"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 That outdated viewpoint isn't even the original quote!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:

Write a thank you letter that you'd hope to receive from a customer.
Read the letter every day before starting work for three weeks.
Try to receive that same feedback from a real customer.

You can see more examples and even get free reminders to complete your own challenge.

Hubris created one of the funniest and saddest moments in my training career.

I had been hired to conduct customer service training for an airport parking operator. The night before the classes, I drove through some of the facilities to see whether employees were following the company's five service standards.

The results weren't good.

Only one out of five employees I visited demonstrated all of the service standards. The other employees only delivered on one or two. Most barely paid any attention to me.

I shared the overall results the next day in class. Employees were shocked. They had been convinced they were all doing it right, each and every time.

One woman was particularly upset. She asked me to point out which employees had failed. I refused because I didn't want to embarrass anyone, but she persisted.

She stood up and angrily asked, "Who was it? Who is making us look bad?"

I didn't have the heart to tell this woman that she was one of the employees I had shopped. She didn't recognize me because she had been too busy yacking with a co-worker while she served me.

This employee's overconfidence was comically bad. It was also sad that she didn't realize she was part of the problem.

Employees like this believe they're awesome when they clearly aren't. This post explores why overconfidence is a problem, how employees develop it, and what you can do about it.

The Overconfidence Problem

Overconfident employees believe service is a breeze. They think of themselves as rock stars who can virtually do no wrong.

When things do go wrong, overconfident employees are quick to blame someone else. Do any of these statements sound familiar?

"I'm awesome, but management doesn't have it's act together."
"I'm awesome, but our customers are a pain."
"I'm awesome, but my co-workers don't know what they're doing."

It's very difficult for overconfident employees to learn new techniques or improve their skills. They refuse to learn because they're stuck in the first phase on the learning curve, which is known as Unconscious Incompetent.

People in this stage don't know what they don't know. It's only when you progress to the next stage, called Conscious Incompetent, that you realize you don't know something. You won't learn something unless you think you need to learn it.

The transition from Unconscious Incompetent to Conscious Incompetent is called the Magic Window because it's essential to learning. Overconfident employees rarely make this transition.

How Does Overconfidence Happen?

Blame the Dunning Krueger effect.

It's a phenomenon where the less someone knows, the more they overrate their ability. David Dunning and Justin Krueger ran a series of experiments where people were asked to rate themselves on a topic and were then tested to see how good they really were.

The only group that didn't overrate their ability was the top 25 percent. Everyone else suffered from some degree of overconfidence. The people who scored in the bottom 25 percent were the most overconfident of them all.

The explanation is two-fold.

First, people with less knowledge, skill, and ability have a more difficult time distinguishing between good and bad performances. So, your overconfident customer service employee might not truly know what a good customer service rep looks like.

The second problem is the Magic Window problem. Overconfident employees don't feel they need to improve because they already think they're the cat's pajamas.

I've run a similar experiment several times.

I start by asking members of a customer service team to rate their own ability on a scale of 1 - 5, with 5 being highest. Next, I ask them to rate the team's overall ability on the same scale. The results are remarkably consistent:

Individual Average: 4.0
Team Average: 3.0

The math doesn't add up, but that's because nearly everyone thinks they're better than the group. Just like the Dunning Krueger experiments, the top performers typically underrate their ability just a tad.

This is a big reason why poor customer service performers don't benefit from customer service training, but good ones do.

Overcome Overconfidence

Many customer service leaders have overconfident employees. The good news is there are techniques that can help. The bad news is not every overconfident employee wants to be helped.

Here are a few things you can try.

Start by making sure employees have a clear definition of outstanding service, called a customer service vision. You can't help them become more awesome if you can't clearly define awesome.

Next, make sure they're getting feedback on their performance. It's often helpful to give overconfident employees the ability to self-diagnose.

Have them review their own calls, emails, chats, etc.
Ask them to self-assess against the customer service vision.
Invite employees to describe what they would do differently.

It's important to understand that some employees either can't or won't overcome their overconfidence. They'll continue to believe they're amazing despite strong evidence to the contrary.

Unfortunately, these employees might not be keepers. You may need to let them go if they are unwilling or unable to improve.