A Simple Way to Double Your B2C Survey Responses

Everyone wants a better survey response rate. The Center For Client Retention (TCFCR) recently shared some data about business-to-consumer (B2C) surveys that revealed an easy way to improve results.

TCFCR helps businesses conduct customer satisfaction research. The company's client focus is primarily Fortune 500 companies in business-to-business (B2B) and B2C segments.

There's a big need for these type of services given that a recent study from Interaction Metrics found 68 percent of surveys offered by America's largest retailers were "total garbage."

I provide similar services to small and mid-sized businesses, so I was curious to see what TCFCR's survey data might reveal.

One quick look and I immediately saw a way for businesses to double the response rate on their B2C surveys.

The Response Rate Secret

TCFCR pulled aggregate data from thousands of surveys across all of their clients for a 12-month period. The company compared response rates for "in the moment" surveys versus follow-up surveys sent via email. 

Here are the results:

Follow-up surveys had more than twice the average response rate!

An in the moment survey is offered at the time of service. It could be a link in an email response from a customer service rep, an after-call transfer to an automated survey, or a link in a chat dialog box.

A follow-up email survey is sent after the customer service interaction is complete.

TCFCR also found that sending a reminder email after the initial survey invitation typically generated an additional 5-point increase in response rates!

Some companies do follow-up surveys via telephone instead of email. TCFCR's data shows that those surveys get an average response rate of 12-15 percent, which is on par with in the moment surveys.

One thing to keep in mind is that this data is for B2C surveys only. TCFCR found that B2B surveys typically get a response rate that's half of what you'd expect from a B2C.

 

Increase Response Rates Even More

There are a few more things you can do to stack the deck in your favor.

One is to keep your surveys short. 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.

Most surveys will gather adequate data with just three short questions.

Another way to improve response rates is through rules-based offering. A lot of customer service software platforms, such as Zendesk, have a built-in survey feature that allows you to adjust which customers receive a survey and when.

For instance, you might only send a follow-up survey once a support ticket is closed rather than after every single interaction. Or if you offer a subscription-based service, you might survey all customers when they reach the six month mark in their annual subscription, regardless of whether they've contacted your company for support.

You can learn more about response rates and other survey-related topics here.

How to Harness the Power of Peer Recognition 

Employee recognition can be a minefield.

One key distinction is to decide between rewarding or recognizing good performance. Rewards are a pre-determined "if-then" proposition. If you achieve X result, you get Y as a prize. 

There's a volume of data that proves rewards often unexpectedly lead to poor performance. Check out Daniel Pink's excellent book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, for an easy-to-read overview of some of the many studies that show rewards don't work in a customer service context.

Recognition can be healthy if done right. It's unexpected and delivered after the performance occurs to let employees know their performance is valued and appreciated. 

So where to start?

The Pitfalls of Recognition

Formal recognition programs are fraught with pitfalls that can demoralize employees. Take the venerable employee of the month program as an example:

  • How do you make the selection process seem transparent and fair?

  • Can you allow repeat winners without prompting feelings of favoritism?

  • What is the impact on morale of not winning?

Even informal recognition can backfire. 

A manager I know once bought his employees donuts to recognize the team for some extra effort. It was so well received that he bought donuts a week later, which quickly started a weekly tradition. 

Soon, the weekly donuts were expected rather than a treat. A few people even grumbled about not getting their favorite kind.

Remember: recognition is unexpected. The donuts no longer recognized good performance once the team expected to receive them.

While researching customer-focused companies for The Service Culture Handbook, I noticed several companies were putting a twist on traditional recognition.

They were using peer recognition to drive culture.

 

The Power of Peer Recognition

According to a 2014 employee engagement study by the employee feedback company TINYpulse, peer recognition is the top reason why employees go the extra mile at work.

Shawn Anchor, bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage, wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review detailing a study on JetBlue that he co-authored. This study found that "for every 10% increase in people reporting being recognized, JetBlue saw a 3% increase in retention and a 2% increase in engagement."

Coincidentally, I profiled JetBlue in The Service Culture Handbook for their employee engagement best practices.

There are a couple of easy explanations for why peer recognition is so powerful.

One is Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs. Psychologist Abraham Maslow developed his now famous ranking of basic human needs in 1943. They are, in order:

  1. Physiological 

  2. Safety

  3. Love and belonging

  4. Esteem

  5. Self-actualization

I've written about this hierarchy before, as a way to explain why employees provide better service (priority #5, self-actualization) when they feel like they're part of a team (priority #3, love and belonging). Peer recognition is powerful because it reinforces a sense of love and belonging.

There's one more explanation: we take our social cues from others.

Experiments by Solomon Asch and other psychologists demonstrate that we humans instinctively try to conform to the groups we're a part of. Conformity is often thought of as a negative trait, but it doesn't have to be.

Imagine a team of employees conforming to a group norm that values outstanding customer service! Peer recognition helps promote this positive conformity.

 

Practical Examples

I reached out to the Inside Customer Service LinkedIn group for some practical examples of peer recognition programs.

Two members shared excellent examples:

Jeremy Hyde, Customer Service Manager at UCare, wrote: "We have a 'hats off' program where people can fill out a brief form on our intranet. Then something is delivered to the Supervisor with the details on who nominated them and why with a little 'hat' pin. A lot of people put the pins on their lanyards or tack them up on their cube walls. After you collect 10 you can redeem them for a gift card."

Jenny Dempsey, former Customer Service Manager at Phone.com, wrote: "At Phone.com, I developed the Smiles peer recognition program. Anyone could write a note of gratitude for a coworker and drop it in the Smile box. At each CSR meeting, we would draw a few entries from the box and read them aloud. The people they were writing about would receive gift cards. The team loved it!"

Both examples are simple, practical, and don't require a lot of input from management. They're also easy to implement.

But wait! You don't even need a formal program. As a customer service leader, you can lead by example. 

Recognize your employees for a job well done by thanking them one-on-one, writing a short handwritten note or email, or praising them in a team meeting. At the same time, encourage employees to pay the compliment forward!

Even a simple "Thank you!" from a colleague can be a powerful form of recognition.

Does Your Company Have Too Many Missions and Visions?

The vice president shared a draft of her company's new values project.

She had been working with two other executives to create them. They had come up with nine after several brainstorming sessions.

On paper, they looked good. These were solid, reasonable values that were all straight out of the corporate values catalog. Nothing controversial. 

There were two problems. 

The first issue was the company already had a lot of cultural artifacts. A cultural artifact is something that helps people understand your organization's culture, like a mission, vision, or set of values. 

This company already had a lot:

  • Mission statement

  • Service promise

  • Service motto

  • Brand tagline

Now, they were planning to introduce a new set of values on top of everything else. Which led to the second problem.

Some of those nine values weren't accurate. Communication was number three on the list. "Oh, we suck at communication!" said the vice president.

Perhaps you face a similar mess. Here's how you can untangle it.

Focus vs. Confusion

Companies' cultural artifacts frequently feel empty because organizations often have too many or the existing ones are inauthentic.

In the rush to create another tagline, motto, or corporate vision, nobody takes the time to decide what one statement is the most important or ensure all the artifacts are in alignment.

If everything is important, then nothing is important.

In The Service Culture Handbook, I related the story of a restaurant chain I worked with that had too many cultural artifacts.

It had a mission statement, a brand promise, a set of four service promises, and a list of 17 service standards that waitstaff were expected to follow with every guest.

Employees weren't quite sure which was most important. 

This was especially challenging since some of these cultural artifacts didn't clearly support each other. For instance, the mission statement described a desire to create amazing experiences while the service standards emphasized up-selling and efficiency.

At an executive retreat, I posed the question to the CEO, his executive team, and the general managers of each individual restaurant: which cultural artifact is most important?

There initially wasn't a consensus, but it led to a good discussion. The group finally agreed that the mission statement should be the primary guide for the employees. 

Next, they decided to rethink their existing cultural artifacts. Some were eliminated while others were simplified and aligned with the mission. The 17 service standards were slimmed down to 10. 

The restaurant chain's leadership team then communicated the revised artifacts to employees with a renewed emphasis on the mission.

Not surprisingly, service quality improved once employees had a consistent understanding of what outstanding service should be.

 

Where a Customer Service Vision Fits In

In customer-focused companies, the most important cultural artifact is a customer service vision.

A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that guides all employees' actions when it comes to serving customers.

What if your company already has some pretty important artifacts?

When my clients face this challenge, I usually suggest two options. Option one is to make one of your existing artifacts do double-duty as the customer service vision.

In many companies, the organization's mission, vision, or values is also the customer service vision. There's no need to add yet another statement to the mix!

For example, take a look at REI's mission statement:

At REI, we inspire, educate and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship.

This is why the company exists (hence, the mission), but it also paints a clear picture of what type of service employees should strive to provide. Go visit an REI location today and you'll almost certainly find enthusiastic retail associates who will try to help you enjoy the outdoors!

In some cases, none of my clients' existing cultural artifacts are particularly inspiring. (They decide this, not me.) That's when I suggest a second option: replace one of your existing artifacts with the new vision.

I recently helped a client do this and it was amazing how much the new vision energized employees.

 

Take the Three Question Test

Here's an easy way to tell if a cultural artifact is actually relevant.

Select one of your cultural artifacts (mission, vision, values, motto, tagline, etc.). Talk to a random sample of employees and ask them three questions about that artifact:

  1. What is it?

  2. What does it mean?

  3. How does it guide the work that you do?

You can tell the artifact has virtually no meaning if employees aren't aware of it or can't give consistent or clear answers to those questions.

In customer-focused companies, every employee can give a consistent answer to the three questions when asked about the customer service vision.

You can learn more about customer service visions and how to create one here.

How to Make Time For Training

I'm a bit behind on listening to podcasts.

For instance, I've just finished episode 91 of Crack the Customer Code, a wonderful podcast hosted by Adam Toporek and Jeannie Walters. The current episode is #255.

Ironically, the title of episode 91 is "How to Find Time for Training."

One of the topics Adam and Jeannie discussed was restaurants and retailers like Chipotle and Starbucks that shut down the entire operation to conduct employee training. 

As Adam points out in the episode, "That's great for a reset," but shutting down the entire business for training is more of a statement than a long-term solution. And many smaller businesses may find it too economically difficult to close down completely.

Trying to train employees while the business continues to run can be an exercise in creative scheduling and challenging logistics.

It's difficult, but not impossible. Here's what you can do.

Step 1: Focus on What You Need

Many leaders mistakenly believe the challenge is figuring out how long the training should be, who should deliver the training, and when can it be scheduled.

This approach neglects one key decision: what training do you actually need?

My analysis suggests that training often addresses just one percent of the problem's root cause! Why worry about how long the training should be if it's such a small part of the issue?

Imagine you wanted to help your team do a better job of serving angry customers. Here are just a few contributing factors that have nothing to do with training:

  • Can you use voice of customer feedback to improve common problems?

  • Do customers have access to self-help solutions to simple issues?

  • Are employees empowered to resolve typical complaints?

Training won't address any of those.

Now, imagine you first implemented some solutions. You reduced product defects, beefed up self-help, and empowered employees with better policies and procedures to serve their customers.

You might still need training, but now you'd need a lot less.

A client once asked me to conduct training to help its call center employees sound more friendly over the phone. I did some research and spent just a little time talking to the employees. It turned out the call center was severely understaffed several times during the week and wait times expanded up to 30 minutes.

The employees sounded curt because they were in a hurry to get to the next customer!

I was able to help the client solve the problem just be reconfiguring the schedule so staffing levels better matched call volume. This solution eliminated much of the wait time and employees were more relaxed.

The employees suddenly sounded a lot friendlier and we didn't do any training at all.

 

Step 2: Embrace the 70-20-10 Rule

When most people think of training, they imagine a formal class such as a live workshop or an e-learning program.

The 70-20-10 rule, based on research from the Center for Creative Leadership, tells us this just scratches the surface of how our employees learn.

  • 70 percent of learning comes from challenging assignments

  • 20 percent of learning comes from a boss or mentor

  • 10 percent of learning comes from formal training

The rule was originally intended as a rough guideline for leadership training. It can easily be adapted to other training topics such as customer service.

Look at those percentages again. They tell us that generally speaking, roughly 90 percent of training (70: challenging assignments + 20: boss or mentor) is already happening to some degree. You just need a way to guide it.

For example:

70 percent: Challenging Assignments

  • Engage employees to solve problems

  • Have employees conduct self-reviews and peer-reviews

  • Encourage employees to share best practice solutions to difficult issues

20 percent: Boss or Mentor

  • Hold short, weekly team meetings (many use my weekly tips for agenda topics)

  • Give employees one-on-one feedback

10 percent: Formal Training

You can save time by leveraging video in many cases. Here's one example where you can use video to reduce training time by 75 percent!

I've also assembled these simple training plans to help you blend experience, mentorship, and formal training into an effective training program takes less than one hour per week.

 

Conclusion

A lack of time isn't a great excuse for not training your employees.

You can make training work if you do it efficiently. Ditch the old content-heavy, classroom-only training model and adopt a new approach that puts the focus where it belongs: getting results!

Simple Training Plan: Preventing Customer Anger

UPDATED: June 14, 2023

I previously posted a couple of training plans that customer service leaders can use to train their teams.

The idea was to provide a low-cost alternative to hiring an expensive customer service trainer. These plans are designed to be cost-effective and easy to use.

The first was called Serving Upset Customers 101, which focused on helping customer service reps learn the basics of defusing an angry or upset customer.

The second was called Serving Upset Customers: Eliminating Repeat Service Failures. This training plan showed customer service teams how to learn from angry customers to avoid repeated issues.

This training plan is the third in the three-part series. 

It's called Serving Upset Customers: Preventing Customer Anger. The best way to handle an upset customer is to prevent that customer from getting upset in the first place.

Give it a try and send me your feedback to let me know how it goes.

Overview: Preventing Customer Anger

Participants will be able to do the following at the end of this training:

  • Create personal connections to avoid angry customers

  • Alert customers before they encounter unpleasant surprises

  • Avoid specific words that can trigger customer anger

  • Use the pre-emptive acknowledgement technique

This course is the third in a three part series:

  • Part 1: Serving Upset Customers 101

  • Part 2: Serving Upset Customers, Eliminating Repeat Service Failures

  • Part 3: Serving Upset Customers, Preventing Customer Anger

Resources Required:

Time Required: <1 hour per week for 3 weeks.

 

Pre-Work: Do This Before You Begin

You can boost the impact of any training program by properly preparing. Here are two simple assignments you should do before starting the training.

Assignment #1: Create a training plan. Use the Workshop Planning Tool to create a training plan:

  • Identify your goal for the training.

  • Determine what needs to be done to prepare for success.

  • Decide how the training will be run.

  • Create a plan to sustain your progress.

 

Assignment #2: Announce the Training. Tell your team what to expect by announcing the training via a team meeting, one-on-one conversation, email, or some other form of communication. Make sure you address three things:

  • Tell participants what the training is about.

  • Explain why the training is important.

  • Share how you expect participants to use the training in their daily work.

 

Training Plan: Eliminating Repeat Service Failures

This plan is divided into three lessons that each take place one week apart.

Pre-Work:

Ask participants to watch the short training video, Creating personal connections with rapport, before attending the first meeting.

 

Week 1: Kick-off. 

Call a 30 minute team meeting to kick off the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Review the purpose and goals for this course.

  2. Re-cap results from previous training programs (if applicable)

  3. Discuss ways that personal relationships can prevent customer anger.

  4. Assign training videos and activities for the next meeting.

 

Assignments for next week:

  • Exercise: Experiment with rapport-building techniques to create personal connections with customers.

  • Watch video: Avoiding unpleasant surprises

  • Exercise: Download the Expectation Management Worksheet exercise file. Use it to identify situations where you can help customers avoid unpleasant surprises.

 

Week 2: Avoiding Unpleasant Surprises

Call a 30 minute team meeting to check-in on the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Discuss the results of the using rapport-building techniques exercise.

  2. Discuss the results of the avoiding unpleasant surprises exercise.

  3. Assign training videos and activities for the next meeting.

 

Assignments for next week:

 

Week 3: Preventing Customer Anger

Call a 30 minute team meeting to check-in on the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Discuss the results of the Pre-Emptive Acknowledgement Technique exercise.

  2. Brainstorm common trigger words and more effective replacements.

  3. Discuss ways to sustain the learning and solutions from this course.

Three Easy Ways to Engage Your Customers

The Westin Portland was my favorite hotel.

It's slated to leave the Marriott (nee Starwood) family at the end of this month and I'm sad to see it go. I've stayed there many times and have always felt welcome. I even wrote about it in my blog and in my book, Service Failure, where I shared some of their secrets for outstanding service.

One thing The Westin Portland consistently did well was customer engagement.

I was surprised with a Westin Portland coffee mug and a handwritten note on my 10th stay at the hotel. I've stayed at several other hotels 10 or more times, but none of the others ever recognized me like that for my loyalty. 

I still use that mug.

Ali, one of the valet parking attendants, always recognized me when I arrived. At first, he greeted me with "Welcome." Soon, he greeted me with, "Welcome back!" 

During one three month stretch when I stayed there every week, Ali greeted me with, "Welcome home!"

Then, there was this incredible experience that proved small things really do matter. 

What is Customer Engagement?

The typical definition of customer engagement is unsatisfying.

Most of the sources I looked at defined customer engagement as any interaction with a customer. My issue with that is not all interactions are particularly engaging:

  • Transactional interactions are routine and unmemorable.

  • Problem interactions are often frustrating.

  • Marketing interactions often feel forced and too cheesy.

The one type of interaction that truly feels engaging is when customers are interacting with an employee or your brand in some way because they like you. These engagements cement a customer's loyalty and make that customer more eager to recommend your business to others.

Most of all, engagement doesn't feel forced or contrived. It's authentic.

 

Three Ideas You Can Use Right Now

Here are three ways you can engage your customers that cost little to no money and take just a small amount of effort.

 

Acknowledge the Social Love

This has got to be the easiest technique on the list.

All you have to do is acknowledge those moments when a customer professes their love for your brand or service on social media! 

Here's a fun exchange I had with Tesco Mobile. (I'm not even a customer, but they're incredibly engaging on Twitter.)

Of course, it helps to have a presence on social media. Patrick Maguire recently posted this story on his blog where a restaurant missed out on some really nice positive exposure because it lacked a social media presence.

 

Keep an Interest List

It's time to put your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to good use! Keep a list of special requests, favorite products, and other things your customers are interested in.

A restaurant can seat repeat guests at a favorite table. A dry cleaner can know exactly how much starch a customer likes in his shirts. A plumber can remember the name of the family dog and bring a dog treat on a service call.

You can even use this technique to generate sales.

Years ago, I managed a contact center for a catalog company that sold products imported from countries that made up the former Soviet Union. Most of it was new, but we also had our fair share of antiques and collectibles.

We'd turn to our interest list whenever a new shipment came in and call customers who were interested in particular antiques. These were people who were looking for something specific and rare, so they were actually happy to get our call!

Notice that the secret to making an interest list work is you need to capture your customers' interests. You can use the Five Question Technique to make this happen.

 

Build Relationships

We often have a chance to interact with customers in a way that stretches beyond a simple transaction. 

For example, The Westin Portland hosted weekly happy hours in its lobby. A lot of hotels do this, but what really impressed me is that many members of the hotel's leadership team, including the General Manager, would show up and spend time mingling with guests.

It was a chance to get to know the people who worked there on a much more personal level. I've even stayed in touch with several associates from the hotel over the years.

One of those people was Jeff Igou, who now works at the Westin Book Cadillac in Detroit. My wife and I visited Detroit on our recent baseball stadium tour and you'd better believe I stayed at Jeff's hotel!

Try to get to know repeat customers on a personal level. Make sure they know you, too. My research suggests that customers are 2-3 times more likely to give a business a top score on a customer satisfaction survey when they know an employee by name!

 

Conclusion

Engaging your customers can improve loyalty, referrals, and ultimately lead to more revenue.

The best part is it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. Just a little bit of effort and creativity can go a long way!

Lessons From the Overlook: Some People Suck

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.

My monthly inspections of The Overlook have revealed a sad fact: each and every month, something is broken or stolen. 

The snow shovel went missing. The ice scraper we left for guests went missing two months later. People repeatedly steal batteries out of the alarm clocks. Three flashlights were absconded. Even our American flag disappeared.

Our flag?!

There's also been some damage, some of which was unreported to our property manager. A few broken glasses. A broken drawer dislodged from a chest (how?). The broom was broken in half. 

Luckily, it hasn't been anything major so far. Everything has been quickly repaired or replaced.

I won't lie. It's frustrating to see the damage and find that items have gone missing. It's also a reminder of a universal truth in customer service.

Some people suck.

Some of our tupperware went missing.

Some of our tupperware went missing.

The Wrong Solution

It's tempting to implement a heavy-handed solution.

Many businesses go this route. They overtly mistrust their customers and institute restrictive policies and unreasonable fees as a result.

Here's an example from a frozen yogurt place that I no longer frequent:

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

The sign was clearly intended to thwart would-be free sample abusers.

One might imagine roving hoards of sample bandits descending upon the shop and draining the yogurt machines of free samples and then merrily tromping out without ever spending a dime.

More likely there were a few frustrating abusers.

The rest of us who are mature enough to handle the heavy responsibility of self-policing our free sample usage feel penalized by a sign like this. It's uninviting and discourages people from trying new flavors.

Here's an example from another vacation rental.

My wife, Sally, and I have rented the same condo in Napa, California twice a year for the past couple of years. We drive up, bring our dog, and enjoy a week-long working vacation in wine country. 

Earlier this year, the owner suddenly decided pets were no longer welcome.

Apparently, some pets made a mess and few were even destructive. But not ours. Not even once. Would the owner make an exception for our well-behaved dog who has stayed at the condo multiple times without incident?

Nope.

And with that, the condo lost a regular customer and the many referrals we've given. Which brings us back to The Overlook. 

We could implement a more stringent damage policy, raise the security deposit, or put up nasty signs all over the house to remind people of the rules.

But that would suck, too.

 

Get Some Perspective

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the importance of knowing your numbers. 

It's infuriating to discover theft or unreported damage. While that's an emotional reaction, a rational review of the numbers reveals its not such a big deal.

Let's start with damage.

Dishes and glasses will break. Heck, I accidentally broke a glass at The Overlook on a recent visit. So we've stockpiled extra dishes and glasses so that when one does break, we can quickly replace it with a matching item. 

The cost per incident is typically less than $5.

Replacing a few dishes and glasses is part of the cost of doing business. Spread out over the many guests who don't break or steal anything, that cost is minimal. 

Side note: Having clean, matching, undamaged dishes and glassware is a surprisingly simple point of difference between The Overlook and the typical vacation rental.

What about theft? Empathy has given me a new perspective.

The Overlook attracts families, which means we often have young children staying at the cabin. Have you ever seen a couple of harried parents trying to corral their kids on vacation? Stuff gets scooped up and shoved in bags.

I'm convinced a lot of the minor thefts are unintentional.

For example, I can imagine a guest using the ice scraper to scrape their car windows on a cold morning. Perhaps they toss it in their car while they're driving around town in case they get more ice. The ice scraper eventually gets forgotten in the trunk until they arrive back home and unload their car. 

Should they have alerted our property manager and offered to pay for a replacement? Of course they should have. But replacing that ice scraper cost less than $10. I gladly replaced it so there's one available to the next guest who gets ice on their windows.

So far, there really is only one big problem with damage and theft.

 

My True Worry

The biggest concern I have with theft and damage is the impact on the next guest.

We try to minimize this issue. Our property manager inspects the property before and after each guest stays there. The cleaning crew also alertly spots problems. Sally and I personally inspect The Overlook at least once per month.

The challenge is its tough to spot everything in a house.

A damaged glass was put back in a cupboard behind other dishes. The weather turned warm right after the ice scraper went missing and nobody thought to look for it. Our property manager didn't realize we had an American flag, so how could she know it was gone?

For now, we try to put everything in perspective.

We keep extra supplies at the house. We inspect everything regularly. We react quickly to guest feedback when they alert us to a problem caused by another guest.

And we avoid the temptation to penalize our many wonderful guests for the actions of a few people who suck. Over time, we think this will help us build a steady clientele of repeat guests who will treat our cabin with respect.

The few guests we know who take items or cause damage and try to hide it just won't be invited back. So much for 100 percent repeat business.

Let's Stop Calling Customer Service a Soft Skill

The term "soft skills" is typically used to refer to a wide range of interpersonal skills.

This includes leadership, emotional intelligence, and customer service. There's no doubt these skills are important, but calling them soft skills creates a problem.

My friend Jeremy Watkin recently wrote about the debate over this term in this blog post for the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) blog on the topic. He asked 17 customer service leaders to weigh in. Nine were against using "soft skills."

Noticeably absent from Watkin's list were trainers. By my count, there were only two people who weighed in who had a background in adult learning. Both of those people were firmly against using the term.

I asked a few of my own training professional colleagues for their thoughts on the term, "soft skills." They were unanimously against it.

That's because calling a skill like customer service a soft skill makes it almost impossible to train and manage. Here's why.

Skill or Soft Skill?

Skills are definable, observable, and measurable. For example, you can see someone demonstrate certain skills to fix a car, program a computer, or cook a meal. 

Let's say you wanted to hire a customer service representative for your contact center. If you wanted to gauge a skill such as typing, you could administer a typing test. That would tell you the person's speed and accuracy.

You could also offer training to develop that person's typing skills (Mavis Beacon, anyone?). The training would focus on specific drills to improve speed and accuracy.

But what about critical customer service skills such as building rapport?

This is where many customer service leaders struggle. Interpersonal skills like building rapport are typically called soft skills because they're difficult to define, observe, and measure.

That creates a problem.

  • How do you train a skill you can't define?

  • How do you screen job candidates for a skill you can't observe?

  • How do you coach employees to improve a skill you can't measure?

You'll find it pretty difficult to answer any of those questions if you don't have a clear definition of the skill involved. And once you create a clear definition, it's no longer soft. It simply becomes a skill.

 

Why Terminology Matters

Keep in mind the term "soft skill" is applied to skills that are difficult to define, observe, and manage. So calling something a "soft skill" is often an unconscious attempt to avoid difficult work.

For example, imagine you wanted to train employees to build rapport with customers. How would you train that?

A typical response might be to do a class discussion, include some self-reflection, and perhaps add some role-playing for good measure.

Notice what's missing:

  • Definition: What is rapport?

  • Observation: What does building rapport look like?

  • Measurement: How can I tell if someone has learned to build rapport?

That kind of soft skills training is usually not training at all.

Training helps people develop knowledge, skills, and ability. So logically, if you can't define what exactly you're trying to train, you can't train it.

Take the time to define, observe, and measure rapport and its no longer a vague, ambiguous soft skill. It's simply a skill.

Here's an example that I often use in training:

  • Definition: Rapport is creating a personal connection with another person.

  • Observation: An example of rapport is learning a customer's name or other personal details.

  • Measurement: I can measure this through a simple training activity. Participants are given three minutes to meet three new people. At the end of the three minutes, they are asked to recall the following information for each person: Name, a hobby or interest, and a customer service strength.

Most customer service professionals will tell you they're pretty good at building rapport. But that's rapport in the ambiguous, unmeasured, soft skill sense.

My activity highlights an unexpected difficulty. In a typical training class, just 10 percent of the group will  successfully complete the exercise.

Now it's time to train.

I spend time working with the class to determine obstacles to building rapport. We discuss specific techniques that can make them more successful. When I run the activity a second time, typically 80 - 100 percent of participants demonstrate the ability to build rapport with three people in three minutes.

That's observable and measurable skill development.

 

Improve Results with this One Adjustment

The Association for Talent Development (ATD) is the premiere professional organization for training professionals.

A few years ago, ATD published a comprehensive handbook which is the definitive reference guide for adult learning. It's noteworthy that the term "soft skills" isn't referenced in this guide.

That's because skills are skills.

It doesn't matter whether it's a technical skill like typing or an interpersonal skill like building rapport. If you can define it, observe it, and measure it, it's a skill.

Make no mistake: defining customer service skills can be a difficult, time-consuming task. That's why most managers and trainers don't do it.

But taking the time to get clear about customer service skills opens up a world of opportunities for customer service leaders. Here are just a few:

  • Hiring becomes easier when you clearly define the skills you need.

  • Training is more effective when you know what to train.

  • Coaching is vastly improved when you can be specific.

Chances are, you're doing some of this already.

Customer service standards are ways of defining expected customer service skills. Quality monitoring and mystery shopping are examples of observing and measuring these skills. You're probably coaching those behaviors already.

So drop the word "soft" and just call them skills.