Fuzzy II: dealing with unclear requests from customers

By J. N. Halm

As a follow-up to the earlier-published piece on 30^th September 2024 where we look at employees making special requests of customers, this week’s piece also takes a look at the issue of fuzzy requests. However, this time the special requests will be those coming from the customer to the front-line employee.

The truth is that as competition continues to grow and customers become more and more aware of the options available to them, there are going to be more of these special requests.

Some customers would even attempt to take advantage of the buyers’ market we are in to make some of these requests. It is however true that there are many cases where the customer does not know that the said request is outside the ambit of the employee’s job description.

As defined in that 30^th September article, a fuzzy request is “slightly or somewhat outside company policy but not completely unacceptable or detrimental to the company.” Fuzzy requests are just outside what would be considered normal requests. In some cases, these are simply referred to as special requests—defined as requests that fall outside the normal job duties of the frontline employee.

These are requests that, by nature, require some careful consideration and evaluation on the part of the customer-handling employee before being responded to.

An example is a customer asking a food delivery dispatch rider to pick up another item on the same route while heading toward the customer’s location. It is not a request that is wrong in itself.

If the dispatch rider does the customer that favour, it would put the company in the good books of the customer. However, it is also not a normal request. The dispatch rider can decide not to honour the request and he (or she) would have been within his (or her) right. But that would not make the customer happy and this could lead to customer dissatisfaction.

The thing about these kinds of requests from customers is that they elicit what experts refer to as “extra-role behaviours”. These are defined as employee behaviours that go beyond their role prescriptions. Because these behaviours are mainly geared toward satisfying customers’ needs, they have also been described by some as “customer-oriented behaviours” or COBs.

These behaviours are normally not formally recognised and thus, they are not formally rewarded when performed. However, because they are not formally recognised, the employee is also not punished if he or she decides not to perform that particular role.

In the example above, the company would not punish the dispatch rider if she or he decides not to pick up the additional item along the route to the customer’s location. In other words, the discretion of the service employees comes into play when customers make special requests.

The subject of special requests from customers was studied in research reported in the May 2016 edition of the Journal of Service Research. The title of that study was “Frontline Service Employee Compliance with Customer Special Requests”.

Data was collected from employees, supervisors, and senior management of two large US firms. Of the two companies, one was an oil-change company and the other was a pest-control company.

This particular study found that customer special requests stemmed from four main categories of deficiencies. These were the limitations or restrictions that led customers to make special requests. There were found to be:

• Physical Resources: This is when a customer lacks a physical resource such as the manual strength (or even equipment or tool) to complete a task that is unrelated to the responsibility of the employee in question. An example is a customer requesting a food delivery guy to help move a piece of furniture.
• Knowledge: This occurs when the customer lacks some knowledge about the service. For instance, this is what would occur if the customer is unaware that the business does not operate at a particular time and therefore, makes a request for the business to open for him or her.
• Financial: This happens when the customer is unable or unwilling to pay for a particular service. A good and very common example is if a business does not offer free transportation with its products purchased but a customer is trying to get the business to transport the goods.
• Time: When a customer is hard-pressed for time, there is a tendency for that customer to make a special request of an employee. For instance, a busy customer can actually ask a bank employee to pass by the customer’s office or even home for money to deposit in that particular customer’s account.

The responses of employees to these special requests from customers were categorised into two. There are the Compliance factors. These are the motivations and abilities of the employee. In all of the cases where employees complied with a special request, it was for one of two reasons—the employee’s desire to be of help or the ease or ability to comply.

In the former case, employees just complied because they felt it was the right thing to do to help a fellow human. An employee in that situation could fall on the Golden Rule to offer help to the customer.

Sometimes, employees comply with special requests as a result of the company they work for. If the company truly values such behaviour, the employee would comply so that the company is placed in the best of lights in the eyes of the customer.

In the latter case, employees complied simply because they had the skills, know-how and proficiency to be of help. If a special request can easily be done without any special skill set, it has a greater probability of being done.

If a food delivery guy is asked by an elderly customer to change a light bulb, it might be the kind of special request that might be complied with. However, if that same customer were to ask the same delivery guy to help fix a malfunctioning electronic gadget, that is a request that might be refused.

There are also the Deterrent factors and these include policy or legal reasons, the potential risk involved in complying with the said requests as well as a lack of resources. These were the three common reasons why employees might refuse to comply with a customer’s special request. Sometimes, the refusal to comply was due to one reason, while at other times, it could be because of more than one reason.

The first reason was because the request was against company policy or was just illegal. It does not matter how much a customer service employee would want to offer help to a customer. If a special request is illegal, there is pretty little the employee can do about it. That request would be turned down, in all likelihood. It is therefore little wonder that this reason for refusal turns out to be the most prevalent among all the other reasons.

The second reason why employees would not acquiesce to a special request from a customer was because the employee did not have the time, energy or ability to comply. Also, if the business did not offer the services being requested, then the employee was most likely going to turn down the request.

The third reason why employees would turn down a request is if complying would present some sort of risk, liability or safety issue with either the employee, the company or both parties. If going out on a limb for a customer would end up in a lawsuit against the employee or the company, then that request might not be granted. There are instances where complying could even present a risk to the customer making the request.

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