Inside Customer Service blog
The Inside Customer Service blog features tips, trends, and analysis that can help you unlock your customer service team's hidden potential.
John Ippolito invited me to be a guest at the Carte Blanche San Diego Book Club a few months ago. We recorded a brief interview where I shared a few thoughts about my book, Service Failure.
You can view the interview here:
Your organization has decided it’s time to work on customer service.
Maybe there’s been a few complaints. Perhaps employees are struggling to do things right. It could be that an executive simply decided it was time.
Training is the reflexive solution. Pick some topics, determine how long the training should be, and get it scheduled. It seems like a magic cure-all, sort of like aspirin for the corporate world.
It’s a strategy that rarely works.
There are a myriad of reasons why customer service training programs fail.
Outcomes aren’t clearly defined.
Specific behaviors aren’t identified, so the training becomes generic.
New skills aren’t reinforced.
Here’s the biggest culprit: training is only a 1 percent solution.
Below is my analysis. The percentages are rough estimates and averages, not absolutes, but they paint a pretty clear picture.
You need to know what's causing the problem before you select a solution.
In his book, Strategic Customer Service, customer service expert John Goodman estimated that service failures can be attributed to poor products and services, customer error, and employee mistakes or attitudes:
Training is employee-focused, but Goodman estimates that employees are responsible for only 20 percent of service failures.
What about the other 80 percent?
The largest share of service failures (60 percent) are caused by poor products or services. This includes defects, unfulfilled promises, and broken systems.
Customers also cause their fair share of service failures (20 percent) due to their own errors or inappropriate expectations.
A training-only solution is likely to miss a lot of the problem. In fact, I had training all the way down at number seven on my Next Level Customer Service Action Plan.
It’s helpful to look at some of the factors that impact a customer service employee's performance:
Knowledge
Skills
Abilities
Attitude
Peer Pressure
Leadership
Training can only improve the first three: knowledge, skills, and abilities.
This leaves other factors unaccounted for by a training class.
You can’t train someone’s attitude.
A training program won’t turn co-workers into more positive influences.
Sending an employee to training won’t make their boss a better leader.
All of these factors are intertwined and difficult to separate. It might be fair to give training 50 percent of the credit since training can improve half the items on the list.
Since employees only account for 20 percent of service failures and training can only improve half of that, we’re down to 10 percent.
But wait, we’re not done yet. Most training doesn’t occur in the classroom.
The American Society for Training and Development released a white paper in 2009 that identified the role of informal learning in employee development. The paper described the 70 - 20 - 10 rule, which roughly estimates how employees learn.
70 percent comes from an employee’s own experiences.
20 percent comes from the employee’s manager.
10 percent comes from formal training.
That’s right - only 10 percent of learning comes from the training class itself. Since training is only 10 percent of the customer service improvement solution, that puts the impact of the typical customer service training class at only 1 percent.
The remaining 99 percent is much more important, yet routinely ignored.
A holistic approach is needed that addresses 100 percent of the problem.
Step 1: Clearly identify the problem you are trying to solve
Determine the gap between existing and desired customer service. It’s hard to get better at anything unless you can articulate what success looks like. You might start by creating a customer service vision and establishing a SMART goal.
Step 2: Analyze the cause of the gap
Imagine you went to a doctor to get treatment for back pain. Without conducting an examination, the doctor prescribes a new drug that she happened to learn about from a sales rep earlier that day.
How confident would you be in the doctor’s recommendation?
Trying to solve a problem without first doing an analysis is the same thing. You must first try to understand what’s keeping you from reaching your customer service goal before you select the most appropriate solution.
Step 3: Select a solution
Now, it’s time to take action.
Training can be very effective, if used the right way. Here are some resources to help you out if you do decide training should be part of the solution.
Worksheet: Learning Objectives
Worksheet: Workshop Planner
One of my favorite features of ICMI's Contact Center Conference & Expo are the Thought Leader Panels.
These are short panel discussions on specific topics featuring thought leaders from the contact center industry. I had the privilege of moderating the Social Media panel at the 2014 conference.
Here's the video (click here if you don't see it):
A needs analysis is the first step when developing a new training program.
It can help you identify what training participants really need and connect that training to business objectives. In many cases, a good needs analysis allows you to create training that's faster, cheaper, and more effective.
My new course on lynda.com will take you step-by-step through the needs analysis process. It’s intended for instructional designers, but anyone who creates training programs can benefit.
Topics include:
The course is part of lynda.com’s online library of video-based training programs. Using video allowed me to create some interesting visual examples.
In the sample video below, you’ll see me meeting with a Vice President who requested an interviewing skills training program. Initial meetings like this can help trainers discover a lot of really useful information. (Click here if you don’t see the video.)
You’ll need a lynda.com subscription to view the entire course. The good news is your subscription gives you unlimited access to all of their courses.
Even better news? You can use this link to get a free 10-day trial.
Some service failures are frustratingly obvious.
Take this one for example. I spoke at the CRM Evolution 2014 conference last week. The conference was fantastic (re-cap here).
There was just a small issue with how the hotel set up my breakout room:
It’s obvious that seats shouldn’t be placed directly behind this enormous pillar. So, why did it happen? Ironically, I touched on the root cause in my session on hidden causes of poor customer service.
The root cause is employees who didn’t know their real job.
Try to see this room through the eyes of the people who were responsible. An obvious blunder can easily be overlooked when people are focused on tactical responsibilities:
Nobody stopped to question the big picture because they weren't looking at the big picture.
The problem is caused by something called framing that allows your customers to see what you don’t. The tough part is framing happens to us instinctively. And, it's further supported by job descriptions that read like a laundry list of tasks.
So, what is their real job? Their real job should be helping their guests enjoy a successful conference.
View the job this way and there are multiple opportunities to prevent this service failure from happening.
On a strategic level, companies need a strong customer service vision. This is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that’s understood by all employees.
On a tactical level, employees should see their jobs from their customers’ perspective. Here’s an exercise that can help:
Here are some examples of customer-focused perspectives excerpted from my book, Service Failure:
Sales reps at a flower and plant wholesaler decided their role was helping florists (their primary customer) grow their businesses by helping them select flowers and plants that will sell well in their shops.
Information technology employees working on a college campus determined that their role was helping faculty and staff minimize downtime from malfunctioning computers.
Call center agents at a medical device manufacturer realized their role was helping to save lives by making sure the right products got to the right doctor in time to help the patients who need them.
Service failures are often obvious, but discovering their root causes can often require deeper insight. I've compiled a set of ten exercises you can use to help your team understand some of these obstacles. You can access them by downloading the free Service Failure Workbook.
I attended the CRM Evolution 2014 conference in New York City this week. It was my first time attending the conference, so I was anxious to see how it would go.
The conference focused on customer engagement strategies and technology. There were also two other conferences sharing the same space, SpeechTek and Customer Service Experience, so there were opportunities to go to even more sessions.
This was a smaller conference with mostly senior level attendees. I really like these types of conferences because you have direct access to a lot of thought leaders and quite a few opportunities to chat with them.
Here’s a re-cap of some of the conference highlights along with links to additional resources.
You may want to start by familiarizing yourself with the conference if you didn’t attend.
Every conference seems to have a few themes that thread through the sessions, keynotes, and hallway discussions. Here are a few themes I observed:
There’s no doubt that the world of customer relationship management (CRM) is getting more complex.
One session I attended shared an impressive success story that came from simplifying complexity for both customers and agents.
The session was delivered by Eric McKirdy, Global Customer Care Manager at Ask.com. McKirdy and his team were able to reduce support ticket volume by 60 percent by presenting customers with a cleaner self-service interface:
Powered by Parature, their customer service software also gave agents a unified view of all the channels they were supporting so they only had to monitor one queue.
The unified queue is likely to be an important trend in the near future. According to ICMI, the average contact center agent uses five software programs to serve customers. This set up encourages unhealthy multitasking that can easily lead to service failures.
Focusing agents on just one queue allows them to focus more of their attention on solving issues for their customers.
Customer service analytics and big data were hot topics, though there wasn’t a lot of agreement on best practices. (Maybe that's a good thing?)
I attended two analyst panels where the panelists seemed downright angry about metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES). The main contention was these measures are frequently used incorrectly and there’s little value in them anyway.
Unfortunately, the analysts were short on clear opinions about what companies should be doing instead.
One session on analytics that was impressive was presented by Steven Ramirez, CEO of Beyond the Arc, Inc. Ramirez showed us how banks and other financial institutions are able to use social media complaints to predict complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Ramirez believes this concept can be applied in other industries too.
For example, let’s say a company launches a new product. Analyzing the volume and content of social media mentions about that product might alert the company to a potential defect before large numbers of consumers actually contact the company or return the product to the store.
The company can proactively respond to the problem by fixing the defect, bolstering customer service staff to handle increased volume, and re-engaging affected customers.
It’s definitely a concept worth investigating, especially for companies that typically receive a lot of social media mentions already.
Customer engagement was a hot topic at the conference.
Stick the word “engagement” on the end of anything and it seems like people will all nod their head in agreement. Employee engagement, brand engagement, customer engagement, you name it. We need it and the analysts all agree its a good thing.
But what the heck is it? This is where there was little clarity.
Perhaps most telling was when a panel of CRM executives were asked to define the term. Four out of five either couldn’t or wouldn’t. Only George Wright, Senior VP and General Manager at Thunderhead.com offered a clear, concise definition.
Engagement is a positive, long-term relationship between a company and a customer.
Do you agree with this definition?
Whether or not you do, it seems clear that we can’t really know if customer engagement is important until we’re sure we know what customer engagement really is.
Every company has basic promises they make to their customers.
These aren’t measures of extraordinary delight. They aren’t the stuff of legend. A basic promise won’t garner your company a viral YouTube video or a million Facebook likes.
They’re basic.
Here are some examples:
Failure to deliver on a basic promise leaves customers bewildered. How could a company fail on something it’s supposed to do each and every time?
There are a few reasons.
One explanation is its acceptable to companies. If a basic promise is kept 9 out of 10 times, will fixing that last problem be economically viable? A lot of corporate executives don’t think so, so they don’t commit the resources to fixing it.
Another explanation is a lack of accountability. If something is broken, and nobody does anything to fix it, it will probably stay broken. The laws of inertia work in customer service too.
A leadership disconnect is another culprit. Leaders think things are peachy. Frontline employees know they aren’t. The two don’t talk.
Many companies break their basic promises as a matter of routine. It shouldn’t be that way.
Forget innovation. Forget new technology. Forget that cool new marketing campaign. Forget it all until you can get the basics right 99.9 percent of the time. (And then, feel really, really bad about that .1 percent and work like hell to fix it.)
A basic promise is just that. Basic. If you can’t get the basics right, what business are you really in?
The latest research reveals the average customer expects companies to respond to their emails within just four hours.
That’s scary fast for many contact centers. One manager exclaimed, “There’s no way we can do that!”
Like it or not, email isn’t going away. A 2014 study from Parature indicated that email is still the second most preferred customer service channel (after phone).
The trouble is it’s an analog channel in an era of instant service. Gone are the days when customers would connect their dial-up modem to check email once a day.
Today, customers check their emails constantly.
I’m throwing down the gauntlet and challenging contact centers everywhere to meet the new four hour standard.
This post can help you get there if four hours is already within reach. If it isn’t, this post can still help you improve responsiveness. Progress is good!
Let’s start with a little benchmarking. (Click here if you can’t see the poll.)
Here are five specific steps you can take to improve your contact center’s email response time.
Inventory every active customer service email address your company uses. Identify where each one goes and look for holes in the system.
Here are a few things to look for:
It’s hard to respond to email quickly if you don’t have enough staff.
Like all channels, emails come in peaks and valleys. Over time, these patterns can become more predictable. Smart contact centers identify these trends and adjust their staffing levels to meet their needs.
Reggie Savage, Customer Service Supervisor for the City of Mesa in Arizona, recently reviewed his contact center staffing levels. He discovered that email volume can spike as much as 150% on Mondays. Savage is adding more staff to meet peak demand and expects to shorten response times from two business days down to one.
Writing expert Leslie O’Flahavan at E-WRITE recommends routing emails to the agent who is best able to handle a particular question.
You might send emails on a specific topic to someone with deep expertise in that area. Or, you might assign emails to individual agents based on how many they already have in their queue.
Large contact centers often use sophisticated software. Others do it manually.
Lupe Zepeda, Customer Service Manager at CSA Travel Protection, found a receptionist who could help route emails to the right customer service agent. CSA Travel Protection currently responds to customer emails within one business day, but is rapidly closing in on meeting the four hour challenge.
Agents can answer email much faster when they can easily find information.
Jesse Hertzberg, Chief Operating Officer at Squarespace, emphasizes the importance of building scalable tools that can grow with the company. They use an extensive internal wiki and a customer-facing knowledge base to house a wealth of product information. Hertzberg also notes that “everyone who works here is a customer, so they all know the product really well.”
Squarespace currently has a fantastic average response time of just 45 minutes.
Contact centers can unnecessarily add to their email volume if they don’t fully resolve the customer’s issue on the first try.
Common problems include incomplete answers, confusing responses, or answers that are completely off because the agent misread the request.
O’Flahavan recommends several solutions to increase the odds of one and done email contacts.
Start with strong web-based content. This allows reps to write simpler messages while sharing links to more in-depth information. (Having great online content can also help prevent email messages in the first place by giving customers self-serve options.)
Another solution is to reinforce critical reading skills with agents. Many agents misread customer emails in their haste to respond quickly. It’s important for agents to take an extra moment to make sure they get it right the first time.
The four hour email challenge may be more realistic than you think.
These tips can help you get started. If you need more help, I suggest contacting Leslie O’Flahavan at E-WRITE. I’ve seen her in action and she’s great at what she does.
So, do you accept the challenge?
We’re not good at multitasking.
Most of us know this. Our brains are only able to process one conscious thought at a time. Try to do more and speed and quality inevitably suffer.
We continue to multitask despite this knowledge. In a very real sense, we’re addicted.
This post explores the cause of our multitasking addiction. If you can read all the way through without checking your Twitter feed, you’ll see some solutions. You probably won’t like them because it’s going to feel like telling the Cookie Monster that cookies are only a sometimes treat.
I’m also departing from my usual format and putting all the links at the bottom of the post. It’s my meager attempt to make multitasking slightly less inviting.
Multitasking is really about attention.
We are easily able to focus our attention when we’re doing just one thing. Trying to do more than one thing requires us to focus and re-focus attention.
The part of our brain responsible for focusing attention is called the Reticular Activating System or RAS. It sorts through a deluge of internal thoughts and external signals to decide where our conscious brain should tune in.
Unfortunately, the RAS has an achilles heel: novelty.
Novelty’s ability to instantly capture our attention used to be a big advantage when we lived simpler lives. One of your ancestors might have been foraging for berries in the woods, humming a merry tune, when they suddenly spotted a bear. You’re here today because the novelty of seeing a bear grabbed their attention away from the delightful bliss of berries and tunes.
Today’s world is an overload of novelty.
Our phones and computer screens are a constant barrage of buzzes, beeps, and flashes. We have two monitors with multiple software programs running at once. Co-workers constantly interrupt us in our open plan office spaces.
It doesn’t stop when we get home. We have television, DVR, Netflix, and video games. Our friends are only a text, Facebook message, or FaceTime session away.
The rational argument for multitasking is managing multiple priorities. That might hold some weight if we were actually working on something useful. We’re not. Our RAS doesn’t make decisions about where to focus attention based on an activity’s relative usefulness. It’s a sucker for anything novel.
Finding something novel triggers a release of dopamine in our brains. Dopamine feels good. In his book, Your Brain at Work, David Rock calls this the “toward” response. It tells us that whatever we’re doing, we should do more of it.
And we do.
Chronic multitasking causes a few problems that heighten the addiction.
One issue is our dopamine receptors become dulled from overuse. That means we have to multitask more to get the same effect. Checking Facebook ten times a day isn’t quite doing it, so you might have to up it to twenty.
Another problem caused by chronic multitasking is it lessens our ability to filter useful information from meaningless junk. A high priority project receives exactly the same attention as our latest status update. The end result is multitasking for the sake of multitasking.
While reading this post, how many times have you been tempted to stop and check something else?
Email, IM, Facebook, Twitter, text, Pintrest, Vine, Instagram, Snapchat, your stock portfolio, Candy Crush, whatever. There’s no real purpose to it, just the irresistible urge to multitask.
It gets worse.
Chronic multitasking can lead to something called Directed Attention Fatigue or DAF. Here are just a few of the common symptoms:
This doesn’t bode well for any job that requires any concentration. It’s why we feel mentally exhausted at the end of a work day that was mostly spent sitting in a chair.
Strangely, we feel physically exhausted too. That’s because all that concentration actually requires a lot of physical energy.
And, because multitasking is really a less efficient way to work, we end the day with more work to get done. Our brilliant solution is often to work more hours and do more multitasking.
Psychologists have compared DAF to ADD. Different conditions, same impact. Our smart phones and multi-monitor set ups are basically giving us ADD.
Squirrel!
If you’re addicted to multitasking, you’re not going to like this part.
Quitting isn’t easy.
Perhaps you’ve been telling yourself you can quit when you want to, but you just don’t want to. Sure, you’d know you’ve hit rock bottom if you fall into a fountain at the mall while texting, but you haven’t done that yet. Not like that lady on TV.
There are some solutions. You need to be committed to make them work. It’s going to be difficult at first, but gradually you’ll feel better.
One solution is to change the way you design your workspace. Go minimalist. Cut out distractions like a second monitor. Clear off your desk to create a more calming environment.
The next step is changing your work habits.
Give yourself permission to focus on one task at a time. Keep other computer programs closed when they’re not in use. Check email and then close email. Check Facebook and then close Facebook. Concentrate on creating that PowerPoint deck and then move on to something else.
This works even if it’s only for a short duration. I will frequently set the timer on my smart phone for 13 minutes and tell myself to focus on a single task during that time. Something amazing often happens. By the end of the 13 minutes, I’m fully absorbed and want to keep going without interruption.
No problem. Just hit the timer again for another go. Pretty soon I’m crushing tasks by giving one thing at a time my full attention.
The final solution is perhaps most important. You need to give your brain a break.
Shut everything down. Take a walk to get some fresh air. Researchers have found that being outside in nature works wonders at counteracting the effects of Directed Attention Fatigue.
Your brain will feel better after getting some rest. It will be more alert and focused. The great part about that is you can get more done while your co-workers continue to spin around on the hamster wheel called multitasking.
The big question is can you kick the habit?
Here’s a collection of links to help you expand your knowledge of multitasking and its addictive qualities. Some are useful and others are just for fun.
One of my favorite features of ICMI's Contact Center Conference & Expo are the Thought Leader Panels.
These are short panel discussions on specific topics featuring thought leaders from the contact center industry. I had the privilege of moderating the Voice of the Customer panel at the 2014 conference.
Here's the video (click here if you don't see it).
Toister Performance Solutions helps customer service teams unlock their hidden potential. Services include helping companies develop customer-focused cultures, voice of customer programs (i.e. surveys) and customer service training.
