Five Characteristics of a Powerful Customer Survey

Customer are constantly getting pummeled with survey requests.

We get them via email. They pop up when we visit a website. The auto mechanic pulls us aside after an oil change and begs us for a 10.

A 2016 study from Interaction Metrics found that more than 80 percent of America's top retailers offered a customer survey on purchase receipts. The study also found that most surveys were total garbage.

Most customer service leaders I know are concerned about their surveys. They recognize customers get too many. Leaders also aren't certain what to do with the data they're collecting.

This post aims to solve that problem. 

Below are five characteristics of a powerful customer survey. Use them to put your existing survey to the test. And, if you want more help, I'm willing to do an evaluation of your existing survey at no cost or obligation (details at the end of the post).

#1 Purpose

Always start with why. Understand why you want to survey your customers. Whenever possible, be specific.

Customer service leaders typically respond by saying, "We want to collect feedback." That's not enough. It doesn't provide clear direction because there's no action involved.

Here's a better reason I recently heard from a customer service leader:

Customer retention is a key driver of our company's success. We want to use our survey to help pinpoint the causes of customer churn.

See the difference? A clear purpose will help you use the survey to drive action.

#2 Choose the Correct Format

There's a lot of debate around which type of survey is best. Here are the three most popular:

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): measures customer satisfaction with a product, service, or transaction.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): measures a customer's likelihood to recommend your product or service.

• Customer Effort Score (CES): measures how easy it was for a customer to resolve their issue.

So here's a secret: there's no single survey type that's best!

Choosing the wrong survey type can yield less helpful data, so it's important to choose the correct survey type to match your goal.

A municipal utility probably shouldn't use an NPS survey because they have a monopoly on their service so generating positive word-of-mouth isn't the goal. The utility would be better off using a CES survey to find ways to serve their customers more efficiently.

Here's a primer that can help you decide which survey is best for your situation.

#3 Ask the Right Questions

A survey is only as useful as the questions it contains.

Most surveys contain too many questions. Those questions are frequently poorly designed and do little to reveal useful information.

You can ask better questions if you keep a few things in mind:

• What's your purpose for doing the survey? (See #1 above)

• What type of survey are you using? (See #2 above)

• What will you do with the data?

If you don't know what you will do with the answer to a question, there's no need to ask it. In fact, I challenge my clients to use just three questions whenever possible:

1. How would you rate (product, service, experience)?

2. Why did you give that rating? (open text response)

3. May we follow-up with you if we have additional questions?I challenge my clients to 

This short explainer reveals the rationale behind each of these questions (and why you usually don't need any more).

#4 Make Your Survey Easy

Offering a survey is really asking a customer to do you a favor.

The easier you make your survey, the more likely your customer is to do you that favor and to feel okay doing it. This means your surveys should follow a few simple principles:

• Easy to access

• Offered in a timely manner

• Easy (and quick) to complete

A 2011 study from SurveyMonkey found that survey completion rates drop 5-20 percent once a survey takes 7+ minutes to complete. The same study discovered that's usually around 10 questions.

#5 Take Action

The number one survey gripe I hear from customers is the survey doesn't matter. 

Truthfully, they're usually right. Studies consistently show the vast majority of survey feedback is never acted upon.

You need to use surveys to drive improvement if you want to avoid wasting your customers' time. That means analyzing the data for trends and identifying opportunities for improvement.

Your survey serves no purpose if you're not doing that.

Resources

Here are a few more resources to help you improve your existing customer survey or implement a new one.

Training Video: Using Customer Surveys to Improve Service

• LinkedIn Premium subscribers access it here

• Lynda.com subscribers access it here

If you don't have a subscription to either source, you can get a 30-day Lynda.com trial account by dropping my name.

You might also want to check out my customer service survey resource page.

Finally, here's my offer to review your survey:

Send your survey as a link or PDF file to jeff [at] toistersolutions [dot] com by June 30, 2017. In your email, answer these three questions:

1. What is your objective for this survey?

2. How are you offering the survey? (Ex: via email to customers who contact you)

3. What are you doing with the survey data?

I'll respond with notes about your survey's strengths and some suggestions for improvement.

Lessons From The Overlook: Experience Your Customers' Experience

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a monthly update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

Guest experience was initially a blind spot at The Overlook.

When we bought the property last October, our property manager did a property walk-through with us and gave her assessment. That was helpful, but we didn't have a lot of data other than that.

How were we going to find out what our guests liked or disliked? Or how we could make their stay align with our customer service vision, Welcome to your mountain community retreat?

Most people would default to a guest survey. We did that (through our property manager), but we also used two techniques that are arguably more powerful in this situation: experience and observation.

Here's what we did and how you can use these concepts, too.

Experience Your Product or Service

The first thing we did when we bought The Overlook was spend a weekend.

The house was already a vacation rental and it was sold turnkey, which meant it came fully furnished. What we didn't know was whether those furnishings were adequate.

You can learn a lot when you experience your product or service the way a customer would. For example, it might be easy to miss a few burned out lightbulbs if you weren't relaxing at the dining table underneath your faux-antler chandelier.

So we tried to experience everything a guest would experience. We slept in each bedroom, used each bathroom, cooked in the kitchen, watched TV, and used the internet. We even brought our dog to see how comfortable she would be.

This experience allowed us to experience The Overlook the way a guest would experience it. We might not represent every guest, but we could still use empathetic insight to imagine what guests might like and what they probably wouldn't.

Then we made a list of everything we felt was sub-par and made improvements. We went back a few times over the next several weeks to make updates and complete some minor repairs. 

A few weeks later, we returned once again. This time we booked our stay through our property manager's website. We wanted to experience the entire reservation process and then see what it was like when The Overlook was prepped for guests.

It's amazing how many small things you can discover this way. For example, we noticed we often had to find creative ways to store leftovers after cooking a meal. We figured our guests would feel the same way, so we added some extra tupperware to the kitchen.

Lesson Learned: Try mystery shopping your own business so you can experience a product or service the way a customer would. You might notice opportunities for improvement from a whole new perspective.

Observe How Customers Use Your Product or Service

Another exercise we did was to visit The Overlook several times immediately after guests checked out.

Our timing was critical because our property manager inspects the property after each stay and then sends a cleaning crew in to clean the house so it's ready for the next guests.

Our goal was to see the cabin before the inspection. We wanted to see it exactly our our guests left it. In particular, we looked for four things:

• What was dirty?

• What was moved?

• What was damaged?

• What was missing?

This exercise gave us insight into how our guests used the cabin. Here are some examples:

We got clues about how guests used the kitchen by what was dirty and what had been moved from it's original location. This helped us better organize and stock the kitchen.

One particular vase was always moved from its original location. This signaled to us that it was in our guests' way. They were likely moving it to make more room for their stuff, so we just removed it completely.

Plates and glasses sometimes get damaged, too. Some guests will notify our property manager, but other guests will try to hide the damaged dish in a cupboard or fail to mention a broken glass. Looking for those items allows us to replace them.

Lesson Learned: Observe how your guests use your product or service. You'll almost certainly gain insight that you'd never get from a survey.

Conclusion

It's always good to have data from multiple sources. We look at our guest survey data and combine it with our experience and observation data. 

For instance, our guest observations tell us that the typical guest uses 75-100% of the bath towels. That's not surprising since we provide eight sets of towels, our max capacity is eight, and we tend to get a lot of groups that size.

Our survey revealed that guests would like even more towels because they often shower after a sweaty hike and then use the hot tub later in the evening. Using the same towel more than once in a day get leave it feeling a bit soggy.

We're working on that one now.

How Shake Shack Stands for Something Good

It was 10:55am and there was already a line.

I was standing outside Shake Shack's Theatre District location in New York City with my friend, Jenny Dempsey. She was working nearby at the time and I was in town for a conference, so this was a rare opportunity to meet up. 

Jenny co-authors the fabulous Customer Service Life blog, which meant we naturally had to visit a place that offers outstanding customer service. Jenny suggested Shake Shack, but warned that we needed to get there early. "Tables fill up fast," she said.

The employees' friendliness immediately struck me when the doors opened at 11. They smiled, looked you in the eye, and seemed genuinely happy. The restaurant quickly crowded, but that friendliness must have been contagious, because guests were friendly, too.

Oh, and the burgers were as delicious as advertised.

It was a great introduction to a restaurant chain that was already legendary in New York City and was rapidly expanding. But I left wondering how a busy fast-casual chain could create an oasis of friendliness and welcome in the heart of New York City.

As I later learned, it all starts with vision.

That's Al Roker in the bottom right corner, getting ready to hand out samples of his Roker Burger to Shake Shack customers in Madison Square Park.

Meet The Roker Burger

On my second visit to Shake Shack, I took my mother-in-law, Mabeth, and my wife, Sally. 

The three of us were touring New York City and I wanted them to experience the phenomenon. We decided to visit the original location in Madison Square Park.

Just like my first visit, the employees were friendly and engaging. We also had an extra treat in store for us this time. A film crew was setting up in the park.

We soon learned it was a Today Show film crew. 

Al Roker appeared and began filming a segment. He had teamed up with Shake Shack to create a unique hamburger called The Roker Burger. We watched as Roker went through the line handing out samples and conducting a taste test. 

It was a great New York City moment. We enjoyed tasty burgers, received friendly and engaging service, and saw a celebrity filming a segment for a television show. I even used up a few seconds of my 15 minutes of fame when I appeared in the background of the clip. (At 2:33)

The Roker Burger ended up raising $20,000 for No Kid Hungry. 

The Shake Shack Vision

All of the things I described in my experiences come from Shake Shack's customer service vision, Stand For Something Good.

A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that guides the actions of all employees throughout the company.

This vision is evident in everything Shake Shack does.

Restaurant locations are carefully selected and designed to become part of the local neighborhood. Prospective employees are screened for friendly, outgoing attitudes, and then given constant encouragement to connect with guests. Food is carefully sourced to maintain quality and then prepared with an exacting process to ensure a consistent taste. Employees are given extensive training and then empowered to create great guest experiences.

Even the Roker Burger fits the vision. 

For Shake Shack, part of Stand For Something Good includes donating to local charities and organizing company volunteers to help feed the hungry, mentor kids, and clean up parks in the community.

The Secret of Alignment

Shake Shack is featured in Chapter 5 of The Service Culture Handbook because the company emulates the concept of alignment so well.

Yes, Shake Shack's customer-focused culture starts with the Stand For Something Good vision. You can use this guide to create a vision for your organization or team.

But the vision becomes real by aligning all aspects of company operations around it. While most organizations struggle to implement a vision because leaders treat it like a side project, Shake Shack's leadership has made the vision a central part of every decision.

You can test your organization or team's alignment using this simple assessment.

The results can help you start the conversation internally about where to start improving customer-focus and employee engagement.

How to Empathize With Customers

The airline passenger was angry about missing her flight.

It was her fault. She had been sitting at the bar a short distance from the gate and lost track of time. Those things happen in Las Vegas.

Our emotions often rise up to protect our ego, so she looked for someone to blame. The first gate agent she talked to explained the airline's boarding policies and maintained that he had made several boarding announcements. It was a perfectly rational and reasonable explanation, but it wasn't the validation she wanted. So the passenger exploded—ranting, raving, and cursing.

Another gate agent calmly took her aside.

He listened patiently as she told her story. He didn't try to argue with her or make her feel stupid. The gate agent used the partner technique to shift his body language so it was non-adversarial. He listened.

Then he simply said, "I can understand why you're angry. You shouldn't have to feel this way." 

The passenger quickly calmed down and thanked him. She accepted an offer to get re-booked on a later flight.

The gate agent accomplished this minor service miracle through empathy.

Empathy Defined

Empathy is a core skill in customer service.

Customers often experience negative emotions. When that happens, the rational part of our brain cedes control and can't function properly. Everything stops until those emotions cool down.

Empathy is the magic that can take angry customers out of the red. Here's how dictionary.com defines empathy:

the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

When you empathize with a customer, it makes the customer feel better. Notice the airline gate agent wasn't agreeing with the passenger. He didn't say, "You're right, we should have sent someone to find you in the bar." What he did communicate was "I understand how you feel, and it's okay to have those feelings." He then took steps to help her feel better.

Of course, this is what makes empathy so difficult.

How do you empathize with someone you can't relate to? Unless you've missed a flight because you've lost track of time in a bar at the Las Vegas airport, it feels like a stretch to put yourself in this woman's shoes. 

Fortunately, there is a technique you can use.

Three Steps to Empathy

Here's a technique I've taught customer service professionals for many years.

Step 1: Consider why the customer is truly angry. For the airline passenger, there were three issues. She was stressed about missing her flight and being inconvenienced by a delay. She was embarrassed that she caused the issue. And she was upset about the lack of empathy from the first gate agent.

Step 2: Think about a time you felt the same way. Try to imagine a situation where you were angry or embarrassed about something that was your fault. We've all done something stupid. It may not have been missing a flight, but it was something.

Step 3: Use that experience to identify with your customer's feelings. When we feel angry and embarrassed, the last thing we want is to hear is its our fault. (That's the mistake the first gate agent made.) We want someone to tell us they hear us, that we're not so dumb after all, and that they would be happy to help us fix it.

This isn't an easy technique. I've seen many seasoned customer service professionals struggle with it. But think of the accomplishment if you can master it!

That airline gate agent used empathy to de-escalate what was quickly becoming a scene. He didn't just make himself look good, he represented his airline well.

And the passenger?

Some opportunistic by-stander swooped in and told her he saw the whole thing. He too empathized with her situation and then offered to buy her a drink at the bar.

That's Vegas for you.

Why Internal Competition is a Bad Idea

A vice president for a large financial services company asked me about internal competition.

He was thinking about creating a scoreboard to show branch managers how their particular location stacked up against other branches. The scoreboard would contain metrics from a variety of categories such as customer satisfaction.

The idea was to motivate managers to find innovative ways to improve the performance of their branch.

My answer surprised him. I told him I thought the scoreboard would lower performance by causing three problems. Here's my explanation.

1. Scoreboards reward selfishness

A branch manager might come up with new ideas to earn a spot at the top. But she might be reluctant to share those innovations with another manager she views as a competitor.

Managers are incentivized to keep good ideas to themselves.

2. Scoreboards discourage laggards

What if a branch manager sees his branch is far behind on the scoreboard? He might feel embarrassment that his branch is performing so poorly, but that embarrassment might not cause him to try harder as intended.

It may make him feel uncomfortable, disengaged, and defensive. Or he might just stop trying.

3. Scoreboards create inconsistency

Customers might be delighted at a high-performing branch, but what happens when they visit a low-performing branch? A service failure might happen just because best practices aren’t shared internally.

It’s hard to trust a brand when the experience varies widely.

Raise the Bar Higher Instead

The vice president would be better off encouraging all branches to elevate to the same high standard. Customers are more likely to do business with a company that offers a consistently good experience.

Starbucks earns loyal customers with remarkable consistency. Here are the Yelp ratings for the 10 Starbucks locations that are closest to my house:

Every single one is 3.5 or 4 stars.

Very few people would say Starbucks is their favorite coffee shop or serves the best coffee. But Starbucks is incredibly consistent and dependable. No matter where you are in town, you can expect a similar experience.

The opportunity for Starbucks in my neighborhood is also clear. The chain would have an even stronger presence if they could get all of their stores to a 4 star rating.

My advice to the financial services branch manager was the same advice that seems obvious for Starbucks when you look at this graph: raise the bar at all locations.

The competition isn't against other locations. It's against external competitors. And the way to do better is to raise the performance of all locations while maintaining consistency.

Here are a few ways to do that:

• Discover what top-rated locations are doing differently and share those best practices.

• Uncover what low-rated locations are doing differently and help them improve.

• Encourage all locations to raise their level of service together.

I call this process “finding your Betty.” It’s named after a customer service rep named Betty who helped an entire team improve its performance by sharing a best practice.

Take Action

The best solutions are often counterintuitive.

Lots of companies use leaderboards and contests to motivate employees. That doesn’t make it a good idea. Customer-focused teams rely on collaboration and continuous improvement to help everyone do better.

Here are two resources to help you find more counterintuitive solutions:

• Book —> Getting Service Right

• Course —> Quick Fixes to Attain Excellent Customer Service

Study: Surveys On Store Receipts Are "Total Garbage"

We've all gotten a survey invitation on a store receipt.

A 2016 study from Interaction Metrics found that 41 of the 51 largest U.S. retailers included a survey invitation on the standard receipt. The surveys were evaluated to see how useful and engaging they were.

Not a single one was fully engaging and scientific.

The study also found that 68 percent of the surveys were "total garbage," meaning the surveys were so flawed they weren't worth the time required to complete them.

You can view the entire study here. Below is a summary of the results along with some action items and resources to help improve your organization's customer satisfaction survey.

How the Study Worked

The study assessed surveys based on four criteria. Each one was weighted to reflect the relative importance of each category:

• Access: Ease of locating and beginning the survey (5%)

• Branding: Style reflecting the brand, correct spelling and grammar (10%)

• Engaging: Keep customers engaged throughout the process (35%)

• Accuracy: Survey design that yielded accurate data (50%)

The surveys were all obtained by making purchases from the retailer, either in store or online.

Accuracy Flaws Uncovered

Inaccurate data can prevent companies from taking the right action to improve service. 

Or worse, a survey might be gamed to yield high scores that disguise the fact that service needs to be improved at all.

Asking leading questions was one of the most prevalent flaws, showing up in 92 percent of the surveys examined. These are questions that are worded in a way that naturally leads customers to a particular answer. 

For example, Ace Hardware had this question on its survey:

How satisfied were you with the speed of your checkout?

The problem with a question like this is it assumes the customer was satisfied. This assumptive wording makes a positive answer more likely.

A more neutral question might ask, "How would you rate the speed of your checkout?"

Another issue was the use of overly positive wording that can bias a customer's response. The study found that 82 percent of surveys contained at least one question with overly-positive wording.

Here's an example from GAP:

The look and feel of the store was very appealing.

This question also suffers from vague wording. Does "look and feel" refer to branding such as signage, displays, and decor? Or does it refer to cleanliness and organization? Perhaps it means the store's layout?

Here's an example from the now-defunct Sports Authority, where a cashier biased the survey in another way. He stamped the expected response right on the invitation:

Engagement Flaws Revealed

Surveys reflect on your company's brand.

They're part of the customer journey. Many retailers have made their surveys so needlessly long or aggravating that the survey itself reflects poorly on the brand, like this egregious example from Buffalo Wild Wings that required customers to navigate through 39 different screens!

The average retailer's survey had 23 questions.

That's a tedious amount of questions to expect customers to answer. Nordstrom advertised its survey took just 2 minutes, but it contained 25 questions. The survey actually took 4 minutes to complete.

The study found that 13 percent of surveys were difficult to access. Walmart required not one but two receipt codes to be answered. Rite Aide, Ross, and Walgreen's all had broken links.

The best surveys are short and easy to complete. In many cases, you can capture troves of useful data with just three questions.

Resources

There are many resources to help you develop, implement, and refine your customer service survey while avoiding these mistakes. Here are just a few:

• Video with step-by-step instructions (You'll need a Lynda account. Get a 30-day trial here.)

• Shep Hyken's interview with Martha Brooke, founder of Interaction Metrics

• This survey resource page

United's Oscar Munoz Refuses to Acknowledge This Massive Problem

We all know about the United Airlines dragging incident.

Passenger buys a ticket and boards a plane. The passenger is later told to leave the plane, refuses, and gets dragged off by security. The world can't stop watching the horrifying video for at least a week.

Oscar Munoz, United's CEO, has been making the media rounds to tell everyone he's really sorry and the airline will do better. He's been interviewed by the Associated Press and appeared on ABC News and NBC News. 

On Friday, a statement from United Airlines announced "changes to improve customer experience." The statement also contained this quote from Munoz about the incident:

our policies got in the way of our values

That quote is a massive problem.

What Munoz doesn't understand, or won't acknowledge, is that United's values created those policies. And until those values change, things won't fundamentally get better.

Image source: United Airlines

What Are Corporate Values?

Corporate values are an aspect of corporate culture.

They provide guidance on how employees should act in the workplace. We often say "employees" in reference to frontline employees or perhaps line supervisors, but the term really refers to anyone in the company's employ, including executives.

People sometimes mistake written values for actual values.

A company might have a set of written values as United does (more on that in a moment). Those values have zero meaning unless they are actually guiding employee behavior.

In my research for The Service Culture Handbook, I discovered company after company where the written values weren't authentic. The real values in these companies weren't written, but you could see evidence of them in employees' daily actions.

This includes policy-making.

United's Corporate Values

In February of this year, United announced its first-ever customer service vision (a.k.a. "shared purpose") along with four corporate values:

We Fly Right On the ground and in the air, we hold ourselves to the highest standards in safety and reliability. We earn trust by doing things the right way and delivering on our commitments every day.

We Fly Friendly Warm and welcoming is who we are.

We Fly Together As a united United, we respect every voice, communicate openly and honestly, make decisions with facts and empathy, and celebrate our journey together.

We Fly Above & Beyond With an ambition to win, a commitment to excellence, and a passion for staying a step ahead, we are unmatched in our drive to be the best.

Now, compare those written values to the myriad of policies and operational decisions that led to a paid passenger getting dragged of a United plane.

The situation was caused because United needed four seats on a plane to get a flight crew to Louisville. If the crew didn't get there in time, the flight might be cancelled, which created severe cost pressure for operators.

Gate agents weren't notified about the crew until after boarding had begun. This is either a failure to anticipate a problem or a failure to communicate it.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that gate agents were empowered to offer a maximum of $800 to solicit volunteers to give up their seat. This was a Sunday evening flight, and the airline was offering to rebook passengers on a Monday flight, so you can see why this wasn't a compelling offer.

United's policy allowed gate agents to have passengers removed from a plane to accommodate crew members, so gate agents followed this policy. They called security for assistance when one passenger refused to leave the plane. 

All of those policies and operational decisions show that United's true values are cost-cutting and tight corporate control.

Crew scheduling in particular has dogged United for years. My most-read blog post way back in 2012 tracked a series of texts from my wife, Sally, as she endured United's comically lame operations while trying to fly home. 

Now, it's fair to assume that United hadn't fully disseminated and indoctrinated its new corporate values since they were created in February 2017 and this incident happened in April 2017.

But the CEO should be the new values champion. Instead, Munoz reflected United's old values in his initial letter to employees the day after the incident, where he blamed the passenger and commended employees for doing things right.

How to Avoid United's Values Problem

Having written values isn't enough.

Employees need to be aware of the values. They must understand what they mean. And they need to be able to describe how the values guide their actions.

JetBlue was one of the customer-focused companies profiled in The Service Culture Handbook. This airline leads the American Customer Satisfaction Index in customer satisfaction (ahead of Southwest Airlines!) while United is ranked near the bottom.

Unlike United, JetBlue ensures its policies are aligned with corporate values.

The airline has six values committees that review workplace polices and ensure each one is aligned with JetBlue's corporate culture. Each committee represents different groups of employees (gate agents, flight attendants, etc.) and committee members are elected by their peers.

New hires at JetBlue receive extensive training on the airline's customer service vision, Inspire Humanity. Supervisors regularly discuss the corporate culture with employees and executives visit each JetBlue location at least once per quarter to share updates and reinforce the culture.

Why My First Book Will Soon Be Hard to Find

I've kept some news under wraps for awhile. 

It concerns my first book, Service Failure. I didn't want to distract from the launch of my latest book, The Service Culture Handbook, so I've kept it quiet for a bit.

Now I'm ready to share.

Service Failure has gone out of print and I've reacquired the rights from the publisher, AMACOM. Frankly, I'm ecstatic! 

Here's what it means, why I'm so happy, and how this might benefit you.

What It Means

Out of print means that the publisher won't be printing any more copies of the book. AMACOM has also taken down the e-book from websites like Amazon's Kindle Store.

This means the only copies still available are new paperback copies that are still in inventory at retailers like Amazon plus used copies that are sold through various channels. You can also get the book on Audible.

Reacquiring the rights means I now own the rights to publish the book.

People don't realize this, but when you get a book deal like I did with a publisher, you sign over the rights to publish the book. This is the publisher's way of protecting their investment so you don't try to publish the same book somewhere else and introduce a competing product. In return, the publisher helps turn the manuscript into a finished product, secures distribution, and pays the author a royalty on sales.

Now that I own the rights, I can republish the book.

Why I'm Happy

AMACOM knowingly allowed Service Failure to become an interactive experience. 

The book was set to be released in November, 2012. Six weeks earlier, I received my advance shipment of author's copies and discovered a binding problem that caused the pages to fall out. 

AMACOM had the printer fix the issue and reprint the book, but the horse was already out of the barn. It had already shipped copies of the defective books to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

Even worse, AMACOM refused to make any effort to get the defective books back and replace them. The official explanation was it was cost-prohibitive.

This put me in a difficult position.

My name was on the book. It was my reputation on the line. And, because AMACOM owned the publishing rights, there was very little I could do about it.

Fast forward to 2016, four years after the book was published, and Amazon was still fulfilling orders with defective books. In fact, the defect rate was increasing to as high as 50 percent!

I finally had the leverage I needed to take action. After a brief negotiation through my agent, AMACOM agreed to give back the book rights.

How This Can Benefit You

Now that the book is mine again, I get a do-over.

That means I can republish the book with some new research and updated examples. If you own a copy of Service Failure, I'm going to get you a copy of the new book when if and when it comes out. (Details to be worked out...)

I can also give the book a new title.

Service Failure has a negative connotation. It might appeal to an individual buyer, but it's not the kind of book you buy and hand out to your management team because that would send a poor message. That clearly hurt sales.

A new title will make the book much easier to share.

So I have a question for you now. The original title was: Service Failure: The Real Reasons Employees Struggle with Customer Service and What You Can Do About It.

What do you think the new title should be?

How To Get Coworkers to Step-up Their Service

A question I often receive from customer service professionals is "How do I get my coworkers to improve their service?

It can be frustrating to feel like you are giving it your all while colleague settle for mediocrity (or worse).

Getting your peers to change is tricky. Approach a colleague the wrong way and you risk harming the relationship. Do nothing at all and things will likely stay the same.

That doesn't mean you are powerless. Here are three strategies you can try.

Image source: BigStockPhoto

Be the Model

"Who was it?!" the woman demanded. "Who is making us look bad?!"

I was facilitating a customer service workshop and was sharing the results of a secret shopping test I had conducted the night before. Four out of five employees I had shopped didn't use any of the company's service standards in my interaction.

This particular employee was incensed. She wanted to know who it was because she felt embarrassed to get such a poor report.

Sadly, she was one of the four people who I had visited who performed poorly. She didn't recognize me because she was too busy chatting with a coworker when I had been her customer the night before.

If you want your coworkers to improve, start by taking a long, hard, figurative look in the mirror.

You can't expect your colleagues to step up their collective game if you aren't doing the same thing. This means you need to be the model of outstanding customer service.

Aside from giving you more credibility with your peers, it’s inspiring to others when they see someone else going the extra mile. It creates subtle but powerful positive peer pressure for them to serve at a higher level.

Identify Shared Challenges

High performing teams work together to solve problems.

For example, a Tier 2 technical support team handled issues that were beyond the scope of expertise for the Tier 1 team. One problem was Tier 1 reps often unnecessarily transferred calls to the Tier 2 team that they should have resolved on their own.

Rather than build silos and cast blame, members of both teams met to identify the top reasons calls were transferred and then mark which ones could be prevented. A Tier 2 rep then put together a job aid that showed Tier 1 reps how to handle those issues on their own.

This approach solved a problem, but it also fostered a sense of teamwork between members of both teams.

Another opportunity is to share common issues with your boss.

Many employees assume that bosses are apathetic toward poor service if they don't take any action to correct it. My research indicates there might be another reason: most employees don’t pass along customer complaints!

The idea isn't to tattle on your coworkers. 

The point is to tell your boss about the top customer complaints you hear, along with some ideas or suggestions for improvement. It might be a policy that customers don't like or a common product defect.

Whatever it is, sharing customer insight with your boss may give him or her needed information to enlist the entire team in taking action.

Ask For Advice

One customer service professional, we'll call him David, wrote to me and explained that he was 26 and had just a few years of experience. He explained that he was the youngest person on his team, and most of his peers were 40 years old or older.

My suggestion to David was to approach his more experienced colleagues and ask them for advice on handling a particular customer service challenge.

Why? Two reasons.

First, asking a coworker for advice is a sign of respect. It shows them you value their wisdom and experience. And that respect makes them more likely to respect you back.

Second, it's human nature that we are our own most credible source of information. If I ask you for a suggestion on handling a particular situation, you'll probably give me a good answer but you'll also be more likely to remember to take your own advice the next time.

Conclusion

In many of the organizations I wrote about in The Service Culture Handbook, leaders cultivate a culture of positive peer pressure. 

Coworkers recognize each other for great performance. They cover for each other without question, which creates a social need for reciprocity (I've got your back, you've got mine). Veteran employees guide new hires to help them succeed too.

You can do your part by trying some of the techniques outlined above. Here's one more bonus technique:

Take a moment to recognize a coworker for doing something well.

Chances are, they'll appreciate you letting them know their contributions are valued. They'll be more likely to do it again. And, there's a chance they'll be a bit more receptive when you have some constructive feedback to share!

Lessons from The Overlook: Know Your Financials

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a monthly update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

Many customer service leaders tell me they struggle with financials.

Things like margin, variable costs, and fixed costs are a mystery. Capital expense doesn't make any sense at all. Cost centers are confounding.

This makes it difficult to ask for money. 

You might want to invest in new technology, hire more staff, or boost wages to improve retention. Knowing the cost isn't enough. Fluffy platitudes about investing in service won't get you there, either. 

You need to convince executives there's a financial benefit to spending that money. 

I can relate. My wife, Sally, and I wanted to turn the garage at our vacation rental property into a game room. But first, we had to run the numbers.

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Why We Wanted a Game Room

We thought it would be a great addition for our guests.

An analysis of similar vacation homes in the area revealed that guests generally looked for a few benefits:

• A well-equipped kitchen

• Expansive views

• A spa

• A deck

• Walking distance to town

Our property, The Overlook, already has all of those features except for walking distance to town. Pretty difficult to change that one.

A few rentals had a game room, which many guests called out as an added benefit, though not the primary reason they booked. Most game rooms had a pool table in a kitschy room that looked like somebody's basement from the 80s. 

We thought we could do better.

The Overlook has a detached single car garage. Guests don't expect to park in a garage, so we thought we could make better use of the space. Our vision was to finish off the garage and put in a ping pong table. 

Truth be told, we also really wanted a ping pong table to enjoy ourselves. 

Running the Numbers

First, it's important to know exactly how much adding a game room would cost. 

We had a few contractors come out to give us estimates. It wasn't pretty. The garage needed a new roof, a new side door, and new windows. The roll-up garage door was unsightly. The floor wasn't level. 

Total price tag, including a ping pong table, was $16,500.

Now that we knew the cost, we had to calculate the return. What would we gain financially from having a game room.

We talked to our property manager. She told us that in her experience, game rooms were nice added features, but it would be difficult to justify a rate increase on that alone. 

This actually jibed with our earlier analysis that guests liked game rooms, but it wasn't a primary factor when booking a rental.

If we couldn't get a rate increase, could we get more bookings? 

There are two factors that might drive this:

• The game room could be a tie-breaker between two similar properties

• Guests might be more likely to return if they enjoyed the game room

We didn't have a lot of data here, having only owned The Overlook since last October. So we took a guess.

The Overlook was already booked most weekends during the busy winter season. A game room couldn't improve upon that. But perhaps we could gain two extra rentals during the summer. 

Here's how that works out:

• Rate: $325 for two nights, $275 for each additional night. 

• Average stay: 2.5 nights 

• Total gain: $975

Would you spend $16,500 to gain $975 per year? Wait, the math gets worse.

Our nightly rate includes the cleaning fee. We also have to pay our management company and some other miscellaneous fees. That means our take on the $975 is really about $500.

Here's our payback calculation:

$16,500 ÷ $500 = 33

This means it will take us 33 years for the game room to pay off. Suddenly, that game room seems like a terrible business decision.

Apply This Lesson to Your Business

Let's step through what we did to run the numbers. You can apply the same lesson to an investment you want to make in your own business.

Step 1: Identify the costs. Know exactly what you're getting into. For instance, if you want to add staff, the cost isn't just their wage. It's the cost of employment taxes, benefits, equipment, etc. Costs are almost always underestimated.

Step 2: Identify the financial benefits. Do your homework to get an accurate estimate.  Many leaders make the mistake of making up numbers without doing their research. Those estimates are almost always too optimistic. For The Overlook, we analyzed the competition and talked to our experienced property manager who oversees more than 40 properties. 

Step 3: Calculate Your Return. The easiest way to do this is to divide the cost by the gain. This will tell you the amount of time it will take for that investment to pay off. Hint: executives usually want to see unplanned investments payoff within the current fiscal year.

Epilogue

There's one more lesson you can take from our game room example.

You can often find money in the budget for a project that the business owner or a key executive passionately believes in, even if the financial return isn't there. This means you need to do more than just run the numbers. 

You need to get your executive emotionally committed.

In our case, we imagined epic ping pong battles with family and friends. We wanted to put barn doors on the garage that opened wide in the summer to let in the cool mountain air. Perhaps a couple of bar stools for guests to sit on while waiting for the next game.

It was a terrible investment, but we really, really wanted a ping pong table. So yeah, we did it.

Garage before

Garage after