What Happens When Customers Decide to Stick It Out

How loyal are your customers after a service failure?

It's question businesses might invest time in answering. In the meantime, I can share the results from a little experiment.

Last week, I included a link to an old blog post in my Customer Service Tip of the Week email. The post was a deliberate collection of broken links and misdirection that was intended to show the reader how it felt to experience a service failure.

What's interesting to me is the percentage of readers who stuck with the post after each failure. The data shows a trend that I believe will hold true if you analyze your real customer data.

If you want to read the blog post, I recommend doing that first. Otherwise, the analysis below will spoil the surprise. 

The post will open in a new window. You can come back here and continue once you've read it. (Assuming you don't bail!) Or, you can just skip the post altogether.

Here's An Interactive Guide to Stuff Your Customers Hate. 

Reader Statistics

The post was a funhouse of problems. Readers are told at the very beginning that I've written it to help them experience some of the issues that bother customers the most.

You’ll truly understand what aggravates your customers if you can make it through all the way to the end.

It had 124 unique readers from July 18 - July 24, 2016.

The first trick was readers were asked to click on a link to learn "A Secret Way to Diffuse Angry Customers." The link was deliberately broken, so readers who clicked saw an error message.

Only 67 unique readers clicked on this link. That's a 46 percent drop-off. Of course, I'm sure some people just skipped it, even though I tried to make it obvious.

There was another broken link. The set-up was exactly the same as the first one. (People really hate it when you don't fix a problem.) Here, just 53 people clicked through. 

That's a 57 percent drop-off. But, it's only a 21% drop-off from the number of unique readers who clicked the first broken link.

Now, I promise readers I've given them a real link. Let's see how many people click on this.

There were 61 unique readers, a 51 percent drop-off from the original post. But, the number strangely rose from the previous service failure. And, it's only a 9 percent drop-off from the original broken link.

This link didn't lead readers to the promised secret.

Instead, it displayed an annoying sales pitch for my book, Service Failure. (The point is that customers don't like to be sold to when you should be fixing their problem instead.) Readers had the option of buying my book or clicking on a link that said, "No thanks - take me to the secret."

That link had a total of 41 readers. These people presumably have faced three service failures: two broken links and an unwelcome sales pitch. Let's see some updated statistics:

  • 67% drop-off from the original 124 readers.

  • 39% drop-off from the original service failure (broken link).

  • 33% drop-off from the previous service failure (sales pitch).

In other words, readers stop reading after every service failure. But, the percentage of readers who stop reading progressively declines. Some people are clearly determined to stick it out.

There's just one more trick. 

Readers who skipped the annoying sales pitch shown in the previous link were taken to yet another annoying sales pitch. The page read, "Are you sure?" 

People could either relent and buy my book or click on another link that said, "I already said No! Just take me to the secret."

Guess how many people clicked on that final link? 41

That's the same number of unique readers who clicked on the previous link. There was a 0 percent drop-off after the last service failure.

 

What Does It All Mean?

Please, take all of this with a grain of salt.

My data shows that people either bail early at the first sign of trouble or become increasingly resilient. But, this is a small amount of data from a poorly controlled experiment. You could easily poke holes in my reasoning.

It does hint that maybe we have some customers who are very willing to be loyal. They'll tolerate a few problems. 

I'd suggest running some real numbers on your own customers. Find people who've experienced a service failure, or two, or more. Dig deeper to calculate their loyalty rate.

If that's true for your business that people are resilient after the first service failure, I'd want to find those people. I'd find a way to make them happy and reward them for their loyalty. 

My guess is those customers are probably worth a lot to your business.

The Department You Need to Check to Avoid Service Failures

In 2008, the shipping company DHL ran an ad campaign touting their outstanding customer service.

Each ad showed different service encounters where a DHL employee went above and beyond. The tagline was, "We're putting service back in the shipping business."

It wasn't true.

In November that year, DHL announced they were pulling out of the U.S. domestic shipping business. The company faced a myriad of problems, one of the biggest being their woeful customer service.

DHL's CEO, John Mullen, was quoted at the time as saying, "It's hard to see what could have been done that would have led to a different result."

But, there is something they should have done: audit their marketing and communications.

Why Conduct an Audit?

Your company's advertising is essentially a promise to customers. So, if you advertise something, you had better be able to deliver it. Customers naturally get disappointed when you promise them something and it doesn't happen.

Imagine a chain of furniture stores that promises same day delivery in their advertising. Fast delivery is the hook to get you in the door. But, what happens if there's a laundry list of exceptions to the same day promise?

A customer who expected same-day delivery when she ordered a couch won't be very happy to learn it will actually take two weeks.

It's scenarios like that that make it essential to conduct a regular marketing and communications audit. You'll avoid service failures if you spot (and fix) promises that aren't being kept.

 

How to Conduct Your Audit

Here's a three step process you can use to audit your marketing and communications.

Step 1: List all advertised promises. Check your advertising, brochures, and other collateral. Find out what your salespeople are pitching. Look at signage. Listen to your hold messages.

Step 2: Test each promise. Run a test on each promise to see if your company can actually deliver it. For instance, a bank is promoting their ATM machines as a faster and easier alternative than completing a teller-assisted transaction. You can test this promise by timing the same transaction via both channels.

Step 3: Make a list to fix. Identify broken promises that need to be fixed. Perhaps your advertising needs to be adjusted. Or, maybe your company needs to boost some capabilities to improve operations. The key is making sure what's promised is what gets delivered.

 

What to Audit

Here are a few specific things you should consider auditing.

Delivery

As I write this, I'm waiting to get my car back from the mechanic. I was told it would be two days, but I just called to check the status and learned it will now be three. 

Check on anything you deliver, whether it's a service, merchandise, or the time to complete a repair or service call.

That's why Netflix frequently sends it's DVD subscribers an email asking, "When did you mail this DVD?" or "When did you receive this DVD?" They're monitoring their delivery to make sure it stays within the promised range.

 

Response Time

Check out fast you respond to customers via various channels. 

For example, the new response time standard for email is one hour. If you can't respond in one hour, make sure you have an auto-responder set up to let customers know when you will respond. And then, time your responses to make sure you're fulfilling that promise.

KLM does this for their Twitter account, regularly posting their expected response time on their profile page.

Product Image

There's a great scene in the movie Falling Down where Michael Douglas's character, D-Fens, loses his mind because he's served a fast food hamburger that looks nothing like what's shown on the menu. 

Source: IMBD

Source: IMBD

It's an extreme example, but customers really don't appreciate it when the product doesn't match what's advertised.

Look at the product images you display on websites, brochures, menus, etc. and make sure they closely match what you're actually delivering. 

 

Resources

You can learn more about this and other techniques in a new training video, The Manager's Guide to Managing Customer Expectations on Lynda.com. 

Here's a short preview video.

You'll need a Lynda.com account to view the entire course, but I can hook you up with a 10-day trial.

PS. Check out this slightly different, but still excellent How-To article from Denise Lee Yohn on how to conduct a brand diagnostic to scale up your brand.

Book Review: Scaling Up Excellence

The authors call it "The Problem of More."

Organizations face a challenge when they identify a best practice and try to do more. Maybe one location in a retail chain is doing something terrific and executives want every location to do the same thing.

Replicating a best practice or an innovative solution throughout a company seems like it should be so easy, but it isn't.

That's the issue tackled in Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less by Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao.

 

Overview

The lessons in this book can be applied to a wide range of challenges.

They describe how a failing hospital re-energized it's staff and turned it's fortunes around. Or, how companies like JetBlue or Disney create and sustain their famous customer-focused cultures.

The book immediately resonated with me in two ways. 

First, it's written as a how-to guide, but there are plenty of interesting real-life stories to spice it up. Second, much of what the book discusses is fundamentally organizational culture.

I read it as research for a book that I'm writing, The Service Culture Handbook, but I found it to be very enjoyable on its own.

The book starts by outlining a general philosophy for scaling excellence. It then describes five core principles and provides some general advice for implementing the ideas in your own organization.

 

Take-Aways

There were quite a few take-aways in this book. Here are my top three:

Think Big + Small. Yes, you need to have a smart program to scale a best practice across an organization, but you also need subtle nudges to get things moving. For example, leaders need to consistently insist on modeling best practices.

Bad Apples Ruin It. Sutton and Rao suggest that people who actively work against an initiative have a far more damaging effect than people who actively support it. You see this time and time again in organizations where individual leaders undermine a program by insisting on doing their own thing. 

You Must Have Excellence. The book contains a quote that's both a blinding flash of the obvious, and an explanation for why so many corporate initiatives fail:

To spread excellence, you need to have some excellence to spread.

 

Buy This Book

The book is available in a variety of formats on Amazon. You can also check out more of my recommended reading list.

 

Why You Need to Partner Up with Angry Customers

UPDATED: October 10, 2023

It was the yelling that caught everyone's attention.

Well, that and the guy emphatically slamming his hand on the hotel's registration desk. A line of people waiting to check in stared at the scene, transfixed by this irate guest.

The problem was clear. He thought he had a reservation. The hotel said he didn't. Plus, the hotel was sold out so they couldn't accommodate him.

The front desk agent was unsympathetic. It’s hard to care deeply about someone’s problems when they’re yelling at you and making a scene. She just wanted the guest to go away.

A supervisor stepped in and immediately made two mistakes. 

First, he gave in to his own embarrassment. The supervisor turned to the long line of weary travelers waiting to check in and said , "I'm sorry for the delay, folks, but you know, some people...." He tilted his head towards the irate guest just in case nobody knew who he was talking about.

Mistake number two was to face the guest directly, hold up the palm of his hand like a stop sign, and loudly say, "Sir, I'm going to need you to calm down!"

All hell broke loose. Someone called security.

Customers are not opponents

The hotel supervisor treated the irate guest as an adversary.

Objectively, we know we aren't supposed to do this. Customer service professionals are there to help, right? It gets a little more complicated when the situation is real.

Angry customers can trigger our fight or flight instinct. Upset customers are harder to help because they tend to get more judgmental and less open to ideas. Some customers are just jerks.

Unfortunately, treating a customer like an opponent tends to make things worse. Now, they have two problems. There's the initial issue plus the maddening feeling of being stonewalled.

Consider this infamous Comcast cancellation call. Nobody really cared that the customer wanted to cancel his service. It was the Comcast agent's unwillingness to facilitate the cancellation request that caught everyone's attention.

Customer service reps stonewall upset customers all the time. Perhaps not at an extreme level, but they still do little things that make matters worse:

  • Robotically quoting policy

  • Using trigger words like "No" or "Policy" to defend a decision

  • Trying to argue with a customer or prove them wrong

  • Failing to demonstrate empathy

  • Using defensive body language

 

The Partner Technique

You'll have better luck serving angry customers if you make them feel like you're on their side by using the Partner Technique. Here are some examples of using partner behaviors:

  • Shift your body language so you're both facing the problem together

  • Listen carefully to customers so they feel heard

  • Use collaborative words like "We" and "Let's"

I discovered the Partner Technique while working with an airline client's ticketing agents. They'd often encounter travelers who were upset about baggage fees or long check-in lines.

Here's how the ticketing agents used the Partner Technique to make their passengers feel better:

First, they'd physically move to the passenger's side. This allowed them to look at the issue together, but it also avoided more defensive face-to-face body language.

Second, they'd ask questions and listen carefully to the passenger's concerns. 

Finally, the ticketing agent gave the passenger their commitment to assist them. This didn't always mean giving the passenger exactly what they wanted, but it did mean making an effort to demonstrate empathy and provide assistance.

This change in perspective helped more passengers feel better and made the ticketing agents' jobs a little easier.

One final note: 

Being on the customer's side doesn't necessarily mean you aren't on your company's side. It just means that you are making an effort to understand your customer and help them succeed.

Case Study: The Partner Technique in Action

How would the hotel situation have unfolded if the supervisor (or even the front desk agent) had used the Partner Technique?

Here’s a nearly identical example where the supervisor did use the technique.

Two guests attempted to check in to a hotel. The associate couldn’t locate their reservation, despite the guests insisting that they had one. They became rude and verbally abusive, even as the associate calmly tried to find a solution.

A supervisor stepped in.

She used open body language and partnering words to show she was on the guests’ side and genuinely wanted to help. The supervisor asked if the guests would give her a few moments so she could research the issue and find their reservation.

The guests were still upset, but they began to calm.

The supervisor returned with an update. She had located the guests’ reservation, but it was at another property managed by the same chain. It was the guests’ error that caused the whole scene!

Continuing to use the Partner Technique, the supervisor offered to have the hotel shuttle drive the guests to the other hotel. It was a 20 minute drive, but the hotel would transport them at no cost. The other option was to transfer their reservation to the supervisor’s hotel. The supervisor offered a discount, though the rate would still be significantly higher than the other hotel since it was a waterfront resort (the other hotel was in a suburban office park).

The guests accepted the supervisor’s transportation offer.

They weren’t happy. They didn’t apologize. They didn’t even own up to their mistake. But the supervisor’s efforts to partner with the guests prevented an escalated or prolonged argument and helped the guests get to an acceptable solution.

That was still a good outcome since all of this happened in a public space in front of other hotel guests. As one of those guests, I can tell you we were all grateful for the way the supervisor handled the situation with grace.

Take Action

Think about situations where you were tempted to argue with a customer. Consider how The Partner Technique might help you avoid that argument.

This short video contains more suggestions for sidestepping arguments with angry customers.

How to Improve Customer Service Training by 900%

Imagine your employees need customer service training.

You want to hire a professional. Someone who can share cutting-edge concepts and really fire up the team. 

The standard approach is to look for someone like me. The trainer flies in, conducts the training, gets great reviews, and then leaves. 

Has that ever really worked out well? Motivation usually jumps for a few days and then employees gradually settle back into their old habits.

There's another approach. One that's 900% better and costs less. 

The 70-20-10 Rule

Research conducted by the Center For Creative Leadership is credited with developing the 70-20-10 Rule. It suggests that leaders learn their skills from three sources:

  • 70% from challenging assignments

  • 20% from developmental relationships

  • 10% from formal training

In truth, it's not really a rule. The 70-20-10 ratio is more of a guide. And, it can be applied to all sorts of training.

Let's look at what happens when we apply the 70-20-10 rule to a typical customer service training program:

 

The typical program focuses on formal training, which accounts for roughly 10 percent of learning. But, what about the other 90 percent?

That's usually not part of the plan.

Developmental relationships account for 20 percent of learning - twice as much as formal training. These usually come from a boss or mentor. Unfortunately, typical training programs often fail because the boss doesn't do much coaching to help employees develop their new skills.

The typical training also lacks a clearly defined initiative where employees' new skills can make a measurable difference. That's another 70 percent of learning they miss out on.

 

A New Approach

The good news is we can make a few tweaks to capture the missing 90 percent. And, we can reduce our costs at the same time, but more about that in a moment.

First, we need to identify a challenge for everyone to work on. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras coined the term Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal in their classic book, Built to Last.

The idea is you can rally the team (or an organization) behind an important goal that focuses everyone's efforts.

My clients often identify a specific challenge through a customer service assessment. I offer a comprehensive version, but you can download this mini-version and try it on your own.

That challenge represents 70 percent of learning. We can capture the other 20 percent if the employees' supervisors are prepared to coach their teams.

There are often two big issues for supervisors:

  • They don't think they have time to coach

  • They don't know how to coach

You can solve both issues by enrolling supervisors in a one-on-one coaching program. They'll learn how to carve out the necessary time and how they develop their employees.

Add in the challenge and coaching and your training model now looks like this:

Reduce Your Costs

Remember that bit about adding in a challenge plus coaching while reducing your costs? Here's how you do that:

You do the training via video. 

Will a training video be as good as live training? The short answer is no. But, video can be extremely effective. And, remember that formal training is only 10 percent of the pie. Better to focus your resources on the other 90 percent.

Let's look at an example of the costs associated with training 30 employees using the typical approach versus the new approach.

I've made a few assumptions here, so your math might work out a little differently:

  • The average hourly wage is $15 per hour.

  • There are three supervisors who oversee the 30 employees.

  • The one-on-one coaching program for the supervisors costs $4,500.

The $900 cost of training for the new approach is based on a one month premium Lynda.com subscription for 30 employees at $29.99 per person. The actual cost can be lower than that with a volume discount. 

 

Bonus Benefit

Many of my clients have reminded me of a bonus benefit gained by the new approach.

Think about what happens when you bring in a professional trainer. That person does their training and then goes home. But, what do you do when you hire a new employee? Or, what happens when it's been six months and your team needs a refresher?

With the new approach, you have an easy source of ongoing development if you keep your access to the training videos!

Report: Most Contact Center Agents At Risk of Burnout

We've all seen the signs.

A contact center agent starts developing some bad habits. You can hear a negative tone of voice. Absenteeism increases. Productivity declines while errors go up. You may even see an alarming lack of caring.

The agent's spark has been extinguished. Your agent seems to be burned out.

You're not alone if you've seen this happen. A new study conducted by Toister Performance Solutions reveals that 74 percent of contact center agents are at risk of burnout. 

A whopping 30 percent of agents face a severe burnout risk. 

Bored contact center agent feeling burned out.

 

Burnout Problems

The U.S. National Library of Medicine provides this definition:

Burnout is a psychological term that refers to long-term exhaustion and diminished interest in work.

According to their website, symptoms include:

  • Emotional exhaustion

  • Alienation from job-related activities

  • Reduced performance

These are all potentially harmful issues. Emotional exhaustion can make it difficult to project friendliness and caring to customers. Alienation from job-related activities might mean an agent gives less effort and rarely goes the extra mile. The result of all that is reduced performance.

You may even seen a spike in absenteeism when an agent begins to burn out before they finally leave. Or worse, they stay, but as a shell of their former selves.

 

Study Results Revealed

The study results are now available in a new research report. Here are a few highlights:

  • 52% of agents who are at severe risk of burnout said their company is not customer-focused.

  • 41% of agents who are at severe risk of burnout said they don't feel empowered.

  • 36% of agents with a severe burnout risk think their co-workers don't provide outstanding service.

How Clear Language Can Help You Avoid Service Failures

"If you say that to a customer, you're lying."

I'll never forget that advice. It came from the manager at the clothing store where I worked as a teenager. She was explaining how to set appropriate expectations.

We'd frequently get calls from customers asking if we had a particular item or size in stock. Customers wanted to save themselves an unnecessary trip if we didn't have what they were looking for. (This was back before the days when you could go online and look it up.)

The process involved walking the sales floor to physically locate the item. If we had it, we could hold it for the customer so it was waiting for them when they came in.

It usually took us several minutes to find what the customer wanted.

Our store manager was coaching the team on how to put a customer on hold. Many of us had a habit of saying, "I'm going to put you on hold for just a minute while I see if we have that item in stock."

Of course, "just a minute" really meant a few minutes. Customers could reasonably believe we literally meant one minute and be slightly annoyed when it took longer than that. 

The lesson the store manager shared was that we can help customers avoid unpleasant surprises by being careful about the language we use.

 

Problem 1: Customers Are Too Optimistic

Two problems can occur if we don't use clear language to manage customer expectations. Both can easily result in a service failure.

The first problem is customers have selective hearing. They tend to be overly optimistic about the service we promise them.

Here are two examples:

If you say, "Your order will arrive in two to four days," a customer will hear, "Your order will arrive in two days."

Or, if you say, "I'm going to put you on hold for just a minute," a customer will hear, "The maximum time you will be on hold is one minute."

 

Problem 2: We're Too Eager to Please

The other problem occurs when we're too eager to please our customers. We inadvertently set the scene for a future service failure by trying to make our customer feel better right now.

You've probably heard the phrase, "Under promise and over deliver." This is just the opposite.

A two to four day delivery time sounds too long, so we emphasize that it often takes just two days. This makes the customer feel good in the moment, because two days is acceptable.

It also sets the stage for an unpleasant surprise if it takes longer than that.

 

How Clear Language Can Help

You can avoid these problems by using clear language to get your customer to agree to the worst case scenario. Most of the time, customers are perfectly fine with this.

Here's an example:

Instead of saying, "Your order will take two to four days to arrive," say, "Your order will take up to four days to arrive."

This way, your customer won't be upset if the order takes four days. And, they'll be pleasantly surprised if it takes just two or three days to get there.

Of course, if four days is too long, you can always discuss options such as express shipping to get the order there faster.

Another example:

Don't say, "I'll get back to you right away." Instead, give your customer a specific time that has a little built-in wiggle room in case it takes you longer than anticipated. You might say, "I'll need to do some research on that issue. Will it be okay if I get back to you by 4pm today?"

 

Learn More

You can learn more from the short video below. It’s part of my LinkedIn Learning course, Managing Customer Expectations.

The Unlikely Way to Check Your True Service Philosophy

Companies have two customer service philosophies.

The first one is the outstanding service fantasy. Executives preach about being great. There's an occasional initiative to rally the team. Perhaps the company advertises it's stellar service quality. 

The second philosophy is the reality.

This is how people at the company really feel about service. You can see this in executive decisions, the way managers lead their teams, and the actions of their employees.

The two philosophies don't match at most companies. The fantasy is that service is great, but the reality is quite different. Service is mediocre at best. It might even be terrible.

Only a very few companies have melded these two philosophies together; where the fantasy of customer-focus is also the reality.

Want to check your organization?

There's a simple test via an unlikely source. Go see how your accounts payable team is treating your vendors. This little test is based on the principle that who you are is how you serve.

Read on to see the answer key.

Result: Vendors Are Paid Late

Some companies are consistently late paying bills. 

These dead beats stretch payments past the agreed upon terms. An excuse is invented to cause a delay. Or, the bureaucratic trolls in the accounts payable department will sit on an invoice until the due date and then start the lengthy payment process.

It's a procedure built on the company's convenience and desire to conserve cash flow. It also reveals a rotten core.

You can't treat your vendors with disrespect and then suddenly flip a switch when it comes to your own customers. These payment delays come from the real customer service philosophy, not the fantasy one.

I've worked with a few companies like this. These organizations are typically hopeless. 

 

Result: Vendors Are Paid On Time

These organizations consistently pay vendors on time.

Payment terms are agreed upon and that's exactly how the company pays its bills. Occasionally, a payment gets delayed for an oddball reason like an incorrect purchase order number, but someone from the accounts payable department generally gets it sorted out.

There's nothing wrong with organizations like this, but there's nothing special either.

You can see the same philosophy in the way employees at these companies treat customers. Do what you say you are going to do and then scramble to fix things when they go wrong.

 

Result: Vendors Are Paid Early

A few companies pay vendors early.

Let's say a bill is due in 30 days. These rare organizations might pay in 16. Why? First, it's easier to avoid being late if you pay early. When something occasionally goes wrong, you can fix it and still be on time.

Second, leaders in these organizations realize their vendors are important stakeholders. They pay early because they want to keep their vendors happy. It's a strategic move.

I've worked with quite a few companies like this. They have all had a strong, customer-focused culture. Leaders consistently insist that all stakeholders (customers, vendors, employees, etc.) are treated like valued customers.

Paying early is part of their organizational DNA. It's how they are.