Lessons From The Overlook: Give Customers Subtle Nudges

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.

There are certain things at The Overlook that require an explanation.

For example, guests need to know how to connect to the WiFi network, operate the television, or follow the checkout procedures.

Sally and I have seen other vacation rental properties take various approaches to this type of guest communication. Some post large signs throughout the house that are unsightly and feel a little unfriendly. Others bury the information in guest books that people rarely read. Still others rely on long-winded instructions sent via email prior to arrival.

We've chosen a communication strategy that we hope is a little better for our guests—the gentle nudge.

The Problem with the Hard Shove

To understand the gentle nudge, it's helpful to consider the hard shove.

Many companies take this opposite approach with their customers. It often involves a large, unfriendly sign. Here's an example from a convenience store:

It sometimes involves a small, unfriendly sign, like this one in a frozen yogurt shop:

This restaurant used multiple, unfriendly signs to greet customers:

All of these felt like a hard shove. These signs were all erected in an attempt to combat a problem that someone in management did not like. The signs are universally unfriendly and make customers feel unwelcome.

The Art of the Gentle Nudge

There are a few principles we follow to give our guests gentle nudges.

Principle #1: Appear at the moment of need. A good nudge appears unobtrusive until a guest needs it. Then the nudge suddenly appears to help.

For example, pine sap is a fact of life in the mountains. Go outside and there's a good chance you'll get a little sap on your shoe or on your fingers. So our guests are likely to be thinking about pine sap removal as they enter the house.

Hand sanitizer gets sap off quite easily. So we've stationed bottles by the front and back doors and put a small label on each one.

Principle #2: Get to the point. A good nudge gets straight to the point. Customers really won't read anything that's too long.

We put up a sign with WiFi instructions right over the kitchen counter. Getting online is one of the first things many people do when they enter a vacation home. Many people will beeline it to the counter to put down their stuff when they arrive, so we put the WiFi sign there.

The challenge was our first sign was too wordy and WiFi instructions were buried in the middle:

We learned through guest feedback that the sign just blended in to the scenery. Keep in mind that guests have just arrived and they are distracted. So we made a new sign with clearer wording. We'll see how this one works.

Principle #3: Guide people to the next step.

We provide a television, DVD player, bluetooth speaker, and even the ability to connect to your Netflix account via our small media center.

It would be unsightly to post the instructions for all of these on outside of the media cabinet, so we opted for a smaller sign leading people inside. There, our guests will find instructions along with the remotes for each device.

One small thing to note is a nudge doesn't necessarily need to be a sign. It can be anything that gently points your customer in the right direction. 

For instance, we recently put power strips underneath the beds in two rooms. Neither of these rooms has an outlet conveniently located next to the bed. We plugged alarm clocks into the power strips to make it easy for guests to find the power and for guests to unplug the alarm clocks (some guests do this to darken the room).

Find Your Nudges

Gentle nudges can give your guests a more frictionless, enjoyable experience.

The key is to see things through your customer's eyes. Experience your product or service the way a customer would. Observe how customers interact with your product or service. Listen carefully to feedback.

I'll be the first to admit we haven't figured everything out yet. It is a constant, ongoing process to adapt to customer needs. Then again, that's part of the fun!

The Top Mistake That Can Derail Your Service Culture

First, the good news.

Customer service leaders are increasingly identifying the importance of having a customer service vision. This is a shared definition of outstanding service that codifies a company or team's service culture.

Now the bad news.

Many customer service leaders are telling me their vision is not resonating with employees. Their people don't love it and they're certainly not embracing the culture.

A recent study from the consulting firm Deloitte revealed a similar trend. The survey found 82 percent of executives believed culture could be a source of competitive advantage. Yet just 12 percent felt they were driving the right culture.

The big question is why? 

It turns out it's all in the execution. Those big executive announcements just don't seem to stick. Here's what goes wrong and what you can do about it.

Don't Make This Mistake When Creating Your Vision

A prospective client recently asked me to help the organization's executive team write a customer service vision. It would have paid a nice fee and possibly could have led to additional business.

I politely declined.

The biggest mistake you can make is to only include executives when writing a customer service vision. This automatically excludes the perspectives of key arbiters of authenticity such as frontline employees and line managers.

Frontline employees will tell you how it really is. Line managers are directly responsible for coaching employees on executing the vision, so they need to feel passionate about it as well.

A customer service vision written exclusively by executives almost always sets off employees' bullshit meter. These visions are often full of fluffy sayings that are disconnected from day-to-day reality.

No wonder employees don't love it.

I tried to explain all of this to my client. She eventually admitted the executive meeting was already set. They had planted their stake in the ground.

Creating an Authentic Vision

The best way to create a customer service vision your employees will love is to include them in the process. You can use my step-by-step guide to help you.

For now, here's an overview:

Step One: Invite Input. Give all employees a chance to weigh in. This means all, whether you have 10 or 10,000. I often use a survey. Some companies have used a combination of focus groups, surveys, and even virtual town halls. You can get a detailed description of this process in The Service Culture Handbook.

Step Two: Write It. Convene a group of 7-10 people draft the vision. The group should have representatives from all major stakeholders, including executives, line managers, and the frontlines. In my experience, each stakeholder invariably brings a perspective the other groups would have missed.

Step Three: Share It. Socialize the vision with key stakeholders who did not participate in the vision writing meeting. The goal is to get their input, buy-in, and blessing before rolling it out to the entire organization.

For instance, I recently helped a client write its customer service vision. We then presented it to both the President and the CEO. Both were ecstatic about it, which told us we had done well.

Occasionally, a stakeholder group will push back. This happens very rarely and when it does, in my experience it has always been a matter of adjusting one or two words to make the vision just right.

The ultimate goal is you want to share the customer service vision with any employee and have that person instantly believe it. People are much more likely to embrace something they believe.

How to Know When Your Employees Need Training

Employee training has some big problems.

It's a big expense. There's the cost of hiring a trainer and developing the materials. You have to pay employees to attend. Many companies have to run overtime to backfill shifts while staff attends a class.

That investment might be worthwhile if the training worked. It often doesn't.

There are many reasons why training doesn't stick. Managers are often too busy to prepare employees for training or coach them through implementing new skills afterwards. The training itself may be poorly designed. Or employees may not be fully bought in.

Training is also overprescribed. 

There are many situations where another solution is more appropriate. My own analysis suggests that training only accounts for one percent of customer service employees' performance.

The best solution to all of this is to train employees when they need to be trained and not train them when training isn't an appropriate solution.

Here's how to know.

The Three Issues Training Can Fix

Training can only fix three types of issues:

• Knowledge: the employee lacks sufficient knowledge.

• Skill: the employee lacks sufficient skill.

• Ability: the employee lacks sufficient ability.

So the only time that training is an effective solution is when employees have gaps in one or more of these areas. 

Some people ask me about the distinction between skill and ability. Skill is the technique involved while ability is a combination of natural talent and skill.

Imagine a warehouse worker lifting products onto a shelf. Skill is the technique the worker uses to lift products safely. Ability is how much the worker can actually lift. The worker can lift heavier weights through training, though there's a limit to how high that weight can go due to the worker's natural ability. 

Here are some issues that can't be fixed by training:

• Lack of standard procedure or process

• Poor policies

• Broken procedures

• Insufficient equipment

• Poor attitude

Test Your Knowledge

Here are three training requests I have actually received. Read each request and determine whether you think training might be an appropriate solution. The answers are in the video below.

Scenario 1: A small department is having a hard time working together because two senior employees create an uncomfortable work environment. Will team building training fix the problem?

Scenario 2: Employees don’t know how to use the organization’s new computer system. Will computer training fix the problem?

Scenario 3: Employees can’t keep up with their workload due to a staffing shortage. Will time management training fix the problem?

Watch this short training video to learn the answers. You'll get to see a group of people from a live train-the-trainer class discussing each scenario before I finally reveal the answers.

Is this a training issue? from How to Design and Deliver Training Programs by Jeff Toister

More Resources

The short video was from my online course, How to Design and Deliver Training Programs. The course is available on LinkedIn Learning. You can get a 30-day trial here.

You may also want to explore alternatives to training. Here's a handy seven-step action plan.

Finally, check out one of the classic training books, Telling Ain't Training, by Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps. This book has been one of my go-to resources for many years.

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Forget Happiness, This Is the Top Emotion for Customer Support

The webinar software picked the wrong time to get wonky.

My online training class started in less than 30 minutes. A client was paying good money for its employees to attend this session. Schedules had been rearranged to make it happen. There was a lot on the line.

Everything was locked and loaded just minutes earlier. Suddenly, I couldn't log in. I placed a frantic call to technical support.

The technical support rep must have been super empowered. She skipped all of the usual items on the support checklist ("Yes, I've tried rebooting my computer.") and quickly diagnosed the problem.

Now came the surprise.

The rep offered to stay on the line with me until my webinar started. She wanted to make sure everything was OK. 

I went from feeling frustrated and anxious to feeling relieved. For support teams, customer relief is much more important than happiness.

Why Relief Matters in Support

A survey of 1,345 consumers conducted by the Temkin Group discovered that relief was the most common emotion experienced after a technical support interaction.

Let's break it down a bit.

Most technical support interactions start with some form of distress. Customers experience a problem that causes anxiety, frustration, or even anger and are counting on the technical support rep to help them fix it.

Now consider the definition of relief. My favorite comes from the Oxford Dictionary:

A feeling of reassurance and relaxation following release from anxiety or distress.

It's a big emotional swing to move from distress to reassurance. The peak-end rule in psychology tells us the emotional peak is often the most memorable part of an interaction. Ending on a big positive further cements good feelings in the customer's memory.

So how can support teams bring more relief? Here are a few steps.

Improve the Pre-Call Experience

Many technical support teams, particularly start-ups, are guilty of intentionally making it difficult to reach a live agent.

The phone number is buried behind a wall of self-service options. Sometimes there's no phone support at all. Even then, customers must wade through a series of questions and menus just to initiate a live chat or send an email.

This is all based on a calculation that self-support is cheaper than live support. It's also a tactic that can backfire.

Customers are already experiencing negative emotions due to their technical issue. A struggle to get live support at a time of need only serves to amplify those feelings.

This puts relief even farther out of reach.

Now here's the secret. Most customers don't want to connect with live support! They too want to solve the problem on their own.

Customers look for live support when they try self-service and it fails or they believe their issue is too complicated for self-service. Smart companies get this and make it easy for customers to choose between self-service or contacting a live agent.

Quickly connecting with the help you need is a form of relief in itself.

You can still deflect unnecessary service contacts if you do it right. For example, customer service software provider Zendesk takes the live agent or self-service option to a whole new level of awesome.

Allow Agents to Build Rapport

Friendliness and empathy aren't just nice-to-have elements of a support call.

Remember, customers contact support when they're experiencing negative emotions. Research shows that people in that state of mind are more judgmental and less open to ideas.

That's a toxic situation for effective support. So a support analyst who can build rapport can quickly set the stage for faster problem resolution. Which, in turn, makes it easier to bring relief.

Here are a few tactics to try:

• Start the conversation with enthusiasm.

• Learn the customer's name and introduce yourself before asking for account info.

• Listen to yourself and note times when your tone isn't friendly.

Give Agents Space to Listen

Customers are notoriously bad at telling their story.

This causes two problems when it comes to listening. First, large support queues can make employees over-anxious to hop to a solution. That shuts down listening, which in turn can create friction.

The other problem is instinctive. Our brains naturally shut down listening when we start hearing a story we think we've heard before. 

Veteran agents have heard it all before, so your more experienced employees can have an even tougher time listening than your rookies.

Agents need coaching and feedback to develop effective listening skills. Try monitoring interactions to see obvious missed opportunities. Here's an example from a written interaction.

Help get agents get listening right and you'll speed up support resolutions and make customers feel better in the process.

Conclusion

The webinar software functioned normally during my client webinar.

I continued to experience other issues afterwards, issues that caused me to think about finding another provider. The only thing that kept me loyal was the memory of that outstanding support interaction.

All told, experiencing relief that day bought my webinar provider two more years worth of renewals it wouldn't have gotten if my webinar wasn't a success.

Lessons From The Overlook: Know Where to Cut Corners

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.

This time of year is budget season for many companies.

Many customer service leaders find themselves under pressure to keep costs flat for next year, despite expected growth in support volume. Or worse, expense reductions are required for an operation that's already lean.

The Overlook is no different. 

Sally and I are looking for ways to reduce expenses in 2018 while providing a consistently good guest experience. Here's how we manage that tricky balancing act.

The Overlook after a winter snow. Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Avoid Bad Cost Cuts

A bad cost cut is something that reduces the value proposition for our guests. Let me give you an example. 

Snow makes Idyllwild a more attractive destination for Southern Californians who don't often experience cold climates. It can also be a danger, especially for people who are inexperienced with wintery conditions.

Our property management company keeps walkways shoveled to ensure our guests' safety. We also pay to have the driveway plowed. Other rental owners pass the snow plow cost along to their guests but we decided to pay for snow plowing ourselves.

The rationale is safety. Sally and I would not want a guest to skimp on snow plowing in an effort to save a few bucks and then get into an accident. That makes the snow instantly less interesting.

Another example is our dishes and glassware.

At the Overlook, we recognize that having a full, matching set of dishes and glasses creates a more welcoming experience. Our maximum number of guests is eight, so we've stocked our kitchen with ten of everything.

We also bought extras, so when one breaks we can quickly replace it with a dish or glass from the same set.

Does it cost a little extra? Yes and no. 

In the short-run, it does cost more to buy extra dishes and glassware. In the long-run, it is cheaper to buy dishes and glasses by the set rather than individually. 

The immediate benefit is our fully-stocked kitchen is consistently mentioned in guest feedback. That little extra expense has become a point of difference that will hopefully contribute to more word-of-mouth referrals and return guests.

If you're planning your 2018 budget, consider the impact that any cost cuts will have on your value proposition.

• Will the cost cut hurt your customers' experience?

• Will service quality likely diminish?

• Will other costs arise as a result?

Making Smart Cuts and Investments

We have generally used three criteria when trying to save money.

The first is the impact on our customer service vision. Our vision at The Overlook is welcome to your mountain retreat. We don't want any cost cut to take away from that.

The second consideration is the impact on our basic promises. For example, a clean and well-maintained cabin is clearly expected. So we have the cabin cleaned and inspected after every guest and immediately address maintenance issues. Trust me when I tell you not every vacation rental owner does this.

The third consideration is how our cost-saving measure will impact long-term costs. This often leads you to making a smart investment rather than an immediate cut.

Our propane bill provides a good example. Last winter, we spent $531.85 on propane over four months to heat the house. We received a 50 percent new customer discount the first time our tank was filled, so the same amount of propane would cost $676.98 assuming a constant per-gallon rate (it actually fluctuates). 

It gets fairly cold in the mountains and we want our guests to be comfortable. What we don't want to do is heat the cabin when nobody is there. The Overlook is typically a weekend rental, so the cabin is often unoccupied three to four days per week. 

Our regular observations revealed guests did not always turn down the heat when they checked out. The house cleaners or our property manager might do this, though they might not visit the cabin until a day or two later.

To fix this issue, we installed an ecobee3 Lite smart thermostat. 

We can control the temperature settings remotely, so it's easy to lower the temperature when The Overlook is unoccupied. We project the thermostat will cut our propane bill by 40 percent, which will pay for the thermostat in less than three months.

It has also improved our guests' experience.

Our old thermostat had a confusing array of buttons. The ecobee allows guests to adjust the temperature with a swipe of a finger, making it easier for people to adjust the cabin's temperature to a comfortable level.

And, every guest who has stayed at the cabin since we installed the ecobee in October has remembered to lower the temperature when they checked out!

Conclusion

It makes sense to find ways to save money while creating your budget for next year. Be sure to set some criteria for making smart cuts. Those same criteria can help you determine when an investment is worthwhile.

• What's the impact on your customer service vision?

• What is the impact on your basic promises?

• How the cut (or investment) impact long-term costs?

How ecobee Wins Customers With Smart Surveys

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

I recently purchased an ecobee3 lite smart thermostat for The Overlook, a vacation rental property my wife and I own. It's one of those where you can control the temperature remotely via an app.

The decision to go with ecobee came down to service and support. 

The company uses a customer-centric approach to its product design, its pre-sales support, and its customer service. Ecobee also takes voice of customer (VOC) feedback seriously, and does an impressive job deploying both Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys.

Ecobee's Director of Customer Service, Andrew Gaichuk, was kind enough to share some insight into how ecobee uses VOC feedback to stay on top.

The Ecobee 3 Lite. Image source: Ecobee

My ecobee Experience

I considered a number of different options before purchasing the ecobee3 Lite ($169 on Amazon).

It had received a number of good reviews. A vacation rental I stayed in a few months ago had the same model and it was very easy to use from a guest perspective. Ecobee even has this simple tool on its website that allows you to verify compatibility with your house's heating and cooling system.

These factors, coupled with a poor support experience from one of ecobee's main competitors, cemented the decision.

Installation was a breeze with this helpful online guide. There were also easy-to-follow instructions in the box along with a few extras such as a plate to cover the hole in the wall left behind from your previous thermostat.

Once installed, I downloaded the ecobee app that lets me adjust the heating schedule remotely. This is a big plus since I'll be able to lower the temperature whenever guests check out, which means a lower propane bill this winter.

Best of all, it's easy for guests to use. Temperature adjustment is intuitive and simple, with a slide of the finger being all that's required.

Ecobee and NPS

Customers get an NPS survey two weeks after registering their ecobee. The survey arrives via an email sent by the NPS survey company Delighted.

This is a good way to deploy a Net Promoter Score survey, since it asks how likely a customer is to recommend a company's product or service.

Gaichuck explained the rationale behind sending the NPS survey after two weeks. "This gives the customer enough time to experience the product and feel the benefits of ownership."

This was certainly the case for me. The Overlook had guests the first two weekends after I installed the ecobee, so I was already getting a sense of how the thermostat was working.

Many companies make the mistake of sending out an NPS survey after each customer service transaction. This really isn't the best tool to assess customer service alone, since likelihood to recommend is based on many more factors. 

In the case of ecobee, the purchase experience, installation, and the product itself all weigh on whether a customer would recommend the product to a friend.

Ecobee's NPS survey also has an open comment question. This allows customers to provide additional detail on why they gave a certain rating, which can be analyzed later.

The survey asks just two questions, a rating question and an open comment question, yet it's a powerful tool because Ecobee uses the data correctly.

Ecobee's customer service team follows up with anyone who gives a rating of six or lower on the likelihood to recommend question. In NPS parlance, people who give a 6 or lower are known as detractors, so this is a chance to dig deeper into customer feedback or perhaps even save the customer.

Gaichuk and his team also analyze NPS survey comments for trends.

"We define trends through key words such as Customer Service, Installation, Wifi, etc. to help narrow down what key issues customers are experiencing so we can action it for future improvements. For example if we see any detractor for 'Customer Service' we can investigate the interaction, determine the issue and provide one on one coaching/feedback with the CSR."

Ecobee and CSAT

Customers who contact ecobee's customer service team receive a CSAT survey at the end of the interaction. 

CSAT is a much more appropriate survey type than NPS for service transactions, so it's good to see ecobee using both NPS and CSAT in an appropriate way.

Ecobee uses Zendesk customer service software, which has a built-in survey question that simply asks customers, "Are you satisfied or unsatisfied?"

Like the NPS data, Gaichuk uses these responses to identify trends.

"I can measure these C-Sat scores by department, CSR team or agent level. The Supervisors are each responsible to review the Unsatisfied results with their respective team members and identify areas for improvement."

Ecobee's customer service team currently has an outstanding 91 percent CSAT rate.

The company sends customers a survey as a post-transaction email. My research shows this is a best practice, and Ecobee enjoys a robust 19 percent response rate.

According to Gaichuk, the customer service team uses the survey invitation to create another positive customer touch point.

"In early 2017 we changed our call process so CSR’s are now responsible to email the customer a summary of the call interaction. This is a great way to finish the interaction, wow the customer and provide them any additional information that may help. As a result the customer is provided the ability to rate the CSR’s support they provided."

Conclusion

Writing this blog post means I'm definitely recommending the ecobee3 Lite to friends and colleagues. 

The product is excellent, though I think it's the service and support that really makes the difference. Perhaps most impressive is how Gaichuk and his team at ecobee are using customer feedback to continuously improve.

The New Rules of Employee Empowerment

Note: This post was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.

Customer service leaders frequently ask me about employee empowerment. It sounds so good in theory, but it's often difficult in practice.

When I talk to them, there's usually something missing. Here's an example:

In a technical support contact center, each call was a roll of the dice.

The issue could be resolved in five minutes if one agent answered. That same issue would take more than 30 minutes to resolve if another agent handled the call.

The 5-minute agent was frustrated because she wanted to share the fix with her coworkers, but there wasn't a great way to do it. Ever since a major software update was released, the support team was flooded with calls. There didn't seem to be any time for team meetings or updating knowledge base articles.

The situation was also frustrating for the 30-minute agent because he wanted to solve customers issues faster.

Both agent were empowered in the traditional sense. They had the authority to go the extra mile to serve their customers.

Yet this authority fell short because they weren't truly empowered. Here's why.

The Old Definition of Empowerment

Ask most people to describe employee empowerment and they'll tell you it's entrusting your employees with the authority to do what's needed to serve their customers.

That's only part of it.

The 5-minute agent had the authority to deviate from standard procedures when she discovered a better way to solve an issue. 

The 30-minute agent had the authority to take as much time as he needed to resolve the customer's issue so the customer wouldn't have to contact support a second time.

But there was something missing.

There wasn't a way for the 5-minute agent to easily share her knowledge with the 30-minute agent so he could solve the same issue just as quickly.

The New Definition of Empowerment

Employee empowerment really means giving people the authority, procedures, and resources needed to serve their customers.

• Authority to go the extra mile to serve customers.

• Procedures that represent best practices for serving customers effectively.

• Resources such as knowledge and tools necessary to get the job done.

The support team was able to provide dramatically better support when they added much-needed procedures and resources to the authority they already had.

New procedures included:

• A documented best practice solution that allowed all agents to solve the same problem in 5 minutes.

• A standing meeting between the support team manager and development manager to review voice of customer feedback and get insights on new software releases. This allowed new issues to be identified, documented, and fixed. (Which, in turn, reduced call volume.)

• Daily 5 minute huddles with support team agents that focused solely on top issues, so that the 5-minute agent could share her solution with her peers.

New resources included:

• A regular bulletin of easy fixes was shared with the support team to promote new solutions to difficult problems.

• An updated knowledge base that allowed the 30-minute agent to access the solution developed by the 5-minute agent.

Yes, all of this took time to put into place. 

That time was quickly paid back because the 30-minute agent now became a 5-minute agent, too. Spread that out over an entire team and hours of time were saved per week.

That left plenty of time to identify, document, and share new solutions.

Put This Into Action

Customer service leaders frequently tell me the number one reason why employees don't go the extra mile is they don't realize how much they're allowed to do!

Here's a practical way to get started:

Jeremy Watkin, Head of Quality at the outsourced contact center FCR, told Shep Hyken on Amazing Business Radio that he regularly asks employees for the top customers requests they have to say "No" to.

He then works with the team to find ways for them to say "Yes." There are many ways this can be done:

• Sharing alternative solutions

• Clarifying existing authoring

• Providing new authority, procedures, or resources

Another easy way to put this into action is to establish clear red lines. These are absolute limits for empowerment.

For example, The Ritz-Carlton is famous for empowering every associate to spend up to $2,000 to help a guest. That doesn't mean they automatically spend $2,000! It simply means $2,000 is the red line that can't be crossed.

The key to making this work is for managers to regularly discuss empowerment actions with employees. Employees should never get in trouble for staying under the red line. What managers can do, however, is have a collaborative discussion about the best ways to handle similar situations in the future. 

You can learn more from this empowerment guide.

Do you have a customer service question I can answer? Contact me and I'll do my best to help!

How Zendesk is Making Customer Service Simple

I was lucky to score an invite to Zendesk's Relate Live user conference in New York last month.

This was my first software user conference, though I was assured by conference leader Sarah Stealey Reed that this wasn't an ordinary experience. The event focused on relationships first, software second.

Zendesk's President of Products, Adrian McDermott, made this crystal clear when he described the convoluted process for adding a security certificate to a website.

"This only works for two technical people having a nerdgasm."

The Zendesk approach is to take something that may be a 22-step process and simplify it down to the push of a button.

McDermott explained that the typical Zendesk customer is a Director of Customer Support. That customer is trying to help her customers, not spend time grappling with technology.

"Our challenge as builders is helping her get that job done," said McDermott.

I've seen this first hand, since many of my clients use Zendesk's customer service software. For instance, legal practice management software provider Clio used Zendesk's built-in survey feature to increase survey responses by 600 percent in just two months.

Another example is Zendesk's Answer Bot, an automated tool that helps customers find self-service resources and avoid contacting a company for support. The major benefit is this frees up agents to focus on helping customers who really need a human.

Omnichannel is another opportunity to make service simple.

Many companies manage various customer service channels such as email, chat, and phone in different silos. If you contact a company via one channel such as email, you'll have to tell your story all over again if you move to another channel such as chat.

Zendesk is putting the customer at the center of all those interactions so it becomes a seamless experience from both the customer and support agent's point of view. This removes a barrier to having a human-to-human conversation.

Mikkel Svane, Zendesk's co-founder and CEO, described the need to keep things simple in his opening remarks.

Svane acknowledged it is sometimes difficult to keep things simple as the Zendesk platform grows and more features are added. For instance, people could signup for Zendesk and configure the software on their own when it was first launched.

Now, laments Svane, we need customers to call us because it's become more complicated.

That's where Zendesk's customer service vision comes into play.

The emphasis is on people and relationships when you contact Zendesk for support. The idea is to connect Zendesk users with a helpful, empathetic support representative who can understand the customer's needs and help them achieve their goals.

The company's elite service culture is why I profiled Zendesk in The Service Culture Handbook, where you can read about how Zendesk developed its vision in Chapter 12.

The Customer Service Bot That Can Save Humanity

Robots can be scary.

They sometimes feels like a barrier to real customer service. Such as when you find yourself yelling "Human! Human! Human!" into the phone, only to hear an annoyingly pleasant robotic voice respond, "I'm sorry, I don't understand."

Other times, automation can create service failures. A bot once tried to send me to the wrong airport when it re-routed me after a weather delay. Another bot hilariously joined a Tweet chat and quickly became confused.

Of course, some automation is inevitable. We use the Starbucks app to skip the ordering line. A self-service portal allows us to troubleshoot our devices without calling support. Automation even sent this blog post to you if you subscribe via email.

Will automation eliminate people? 

I recently attended Zendesk's user conference, Relate Live, where I learned about one bot that's actually helping people be more human.

The Zendesk Answer Bot

Customers often prefer self-service.

This is especially true for easier issues, such as resetting a password. A challenge occurs when customers can't get the answer they want via self-service so they grudgingly contact the company for live support.

Zendesk's Answer Bot tries to save customers from that extra step. We can see how it works with this example from MailChimp, a marketing automation service that uses Zendesk to power its customer support.

Let's say I want to use MailChimp to automatically send new Inside Customer Service blog posts to email subscribers. I search the MailChimp support site but can't figure out how to do it, so I decide to send an email.

Once I hit send, Answer Bot jumps in and scans my email. It helpfully suggests a couple of articles based on what I wrote:

Ah ha! The second article is exactly what I'm looking for.

Now I can cancel that support ticket. No need to wait for a live person since Answer Bot already solved my problem. I can just click on the article and walk through the how-to steps. 

So how does Answer Bot help humans be more human?

Restoring Humanity

It was a presentation by Brian Crumpley from Dollar Shave Club at Relate Live that helped me see Answer Bot's true potential. 

Crumpley shared an analysis of Dollar Shave Club email interactions. His data revealed that 40 percent could have been handled via self-service. Even worse, these interactions cost a little more and satisfied customers a little less than transactions that truly needed the human touch.

The company wants its agents to have great, personalized interactions with members. It's tough to do that with more transactional issues. The customer generally wants a quick answer and to be on their way. 

High volumes also make personalization difficult. If there's no budget to add extra staff, agents find themselves racing through contacts just to keep up.

Enter Answer Bot.

Dollar Shave Club implemented Answer Bot to help deflect some of those self-serviceable contacts. After six months, Answer Bot was handling nearly 5,000 contacts per month that would otherwise have gone to an agent.

Those contact deflections gave Dollar Shave Club some extra capacity without adding staff. Here's how Crumpley was able to use it:

• Expanded live chat availability

• Created a knowledge base task force to further improve self-service

• Debuted a Customer Insights magazine

Best of all, agents now had bandwidth to provide a bit more human service to customers who really needed it.

What's Next?

Forrester predicts that robots and artificial intelligence (AI), collectively referred to as "bots," will replace 7 percent of US jobs by 2025.

I'm hoping for a different trend.

History tells us the proliferation of automated teller machines actually led to an increase in bank tellers. The teller role just became more sophisticated since they were called upon to handle fewer simple transactions. 

I noted this is a 2016 post:

• Robots = good at simple transactions

• Humans = good at complicated transactions

Other customer service roles can follow a similar path. This should free up humans to be more human when customers really need it.

Your Inventory Problem is Hurting Customers

It was a scene straight out of the movie, Office Space.

The Vice President of Customer Service called a meeting of directors, managers, and supervisors. He stood under a banner that read "One Call Resolution" and proclaimed that solving customers' issue on the first call would be our focus.

Just like in the movie, people listened silently though nobody really believed him. 

Cost savings was the motivation behind this initiative. Repeat calls cost money and the company was light on cash. The VP was getting pressure to cut costs.

Unfortunately, the initiative started and ended with that meeting. The "One Call Resolution" banner was the only tangible step taken to improve.

Meanwhile, the solution to the problem was literally sitting in the parking lot.

The Returns Mess

The One Call Resolution meeting happened in 1998.

I was a call center training supervisor at Chadwicks of Boston, a catalog company that primarily sold women's clothing. The number one reason for repeat calls was a customer checking the status of a return or exchange.

Customers would mail back an item expecting either a refund or a replacement item sent out in exchange. A couple of weeks would pass and they'd call to check the status.

Tracking packages was a lot more difficult back then. We didn't have handy websites that told us the precise location of a shipment. There were many times when the best a customer service agent could do was tell the customer we hadn't received it yet.

The truth was we probably had the customer's shipment on site. 

At any given time, we had a backlog of six weeks worth of unprocessed returns. These packages were in truck trailers parked at our warehouse, waiting for our warehouse returns staff to open them and record each return or exchange in our computer system.

The company's average return rate was 25 percent. I'll save you the math—a six week returns backlog meant 3 percent of the company's annual inventory was sitting in the parking lot, completely useless.

Put another way, that inventory was worth about $6 million.

Money Hiding in Plain Sight

The returns backlog was a known issue. So why wasn't it solved?

A lack of resources was frequently blamed. The issue was really more complicated than that. Customer service came out of one budget. The fulfillment center, which processed the returns, came out of another. 

The challenge was the fulfillment center was under the same pressure to cut costs that the customer service department faced. It's managers didn't want to invest in the extra staffing necessary to clear out the backlog.

The irony is clearing out that backlog would have freed up a lot of money. You've probably guessed how:

1. Temporarily staffing up to clear the returns backlog would free up $6 million in inventory.

2. Processing returns faster would reduce customer service calls by 10-20 percent. That's an estimated $1-2 million in additional savings.

3. Faster returns would increase customer loyalty, which translates to revenue growth.

That extra cash would have helped improve customer service and reduced some of the cost pressure on the call center. 

Alas, it never happened. The cash crisis continued, customers defected in droves, and many people would up losing their jobs.

More Ways to Find Money

Inventory issues can plague businesses in many ways. Here are a few more examples.

Dead Space. Inventory takes up valuable warehouse space. Having too much on hand, especially products that don't sell fast, causes a business to over-invest in space or utilize the space it has inefficiently.

Product Confusion. There's a shop in my neighborhood that's full of every random trinket, knick-knack, and gift item imaginable. You'd never guess that the shop primarily provides small business services such as copying, shipping, and private mailboxes. All that extra inventory clutters the shop and makes it more difficult to sell the company's primary services, which ultimate hurts revenue.

Slow Movers. I once worked for a catalog company that sold collectables from the former Soviet Union. We carried some unique items, such as an actual cosmonaut space suit. The challenge was these one-off items were expensive and would often sit in our warehouse for years until we found a buyer. That extra inventory represented a significant investment that hampered the company when it tried to expand and ran into cashflow trouble.

Phantom Stock-outs. In her book, The Good Jobs Strategy, Zeynep Ton shared how phantom stock-outs contributed to the demise of the once-popular Borders Bookstores. A phantom stock-out occurs when the inventory system shows and item is in stock, but it can't be physically located. 

This list can go on and on. 

If your company has physical inventory, I encourage you to look for ways that inventory may be hiding cash that could be used for something else.