three good faith attempts
The batter swung his bat twice and walked back towards the batter's box. Sweat was dripping down the side of his face. He situated his back foot into the box. As he placed his front foot in, he held up his right hand, indicating to all that he needed a minute. He made a couple more swings and held his bat high. With a full count, what he did with this pitch could determine the game. His team was down by one run. It was the final inning, there was a runner on third, and there were two outs.
The pitcher leaned in, glanced at the runner leading off third, and threw a low fastball to the plate. The pitch was too fast, and the batter swung and missed. As the umpire indicated strike three, the catcher ran toward the mound in celebration while the batter walked slowly back to the dugout dejected. Three strikes, and he was out.
The three strikes rule is fundamental to the game of baseball, but somehow, somewhere, we in IT developed it for working with customers. It's a popular process, look it up on the internet, and you will find thousands of pages that refer to the three strikes rule. Three strikes, and you are out, “I'm closing your ticket”. I have disliked this verbiage from the second I heard it. Whenever I hear it used, I correct the person (I'm sure they find it annoying). A couple of weeks ago, I was on a call with a group of customers and heard, "my ticket was closed because of the three strikes rule." I hung my head, the three strikes rule sounds like punishment, and it has no place in customer service.
Still, we have SLA's, and we can't leave problems and request tickets open forever. In my view, it is all about our intent and our approach. About ten years ago, I reframed the three strikes rule for our teams. Instead of three strikes, we call it three good faith attempts. There is a difference. There is a mindset to deliver amazing service rather than an attitude to close all my tickets.
You may think this is just semantics. Is there really a difference in practice? You bet there is!
I have reviewed three strike tickets that have a documented email in the morning, an email in the afternoon, and an email in the evening. Didn't hear back? Close the ticket. The three strikes rule focused on simply getting rid of your tickets, not on exceptional customer service.
Three good faith attempts: Good faith attempts mean effort is applied and demonstrated that we want to resolve the issue for the customer. We define three good faith attempts as three documented contacts, three different ways, over a period of three days. This looks like a phone call, an email or chat, a walk by their office, an inquiry of when they will be working next, and an email documenting our contact attempts and stating when we will close the ticket if we don't hear back from them.
With three good faith attempts, the goal is problem resolution and an extraordinary customer experience, not a quick ticket closure. The next time you encounter a customer who hasn't responded to your assistance for help, I encourage you to take a different approach.
If you are in proximity to them, take a walk to their workspace
If you have their number reach out to them directly by phone
Use your work chat program to send them a direct chat
Call their department and ask for them
Document each of your attempts. If you don't connect with them and it's time to close the ticket, know that you did everything you could to reach them and solve their problem. In the final attempt, encourage the customer to call you directly when they are ready to resolve the issue.
Most of all, don't let your customer's experience with IT feel like the dejected batter who struck out. Instead, ensure they know you made good faith and reasonable attempts to help them. Let's leave the strikes rule on the baseball field, it has no place in customer service excellence.
