CEO Underperforms in Call Center on Reality Show "Undercover Boss"

Whenever I walk into a call center and start to hear blame placed on the call center representative, I become skeptical. I was recently watching the show Undercover Boss with Michael Rubin, CEO of GSI Commerce, a leading provider of e-Commerce and interactive marketing services for the brands and retailers. Michael Rubin sits with "Danielle" an employee of his company in the escalations arm of the customer service department to discover (undercover) how his organization performs.

Danielle in handling customer service escalations has to field calls from customers that are presenting failure demand (demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right for a customer). And the fact there is a customer service escalations department is evidence that they have plenty of failure demand. Dissatisfied customers phoning the call center in after failure occurs from any number of points in the system that produce failure.

Like most service organizations, failure demand exists at GSI because of the design and management of the call center work. The system that hired, trained and caused the failure demand was designed by the call center management. Danielle may or may not be the right person for customer service escalations, but the system in place is not her fault.