Authenticity in Business Communication

A funny communication glitch occurred in my home last night, after we lost power: I received a ridiculously obscured non-answer from PSE&G, the power company that services my area.

After the power went out in my neighborhood, I called PSE&G to alert them. After holding a very long time, a customer service representative came on the line and told me there was an “unknown cause of power loss in your area.” That’s understandable, of course, and I was relieved they were aware of the problem.

Where the customer communication broke down was her following statement:

“Power will be restored either before or after 10:30pm this evening.”

I puzzled over this for a moment, and even over the phone I could feel the besieged customer service representative brace for criticism. I asked her if that was the information she’d been given to relay to customers with no power. She paused, and said yes, and at that moment we both burst out laughing.

We both agreed I was in the better situation. No lights or heat beats having to be the bearer of that message!

THE LESSON:

1.  Be truthful and authentic with your customers:

“There is a power outage in your area. Currently we do not know the cause of the outage, but are actively investigating. At this time, we do not yet have an estimated time your power will be restored.”

With this information, a customer would know PSE&G knows of the problem and is working on it, and with no facts yet known, it’s logical a power restoration time estimate would be just a guess. Stating a convoluted, meaningless time puzzle just annoys customers.

2.  Don’t obfuscate with meaningless jargon, to avoid truth. Connect authentically with your customer or reader.

I felt badly for the customer service representative, who was very kind and clearly uncomfortable delivering that non-message. Whoever crafted that communication statement for the customer service representatives to deliver harmed both customer and employee relations. (I suggested the customer service representative tell her supervisor that she needed a break, but would return before or after the end of her shift!)

Even if the news isn’t welcome, good business communication tells the truth and respects all of the people in the communication cycle. In this case, the customer service representative had nothing of value to work with, and the obvious dance-around-the-facts message was disrespectful to customers.