"Who was it?! Who's making us look bad?!"

The employee was furious at her coworkers, and she let everyone in the customer service training class know it.

I was facilitating the class. The night before, I had completed a mystery shop on five random employees at the client's request. The class was shocked when I revealed the dismal results. Nobody passed.

One employee failed to meet a single service standard. They completely ignored me as they rang up my transaction because they were too busy talking to a coworker.

The employee in class wouldn't relent. She was furious at this unknown coworker for failing the mystery shop and insisted I tell everyone who it was.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that it was her. She was the employee who had failed to meet a single service standard. If anyone was making the team look bad, she was the one doing it.

Her giant ego was crushing customer service.

Sadly, this is a common problem. Inflated egos often get in the way of our ability to serve others. Here are three signs that your giant ego could be crushing customer service, too.

Do you feel superior to customers?

Customer service can get derailed when one party feels superior to the other.

Employees bristle at self-important customers who insist that the customer is always right. That outdated viewpoint isn't even the original quote!

Yet some employees treat their customers with disdain. Just this past week, I've observed employees:

Yell at customers for being confused.
Look down at customers for needing help.
Talk to customers in a patronizing manner.

The angry employee in my class felt superior. She felt superior to her customers when she served me without ever interrupting her conversation with a coworker. Now, she felt superior to her coworkers when she angrily demanded the "culprit" reveal themselves.

I realized I had been feeling a little superior, too.

My client had asked me to do the mystery shops before my class, and it had seemed like a good idea at the time. My ego convinced me that it would be helpful to secretly evaluate employees before the class so they realized they had something to learn. (My client suspected the results wouldn’t go well.)

Now I realized that the mystery shops had changed the usual training dynamic. As a trainer, it's my job to help people grow. Those mystery shops positioned me as someone who was there to judge the employees.

Are you overconfident in your abilities?

It feels good to be an expert in your craft. That feeling is often well-deserved, but customer service employees can make mistakes when they're overconfident.

One example is the tragic death of Pebbles, an emotional support hamster whose untimely demise was set in motion by an overconfident employee who gave the wrong answer to a customer's question.

The employee in my class was clearly overconfident.

She couldn't imagine it would be her who made the mistake. The employee felt her service was perfection and it must have been someone else who was making the team look bad.

In retrospect, I realize I was overconfident, too.

Why had I agreed to my client's request without first thinking through the ramifications? How could I possibly not have foreseen this ugly situation that was now playing out in my class, where employees felt wounded and angry?

A giant ego can cloud your brain.

Are you stubborn?

Stubborn employees don't want to admit their mistakes. They look for ways to shift blame and often victimize customers or even their coworkers in the process.

How many times has an employee said one of these things to you?

That's not my job!
Who told you that?
They never tell us what's going on.

All of these are examples of deflecting ownership.

The angry employee in my class was stubborn. She wouldn't relent, even after I refused to point out who had failed the mystery shops and reiterated the goal was growth.

Here's where I finally put my own ego in check.

I now understood that the training participants saw the mystery shops as a gotcha. It breached trust and hurt learning. The angry employee's outburst didn't help.

That was the last time I did a mystery shop before facilitating a training class.

From that point forward, I switched to employee observations where employees knew in advance I was coming. I always told employees that I was observing them and why.

The big surprise?

Employees didn't conceal any problems or bad behavior. I still saw plenty of cringe-worthy service encounters. Yet I also gained valuable perspective on why employees acted the way they did.

Best of all, I built trust that made my classes much better.

Conclusion

We all have an ego. The trick is to know when your ego is getting in the way and put it in check before Carly Simon sings a customer service song about you.

One exercise that can help you put your ego in check is the Thank You Letter challenge. It's a powerful way of visualizing yourself helping someone else.

Here's how it works: