Five reasons why we struggle to achieve our goals
I talk to a lot of people who are trying to improve customer service.
It's a diverse group, including CEOs, executives, middle managers, team leads, and frontline employees. Their challenges are individual, but they all struggle.
Many have received conflicting advice. It's hard to know where to start.
Fortunately, I've done the research for you. Peter Gollwitzer, a professor in the Psychology Department at New York University, gave me a treasure trove of studies on achieving goals.
I've combined them with my own experience talking to thousands of customer service professionals.
Here are the top five reasons why we don't achieve our goals (and what you can do about it.)
Reason #1: Your goals are too vague
An analysis of 422 scientific studies involving 82,107 participants found that having a clear goal accounted for 28 percent of success.
Let's do a demonstration. Grab your phone and open up the maps app. Ask the app to give you directions to a generic restaurant.
Not a specific place. A generic restaurant.
Obviously, that doesn't work. The app even makes helpful suggestions in an attempt to get you to make a decision.
We face the same problem when it comes to achieving goals—it's impossible to get started without a specific destination.
The fix is simple: set concrete goals.
Imagine shipping delays are your biggest source of customer complaints. Your on-time rate is 85 percent, which means 15 out of 100 orders are late. Process 1,000 orders per day and you're getting 150 daily complaints.
A goal to "reduce complaints" is too squishy.
Order delivery is the real problem in this scenario. A more specific goal, such as "reduce late deliveries by 50 percent in 30 days" would make it much easier to get started and track your progress.
Need help crafting specific goals? Trying using this guide.
Reason #2: Not starting
It’s exhilarating to set a challenging goal. That’s as far as many people get. Many never get started making progress toward achieving it.
Sometimes, we tell ourselves we're too busy.
One executive created a set of ambitious goals at an executive retreat. She promptly set her goals aside the moment she returned to the office. "We have a lot going on right now," she told me. "We're just trying to catch up."
Other times, we just forget.
A customer service rep attended a workshop on serving angry customers. That was a Thursday. He didn't encounter an upset customer until the following Monday, when his old behaviors instinctively kicked in and the lessons learned in training were lost.
The solution is to create a specific plan to get started.
One study on goal completion discovered that just 22 percent of participants completed a difficult goal when they did not have a plan. That number rose to 62 percent when participants created an action plan.
Reason #3: You get derailed
It's hard to block out distractions when you're trying to achieve a goal. Old habits are hard to break. Conflicts arise between new goals and existing routines.
A CEO delegated a service culture initiative to his leadership team. They got started with a lot of fanfare, but the CEO never checked in on them.
Instead, he kept piling on new projects and assignments. The team prioritized the new work and the service culture initiative was soon set aside.
It's not just a lack of checking in that derails our project. Customer service professionals are overly tired and distracted.
The solution is to identify your own blindspots and solve for them ahead of time.
For example, I do my best writing in the morning, but I know checking email and social media will distract me. So I start the day by writing and don't check messages until mid-morning.
Reason #4: You don't recognize a bad plan
Some plans are destined to fail. And when that realization sets in, many of us instinctively stick with the plan.
One executive lamented about how much time his team had spent on a failed initiative. He was determined to press on, even though it wasn't working.
He struggled to get over the time and effort already spent.
A customer service manager invested in new technology for her team. The technology made things worse, not better. The manager stuck with it anyway because she felt she had to justify the expense.
Don't be afraid to reset when you see your plan isn't working. That's why I recommend doing regular business reviews.
Reason #5: You get overextended
We're overwhelmed with initiatives, projects, and to-do items. More gets added constantly. Interruptions never end.
Take a look at your own to-do list. Ask yourself these questions:
What will actually get done today?
How many items get bumped or ignored?
How many items will get added to the list?
For many of us, this simple analysis makes it clear why we fail. We're trying to do too much.
One executive created a host of committees to improve customer service. There was a culture committee, a customer obsession committee, an operational excellence committee, and an employee engagement committee.
Nobody knew exactly where one committee started and the other ended. They didn't have clear goals, but they did have endless meetings.
Nothing got done.
Focusing on one thing at a time is the counterintuitive solution to getting more done. One client of mine, Clio, won an award for best contact center culture by relentlessly focusing on one step at a time. Leaders would not move on to the next initiative until the last initiative was completed.
Conclusion
We can achieve more goals. Set your next customer service initiative up for success by addressing these questions:
What is the goal?
What is my plan to achieve it?
How can I make the goal easier to achieve?
When will I review my plan?
Why is this goal a priority?