Customers and Co-workers Expect Faster Email Responses

Note: This study was repeated in April, 2018. The new study includes response time expectations for Twitter and Facebook messages. You can read the latest results here.

The results of my 2014 email response time survey reveal it may be time to re-think our response time standards. Customers, co-workers, and even our friends expect faster responses to email than ever before.

Previous years’ surveys have indicated these email response times are acceptable:

At first glance, the 2014 results seem similar to the 2013 survey. For example, 78 percent of respondents expect co-workers to respond to an email within 4 hours or less, up slightly from 74 percent in 2013.

A small problem appears when you look at the distribution of responses. While a majority of people (59 percent) are happy with a 1 day response time from a business, there's still a large portion of people (41 percent) that expect a faster response.

In a new wrinkle, I decided to see what response times would meet at least 80% of the respondents’ expectations. This seems like a fairly reasonable benchmark to use when establishing response-time standards. 

This new perspective suggest some new response time standards may be in order:

This chart suggests the following response time standards are now appropriate:

• Responding to a customer = 4 hours
• Responding to a co-worker = 1 hour
• Responding to a friend = 4 hours

The survey also looked to see whether there were significant differences between response time expectations for different generations. The short answer is there weren’t. Millenials, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers all have similar response time expectations. 

This data does bring up several important issues:

• How can we meet demand for increasingly fast email responses?
• Are there strategies to reduce the volume of email we receive?
• Are our co-workers insane?

I will be attempting to answer these questions in a webinar I’m hosting next week called Seven Ways to Improve Email Response Times. 

The complimentary webinar is next Tuesday, April 22 at 10am (Pacific).

Update:

If you missed the webinar, you can watch it here plus read a re-cap.

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Why Your Employee Engagement Survey is a Waste of Time

Let’s start with what most of us agree upon:

• Employee engagement is important

• Engaged employees are more productive

• Engaged employees provide better customer service

The benefits are there. Unfortunately, the way most companies conduct their employee engagement survey is a waste of time.

The are five primary problems.

Problem #1: “Employee Engagement” is not defined

There’s a lot of agreement on the importance of employee engagement, but not much agreement on what “employee engagement” actually means. Even the big consulting firms like Gallup and BlessingWhite disagree. 

This can spell big problems for your survey efforts. 

Without a clear definition of engagement, your survey questions will be random or poorly designed. Some companies rely on the employee engagement consulting firm they’ve hired to supply the questions, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those are the right questions.

If you want to measure employee engagement, start by defining it. For what it’s worth, here's my preferred definition:

Employee engagement is the extent to which employees are deliberately contributing towards organizational success.

Problem #2: Infrequent Feedback

The typical employee engagement survey is done every 12 - 18 months. 

To understand how ridiculous this is, consider what would happen if you waited that long to measure anything else that was important to your business. Can you imagine...

• Reviewing your financials only once per year?

• Waiting 18 months to peruse your KPIs?

• Asking customers for feedback only once per year?

How could you measure engagement more frequently without constantly bugging your employees? One solution is to divide your employees into 12 random groups and survey a different group once per month. This way, you get monthly feedback (just like your financial performance) while each individual employee only completes the survey once per year.

And, lest we forget, you can also try talking to employees directly. 

Problem #3: The Data is Easily Manipulated

The annual engagement survey doesn’t capture a year’s worth of employee sentiment. For most employees, their most recent experiences will have a far greater impact on their survey scores than what happened six months ago.

Managers know this. Some deliberately hold morale-boosting events just before the survey goes out. Others withhold negative actions, such as employee discipline, until after the survey window is closed.

The result of a survey conducted every 12 - 18 months is skewed data. One fix is to survey random samples of the employee population more frequently (as suggested above).

Problem #4: It Feels Like a Side-Project

Many employee engagement surveys feel like a side project that distracts leaders from their real work.

It’s failure by design. Look at this typical cycle:

1. Employees are surveyed

2. Senior leaders review a results report

3. A blue-ribbon committee is convened to study the issue

4. The committee reports back to senior leaders

It's now several months after the survey. Employees are wondering if their voices were even heard. Leaders lose focus and move on to something else. The whole thing feels like a Dilbert cartoon.

Companies with highly engaged employees instill passion in their workforce through consistent, purposeful efforts. Engagement is something they do all the time, not just occasionally.

Problem #5: No Action is Taken

It all comes down to this. If you’re going to ask for your employees’ opinions, you had better do something with that information. 

If not, you’re wasting everyone’s time.

Re-cap of Customer Service Meet-up at Phone.com

Last night, Jeremy Watkin and I co-hosted a customer service meet-up at Phone.com. It was a small, informal gathering of customer service professionals from various industries within San Diego. 

Our goal was to facilitate dialogue and the exchange of ideas around the types of customer service challenges we have in common.

Jeremy’s the Director of Customer Service at Phone.com, so he and his team were kind enough to host us. They even provided pizza, beer, and wine!

The evening kicked off with Jeremy sharing a little bit about Phone.com’s approach to customer service. He told us that everything ultimately boiled down to one philosophy: communicate better.

Jeremy Watkin providing an overview of Phone.com's awesome customer service philosophies.

This works for them on a few levels.

• On a product level, because they’re a telecommunications company. 
• On a service level because they’re constantly striving to improve customer service.
• On an internal level, because they rely on teamwork to get things done.

Of course, Communicate Better is also the name of the blog that Jeremy co-authors with Phone.com’s Jenny Dempsey.

Jeremy also gave us a brief tour of their contact center before we re-convened for some open discussion. 

Here were a few of the big topics we discussed.

Voice of Customer Data

It seems like every organization struggles with this on some level. Here are some of the challenges we discussed:

• Combating negative reviews on external sites like Yelp and Angie’s list
• Using customer service data to generate actionable insights
• Getting executives to worry less about the number and more about improvement

Jeremy mentioned I recently facilitated two webinars on this topic. One was on designing customer service surveys and the other was on analyzing and acting on survey data.

Service Standards

The concept of customer service standards generated a lot of great discussion. There’s a delicate balance between consistency, authenticity, and flexibility. 

We all agreed that it’s a bad idea to make customer service standards that are too rigid and scripted. This takes away the employee’s ability to adapt their service to each individual customer. 

Check out my recent post on the Zendesk blog if you’d like to read more about the potential downfalls of service standards.

Balancing Quality and Efficiency

This was another interesting discussion. Customer service leaders are constantly feeling pressure to increase productivity while still creating amazing customer service experiences.

We did an impromptu networking activity where people had to introduce themselves to three people in three minutes and learn three things about each person. This simple exercise turned out to be very difficult and only one person was able to successfully complete it AND remember the three facts about three people.

The challenge is we’re just not naturally great at being both fast and engaging with customers. We can learn it, but it takes time and practice. 

The top customer service organizations value both quality and efficiency, but they prioritize quality. In other words, helping the customer is more important than serving the customer quickly.

Will there be another meet-up?

It all depends on interest and volunteers. Is there an audience for this sort of event? A few people suggested their organizations might be willing to host the next event, so we may have the volunteer side covered.

If you’d like to learn about future customer service meet-ups in San Diego, please take a moment to add your name to the interest list below:

The Fight or Flight Response in Customer Service

Updated: March 16, 2024

The customer pounds his fists on the counter.

He bellows with rage, spittle flying out of his mouth like angry rain. “This is your fault! You screwed up! You need to fix this!”

The customer’s tirade feels like an attack. He means the company when he says “you,” but it feels personal.

“Don’t take it personally,” is awful advice.

That’s the most common tip for serving an upset customer. But it doesn’t work. Taking it personally is a natural reaction.

Here’s what to do instead.

Why don’t take it personally is bad advice

Your defense mechanisms automatically kick in when confronted with a physical or psychological threat. You instinctively fight off the threat or flee it.

This instinct is called the fight or flight response. It helps in many situations. 

For example, let’s say you’re accosted by a growling, snarling dog. There’s no time to plan your reaction. You instinctively confront the dog or try to get away.

Customer service is one place where this instinct doesn’t serve us well.

Try to imagine that furious customer. He’s pounding his fists on the counter and yelling. Taking it personally is a natural reaction.

Your instinct is to either confront the furious customer or try to get away.

What triggers the fight or flight response?

An angry or upset customer can trigger your instinctive flight or flight response. Here are a few examples:

• Yelling at you

• Making derisive comments about you or your company.

• Accusing you or your company of wrongdoing.

The infographic below illustrations our physiological reactions to a “fight or flight” situation.

Source: Jvnkfood

How to overcome the fight or flight response

Recognize that the fight or flight response is a powerful instinct. Pithy advice like “don’t take it personally” isn’t enough to handle it.

I have two suggestions for overcoming this challenge:

1. Identify your triggers. Try to be aware of what triggers your fight or flight instinct. Recognize the instinct as it starts to happen.

2. Pause. Catch the instinct before it takes over. Pause and make a better decision.

This short video from my Working with Upset Customers course shows you an example. You’ll see two scenarios from a coffee shop.

Scenario 1 is at 1:25. Here, the coffee shop barista does a poor job controlling his fight or flight response.

Scenario 2 is at 2:56. This time, the barista identifies the fight or flight response kicking in and takes a brief pause.

Recognizing your natural instincts from Working with Upset Customers by Madecraft and Jeff Toister

Training your team to serve upset customers

Serving upset customers is difficult. Your employees need training, coaching, and practice to develop these skills.

Here’s an exercise you can use to train your team on the fight or flight response:

1. Show your team the recognizing your natural instincts video.

2. Ask them to identify their own “fight or flight” triggers.

3. Have your team practice becoming aware of this response while serving customers.

You can use these resources to provide even more training:

1. Guide: How to deal with difficult customers

2. Course: Working with Upset Customers

Two Great Customer Service Events in San Diego This Week

Monday Morning Extra!

I don’t typically post to my blog on Mondays, but I wanted to let you know about two terrific customer service events in San Diego this week.

There aren’t a lot of educational and networking opportunities for customer service professionals in San Diego, so it’s good fortunate to have two in one week!

CXPA San Diego Local Networking Event

The Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) is coming to San Diego. 

Learn the three secrets to building a customer-focused culture from yours truly. You’ll also have the opportunity to network with other local Customer Experience professionals.

• Date: Tuesday, April 8
• Time: 5:30pm -8:00pm
• Cost: $20

Register Now

Customer Service Meet-up at Phone.com

This is a great opportunity to meet other customer service leaders in town. We’ll be holding roundtable discussions about our biggest customer service challenges.

You’ll also get a behind-the-scenes tour of Phone.com’s award-winning customer service operation.

• Date: Wednesday, April 9
• Time: 4:30pm - 6:30pm
• Cost: Free

Register Now

ICMI’s Contact Center Expo & Conference

But wait, there's more!

This fantastic conference for contact center professionals is coming to San Diego May 6 - 9. This conference regularly draws 1,000+ participants and is full of outstanding educational and networking opportunities.

I’ll be facilitating a pre-conference workshop on High Performance Management, which means I get to share my super special speaker discount with you.

Use the code SPKR at checkout and save $200 on your conference registration!

Learn more and register

American Airlines Tried to Send Me to the Wrong Airport

The airlines have cut back on a lot in recent years. There’s a charge for checked luggage. It takes more miles to earn a free trip. You don’t even get peanuts anymore.

Last week, American Airlines sunk to a new low when they tried to send me to the wrong airport.

I was traveling from San Diego to Washington Dulles, connecting through Dallas Fort Worth. My flight from San Diego to Dallas Fort Worth was delayed because American didn’t have a flight crew available on time. This caused me to miss my connecting flight.

The good news is I was automatically rebooked on a new flight. The bad news? The new flight was to Washington Reagan, not Washington Dulles. 

As you can see from this handy map, these two airports aren’t the same.

It was an error caused by a big, dumb computer system. It was exacerbated by unfriendly and unsympathetic employees. 

The only apology I received was a perfunctory “sorry for the inconvenience” sent via direct message on Twitter. (I had contacted the American Airlines twitter team for help getting re- re-routed to my correct destination.)

I eventually landed at Dulles five hours late. 

Perhaps I should feel lucky. In January, a Southwest Airlines plane landed at the wrong airport. The incident prompted the National Transportation Safety Board to issue a bulletin to airlines that was headlined by this blinding flash of the obvious:

Check and confirm destination airport.

Ok, so I’m lucky. I ended up in the correct destination. But this experience still highlights three big customer service lessons:

1. The experience must match the promise
2. Your employees can fix problems
3. You have competition

Lesson #1: The Experience Must Match the Promise

The CX Journey blog provided some nice coverage last year of American Airlines’s rebranding effort. One of the posts contained this quote from an American Airlines representative:

Through the fusion of technology and the human touch of our people, we aim to elevate and modernize the travel experience so our customers feel at ease and connected.

Denise Lee Yohn’s terrific new book, What Great Brands Do, does a terrific job of explaining how the best brands work diligently to ensure the customer experience matches brand promise. Great brands know these statements aren't just marketing slogans. They're blueprints for doing business.

American Airlines clearly has their work cut out for them as my experience was the opposite of their promise.

The technology tried to send me to the wrong place. I felt uneasy as I tried to connect with a helpful human or the right technology to fix the problem.

The human touch was non-existent. No empathy. No courtesy. Not even a smile. Gate agents on this trip didn’t even make eye contact or return my “Hello” when scanning my boarding pass at the gate.

It’s okay to make brand promises. Just make sure that’s what your customers actually experience.

Lesson #2: Your Employees Can Fix Problems

It was just a year ago that I wrote about another service failure caused by a big, dumb system at American Airlines.

That time, I gave a few of their employees credit for their kindness and empathy. It was enough to earn my continued business.

So, what’s different a year later?

It’s probably been pretty hard to work at American Airlines lately. There were widespread layoffs threatened. A merger with US Airways created uncertainty. The airline has been navigating through bankruptcy.

That’s the real shame. I encountered several American Airlines employees on this journey. Anyone of them could have given me what I really wanted: a heartfelt apology and a little empathy. I didn’t get it.

I certainly wouldn’t be writing this blog post if someone at American had made it right.

Lesson #3: You Have Competition

The Communicate Better blog recently had a terrific post describing how a website offering the same product, for less, as Amazon lost the business to Amazon anyway. The reason? The experience lagged far behind what Amazon could deliver. 

Apparently, American Airlines hasn’t figured out there are other airlines. Their service is consistently awful with a lowly 65 point rating on the American Customer Satisfaction Index. That’s United Airlines territory.

Other airlines, like Alaska, offer much better service. 

Ironically, I recently flew Alaska from Washington Reagan to Los Angeles. My flight was delayed when the airport temporarily closed due to a snow storm. Alaska employees were cheerful and helpful the whole time. 

It wasn’t a great travel day due to the weather, but the service I received nonetheless cemented my commitment to fly Alaska whenever possible.

Survey: How quickly should people respond to an email?

It's time once again for my annual email response time survey. You can complete the short survey below or click here to access the survey if it doesn't appear on your screen.

• The survey is open now through April 16
• I'll post the full results on April 17
• Learn how to improve email response times in a webinar on April 22

Introducing My New Customer Service Training Video

More and more people are turning to video-based training.

Clients and colleagues have often asked me to recommend a customer service training video. Now, I can finally suggest my own.

The full-length course is called Customer Service Fundamentals. 

It’s based in part on my Delivering Next Level Service training program that I facilitate for clients in live classes. The course also borrows heavily from concepts discussed in my book, Service Failure. 

The course covers the following skills:

• Building winning relationships with customers
• Exceeding customer expectations
• Handling angry or upset customers

The course was produced by Lynda.com. If you aren’t familiar with them, they’re an online learning company that offers a fabulous library of video-based training programs.

One of the course’s strengths is its broken into short video segments. Each is generally three to five minutes long. This allows you to watch part of the course, apply some of the exercises in each segment, and then come back for more at a later time.

You can watch a sample module on the Lynda.com website or by watching the video below. This particular video covers managing customer expectations.

A subscription is required to view the entire course. If you don’t have one already, I can offer you a free 10-day trial. Click here or on the banner below.

5 Signs Your Customer Service Survey is Missing the Point

Note: This post originally appeared on the Salesforce blog. Check out my latest post on the Salesforce blog, "Why Role Playing Doesn't Work for Customer Service Training."

Customers are getting tired of surveys. A 2010 study by Vovici revealed that Americans are inundated with over 7 billion survey requests per year. That’s nearly 23 survey requests for every American. (Ironically, I encountered a pop-up survey request when I went to the US Census Bureau website to track down that statistic.)

Many companies survey their customers, but that doesn’t mean they are doing it right. Here are five signs that a customer service survey program is missing the point.

1) Your survey has no purpose

Perhaps someone in customer service decided a survey was a good idea so they wrote a few questions. Then marketing added a few more questions. Sales chimed in with a few questions of their own. Operations got in the act too. The end result is a 100-question survey with no clear purpose.

Thinking of questions to ask your customers is the wrong place to start. Instead, think about what you specifically want to know and then design your survey to achieve that clear purpose. 

Keep in mind that you may have multiple audiences. For instance, a business-to-business software company might have a transaction survey for users contacting technical support and a relationship survey for executives who make buying decisions.

2) Your survey is tiresome

The second sign of a pointless survey is it needlessly annoys customers.

For example, the dealership where I get my car serviced routinely sends me a 36 question survey after I get an oil change. That’s obnoxious.

Focus on what you really want to know and limit your questions to as few as possible. You can always use text boxes to capture additional information.

My car dealership could cut their survey from 36 questions down to 3 and still get an amazing amount of useful data:

1. How satisfied were you with your recent service?
2. (Comment box): Is there anything we can do better?
3. Would you like one of our service advisors to follow-up with you?

Correlating satisfaction levels with individual comments could tell the dealership what they’re doing well and what can be improved. And, asking customers if they’d like to be contacted allows service advisors to try to fix any problems that customers are venting about.

3) You’re focused on the score, not the feedback

The third sign a survey is missing the point is focusing on the score and not the feedback. 

The service department at my local dealership provides a great example. All of their post-transaction follow-up focuses on cajoling me into giving them a good score on their survey. My actual feedback is irrelevant.

1. A sign by the cash register reminds customers they’ll be getting a survey.
2. Someone from the dealership calls the next day with a reminder about the survey.
3. The service advisor sends an email reminder a day later.

 Each point of contact encourages customers to provide a top box score on the survey. At no time are customers asked about the quality of service they’ve received.

Surveys should be designed to give you feedback that you can use to improve service. Focusing on a score versus the feedback itself defeats that purpose.

4) You only look at aggregate data

The fourth sign of a pointless survey is the data isn’t analyzed. Only total scores are viewed.

Knowing what percentage of your customers are satisfied is a relatively useless statistic. There’s not much you can do with that.

It necessary to dig a little to make customer service survey data truly useful. For example, let’s say you have a 75 percent customer satisfaction rating. It takes a little bit of analysis to reveal actionable information:

• Is service quality consistent amongst all employees?
• What factors make it more likely for a customer to be satisfied?
• What factors make it more likely for a customer to be dissatisfied?

5) You Don’t Take Any Action

The last sign of a pointless survey is the company doesn’t do anything with the data it collects.

Chip Bell, author of 9 1/2 Principles of Innovative Service, shared this startling statistic with me:

 95 percent of companies survey their customers but only 10 percent actually use the feedback to take action. 

It’s a waste of your customers’ time to ask them for feedback and then do nothing with it. It’s also a waste of your time too.

Smart companies use surveys as part of their continuous improvement cycle. They analyze their survey data to look for trends and pinpoint problems. This analysis leads to solutions that are implemented to improve service. Creating survey’s that generate actionable results is the key to creating a company that is constantly evolving and improving.

Want to know more?

Here are links to recordings of two of my recent webinars on making the most of customer service surveys:

• Developing Effective Customer Satisfaction Surveys
• How to Analyze and Act on Customer Satisfaction Data

A Customer Service Training Technique That's Easy as 1, 2, 3

Great service comes from great training.

Training customer service employees doesn’t have to be too difficult or time-consuming.

I recently wrote a post that demonstrated how performance checklists can be used to quickly create highly effective training programs. This post is about a three step technique you can use to deliver training to your employees.

It’s call the Tell, Show, Do Technique. 

This technique may be the oldest technique in the book. That’s probably because it’s highly effective. You don’t need an advanced degree in adult learning to use it and it’s perfect for one-on-one training.

Here’s how the Tell, Show, Do Technique works:

Step 1: Tell the trainee what they should do and why. 

Imagine you’re training a new employee on the proper way to greet customers. The trainer should start by explaining the proper greeting. The trainer should also explain why this is important to good service, such as describing how a good greeting creates a positive first impression.

A lot of training fails because the trainer stops here and never completes steps two and three. They just tell and tell.

There are three problems with relying on telling alone.

1. Most people don’t learn best by listening.
2. It doesn’t require learner engagement, which makes memorization difficult.
3. You never get confirmation that the learner as actually learned anything.

As Harold Stolyvitch pointed out in his outstanding book on employee training, Telling Ain’t Training.

Step 2: Show the trainee how to do it properly.

Most people are visually dominant learners. That means seeing an example is an extremely important part of the learning process.

Even for those that aren't visually dominant, an example can show them what success should look like.

If you’re training someone on how to greet customers, you might demonstrate the proper greeting. It’s best if you can do it with a real customer, but you can just give a demonstration if that’s not feasible.

Step 3: Have the trainee do it

We don’t really know whether someone has learned something until we see them do it.

This makes step three critical. The learning process isn’t complete until the trainee can demonstrate the expected performance.

If you’re training someone on how to greet customers, this is when you ask them to demonstrate the proper greeting. Ideally, they can do this by greeting real customers, but you can also role-play if that’s not feasible.

You might be asking what happens if they don’t do it correctly. This is a real possibility since we all struggle a bit when we try something out for the first time. 

A good trainer will provide coaching and feedback to help the trainee understand what needs to be improved and then have them do it again. This process should be repeated until the trainee can demonstrate the desired performance correctly.