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I'm with most here in saying I don't think what's being referred to here is the case of bashing a CSR or front-line employee.
However, as a side issue, I understand what Katsunami is talking about. It's actually quite a challenge getting customer service and/or helpdesk departments running both cost-effectively/efficiently and delivering the right amount of service to the customer. I've been somewhat involved in that side of things from an IT operations point of view and you try to promote a balance without becoming a wooden automaton giving no real help to customers at all but filling the numbers, and someone who over-services meaning great service to one customer possibly at the expense of others.
I firmly believe that adding value should only be named 'over servicing' once the practice leads to an overall deterioration in service. But that's easier said than identified, both to the individual and quite often, to the supervisor, manager and even beyond. You can come across as totally hypocritical to the poor bugger answering the phones and sometimes, that person might be right. A lot depends on the quality of metrics being collected on the service and the skill behind the data analysis.
And this is not just a problem to customer facing staff in L1 support. It extends to L2 and L3 as well - and to other areas of organisations equally. It's one of the reasons I'm not overly fond of outsourcing - especially offshore outsourcing. It's difficult for an organisation to inherit all the ideals of a company they provide a service for enough to understand that company's customers. Separate the two groups by a country or six, or a an ocean or a cultural divide and it surely becomes more of a challenge. How do these organisations walk the tightrope between alienating and over-servicing customers? Usually they don't. They pick the side of efficiency because it's repeatable and cost-effective to maintain. It nicely ties in with SLAs they've negotiated with their customer (where customer satisfaction is often tied in with calls answered etc..), so they're relatively protected from criticism and they run their show with ruthless effectiveness, but are complained about often. I don't really envy these organisations either.
It's easy to blame CSRs, it's easy to blame managers, it's easy to blame policies. Basically, it's really easy to throw blame. It's much harder to actually solve problems - which is possibly why playing the blame game has such a strong appeal.
One of the things I like about the "?" approach (and I've received a few emails like that in my time) is that it's very non-specific. If you take it positively from the start, it's an opportunity to explore an issue you might not be aware of, find the appropriate pieces of data required to quantify and qualify it and then get to its root cause and a possible solution. It's smart from the point of view of the person who sends the "?" as well because it's not a pre-supposition of what the problem or solution is. You're allowing your team to use its expertise to advise you, rather than narrowing the parameters of their activities too much and perhaps limiting the value of the answer you receive. You can only really afford to do that if you can confidently claim that your knowledge and wisdom is infallible - and who can really say that?
I'm waxing philosophical a bit, but strangely enough, I do think about these kinds of things quite often.
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