Do You (or your employees) Make this Mistake?
Yesterday morning my husband asked me to make a phone call for him. This is normal – he doesn’t like to make phone calls, so the job has always fallen to me.
I called, and after giving the message to the gentleman (?) on the other end, he said l “Have your husband call me.” I was a little annoyed by that, but left a note and my husband called him.
Why did he insist on a second phone call? Because he wanted to talk to a man and not take a message from a woman.
He didn’t ask any question that I hadn’t already answered, but since I was placing an order for a couple thousand dollars worth of roofing trusses, he needed to hear it from a man before he would go ahead and put the order in to be processed.
Obviously this employee didn’t respect the convenience of having a secretary – and that in the small construction business that a secretary and a wife are often the same person.
But you know what? I don’t care about the excuse. So it was a young employee – so he didn’t know better – so what? The boss should have taught him.
He annoyed me by treating me as if I couldn’t convey a simple message, and he annoyed my husband by insisting that he make the phone call himself.
He won’t get the opportunity to do this twice. And the firm he works for will lose any future orders that would come from us.
Think about that – and check on how your employees are treating people who call in orders. If they’re practicing this kind of discrimination it could be a reason why your revenues aren’t higher.
Posted: August 18th, 2009 under business building, customer contact, customer relations, customer retention, customer service.
Tags: customer service, discrimination, gender discrimination, insulting customers