you Sir. Now, if you can just confirm your normal method of payment for me..."

"OK, but I need your help to complete this call quickly, because I've got to report all my cards missing too."

"So that's your address, thank you. Can you confirm your normal method of payment?"
"Have we completed the identification process? Because if we have, I need to report my phone stolen and then move on, because some dastardly villain is in possession of my debit card..."

"And can I just confirm your email address -"

"Yes, but I need to report my phone missing first and then end this call, because someone in a blue stripey jumper is enjoying a suite at the Ritz even as we speak..."

See the rub: the Call Centre agent isn't listening. He's hearing - in the sense they're speaking the same language - but he isn't listening. And study after study (those people at Rapide have done some research on this) you can't communicate without listening. 

"Thank you for confirming your email address, Sir - yes, yes. I appreciate that, but we like to keep our records updated..."

Jarney's obviously hopping from one yellow wellie to the other by now, because he's got four credit and debit cards about to furnish some thieve's penthouse and doesn't want to explain to his bank that he didn't really order £5000 of questionable items from Bulgaria. 

"OK, have you now noted on your system that  this phone has been STOLEN? And that the phone will be deactivated?"

"I've done that, Sir. I notice you're on the [deleted] tariff - let me just go through the latest Price Plans you may wish to take advantage of..."

"NO! NO! No price plans, please! I just need to confirm this phone number shouldn't be in use as of NOW so I can make some other calls!"

"But I notice you haven't been using all of your free minutes, Sir, and this month we have a special offer available to our loyal customers."

So there you have it. The Call Centre agent, following a script, simply wasn't able to "step outside the script" and deal with his customer's genuine problem. He didn't listen. And without listening, there can be no understanding. Nothing to do with technology; you note Jarney's not complaining about Press-1-for-this, Press-2-for-that sort of thing. It's all about the attitude of the Call Centre worker, and to be honest, that's something quite easy to fix - you've got to train them to listen first, and talk second.

The Rapide people recently wrote a piece on Call Centres, and how they can be turned into profit centres that serve customers properly. Why not ask them for a cheeky download?