13 Reasons Why Customer Service Employees Don't Care

Updated: January 22, 2024

It's infuriating when a customer service rep doesn't care.

Isn’t that their job? They're supposed to help you out and make you feel better. So often they don't.

If you're upset, they answer with a shoulder shrug. If there's a problem, they say, "Yeah, I know," and then do absolutely nothing about it. You ask if something's in stock and their complete and final answer is, "I don't know, check over there."

There's no care. No hustle. No ownership. 

Why does this happen?

Let’s take a moment to get inside their heads. Look at things from the employees' perspective. You might not agree with their lack of caring (I don't), but you'll begin to understand. 

Here are 13 reasons why customer service employees don't care.

Reason #1: It's not a career

I was hired on the spot for my first contact center job. It wasn’t the job I wanted, but I needed a job right away. It was the one I could get. That's how many employees find their way into customer service. They don't have some grandiose vision of saving the world. They just need a paycheck. 

Reason #2: It's not their company

Customers look at the employee as a representative of the company. Employees often see it differently. They're paid by the company to do a job and you, the customer, can either make that job easier or harder. Check out this video gem from Randi Busse that explains what she calls the difference between an owner and a renter mentality.

Reason #3: There's no purpose

Smart companies create a strong customer service vision that defines their brand of outstanding service. It can create purpose and meaning for employees to help them think of their job as more than just a paycheck. Unfortunately, most companies haven't defined a customer service vision because they assume that great service is self-evident. (It's not.)

Reason #4: Poor fit

You probably know that not every employee is a great hire. The challenge is those poor hires end up serving customers. Imagine being in a job you don't like, working for a company you don't care about. That's a recipe for apathy. Smart companies create an ideal candidate profile to help them hire employees who will love their jobs. 

Reason #5: Incentives and Games

Managers often use incentives, games, and contests to motivate employees. It's based on the assumption that these employees need to be motivated. (They usually don't.) Unfortunately, these incentives create a distraction where employees care more about winning prizes than serving customers. They also create a disincentive to help customers in situations that don't contribute to earning an incentive. 

Reason #6: Rude customers

Customer service employees have to endure a lot of rude treatment. They're looked down on by condescending customers. They face the brunt of customers' anger, which can trigger an instinctive reaction to get away from that person. That's counter to what a customer service employee is supposed to do, but it's tough going to work every day and feeling like a punching bag.

Reason #7: Unpredictable schedules

Many customers service employees have their work schedules changed on a weekly basis. It's hard to explain how disruptive this is if you've never lived it. An unpredictable schedule creates child care issues, disrupts sleep cycles, and makes it impossible to make plans ahead of time. This amazing New York Times article profiles a Starbucks employee whose ever-changing schedule made life outside of work extremely difficult.

Reason #8: Misplaced priorities

Employees tend to understand something's importance by how often their boss talks about it. Unfortunately, many managers don't spend enough time talking about customer service. If the manager displays that sort of apathy, then it should be understandable when employees appear to be uncaring as well.

Reason #9: Blame

I recently wrote about a disturbing trend where companies blame their employees for poor service. A natural by-product of avoiding blame is to avoid taking risks. Employees tow the company line and become reluctant to bend the rules to help customers. This can come across as uncaring.

Reason #10: Disengaged co-workers

In my book, Getting Service Right, I wrote about Camille. She was a hotel associate who felt pressure from her disengaged co-workers to provide poor service. Sadly, this happens a lot in customer service. Employees aren't always aware that it's happening. So, one uncaring employee can lead to a whole bunch.

Reason #11: Broken systems

So much of customer service is outside the employees' control. Defective products, unfriendly policies, or a lack of coordination between departments can all make it hard for a frontline employee to help customers. Many employees lack the necessary empowerment. All of this adds up to create a feeling of learned helplessness, where employees perceive that any effort is futile so they stop trying.

Reason #12: Emotional labor

Emotional labor is the amount of effort it takes to display a certain emotion. If you're feeling happy, then it's easy to smile and show people you're happy. But, looking happy and friendly (key customer service emotions) becomes much more difficult when you don't actually feel that way. Over time, expending too much emotional labor can leave people feeling burned out.

Reason #13: Poor leadership

Customer service leaders must set a positive example for their employees. Many don't. They talk down to their employees. They treat customers indifferently. They think they're too busy to deal with customer service. (What the heck are they doing?) It's hard to ask an employee to be inspired if his manager isn't.

Solutions

There are many things you can do to inspire more caring among your customer service employees.

1. Create a customer service vision

2. Talk about service constantly so employees know it’s important.

3. Be a role model.

That last one is a gut-check. You can't expect employees to care unless you do, too.

Customer service leadership can be counterintuitive. My book, Getting Service Right, will help you identify 10 hidden obstacles that make it difficult for employees to be their best.

Get Chapter 1

Discover the reasons behind an employee’s odd behavior.

Download

Companies Are Trying to Blame Employees for Service Failures

Sandee gave the same speech to every customer.

"If you give me a 10 on the survey, the whole store gets credit. If you give me an 8 or less, I'll get in trouble."

This was a classic case of survey begging. It was annoying and inauthentic, but it was easy to understand why she did it. Sandee was try to avoid getting some heat for anything short of a top tier survey score.

This is an example of a corporate blame system. The frontline employee is set up to take the fall for anything that goes wrong, even if it's out of her control.

It's a disturbing trend. 

The Blame Game

Surveys are a common tool used against employees.

Employees like Sandee face sanctions if they're named in a survey that's anything short of spectacular. A car salesman recently told me he received a customer survey full of glowing comments, but the overall rating was an 8 out of 10. The salesman's reward was getting some of his commission docked for the "poor" survey result.

Company PR teams like to blame employees too.

Two years ago, a Comcast customer recorded the cancellation call from hell. He spent ten minutes trying to cancel his service while the Comcast rep continuously badgered him about keeping his account. 

Predictably, Comcast's PR strategy was to blame the employee for the incident. I took a closer look and discovered it wasn't the employee's fault. Comcast had intentionally designed a system that made it hard for customers to cancel and then hired a team of Retention Specialists who were trained and incentivized to prevent cancellations.

In another example from 2015, protesters lined up outside an Arby's in Florida after an employee allegedly refused to serve a police officer. It turned out the officer wasn't refused service, and the store manager was fired for creating an unfortunate incident. Yet, somehow, the exonerated employee was still suspended.

Is It Fair to Blame Employees?

Sometimes, the answer is yes.

Let's draw a line between unacceptable, lone-wolf behavior and the behavior you'd naturally get when you put an employee is a difficult situation or don't give the employee the resources or empowerment to help their customers.

Recently, a Starbucks employee (called Partners at Starbucks) typed "Diabetes here I come" on a customer's drink label. It made national headlines and caused the company a lot of embarrassment.

This is clearly unacceptable behavior. Kudos then to Starbucks for issuing a statement that still spoke to collective responsibility:

“We strive to provide an inclusive and positive experience for our customers, and we're disappointed to learn of this incident. We are working directly with the customer to apologize for his experience, and with our partners (employees) to ensure this does not happen again.”

Of course, there are many times when it's not fair to blame the employee. 

Don Peppers recently reported that Delta Airlines was asking customers to rate their phone service reps with a single question: Would you hire this person?

The problem is a customer can easily direct their anger towards a hapless customer service rep. Flight delays, cancellations, lost baggage, exorbitant flight change fees, and a myriad of other issues are all beyond the agent's ability to control. 

Granted, a terrific customer service rep might be able to turn things around despite all those obstacles. Perhaps the employee can learn to be more successful in these challenge situations, but blaming them when they fall short takes it too far.

Why Companies Blame Employees

The big picture is PR. 

They'd like the public to view any service failures as the work of a lone wolf rather than a systematic issue. Companies that use this tactic are depending on us customers not being able to see through this charade.

There's also another reason that corporate executives may not realize. I call it the intermediary problem. It's something that I discovered while conducting research for my book, Service Failure.

The intermediary problem suggests that it's easier for us to treat someone else poorly if we do it through an intermediary. 

For example, a 2009 experiment by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University gave subjects $10 to share with a partner. They found that subjects shared an average of $1 less when they used a intermediary (i.e. an employee) to determine how much to share.

Here's a real life example of the intermediary problem that's happened to many customer service teams. 

A customer service executive is contacted by a furious customer. The executive feels bad about the situation and promises to make it right. The executive passes the case to a customer service manager and demands swift action.

What the executive never realizes is that the customer's problem was caused by staffing cuts that the executive had made to save money. The executive didn't think about the thousands of customers those cuts would affect because those customers were served by intermediaries (i.e. employees). The executive did care about the one furious customer because that person contacted the executive directly.

The Solution

All of this leads to a simple solution.

Executives need to spend time on their frontlines. They need to talk to customers directly. They should spend time listening to frontline employees who serve customers everyday.

Then, and only then, can they truly understand the obstacles their employees face. That will make it much more difficult to throw employees under the bus.

The Undeniable Power of Using Experts to Get Better Service

Coppa seemed all wrong.

It's an Italian tapas restaurant in Boston's South End. That's a neighborhood I avoided when I had lived there in the 90s.

They didn't have any reservations available. My wife and I didn't like that uncertainty. We had other things we wanted to do that night and didn't want to get stuck waiting for an hour.

It was tiny. I've been in a lot of tiny places in Boston. Tiny usually equals cramped, crowded, and unpleasant.

Coppa turned out to be perfect.

They had amazing food, a wonderfully cozy atmosphere, and great service. The restaurant was crowded, but they found a comfortable spot for us at a small bar looking out the window.

We never would have gone there if we had relied on Yelp. Good thing we asked an expert instead. When it comes to getting great service experiences, a knowledgeable person is still the go-to option.

The Limits of Yelp and AI

Yelp makes recommendations based on two things: algorithmically-culled recommendations of an anonymous crowd and the searcher's ability to enter appropriate search criteria.

It generally does a good job. 

Just last week, I was traveling and needed to find a place to get a haircut. Yelp was able to narrow down my search to a few highly rated places that were all within walking distance of my hotel. A quick scan of the reviews helped me pick a winner. It worked out well.

But, there are a few problems with how Yelp delivers its recommendations.

First, how do I know that the anonymous crowd shares my interests and tastes? Coppa has over 500 Yelp reviews and a strong four star rating, but I really don't know who is rating them. 

There's been plenty of times when the crowd has absolutely loved something that I just couldn't get into. For example, I've tried many times to love The Godfather movies and still don't like them.

The second problem with Yelp is the user. It's limited by whatever search criteria you use. So, if you decide to exclude the South End, then Yelp won't recommend anything in that neighborhood. That's why Coppa didn't appear in my Yelp search.

The problem, of course, is customers often don't know exactly what they want. Or, they think they do, only to be delighted later on by an option that didn't fit their criteria at all.

I experienced a similar challenge when I tried to use IBM Watson to pick out a jacket. Watson was limited by the search criteria I thought matched my needs. I received better service from an in-store sales associate who could interpret my criteria and think laterally to suggest options I hadn't considered.

The Power of Experts

My friend, Patrick Maguire, had suggested Coppa. 

Patrick knows a lot about restaurants in Boston. He writes the popular I'm Your Server, Not Your Servant blog about hospitality service. He also consults with Boston-area restaurants on PR, promotions, and hospitality. I definitely consider him an expert.

I had told him my wife, Sally, and I were looking for a place for dinner. He asked a few thoughtful questions that led to his recommendation.

Patrick used his extensive knowledge of area restaurants to make his suggestion. He used his perceptiveness to interpret my criteria and understand what was truly important to us. And, he used his relationship with me to effectively persuade me that things I saw as obstacles (South End, no reservations, etc.) weren't really obstacles at all.

Yelp couldn't do that. 

The other thing that Yelp couldn't do is validate my choice. Getting some insider information makes me feel good. Heck, look at the title of my blog and you can tell this is something I obviously value.

Accessing Experts

I wrote a little about connecting with experts in this blog post about Do-It-Yourself Learning. 

Chances are, you know a lot of people who are an expert in one thing or another. The thing I've learned is you have to approach them directly.

So, if I had made a general post on Facebook asking for restaurant recommendations, I might have gotten several suggestions from well-meaning friends who may or may not have been on-target. If I was lucky, Patrick would have seen my post, but there's a good chance he wouldn't have. 

The direct approach worked much better. I went to him because he's an expert in that area.

This means you have to think about who's in your circle that knows something about what you know. Check up on your friends' profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks if you can't remember who knows what.

Employees are often experts too.

They've received specialized training. They spend a lot of time answering questions and familiarizing themselves with their company's products and services. And, I can tell you that most customer service employees love getting the chance to share their knowledge.

This means your restaurant server knows the inside scoop on how menu items really taste. A retail employees knows the ins and outs of their products.

As I noted in a recent blog post, self-help tools like Yelp are gaining in popularity, but employees (and your friends) still hold the edge when it comes to nuanced or complex requests.

Spot the Customer Ownership Mentality Before It's Too Late

Customers think they own things they really don't.

It's an instinctive thing. I first noticed this quirk of human nature years ago as a customer service trainer. Whenever I'd facilitate a multi-day class, people would invariably return to the same seat on day two.

Seats weren't assigned. It's just that people felt it was their seat.

Participants would even get a little uncomfortable if they arrived to find someone sitting where they had sat the day before. No reasonable person could lay claim to that seat, but you could tell they secretly thought it belonged to them.

I've since noticed this in many customer service situations. Here's an overview along with some tips on handling it.

Hey! That's My Seat

The seat issue happened on a recent Southwest Airlines flight that was delayed because of weather. Southwest doesn't have assigned seating, but that didn't stop people from thinking they owned their seat.

The flight crew handled flight delay very well. They made an announcement and told us it would be awhile. We could de-plane if we wanted to. Most people did.

A few people from our flight were re-booked on different flights so they wouldn't miss their connection. Other passengers from later flights joined ours. This meant the passenger mix was slightly different when everyone re-boarded the plane.

Per Southwest's open seating policy, the new passengers sat wherever they found an agreeable open seat. Of course, this often meant they chose to sit where someone else had been sitting before we de-planed because of the weather delay.

I could hear more than a few passengers exclaim, "Hey! That's my seat!"

Seats weren't assigned, but passengers felt they owned the seat by virtue of having sat there first. Some displayed some genuine distress despite the frequent and gentle reminders from the flight crew that Southwest Airlines has open seating.

Other Ownership Examples

There are other situations where customers can think they own things they really don't.

It happens when customers are assigned dedicated account managers. They start to develop a relationship with that person. They think their account manager is their account manager.

Trouble can happen when that account managers leaves the company or some accounts need to be re-assigned or re-distributed. Customers get upset. They feel slighted. Often, their business follows the account manager to the new company.

Perks are another great example. 

It's tired news that airlines have made people unhappy by taking away inflight meals. What people conveniently forget is that nobody liked those meals! They were the target of universal disdain. Comedians made a living by poking fun at how bad airplane food was.

But, now that they're gone, we feel slighted.

My local hardware store used to offer customers free bags of freshly popped pop corn. One day, the popcorn machine was gone. A store employee explained that they had to get rid of the popcorn because of some sort of health code issue (apparently, you need a permit or something - I didn't fully understand it, but it sounded reasonable). It made sense what the store had to do, but customers were disappointed.

At the grocery store, try shopping out of someone else's shopping cart and see how they like it! (Just kidding - don't try that.)

Prevent The Ownership Problem

There are a few things you can do to prevent the customer ownership mentality from causing service failures.

The first thing you should do is get proactive. Identify situations where this is likely to impact your customers. Create a plan to ease the pain.

The second thing you should do is set clear expectations.

The Southwest Airlines flight crew did a great job of continuously reminding people that the flight featured open seating. This prevented the ownership issue from getting worse.

If you have dedicated account managers, make sure your customers get to know a few other people. This might include other support staff or a back-up account manager who can help out if the regular person is on vacation or out sick. Setting up multiple relationships will ease the transition if their favorite account manager leaves the company or is re-assigned.

The final thing you should do is avoid taking something away from a customer that they are likely to think is theirs.

That means keeping perks in place whenever possible. Or, if you have to take something away, give customers something better in exchange.

Squarespace is a great example of this. They provide cloud-based software that makes it easy to create websites.

A few years ago, they upgraded their platform. This upgrade had many new features, but existing users had to convert their websites to the new platform to take advantage of those new features. 

Squarespace's remarkable decision was to continue supporting the old platform indefinitely while giving existing customers the option to upgrade their website to the new platform at no charge.

They gave, without taking away.

How To Assist Customers With Self-Service Kiosks

Note: This is a revised version of a post that originally appeared in 2014.

It's weird to see an employee standing by a self-service kiosk.

These kiosks are, by design, intended to be self-service. They're supposed to be cheaper than the humans they replace when it comes to handling basic transactions. 

(Side note: Check out this recent blog post on who is better at service, Employees or Robots?)

The reality is customers often need extra help, especially if they are a first-time user or use the kiosk infrequently. 

You see this at the airport where a mass of infrequent travelers are trying to check-in for their flights. It happens at the post office, where a postal worker is available during busy periods to help people figure out how to buy their postage from the machine. You also see it at the grocery store where there's usually one employee stationed in between a bank of four self-serve check-out lanes.

Unfortunately, the employees assigned to help customers use kiosks are rarely given any training on how to do this.

There really is an art to it. Do it wrong and you'll annoy your customers and actually slow things down. Do it right and you've convinced another person to join the self-service revolution.

Here are three steps employees should follow:

Step 1: Ask

The first step is to ask customers if they’d like assistance. Never assume they need or want your help.

It can be seen as an annoying intrusion if you just start offering assistance. Many times, your customers already know how to use the kiosk. Or, they'd really prefer to figure things out on their own.

You can even make it sound like an invitation.

When the Portland International Airport installed kiosks outside their parking garage to allow customers to pay for their parking, employees were stationed by the kiosks to help out. They invited customers to save some time by paying for their parking right there.

This embedded a clear customer benefit inside their offer of assistance.

Step 2: Guide

Avoid pushing buttons.

If a customer would like some help, guide them through the transaction using verbal directions and pointing to the appropriate buttons. This approach incorporates a basic tell, show, do learning approach into a mini-training lesson on how to use the equipment.

• Tell: give the customer verbal instructions

• Show: point to the correct button on the kiosk or visually describe it's location

• Do: have the customer complete the transaction themselves

Two bad things can happen when employees operate the kiosk for the customer.

The first bad thing is it can be rude. I've experienced this several times where an aggressive employee just cuts in front of me and starts pushing buttons faster than I can even read the screen.

The second bad thing is operating the kiosk for the customer prevents the customer from learning how to use it. That means they'll likely need help again the next time around.

Step 3: Encourage

The final step is to encourage the customer. Making sure they have a pleasant self-service experience is key to getting them to do it again.

This can mean the difference between self-service kiosks taking off or being neglected. My local post office provides a great example.

During busy times, a postal employee is stationed in front of their self-service kiosk. He or she invites people over to try the machine, but this same employee frequently sabotages the process. The employee takes over each customer's transaction, shooting out rapid-fire questions and pushing buttons before the customer really understands what's going on.

Confusion and anxiety are apparent on most customers' faces. The self-service kiosk isn't a pleasant experience for them. 

Meanwhile, the employee adopts an aggressive attitude. It's clear their top priority is to process each transaction as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, their lack of encouragement actually slows things down.

This spills over to slower times. There is almost never someone using the kiosk when I go to the post office. People would rather wait in line because it's less stressful.

Meanwhile, I cruise over to the kiosk and complete my transaction in less than a minute. With nobody there to push my buttons, using the kiosk is a breeze.

The Customer Service Training Your Employees Absolutely Need to Have

Updated: January 20, 2024

Customer service training is often an arbitrary decision.

One customer service manager requested a four-hour onsite training class. How did she arrive at that decision?

She hoped the training would help a group of long-term employees become more customer-focused. The manager had a limited budget and though a four-hour workshop would be less expensive than other options.

There are big questions:

• Is four hours the right amount of training?

• What specific skills need to be trained?

• Will training even solve the problem?

Given the manager's limited budget, perhaps the biggest question is whether or not training is a good investment? 

These questions are difficult to answer. Moving ahead with generic training before you've answered them is an arbitrary decision.

You can do better. 

This post will show you how to determine the customer service training your employees absolutely need to have.

The Cost of Poor Training

Before we explore how to make the right decision, let's look at some of the potential costs of making the wrong decision.

Here are a few hard costs:

• The cost of the training itself.

• Wages for employees who attend the training.

• Wages for employees who cover the employees attending the training.

• Facilities costs (room rental, etc.)

There's also a soft cost to consider that's harder to measure, but can still have an impact on your team. 

Employees might resent attending training they don't feel is useful. Or worse, they might feel punished if they perceive the training is intended to correct their poor performance.

All of these costs can be hard to justify if you schedule the training and customer service doesn't improve.

Solution: Construct a Business Impact Model

Robert Brinkerhoff provides a simple method for narrowing down the training content your employees really need while simultaneously building a case for the expense. 

It's called a Business Impact Model. You can read more about it in one of Brinkerhoff's outstanding books, The Success Case Method.

I've borrowed heavily from this concept to create a four-step process below:

Step 1: Identify Your Business Goals

The whole point of training is to help your team achieve something. That means you have to clearly define what they're supposed to achieve.

Forget training for just a moment. Focus first on your overall customer service goals. Here are just a few areas you can explore for setting your goals:

• Survey scores

• Complaint reduction

• Customer retention

You might even try to reduce costs. I've found at least 13 different ways that poor customer service can cost your company money.

Be sure to set your goal using the SMART model. SMART is an acronym:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Relevant

• Time-bound

Once you complete this step, you can eliminate any training that doesn't support the goal.

Step 2: Determine Key Actions

It's pretty hard to train employees to do something if you haven't defined what exactly you need them to do.

Let's say you want to give your employees training on handling upset customers. In step one, you decided to set a SMART goal for reducing customer complaints. Now, you need to determine what employees actually need to do to serve an angry customer.

Here are a few things you might look at:

• Is there a process, procedure, or policy employees should follow?

• Do employees have the tools, resources, and authority to do the job?

• Are there factors outside their control that contribute to angry customers?

In most cases, this exercise will quickly reveal that training alone won't fix the problem. There are other factors that need to be addressed first.

It will also reveal the specific topics that may need to be trained.

Step 3: Describe KSAs

Before you train, it's important to know what training can and cannot do. Training can only help your employees develop KSAs:

• Knowledge

• Skills

• Abilities

So, training won't solve the problem if your employees know how to do something, but won't do it, forget to do it, or don't do it consistently.

Managers often mistake KSAs for other issues. Here are some examples of items that cause poor customer service, but can't be trained:

• Lack of clear processes, procedures, or policies.

• Lack of tools, resources, or authority.

• Lack of motivation.

That last one is a huge challenge. How do you motivate employees to serve their customers? It turns out you don't.

The real challenge is preventing demotivation.

One way you can do that is by involving employees in this process. Get their input on a team goal. Have them help document what needs to be done to achieve it, and identify what barriers get in the way.

Back to training, only the necessary KSAs should be included.

Step 4: Identify Missing KSAs

You don't need to train employees to do things they already know how to do. That would be a waste of time.

The only train they need are KSAs they don't already have that are necessary to perform the key actions that will help achieve the goal.

That's it.

This is usually a small, focused list. Once you've created it, you can go back to decisions such as how much time is needed, when to hold the training, and who needs to attend.

Focusing Your Training

The truth is most managers will skip all these steps.

They get impatient, so they jump to conclusions and hope for the best. The paradox is the training they offer typically doesn't work and they've just wasted time, money, and resources by taking shortcuts.

In reality, training is only responsible for one percent of customer service. The remaining 99 percent can be attributed to other factors.

The process of finding that one percent is called a needs analysis. You can learn more about the importance of going through this process by watching this short video.

Understanding the importance of needs analysis from Instructional Design: Needs Analysis by Jeff Toister

Employees vs. Robots: Who Is Better At Service?

This is a real question.

According to a recent report from Execs In The Know, 47 percent of companies are trying to shift traffic from traditional channels (phone, email, etc.) to lower cost channels such as chat and self-service.

It's self-service that's really grabbing headlines. 

Companies want to lower costs. With California leading the charge towards a higher minimum wage, executives feel pressure to spend less on service. Carl's Jr. and Hardee's CEO Andy Puzder recently speculated about building a fully automated restaurant with no employees. (No word on whether it will be called the Skynet Cafe.)

Customers are demanding faster, more frictionless service. That often means self-service. There's even a rumor going around that Millennials are causing this ruckus because they don't like to talk to people.

So, can robots really serve better than human employees? This post examines both sides of the discussion. 

Note: I'm using the term "robot" loosely to mean any aspect of automated service or autonomous self-service.

The Case for Robots

Imagine booking a airplane ticket in the old fashioned days.

You had to call the airline to make a reservation, which required an expensive employee to take your call. Or, you made your reservation through a travel agent, who took an expensive commission out of the price of that ticket.

Either way, you spent valuable time calling, waiting on hold, and then explaining your travel needs to the person on the other end of the line. That person needed to be compensated, and that compensation added to the price of your ticket.

On your day of travel, you had to wait in line to check-in at the airport. If you got to the gate and decided you wanted to change your seat, you had to wait in line for that too. 

Today, you book your ticket online or via a mobile app. You use the app to check in and download your boarding pass so you can by-pass the check-in counter. You can also use the app to change your seat.

Thanks to automation and self-service, air travel is much more convenient than it used to be. It's also cheaper to fly today than it was 20 years ago (in inflation-adjusted dollars).

It's not just air travel. Robots increasingly deliver better service for a lower price. 

Uber is disrupting ground transportation with it's ride sharing app. You can do your taxes on TurboTax or TaxAct using their simple, question-based system. Or, you can deposit a check using your smartphone without ever having to step foot in a bank.

Netflix recommends movies you might like using an amazing/creepy algorithm. Amazon recommends nearly anything you might like using an amazing/creepy algorithm, and then gets it to you in two days. Or, you can just install an Amazon Dash button and use it to re-order supplies with one click. 

IBM is poised to shake up the world of retail with their Watson artificial intelligence technology. In one experiment, they partnered with North Face to use Watson to help customers pick out a winter jacket.

In short, robots make service easier, faster, and better.

The Case for Humans

Automation is great, until something goes wrong.

Take air travel as an example. American Airlines used an automated system to rebook my flight when a delay caused me to miss a connection. That would have been great, except the dumb robot booked me on a flight to the wrong airport. I needed a human to fix it.

Guess who ultimately drives you when you order up an Uber? Autonomous vehicles haven't yet arrived, so you still need a human to drive you from A to B.

Last year, I discovered a bug in TaxAct's software. Getting past it required a full manual workaround by this human.

Order something online and you still need a delivery driver to bring your purchase to your door. My local UPS driver once delivered a package that had the wrong address on it. Some robot screwed up and he fixed it because he knew where I really lived.

Watson may win on Jeopardy, but it's not ready for retail. I tried to use Watson to find a North Face jacket. It didn't do nearly as well as the helpful, in-store sales associate.

Don't even get me started on Interactive Voice Response or IVR. That's the annoying automated phone menu that never understands anything you say.

Robots also can't do warm and fuzzy.

Sure, the automated kiosk at the post office displays "It's been a pleasure to serve you" at the end of each transaction, but I don't really feel it.

OK, so robots can fumble the service bit at times. But, what about cost reduction? Certainly, robots can save money, right?

Not so fast. In her book, The Good Jobs Strategy, Zeynep Ton profiles how low-cost retailers like Trader Joe's and Costco offer low prices by counterintuitively spending more on their employees.

These employees drive both operational excellence and outstanding customer service. They do it by making decisions that simply can't be automated. For example, spotting that "I'm lost" look on a customer's face and then expertly recommending products that customer never even knew existed.

The Winner

Calling a clear winner is tricky.

That's because it's not one or the other in a perfect world. When service is done right, robots and humans can co-exist perfectly.

Here's how I see it:

• Robots are good at: simple or transactional work.

• Humans are good at: complex or relational work.

The challenge for companies is getting both robots and humans to do their jobs, and do them well. Here's one more example. 

I recently had to call a certain satellite radio company to merge two accounts into one. This problem occurred because a I had bought a new car, and the new car automatically created it's own account (robot fail). 

Even worse, the only way to fix it was to call.

So, I called and spoke to a helpful and friendly customer service rep whose only problem was he had limited English skills. We both worked patiently through the issue and he was eventually able to fix everything the robot couldn't handle.

While I was on the phone, repeating every third sentence, I noticed that my account had an old credit card number attached to it. So, rather than fumble through this simple transaction over the phone, I updated my account with the new card number myself.

Human + robot for the win!

How Confirmation Bias Influences Your Customers

Imagine taking a train from San Diego to Santa Barbara, California.

Beautiful, right? You can probably picture the amazing views of the ocean and the charming beach towns you pass along the way.

That's how I describe it. I took that trip recently when I traveled to Santa Barbara to film my latest training videos at Lynda.com. It was peaceful and relaxing.

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

But, what did I really see along the way? 

Watch this short video for just one minute to see my view from the train. For more than half the trip, my view was much closer to this one.

What is Confirmation Bias?

Here's a great definition from psychology expert Kendra Cherry:

A confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias that involves favoring information that confirms previously existing beliefs or biases.

In other words, once we believe something, we tend to stick to that belief. We naturally filter information based on whether or not it supports our opinion.

Here's an example of how it can influence your customers.

A friend and I were talking about Zappos. She told me she thought that Zappos customer service was amazing. She emphasized the word "amazing" as she shared this with me.

Intrigued, I asked her about her own experiences. Her answer surprised me.

She told me she had ordered from them a couple of times, but there were mistakes made each time. Neither experience was good. She also mentioned another friend who had a bad experience with them too.

I asked my friend why she thinks Zappos has amazing customer service if she's only had bad experiences. Her reply was, "Because that's what everybody says."

There's no doubt that Zappos has a reputation for outstanding customer service. My intent here isn't to refute that. 

It's just astonishing that a customer who can only remember bad experiences would still believe the company had amazing service.

That's confirmation bias.

You can try this exercise on your own. Think of a few companies that deliver amazing service and a few that are poor. Now, list specific facts that back up your impression. See if you can really make an objective argument.

For example, I've professed my love for In-N-Out many times on this blog. What's my real argument for their awesomeness?

• They rank high on customer service and taste test lists.

• I consistently have good experiences.

• It's my favorite fast food burger.

Those are all commendable attributes. But, at the end of the day, In-N-Out is a fast food hamburger joint. That's it. No more, no less.

It's not a magic customer service unicorn that will make all your dreams come true.

How Confirmation Bias Affects Your Reputation

Most companies don't have a reputation for customer service that's as strong as Zappos's. Or, as strong as Comcast's for that matter.

These biases can be either positive or negative.

Your customers can still develop a bias about your company. Once customers form a belief about your company, confirmation bias makes it hard to change their mind.

Here are a few examples:

• A customer's first impression can anchor how they feel about your business.

• Online reviews can convince customers that you're awesome (or not).

• How quickly and how well you handle problems can cement a reputation.

• Making personal connections with customers can strengthen their positive bias.

• One prickly employee can convince customers you suck.

Sometimes, your business can develop a strong reputation with someone before they ever become your customer. 

That's why local businesses push so hard to land on those "Best Of" lists found in many communities. It's validation that they're fantastic.

It's also why companies worry about a service failure somehow going viral. In one extreme example, the owners of a gourmet marshmallow company appeared on the show The Profit. 

Viewers were so disgusted by the owners' boorish behavior that they quickly voted the company's Yelp and Google ratings down to one star, even though the overwhelming majority of reviewers had never done business with them.

Would you do business with a company that had a one star rating?

Developing a Positive Bias

Customers are going to develop biases whether you want them to or not. So, the best strategy is to help your customers have positive biases.

Here are a few things you can try:

• Develop a customer service vision to guide your team

• Create an amazing first impression experience

• Master the three Moments of Truth 

• Reduce your customer's perceived wait time

• Manage your reputation on Yelp and other review sites 

Here's What's New In Social Media Customer Service

Social media is still an immature customer service channel.

That's apparent when reading the latest Customer Experience Benchmark report from Execs In The Know and COPC, Inc. This report is the 2015 Corporate Edition and was published in 2016.

I previously analyzed their 2013 report and their 2014 report and came to the same conclusion each year. Most companies still don't get social media as a customer service channel.

Six years ago, I did my own tiny social media study. That's back when the Starbucks Twitter profile said that some guy named Brad did the tweeting. Things are pretty much the same as even back then. (Except for Brad. I'm not sure what happened to him.)

In this year's report, I did see a glimmer of hope that more companies are starting to catch on. Social media customer service is still far from maturity, but it might be entering it's adolescent years.

Below are three of the more interesting trends revealed in the report. You can also purchase the full report from Execs In The Know. It's full of intriguing insights on social media plus more traditional channels (phone, email, etc.) and emerging channels like self-service and chat.

Trend #1: Ownership

More customer service teams are getting involved, and they're getting more resources to do it. It still isn't great. Here's the breakdown of who owns the social media function:

Customer service has sole or joint ownership of social media in 54 percent of companies surveyed. That's up from 50 percent last year.

The percentage of companies that give their social media agents training is also up, though not quite as high as it was in 2013.

Side note:

What the heck are companies doing that aren't training their employees?! I can just see those managers now.

"Hey Kayla. You're a millennial, right?! Don't all you millennials get social media and stuff? Well, you're in charge now."

I digress.

The other good news is that 60 percent of companies surveyed expected their budget to increase. Only 27 percent of companies surveyed last year planned to increase their budget.

Trend #2: New Channels

Twitter and Facebook remain the big dogs when it comes to social media customer service. 

There are other sites like Pintrest, Instagram, and LinkedIn that have millions of users but haven't really caught on for customer service.

However, there are a few alternative social media channels that are increasing. The chart below compares each channel's share of social media engagements in 2015 vs 2014.

Here, it's helpful to remind ourselves what constitutes social media. This is the definition from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)

What types of sites are in these three growing categories?

• Forums include online support communities like this Apple site.

• Review site examples include Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google My Business.

• Blogs posts can engage customers too, like this sample post from Alaska Airlines.

So, the real trick for companies is figuring out where their customers are trying to interact with them and then establishing a service presence in those channels.

Trend #3: Maturity Is Still Low

If something stays the same, does that constitute a trend? 

I'm going to say yes. It's important to acknowledge that many companies are struggling to serve their customers via social media. 

Just 20 percent of survey respondents felt their social media customer service was mature or very mature.

This is going to pose a problem for two reasons. First, social media volume is increasing. The survey found that social media volume increased in 77 percent of companies. 

Second, companies are struggling to keep up with this volume. I examined this 2015 multichannel study from Eptica to learn about social media response rates. 

Here's how the top 500 U.S. retailers fared via Twitter, Facebook, and email:

Yikes! Do these brands hate their customers?

Seriously, brands. I say this with sincerity and affection: If you aren't going to respond to your customers on social media (or email?!) then shut down your account. 

It's social + media. Not media. Sheesh.

Here, I suspect companies are lying to themselves. They think they are awesome when they're not. (I recently wrote about overconfidence causing service failures.) 

There are three data points that support this assertion.

First, the Customer Experience Benchmark found that improving the quality of care was a top priority for contact centers for the second year in a row.

Second, the report also found that 79 percent of companies think they're meeting the needs of their customers, but only 33 percent of customers surveyed agree.

Finally, there's Gartner's famous stat that 89 percent of companies expect customer experience to be their primary basis for competition in 2016.

It's hard to believe we're entering a new age of customer service awesome if companies aren't even responding to basic inquiries. Maybe that's why retail customer satisfaction continues to drop. 

One Last Trend

There's one last trend that I think explains a lot.

Take a look at Domo's 2015 Social CEO Report. They looked at Fortune 500 CEOs to see which ones had a presence on social media. 

Their sad finding is 61 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have no presence on social media. It's hard to believe that social media will get the attention it deserves if CEOs don't understand it.

How Employee Overconfidence Causes Service Failures

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

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

The results weren't good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Overconfidence Problem

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

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

• "I'm awesome, but management doesn't have it's act together."

• "I'm awesome, but our customers are a pain."

• "I'm awesome, but my co-workers don't know what they're doing."

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

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

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

How Does Overconfidence Happen?

Blame the Dunning Krueger effect. 

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

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

The explanation is two-fold.

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

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

I've run a similar experiment several times.

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

• Individual Average: 4.0

• Team Average: 3.0

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

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

Overcome Overconfidence

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

Here are a few things you can try.

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

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

1. Have them review their own calls, emails, chats, etc.

2. Ask them to self-assess against the customer service vision.

3. Invite employees to describe what they would do differently.

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

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

Resources

Overconfidence can plague everyone, from frontline employees all the way up to senior executives. 

I tackled this topic in my book, Getting Service Right. You can download a free chapter to read about overconfidence or buy the book on Amazon.

You may also enjoy this short video that describes why customer service is so hard. Overconfidence is part of the problem. 

Understanding why customer service is hard from Innovative Customer Service Techniques by Jeff Toister