How to get your customer service employees to be more proactive
"I want them to be more proactive."
The vice president was talking about his company's customer service team. His primary concern was customer retention. He worried that employees were too transactional and didn't work hard enough to retain customers.
He shared a number of examples.
Customer service reps didn't always see the big picture. They often failed to ask probing questions or use adequate listening skills. At times, reps sounded like robots mechanically going through the motions of service.
The executive was feeling pressure from his boss, the CEO, to improve customer retention. It was the key to the company's growth.
The customer service team needed to change if that was going to happen.
I asked a few questions to learn more about the situation. The solution slowly dawned on the vice president as he answered. To his credit, he realized the change needed to start with him.
Here are the questions I asked. They might prove useful to you, too.
How do you manage your team?
Customer service reps often become transactional because that's precisely how they're managed. Bosses reduce their work to a series of carefully defined transactions with a dashboard full of metrics to track each one.
I asked the executive how he managed his team. It was a broad question, but he immediately thought of metrics.
The most important metric to the vice president was the number of tickets processed. That's what the company called a customer service issue. A ticket was "opened" when a customer contacted the company for help. It was "closed" when the rep figured they'd solved the customer's issue.
This was very transactional stuff. A closed ticket signified the end of the transaction, but it didn't really tell you whether or not you retained the customer.
I asked the executive to share more about how the team was managed. He went back to metrics, and mentioned three key performance indicators (KPIs):
Wait time: how long customers had to wait for someone to answer the phone.
Hold time: how long customers had to wait if they had to be placed on hold.
CSAT: the results of an after-call customer satisfaction survey.
These KPIs all created problems.
They focused reps on speed, not customer retention. Reps rushed through calls to reduce wait time and were reluctant to put customers on hold, even if they didn't know the answer to a question. CSAT metrics are notoriously easy to manipulate.
As he answered, the executive realized that he wasn’t talking to his team about customer retention.
How do you train your team?
Transactional behavior is often rooted in how employees are trained. They learn to do their job as a series of transactions without ever understanding the big picture.
All of the training for this company's support team was transactional. It was a software company, so most of the training was technical. The rest focused on systems, policies, and processes.
Ironically, the customer service team wasn't trained on customer service. They were taught to quickly close tickets, not retain customers.
What is your customer service vision?
A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page. Having one gives your team a bigger picture to focus on while they serve customers.
The vice president's customer service team naturally defaulted to transactional behavior because the metrics used to manage the team were clearly defined, but the vision was not.
Everything revolved around closing tickets. It was assumed the team was doing well if the KPIs looked good, too. That's exactly what was drilled into them in training. It's what was discussed in team meetings and one-on-ones.
Yet there were big questions the vice president needed to answer if he wanted his customer service team to be more proactive.
Do reps know what proactive customer service looked like?
Do they understand the big picture focus on customer retention?
Do they know what they need to do to retain more customers?
A customer service vision could help answer all of those questions.
Conclusion
It's natural for employees to be transactional when that's how they're led. The journey to a customer-focused culture starts with leadership.
Do you have a clear vision? (If not, write one with this guide.)
Have employees been trained to be proactive?
Does your leadership encourage proactive behavior?
You can get a step-by-step plan for getting your team obsessed with service from The Service Culture Handbook. LinkedIn Learning subscribers can also access the video version of the book.