Emotions: the next frontier in customer service efficiency

It's not always easy to act happy.

Many frontline customer service jobs have two things in common. First, the pay is low with many starting at minimum wage. Second, they require a high degree of emotional labor.

The market for emotional labor may be cheap, but it’s also woefully inefficient. 

I know it’s hard to make a business case for making your people feel better, but there’s always money to be made in efficiency. Companies love efficiency. This post explores how companies use emotional labor ineffeciently, the high costs associated with this problem, and explores some possible solutions.

What is emotional labor?

Here’s a brief explanation of emotional labor from a recent blog post about why customer service reps aren’t friendly:

“Emotional labor is a term initially coined by Arlie Hochschild in her 1983 book, The Managed Heart. It refers to the effort required to display appropriate workplace emotions, such as friendliness and enthusiasm. The amount of emotional labor required is based on the difference between the emotions an employee is expected to display, and the emotions an employee actually feels.”

Think about the emotional labor that’s often required in customer service. Employees are expected to convey positive emotions to customers regardless of whether they actually feel this way. They must even remain calm and professional even when a customer treats them as a verbal punching bag and avoid taking it personally.

If you’ve ever worked in customer service, you know this isn’t always easy.

Cheap, but not efficient

A 2004 study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that emotional labor is inversely correlated to hourly wages. The higher the level of emotional labor a job requires, the less that job is likely to pay. Examples come from customer service employees as well as other professions such as social workers, bill collectors, and 911 operators. 

Customer service employees don’t get paid much to act happy.

Cheap doesn’t necessarily mean efficient. There are also substantial costs associated with high degrees of emotional labor. These costs may offset or even surpass any savings associated with low wages. 

Here are just a few examples from high-stress customer service jobs:

• Turnover. It costs a lot to hire and train employees, even cheap ones.
• Absenteeism. Extra employees are required when people call out.
• Productivity. People get less done when they feel emotionally drained.
• Customer Satisfaction. Service quality suffers when emotions run high.

All of these costs negatively impact profitability.

Improving emotional labor efficiency 

Companies often improve efficiency by finding ways to reduce consumption. This strategy works brilliantly for emotional labor. Happy employees require less effort to project the right customer service personality.

Employee engagement is the key to reducing your emotional labor consumption. Engaged employees are overwhelmingly happy in their jobs. They are also highly committed to helping the company achieve its goals. 

Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace Report found that having engaged employees greatly reduced the costs associated with high emotional labor requirements. On average:

• Turnover is 25% lower
• Absenteeism is 37% lower
• Productivity is 21% higher
• Customer Satisfaction is 10% higher
• Profitability is 22% higher

That's the business case. Your executives won't listen to a touchy-feely argument about employee happiness, but you'll capture their attention when you start the conversation with numbers they care about. Efficiency is efficiency.

Improving employee engagement isn’t easy, but I’ve assembled a short reading list to help you get started.

• This post on the using the Employee Engagement Cycle will give you a strategic view of employee engagement. There’s even a short quiz to help you start the conversation.

• Some customers require an unreasonable amount of emotional labor from your employees. Consider asking them to take their business elsewhere. Seth Godin has a nice and simple explanation.

• Customer service leaders in low-margin industries like Trader Joe’s and Costco have found it’s more efficient to pay a higher wage so they can attract better employees. This post explores whether you should consider giving your employees a raise.

When I wrote my customer service book, Service Failure, it took me some time to find the right words to end the final chapter. I finally found a sentence that I think applies here quite well:

Above all else, customer service leaders must remember that while customer service can be difficult, their job is to make great performance easy.

Keep that in mind when you are working with your employees. What can you do to make it easy for them to be happy?

Why experience can be a liability in customer service

The legendary Tommy at the Strathisla Distillery in Scotland. 

In customer service, as in many aspects of life, experience is prized. It’s asked for in job ads, touted in advertising, and used to headline resumes. “I’ve got experience” is said with pride.

There are even cautionary tales about undervaluing experience. Circuit City famously fired its most experienced employees in a last ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy. It failed.

As terrific as experience is, it can also be a liability in customer service. That's because there are certain situations where experience can make service failures more likely to happen. Here are three reasons why:

#1 The Video We’ve Seen Before

There’s an incredible video on YouTube that highlights research on a phenomenon called selective attention. Watch the video below first before reading further or skip it if you’ve seen it before. (Click here to view it on YouTube if it doesn’t appear on your screen.)

Pretty crazy, right? 

The researchers have since published a second video highlighting their research. Take a look at this one and see how you do the second time around. (Click here to view it on YouTube if it doesn’t appear on your screen.)

How did you do? 

For most of us, the experience we gained by watching the first video inhibited our ability to spot new changes in the second video. We became locked in, delighted that our experience let us in on the trick until it turned out that really wasn’t the trick at all.

Experience often works the same way in customer service. We develop a laser focus on what we know while missing new opportunities to serve.

#2 Lightning fast recognition

I once wrote a post explaining why listening to customers is harder than you think. The problem gets amplified for experienced employees.

Our brain has the amazing ability to make sense of large amounts of data by comparing it to familiar patterns. It’s how we recognize familiar faces or even read written words. 

You've probably seen this famous example involving misspelled words: 

People can easliy raed misspleled wrods as long as all the lettres are there and the fisrt and lsat letters are in the corerct position.

This pattern recognition ability can also cause problems for experienced customer service employees. If they’ve heard the same story 100 times before their brain will quickly sense a familiar pattern. Listening stops as their brain instinctively anticipates the rest of the story. 

The experienced brain often anticipates correctly, but not always. This ability can be a problem when the brain automatically cuts off listening and returns the wrong answer. 

#3 Everyone loves Tommy

My wife and I visited the Strathisla Distillery in Scotland last year where we met a man named Tommy. He had made Scotch for years until he retired and moved to the visitor center. We couldn't pass up a chance to snap a photo of Tommy holding a bottle of 12 year old Scotch that he had made years before. Tommy was a legend.

We recently dined at a restaurant that also had an employee named Tommy. This Tommy had worked there for 45 years. His official role seemed to be schmoozing with guests and telling stories. Everyone loved Tommy.

A lot of companies have a Tommy. He or she has worked there for years and knows all the ins and outs. Tommy is beloved by customers, co-workers, and even the boss. 

There’s also a downside to all this deference to Tommy. Sometimes, Tommy slips a bit or has a bad day. Perhaps he starts taking his role for granted or, like all of us, he needs a little feedback to stay on course. 

However, unlike everyone else, Tommy doesn’t get this feedback. He isn’t held accountable. Nobody wants to hurt Tommy’s feelings.

Overcoming the experience problem

Customer service leaders should prize all the good qualities that come with experience while helping to minimize the obstacles that come with it. Here are a few suggestions:

• Turn them into trainers and mentors. Taking knowledge they know like the back of their hand and explaining it to someone else allows them to see it from a new perspective. Plus, less experienced employees will gain from their wisdom.

• Teach new tricks. One way to overcome the problem of familiar patterns is to give experienced employees new assignments and special projects. This challenges them in new ways and slows down the problem of familiar patterns.

• Suck it up and go there with Tommy. You don't want to upset Tommy. I get it. But there's a good chance Tommy will appreciate a little feedback and coaching if he's approached with the proper amount of respect. Make it clear that Tommy’s experience and wisdom is valued, but be firm about the expected performance.

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How could they miss that?!

How could they miss these obvious housekeeping issues? 

I recently spent the night in a budget hotel. It had all the features you might expect such as a clean bed, a decent television, complimentary breakfast, and free WiFi. The room also had a number of housekeeping and cleanliness issues that really detracted from the experience. 

It made me wonder, how could they miss that?

Before I give you a rundown of possible explanations, check out my short video tour that highlights some of the problems in the room. (Click here to view it on YouTube if you don’t see the embedded video.) 

It’s obvious that these housekeeping issues shouldn’t happen, but they did. The real question is why? It’s important to understand the potential root causes of these types of service failures if you want to prevent them.

Here are some possibilities:

• The housekeeper wasn’t properly trained.
• The housekeeper doesn’t care about doing a good job.
• Productivity standards make the housekeeper feel pressured to take shortcuts.
• The hotel doesn’t have clear standards and SOPs for housekeeping.
• A supervisor never inspects the room to observe the housekeeper’s performance.
• Budget constraints are used as an excuse for letting little issues slide.
• The housekeeper doesn’t feel it’s their job to report maintenance issues.
• Maintenance waits for housekeepers to report maintenance issues.
• The supervisor rarely if ever reminds housekeepers about the importance of cleanliness.

Those explanations are all plausible. Here’s one that’s not:

The hotel somehow assigned the only room that had housekeeping and maintenance issues to a customer service consultant who blogs about the root cause of service failures. 

I’m a big believer in the iceberg theory, which means that many other rooms probably had similar issues.

Sadly, the problems I highlighted in the video weren’t the only issues I experienced. My electronic room key didn’t work when I first got to the room, so I had to go back to the front desk after checking in. The television didn’t work either, so I had to call for maintenance. I showed the broken ironing board to the guy who came to fix the television and all he said was that he’d make a note of it. 

Gee, thanks.

Here’s one more explanation that reminds me of my very first post on this blog.

The hotel was in a small town and only had a few competitors. It’s possible that the hotel’s management didn’t feel it was worth their time to invest in luxuries such as removing hair from the bathroom since guests didn’t have many other options.

Whatever the explanation, these small issues could end up hurting business. Here are just a few ways this hotel might see profits take a dive:

• Negative online reviews. Their online reputation is decent, but there are a number of complaints about cleanliness issues on Trip Advisor. That could be enough to encourage guests to stay somewhere else.

• Corporate accounts. I was traveling to visit a client and this hotel was my client’s preferred lodging. My client is one of the biggest companies in town and no doubt a major source of revenue for the hotel. Too many complaints from people like me could cause my clients to send people to a competitor.

• Negative WOM. Having a blog that three or four people read on a semi-regular basis gives me a platform for spreading bad news about a company. I won’t name this particular hotel because doing so wouldn’t fit my personal policy for calling out companies, but what if I did?
  

5 Reasons Why Angry Customers Don't Complain

Customer complaints are a valuable source of information. They let us know when a customer is unhappy so we can try to retain their business. Complaints can also serve as an early warning system that helps prevent service failures by allowing us to fix small problems before they become big ones.

A lack of complaints doesn’t mean things are going well.

Noted customer service expert, John Goodman, estimates that only 50 percent of customers will complain about a problem. (The actual number varies by industry, company, and product.) Of those complaints, Goodman estimates that 90 percent are directed to frontline employees. In a recent post, I discussed reasons why frontline employees don’t pass along those complaints to management.

What about the other 50 percent who don’t complain at all?

This is the really scary group. They silently take their business elsewhere or they tell everyone they know (except for you) about your poor service. The damage to your reputation and your bottom line could be well underway before you even know about it.

Here are five reasons why these customers might not be sharing their complaints with you.

Does your company discourage customer complaints?

#1: It’s too difficult

Most customers won’t bother complaining to your company if it’s too difficult. Or, they’ll just Tweet it. 

I recently went online to register an LG television I had just purchased. Their registration link redirected me to the wrong page so I had to hunt around on the LG website for the correct page. This was a minor annoyance, but I’m an LG fan, so I decided to let them know.

First, I tried to email. If you want to email LG you have to fill in 14 required fields in their email contact form plus acknowledge that you’ve read and agree to their data protection policy. No thanks.

One of those Forsee website surveys popped up as I clicked out of the email form. I thought about giving that a try until I saw the survey. It consisted of 36 questions, 24 of which were required. Really?!

I just wanted to tell LG about a small problem on their website, but they made it too difficult to be worthwhile. I decided to Tweet the problem to LG instead. Their responsive Twitter folks quickly got the message and fixed the link, but my complaint was now public rather than private.

If you want your customers to complain, don’t make it so difficult that they feel like they’re being punished for trying to drop you a line.

#2: No confidence

Many customers don’t complain because they don’t think it will do any good.

Psychotherapist Guy Winch called these “self-defeating, self-fulfilling prophecies” in The Squeaky Wheel, his how-to guide for effective complaining. We don’t believe complaining will do any good so we don’t complain. Because we don’t complain, the problem doesn’t get fixed. Because the problem doesn’t get fixed, we continue to be angry with the company that’s responsible.

#3: Afraid of the outcome

Some customers don’t complain because they’re worried it will negatively impact an otherwise good relationship.

I learned about this one from my friend Lenore. She and her husband had received poor service at one of their favorite restaurants. They thought about complaining, but were worried that the owner would back his employee rather than see it their way. In the end, they chose to write off a new employee’s rude behavior as a one-time occurrence because they didn’t want a complaint to escalate to the point where they felt like they wouldn’t return.

#4: Fear of retribution

You won’t get many complaints if customers feel they’ll be penalized in some way.

Complaining customers have been treated rudely, denied service, or worse. It only takes one gross YouTube video to convince customers to never, ever, complain about their pizza. Patrons of Amy’s Baking Company Boutique & Bistro in Scottsdale, Arizona were recently subjected to a barrage of profane verbal assaults in what BuzzFeed called the most epic Facebook meltdown ever. In one extreme case, a San Francisco bookstore owner tracked down the writer of a negative Yelp review and went to his house where she allegedly assaulted him. 

#5: Nothing to gain

Customers won’t complain because there’s nothing in it for them. 

This is often the case with rude service. Customers aren’t trying to get a refund or have a defective product repaired. They simply feel slighted by a rude employee. Why take time to complain if they can just take their business somewhere else?

How can you encourage complaints?

Start by making complaining easy. Whittle down those 14 fields on your contact form to just three: name, email address, and message. Skip the never-ending surveys and stick with a few simple questions. Be available.

Next, encourage customers to complain. Make sure none of the obstacles detailed above are present. Ask them directly, “How was everything?” Actually give a damn about the answer.

Finally, take action. Prove to your customers that their complaint was worth their time. Resolve their issue. Thank customers for their feedback rather than lashing out or making excuses. After all, they’ve just helped you make your business better.

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Why employees don't pass along customer complaints

Are your employees silent about customer complaints?

Continuously improving customer service seems simple in theory. All you have to do is listen to what customers complain about and then solve their problems. The really sophisticated companies employ early warning systems to spot complaints before too many customers are affected.

Unfortunately, the most critical link in this process is often its weakest: frontline employees.

Noted customer service expert John Goodman estimates that 90 percent of complaints are directed to frontline employees. That makes them a great source of information about what makes customers unhappy. The problem is that these complaints often aren’t passed along to someone who could take action.

Here’s a passage from my book, Service Failure, that addresses reasons employees might not pass along complaints:

If employees aren’t at fault, you might expect them to take action to resolve the problem or pass the complaint along to someone who can address the issue. But what if handling the complaint isn’t in an employee’s best interests? 

There are several explanations for why an employee might not want to address a customer complaint or pass it along to management: 

• The employee fears being reprimanded for causing the complaint.
• The employee thinks the complaint will not be properly addressed by management, so sharing the information is a waste of time.
• The employee views handling the problem as an annoyance or inconvenience.
• The employee believes he was treated poorly by the customer, so intentionally mishandling the complaint is a means to exact revenge.

If you want complaints, you’ve gotta ask

I used to think I possessed some sort of magical charm that would get employees to open up to me. Many of my consulting assignments require me to gather information through employee interviews. Time after time, my client’s executives would be surprised at what I was able to learn through my conversations with their frontline team.

The reality is I don’t have any magical powers. Employees open up to me because I do two things their managers typically don’t.

1. I ask them for their input.
2. I offer to work with them to make things better.

Employees, like customers, want to be heard. Most genuinely want to make things better. They just need to be given that chance.

Unfortunately, too many customer service leaders solve problems by brainstorming with each other in closed-door meetings. The unsaid message to the frontlines is “the grown-ups are talking” and the team should hold tight until the next proclamation is made. 

Do you want to get your employees to pass along those complaints? Make a habit of asking them what their customers are saying. Better yet, ask them what they think we should do about it. Involve them in creating and implementing solutions.

Frontline employees are one of the best sources of voice of customer feedback. Can you afford to ignore them?

Why customer service reps aren't friendly

Why is it so hard for customer service reps to be friendly?

This post originally appeared on the Salesforce Blog. You can also read my latest Salesforce blog post, " How detoxing our brains can improve customer service."

Friendliness is a basic expectation for employees serving customers. It doesn’t cost anything and isn’t really a skill that needs to be trained. So why do we still receive unfriendly service over and over again?

I remember walking into a furniture store with my wife, Sally. There was a cluster of employees having a conversation at one end of the store when we arrived. Nobody stopped to greet us. We didn’t see anything exciting so we decided to leave after a few minutes.

One of the employees finally approached us as we left. “Can I help you?” he said tersely. No thanks, we’re just leaving. The employee obviously sensed that a lack of service had hastened our exit. “Hey! We’ve been here for 12 hours! Give us a break!”

Sally and I noticed a sign in the window for the first time as we left the store:

Going out of business sale! Everything must go!

We had a good laugh as we imagined we might have just identified the cause of the store’s demise.

The root cause of unfriendly service

It’s easy to get stuck thinking about what employees like the guy at the furniture store should have done. I think that answer is obvious. A more important question is why wasn’t he friendly?

One explanation is something called emotional labor.

Emotional labor is a term initially coined by Arlie Hochschild in her 1983 book, The Managed Heart. It refers to the effort required to display appropriate workplace emotions, such as friendliness and enthusiasm. The amount of emotional labor required is based on the difference between the emotions an employee is expected to display, and the emotions an employee actually feels.

Simply put, it’s hard to be friendly if you don’t feel friendly.

Let’s go back to the furniture store. The employees were likely to lose their jobs after the store closed. It was difficult to take pride in their store since the merchandise grew less and less appealing as inventory was sold off. The employees felt tired from working long hours for a losing cause. It’s easy to imagine that they didn’t feel particularly friendly that day. This doesn’t excuse the poor service we received, but understanding the employees’ perspective does explain why it might have happened.

There are plenty of reasons why employees might not feel friendly. Upset customers, heavy workloads, demanding bosses, and poor products can all make an employee feel frustrated. This says nothing about what types of stress may be going on in employees’ personal lives. “Leave your problems at home” is simplistic advice that’s much easier said than done.

Contact centers often provide a great example of a work environment that can bring many of these factors together. Agents may feel frustration sinking in when they serve irate customer after irate customer. At the same time, their boss is breathing down their neck demanding greater productivity while monitoring their every move, even bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, agents might feel powerless to solve many of the problems they encounter that are caused by defective products or poorly designed processes.

Some employees just don’t like their jobs and feel miserable every day they go to work. I recently talked to a customer service employee who had great skills but a sour attitude. She confided in me that she absolutely hated her job! She had been hired into another position, which she liked, but her boss recognized her obvious talent by promoting her into a new role she couldn’t stand.

How to help service employees be friendlier

The best customer service leaders make it easy for employees to be friendly.

It starts by setting a positive example. Employees are much more likely to be friendly when they have a boss who is friendly, kind, and treats them with respect. On the other hand, gruffly telling employees to “act happier or you’ll be written up” rarely has the desired effect.

Another important strategy is hiring employees who will be happy to do what you want them to do. A company that sells covers for boats and RVs hired a boating enthusiast to work in their small customer service department. She was an immediate hit with her customers since she loved the job and could relate to the products. Her positive attitude even influenced an unfriendly co-worker who improved her own demeanor after working with the new employee.

Finally, involve employees in finding solutions to your toughest customer service challenges. This works in two ways. First, employees feel more empowered when they are able to give meaningful input on how to serve customers better. Second, working with upset customers requires a great deal of emotional labor so fixing the problems that upset customers naturally makes the job easier.

How to work faster with less knowledge

Employees can have a hard time memorizing data and often forget important information.

My last blog post shared four ways that memorization can hurt employee performance. Now, I’d like to share a few solutions for overcoming this obstacle.

The trick is to allow employees to rapidly access vital information without having to memorize it. There’s an amusing anecdote about Albert Einstein that illustrates this point. I don’t even know if this story is true, but I like it just the same.

According to the story, a colleague once asked Einstein for his phone number. Einstein surprised his colleague by reaching for a telephone directory and looking it up. The colleague asked, “You don’t even know your own phone number?” To which Einstein famously responded, “Why should I memorize something that I can look up in a book?”

We can modernize this quote a little bit, but the principle still stands:

Never memorize something that you can easily look up.

I recently discovered a great example of how to do this while walking my dog on San Diego’s Harbor Island. We came across a strange contraption and I wanted to know more about it.

There was a small sign on the side that briefly described the contraption and then provided a QR code for additional information. With a click of my smart phone I was able to access a wealth of knowledge.

Scanning the QR code takes you to a website that explains all about this experimental wind turbine.

This allowed me to satisfy my curiosity. It also allowed me to retain the information without having to memorize it. All I had to do was scan the QR code again to quickly re-access the information. 

QR codes are a great method of quickly connecting people to information so they don’t have to memorize it. Here are some examples of places where a QR code might be helpful:

• On a piece of equipment to allow a repair technician to access a repair manual. 
• On a product display to allow a customer service rep (or a customer) to access more product information. 
• On a bulletin board to allow employees to access more information about an announcement.

You can get even more ideas for QR codes from Larry Straining’s book, 111 Creative Ways to use QR codes.

QR codes aren’t the only way to help employees avoid memorization. Here are a few other ways you can give employees access to the right information at the right time.

Signs

Sometimes instructions are so simple you just need a sign. I once helped a client solve a security problem by suggesting a small sign above the intercom they used to screen visitors to a secure office. Employees weren’t following the proper procedure because used it infrequently and often forgot. The sign made it easy to do things correctly.

Job Aids

A job aid is a quick-reference guide that simplifies information. Employees in the parking office of a large university hand out campus maps to visitors and use a pen to draw a suggested route. The map is a great job aid that helps both the employee and the customer! Joe Willmore’s Job Aids Basics is an excellent resource.

Performance Support Systems

These tools embed necessary information into the workflow. I bet you know how to use an ATM machine even though you’ve never taken an ATM machine training class. That’s because the instructions are embedded in the machine. Many software programs use this same approach by walking users through step-by-step instructions. There are even services such as WalkMe that will provide customers with step-by-step guidance to navigate through procedures on your website.

Knowledge bases

Wikipedia may be the ultimate knowledge base since it allows you to look up just about anything. Many companies have their own specialized knowledge base where employees can enter search terms to find product information, policies, documents, and other resources on the company intranet or website.

Brain power is a precious resource

There’s a limit to how much our employees’ brains can process. As with any limited resource, we want to conserve it. That means eliminating waste while allowing our employees’ brains to focus on important tasks like serving customers, solving problems, or increasing productivity.

Memorization is just one source of brain waste. Here are a few other resources to explore.

• Boost performance with scenario-based training
• How detoxing our brains can improve customer service
• Why multitasking hurts customer service

4 Ways Memorization Hurts Performance

Employees need to know a lot of stuff. 

They must know their company’s policies, procedures, products, service standards, customer preferences, and leadership prerogatives. They must keep up with training, meetings, phone calls, hallway conversations, emails, texts, chats, postings, and signs. Today’s correct answer is tomorrow’s outdated content as employees are deluged with an endless flow of updates, bulletins, and change of plans.

Keeping it all straight requires a lot of memorization.

Unfortunately, our memories aren’t the ideal location to store the large volumes of complex information needed to do our jobs. Here are four ways that memorization can actually hurt performance.

#1: Memorization takes time

Memorization is a time consuming process. In his book, Creative Training Techniques, training guru Bob Pike suggests that new information typically needs to be reinforced six times for it to be retained. Pike further elaborates that knowledge retention activities must require some form of learner interaction to truly be effective.

The time consuming nature of memorization leaves many managers with a dilemma. On one hand, they can take shortcuts in their communication with employees, but this often results in employees forgetting important information. On the other hand, they can devote the time necessary to help employees memorize and retain key knowledge, but today’s busy managers rarely have this kind of time.

#2: Our memories don't update easily

Information changes constantly. Even if you take the time and effort to memorize important facts, you will have to repeat the process all over again when those facts change. It gets even more complicated when a team of employees must memorize new information since some people may continue working with the old information.

Frequent travelers provide an excellent glimpse into what happens when you have to regularly replace old information with new information. Road warriors often rent similar looking cars. Is it the silver Cruze or the blue Impala this week? The key information (Which rental car am I driving?) changes so frequently that its hard to keep straight. 

It’s not uncommon for business travelers to get into the wrong vehicle when hotel valets deliver several cars at once on a busy morning. 

#3: Memories are unreliable

Our memories are notoriously unreliable. They may fail us completely, or worse, cause us to produce the wrong answer with absolute certainty. In one experiment, researchers found that 40 percent of subjects recalled viewing footage of a terrorist attack in London even though the footage didn’t exist.

Our unreliable memories can prevent employees from being on the same page. I remember once renting a car where I used a pre-paid voucher to cover the cost of the rental. The employee who processed the rental confidently told me that I needed to turn in the voucher when I returned the car. The employee who processed my return confidently told me I should have provided the voucher when I rented the car. One of these two obviously misremembered the correct procedure, but both were absolutely certain they were right.

#4: Memories are use it or lose it

Facts and figures require repetition to remain easily accessible. Information we use often is easily be recalled without effort.  Information we use infrequently or haven’t needed for a long time is difficult to recall. 

An example I like to give is the high school locker combination. Most of us had a PE or book locker in high school. Back then, opening the locker took just a few seconds. We opened the locker one or more times every day so the combination was easy to recall. Today, most of us wouldn’t be able to remember the combination at all. Why? Because it has been so long since we’ve needed that information that it’s no longer readily accessible.

What’s the solution?

Stay tuned for my next blog post where I’ll provide some simple solutions to overcome the memorization dilemma. However, I can give you one hint now.

Overcoming the memorization obstacle requires us to rethink our objective. 

We ask employees to memorize information so they can quickly apply information to their jobs. What if there was an alternative way for employees to rapidly access this information?

Boost performance with scenario based training

Note: This article originally appeared on ICMI.com. It focuses on new hire training for call centers, but the principles can be adapted to many other environments.  

New hire training represents a significant investment for many call centers with typical training times ranging from two to six weeks or even more. It can also require a delicate balance. Train too little and employees will underperform, require too much supervision, or even quit in frustration. Train too much and you waste valuable time and money.

Scenario-based training is an accelerated learning technique that has the potential to deliver the best of both worlds. It allows you to train new hires faster and get better performance once they’re on the job. It works by solving some of the biggest limitations of the traditional approach to call center training. 

The Traditional Approach

Many call centers currently train their new hires using what’s called the building block method. It works by breaking down various job-related tasks into smaller learning blocks that are relatively easy for employees to learn. For example, a new employee might first learn to use the company’s CRM system, next learn about the company’s products, and finally learn how to interact with customers in a positive manner.

It’s relatively easy to design training using the building block approach, but there are also some substantial limitations. 

The first is integration. Individual skills are trained separately, but they are used together on the job. Employees often experience a sort of mental gridlock, known as cognitive overload, when they first put all of these new skills together while taking live or simulated calls. This slows them down and makes them more prone to errors. 

The second limitation is timing. New skills must be repeated frequently in order to become second nature. The building block approach can prevent this from happening because some skills are trained early on in the program and then not revisited until days or even weeks later when the employee prepares to take live calls. This often requires additional training or coaching to remind employees of previous lessons.

Scenario-based Training

Scenario-based training works by structuring training to mirror how the job is actually performed. Each lesson is introduced via a realistic scenario that requires employees to utilize a variety of skills simultaneously. For example, one scenario might be a customer calling to check on an order. A new hire must look-up the customer’s order in the CRM system while applying their product knowledge to answer questions and using appropriate customer service skills to role-play the conversation. The scenarios are all modeled after the call center’s quality assurance guidelines so new hires practice handling calls correctly from Day 1.

The scenarios are arranged in order of increasing complexity so that each one introduces a new skill while building on what has already been learned. After learning to respond to a simple “Where’s my order?” scenario, a new hire might be asked to tackle a situation where a customer received the wrong item. The added advantage is the skills that are used most often, such as answering the phone properly, are drilled to perfection throughout the training.

The initial pace of a scenario-based training program is very slow. The first few scenarios take a long time because the new hire must learn a lot of basic skills such as the proper phone greeting and how to look up customer records in the CRM. The pace improves with each successive scenario as employees become proficient with the basic skills. Eventually, the training becomes very fast-paced as employees master the ability to quickly handle new scenarios.

Success Stories

Scenario-based training can often reduce new hire training time by 25 to 50 percent. I first discovered this concept as a call center training supervisor in the late 90s when I was given a mandate to cut down new hire training time. One of our new hire training programs took 15 days; 10 classroom days plus up to 5 more days taking live calls with a coach present to provide intensive support. The scenario-based training approach allowed us to reduce the training to just 10 days; 6 classroom days plus 4 days taking live calls with a coach. This created a substantial savings for the call center but also enabled it to be more nimble when staffing up to meet rising call volumes.

Performance also improves with scenario-based training because it eliminates the waste inherent the building block approach while still improving the learning process. One call center implementing this method found their first group of new hires exceeded the call center’s QA score average within a week after training. Another call center reduced average handle time by 10% after implementing scenario-based training.

Getting Started

Moving to a scenario-based learning approach requires a little bit of upfront effort, but the savings and improved performance is more than worthwhile in the long run. 

Step 1: Identify performance requirements

Start by identifying the performance required of a fully trained employee. The training program should focus on helping new hires meet these targets. If you don’t already have a clear standard for a fully trained employee, you can look to your quality assurance standards for guidance. 

Step 2: Create Scenarios

Outline a list of progressively difficult scenarios that cover at least 90 percent of the calls agents are likely to receive. You can learn this information by reviewing call-type reports, listening to calls, and enlisting the help of your most experienced agents.

The sequencing is especially important since you want to introduce new skills in each scenario, but also use scenarios to build on skills that were previously learned. Be sure to vary the customer’s demeanor in each scenario too, since not all customers will be happy and easy to assist.

Step 3: Develop Materials

Now it’s time to develop your training materials. Here are a few of the basics:

• Create a trainer’s manual with instructions for each of the scenario
• Add data for each scenario to your CRM’s sandbox. 
• Develop self-paced scenarios to allow learners to practice on their own.

How unfriendly service gets crowd-sourced

The Pyles Peak trail head.

I won’t waste your time extolling the virtues of friendly customer service. You get that. The real question is why do we receive unfriendly service so often?

There are many explanations. Some customers are jerks who are hard to be nice to. A few employees just don’t care. I recently wrote a post for the Salesforce.com blog describing how something called emotional labor is often to blame. 

Some unfriendly service is caused by crowds.

In a strange quirk of human nature, people tend to get less friendly as the size of the crowd grows. You probably know your neighbors if you live in the country. Move to a city with many more people and you hardly know anyone. In many urban environments, eye contact with strangers is downright discouraged.

I recently conducted a little experiment called the Eye Contact Game while hiking near my home in San Diego. Each time I encountered someone on the trail, I looked them in the eye and smiled. If they looked back I said hello. 

There were two parts to the hike. The first was on the Cowles Mountain Golfcrest Trail, which is one of the most popular hiking trails in San Diego. The second part was the much quieter Pyles Peak trail which continues from the top of Cowles Mountain. I wrote a blog post about the Pyles Peak trail way back in 2009 where I compared it to the business road less traveled.

Here are the results of my game:

Ascent

• Cowles: 8 of 62 people made eye contact
• Pyles: 2 of 2 people made eye contact

Descent

• Cowles: 4 of 162 people made eye contact
• Pyles: 3 of 3 people made eye contact

Any statistician will tell me my sample size is too small to be totally certain, but the results are still interesting. 

I went on my hike in the late afternoon and the after work crowd was arriving as I descended. The Cowles Mountain trail itself got less friendly as the number of hikers increased. I even caught a few people deliberately avoiding eye contact!

It’s worth noting that everyone on the Pyles Peak trail not only made eye contact but said “Hello” too. 

There are a few ways this same phenomenon happens in customer service situations. Ask yourself when you’re more likely to get friendly service:

• From a small business or a large business?
• In a quiet store or in a busy store?
• From a single employee or a group of employees talking to each other?

Reflecting on these situations makes it easy to generalize that friendly service happens in more intimate settings.

What can you do about it?

It’s human nature for crowds to make us a little unfriendly. That doesn’t mean customer service employees can’t overcome this challenge. Here are a few great ways to ensure service remains friendly no matter how many people are around.

Training: A former co-worker of mine was famous for reminding his employees “You can only serve one customer at a time.” Giving employees a few skills to stay focused on the customer they are working with can go a long way.

Staffing: Ensure you have adequate staff to provide customers with friendly service and personal attention. This looks like a big expense up front, but the payoff comes in the form of higher customer retention and increased sales.

Leadership: Are you the kind of leader who keeps cool under fire or do you become a stress monster at the first sign of pressure? Employees look to their boss to set an example, so a boss who encourages employees to be friendly even as the crowds grow will make it easier for employees to be friendly too.

Here’s a quick example from the Container Store:

My wife and I recently went to our local Container Store to get help organizing our bedroom closet. It was a busy afternoon and the store was full of customers. We worried whether one of their designers could spend enough time to help us design our closet.

Fortunately, they had it covered. A friendly manager greeted us and told us they’d be happy to help design a closet (leadership). She paged a closet designer who was available to assist us (staffing). Our designer was frequently interrupted by other customers while she assisted us, but each time she graciously offered to find a co-worker who could assist them (staffing) and then immediately returned her attention back to us (training). 

We appreciated the fact that we received friendly, attentive service in a crowded store. We are also really enjoying our newly organized closet! 

Crowds naturally cause people to be a little less friendly. Smart companies recognize this and take steps to avoid service failures by mitigating this challenge.

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