When crucial “Moments of Truth” instead become “Moments of Lies”, an organization is heading down the slippery slope into the trash heap of history. It is only one substantive product failure or economic downturn away from oblivion. That’s very bad for everyone affected and it’s tragic because it’s preventable.

A recent purchase experience started out happily and quickly eroded when a very simple matter arose, which required an adjustment of course to keep the service experience on track. A few lowlights:

• Five separate “live chats”, whether human or machine (your guess is as good as mine), led nowhere. Initial expressed desire to help turned into “there is nothing we can do about that” each and every time;
• Two separate efforts to actually speak to a living, breathing and ideally caring person resulted in one who actually hung up mid conversation and a second who willingly transferred me to a ‘service specialist’ which was followed by a 22 minute permahold, listening to awful music. I finally hung up;
• Senseless text message “surveys” followed each contact and, you guessed it, evidently there is no living person on the other end who cares to do anything with the feedback either.

At least they were consistent. I won’t bash the company name, because that’s not my style, but I will use this experience to highlight the customer service tragedy of our “enlightened age” and to encourage those who actually care to focus intently on their customer service process and experience. Technology is not the solution, especially when used as a service roadblock; caring, thinking and empowered people are.

Moments of Truth transcend the product or service and wrap around it.

Done consistently well, Moments of Truth elevate customer loyalty and enhance the brand. Handled robotically and without caring, they become Moments of Lies.

If you aspire to be Leadership Worthy, seek the ground truth to make certain that your own Moments of Truth are exactly that. The very survival of your business depends upon it.

Tempus Maximize!