Updated: June 12, 2023
The Director of Customer Experience was proud of her company’s new customer service survey. She had been a strong advocate for collecting voice of customer feedback and now they were finally getting it.
"That's great!" I said. "What are you doing with the data?"
There was an awkward silence. Finally, she replied, "Uh, we report the numbers in our regular executive meeting."
That was it. The survey was doing nothing to generate insights that could help improve customer experience, increase customer loyalty, or prevent customer churn.
One problem was the survey had no comment section. Customers could rate their experience, but there was no place for them to explain why they gave that rating.
Comments are a critical element that tell you what your customers are thinking and what you need to do to improve. But having a comment section isn't enough.
You need to know how to analyze those comments. This guide can help you.
Why Survey Comments Matter
Comments provide context behind numerical ratings. They help explain what makes customers happy, what frustrates them, and what you can do better.
Let’s look at the Google reviews for a Discount Tire Store in San Diego. As of June 12, 2023, the store has a 4.5 star rating on Google from 482 reviews.
That's great news, but two big questions remain if you’re the store manager:
How did your store earn that rating? (You want to sustain it!)
What's preventing even better results? (You want to improve.)
The rating alone doesn't tell you very much. You need to look at the comments people write when they give those ratings to learn more.
The challenge is the comments are freeform. You'll need a way to quickly spot trends.
Analyze Survey Comments for Trends
The good news is you can do this by hand. It took me less than 30 minutes to do the analysis I'm going to show you.
Start with a check sheet. You can do this on a piece of paper or open a new document and create a table like the one below. Create a separate column for each possible rating on the survey.
Next, read each survey comment and try to spot any themes that stand out as the reason the customer gave that rating. Record those themes on your check sheet in the column that matches the star rating for that review.
For example, what themes do you see in this five star review?
I recorded the following themes on my check sheet:
Now repeat this for all of the reviews. (If you have a lot of reviews, you can stick to a specific time frame, such as the past three months.) Look for similar words or phrases that mean the same thing and put a check or star next to each theme that's repeated.
Once you've completed all of the reviews, tally up the themes that received the most mentions. Here are the top reasons people give a 5 star rating for this Discount Tire store:
Fast service: 72%
Good prices: 35%
Friendly employees: 23%
There weren't many bad reviews. The few that had comments mentioned a long wait time, a lack of trustworthiness, or some damage done to the customer's vehicle.
You'll see a larger theme emerge if you look across all the reviews.
Some aggravation usually accompanies a trip to the tire store. Maybe you got a flat tire. Perhaps you're trying to squeeze in car service before work. There's a good chance you're dreading the cost.
When Discount Tire customers are happy, their comments tend describe some sort of relief. For instance, more than one customer mentioned arriving just before closing and feeling relieved to get great service from helpful and friendly employees.
Take Action!
The purpose of this exercise is to take action!
If I managed that Discount Tire store, I'd make sure employees understood they are in the relief business. (Perhaps they do, since their rating is so high!) Relief is one of the top emotions in customer support.
I'd also respond to negative reviews, like this one:
For private surveys, you'll need a non-anonymous survey or a contact opt-in feature to do this.
Many public rating platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, and TripAdvisor allow you to respond publicly to customer reviews. A polite and helpful response can signal other customers that you care about service quality.
And you might save that customer, too. One Discount Tire customer changed his 1 star review to a 5 star review after speaking with the manager who apologized and fixed the issue!
You can watch me do another check sheet in this short video on LinkedIn Learning:
How to Keep Non-Desk Employees in the Loop
Sharing information with non-desk employees is a challenge in customer service.
These are employees who don't sit at a desk in front of a computer to do their job. They may not even have a set work station and often don't have access to company email. Non-desk employees can work multiple shifts or even at multiple locations, making face-to-face communication difficult.
Here are just a few common examples of non-desk employees:
Cashiers
Servers
Hotel Housekeepers
Field Technicians
Parking Attendants
Security Guards
Museum Docents
Retail Associates
It's critical to share vital information with these employees. Here are some ways you can do it.
Two Bedrock Communication Principles
Attention and repetition are two key principles that should guide any employee communication effort.
We are much more likely to notice things that are unusual or capture our attention in some way. Our brains then use repetition to decide what information to keep front and center.
For example, posting a notice on a bulletin board might not capture your employees' attention or get them to remember something important. But employees will be more likely to read and retain what's posted if they know their supervisor will randomly quiz them about it.
This means the best communication strategies have multiple means of communication.
It often starts with conversations between employees and their direct supervisor. Elizabeth Cogswell Baskin, CEO of the internal branding agency Tribe, cautions against relying solely on the manager.
"Cascading information through the managers of non-desk employees is the default communication method in many large companies, but there really needs to be some communication directly from corporate as well. Our national research suggests that non-desk employees see a lack of communication from the top as a lack of respect for their contributions."
Communication Options for Non-Desk Employees
Keeping in mind employees need multiple means of communication, including some messaging straight from corporate, here are some ideas for different options to consider.
Company Newsletter. A professional-looking print newsletter can make a big impact when you have employees working multiple shifts in multiple locations. You can share company news, profile various employees, include messaging from executive leadership, and reinforce customer service concepts. I once edited a newsletter that went out to 4,000+ employees in five states and employees consistently told me they were excited to learn what their colleagues were doing in the parts of the company. The CEO also contributed a regular message which also made an impact.
Team Huddles. This is a short meeting that's often less than 15 minutes long. They are also called pre-shifts, stand-ups, or tailgates because the meetings usually take place daily to brief employees on important messages and discuss any pressing issues. Here's a guide on huddles.
Briefing Sheets. Many event-based businesses create daily briefing sheets for employees. For example, hotel managers often distribute a one-page update with information on where each meeting is located, VIP guests, and other special announcements. Associates use it as a handy job aid to give guests correct and timely information.
One-on-One Conversation. Years ago, I supervised a contact center training team that had two shifts (day and evening) in two locations. I quickly learned the best way to be an effective leader was to regularly spend time on both shifts and in both locations. While it's important to use multiple communication methods, nothing can replace regular one-on-one communication with your direct reports.
Visual Displays. A bulletin board or poster probably won't make an impact by itself, but it can be incredibly valuable when combined with other communication methods. One manager posted secret shopper reports on a bulletin board and then discussed the results with his team in pre-shift huddles.
Sasha is a hospitality executive who is an expert at creating impactful visual displays. She shared these suggestions for creating an impactful display board:
"Look at positioning it next to where team members visually see it daily (ex: by a time clock). The board should have color—a WOW factor but also a serious message. It should be easy to maintain and get changed up. Do not put too much information on the board so it gets lost. One month can have a focus on a specific area and change it up the next. Get your team involved."
Technology Solutions
There are a host of mobile apps on the market such as Beekeeper and Staffbase that are designed to keep employees in the loop. Employees can install the app on a company or private smartphone and use it to access communication, training, and other resources.
Alexandra Zamolo, Beekeeper's Content Marketing Manager, shared some of the benefits of using a mobile communications platform.
"Beekeeper's mobile solution allows everyone access to real-time news and updates wherever they are and gives them the ability to engage in two-way communication. This centralized digital hub gives employees instant access to countless communication channels to help employee correspondence and workflows run more efficiently, while also connecting to crucial operations tools like payroll and scheduling."
Large retailers and other companies with remote employees often have internal contact centers to handle issues such as payroll, human resources, and IT. Giving employees an app to handle some of those tasks can save a lot of time.
A mobile app can also allow companies to respond faster during an emergency. Sina Lockley, Staffbase's Campaign Manager, shared a story where Adams Land and Cattle used a mobile app to keep employees informed during an ice storm.
Tell Me About Your Experience
If you've managed non-desk employees or have been one yourself, leave a comment or drop me a line and let me know what challenges you faced and how you solved them.
How to Share the Customer Service Tip of the Week
Updated: July 15, 2024
I send out an email with a weekly customer service tip each Monday.
It’s called Customer Service Tip of the Week and is available to anyone who subscribes.
Many customer service leaders share these tips with their teams. They use them for customer service training or to reinforce existing skills.
Here are several examples. Most take just five minutes.
Ariana Wharton
Customer Operations Manager, AVOXI
"We meet weekly with our CSR team to train on new processes and review existing processes. In that training, we always include a ‘soft skills’ portion and a team building section. Frequently your weekly tip is what we train on for our soft skills, and the activities you mention are also really great to tie in to our team building section as well."
My take: It's a best practice to have regular team meetings like Ariana does. The Customer Service Tip of the Week is a great way to generate discussion topics.
Mélanie Sprague
Technical Support Manager, Everbridge
"I am in charge of a technical support team (no face to face support). I forward your emails to my team when I feel the topic is relevant and when I feel it would be useful to them. You have a lot of great tips but they don’t always translate well to phone support with agents who have no authority to issue refunds or anything of that nature. If I forward your email, I often follow up with my team during our team meeting to see who has read it, what the post was about and how it can help them provide better support."
My take: We can easily get overwhelmed with information, so I like how Mélanie curates the most relevant tips for her team. The follow-up discussion also make the tips extra meaningful.
Amy
Vice President, Client Service Management
"I run a Service Management Team for a Financial Services Technology Company. My mission is to keep 'service' in the forefront of every associates' mindset regardless of their role within our company. We use SalesForce and within SalesForce, there is a tool called Chatter, which I use your weekly updates to share with all associates.
My take: A number of leaders have told me they share updates via Chatter, Slack, and other internal communication tools like Amy does. The advantage here is it allows for comments and discussion.
Carmen Gass
User Services Training Coordinator, Penn State University Libraries
"I share some of your customer service tips and blog posts in Pennsylvania State Universities' weekly blog posts and training emails."
My take: It's hard to come up with relevant content on a regular basis, so I really like Carmen's resourcefulness. You are free to use my weekly tips in your internal newsletters, blog posts, etc. All I ask if you attribute them to me or Toister Performance Solutions.
Marissa Franz
Visitor Services Manager, Muhammad Ali Center
"I usually forward the emails to my team and have them respond with one strategy they will incorporate into their workday."
My take: This is another great example of turning a piece of content, the weekly tip, into an opportunity for dialogue with the team.
Take Action
You can share these tips in just five minutes per week. Have your team subscribe themselves here: toistersolutions.com/tips
New Training Video: Serving Internal Customers
Finally, there's a training course geared specifically towards internal customer service.
Nearly 50 percent of my client requests throughout my career have been for internal customer service. This is a special type of customer service that involves serving internal stakeholders.
The new training video from LinkedIn Learning is called Serving Internal Customers. Here's an overview, a preview, and information on how you can access it for free.
On the set of Serving Internal Customers. Photo credit: Jeff Toister
Overview
An internal customer is an internal stakeholder you serve. This includes coworkers, contractors, and even vendors. Here are just a few jobs that are heavily-focused on internal customer service:
Human Resources
Finance and Accounting
IT
Facilities and Maintenance
Security
Many large organizations with multiple locations even have internal contact centers established to support the needs of employees and managers in the field.
Serving Internal Customers focuses on the special skills required to be successful in these roles. Topics include:
Distinguishing between internal and external customer service
Creating positive workplace relationships
Working with difficult coworkers
Practicing active listening to uncover your customers' needs
Managing internal customer expectations
Anticipating problems
Defusing angry colleagues
Adjusting your workplace attitude
Preview
The training video has a few special features to increase learning impact:
Realistic scenes
Short segments
Hands-on activities
You can see all of these special features in this short segment on active listening techniques.
Resources
You can view the entire course on Lynda.com. LinkedIn Premium subscribers can watch the video on that platform.
A 30-day trial if you aren't already a Lynda member. This will give you access to the entire learning library. You'll be able to view all 17 of my courses plus training videos from other customer service experts such as Brad Cleveland and Leslie O'Flahavan.
The library also contains many other topics in addition to customer service. You can learn about leadership, marketing, programming, and many more. All of the courses are taught by experts in the field and professionally filmed and produced.
9 Ways Your Employees Waste Time at Work
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.
Employees waste a lot of time at work.
A 2014 Salary.com survey discovered that 57 percent of employees admitted to wasting at least one hour per day. These employees spend paid work time goofing off online, using social media, or shooting the breeze with colleagues.
There's another hidden time waster. Many employees waste time through inefficiency. The result is we spend the day frantically working without accomplishing very much to show for it.
Here are nine common ways employees waste time without knowing it.
Common Productivity Killers
This is by no means a complete list, so please share other time wasters you've seen. You can leave a comment on this post or drop me a line.
Meeting Invites
You exchange emails with a colleague and agree to set a meeting for a specific date and time. "Ok," comes the reply. "I'll send you a meeting invite."
This approach doubles the amount of communication required to organize the meeting. There's the email exchange to schedule the meeting and then the meeting invite that comes after it.
A meeting invite is great if you are coordinating multiple schedules or are actually using it to invite someone to a meeting. Skip it if you already agreed to meet with just one person.
Meetings
We get a lot of meeting invites because we get asked to a lot of meetings.
A 2015 report from Workfront revealed that meetings are a huge time waster reported by employees in large companies, with 57 percent saying unproductive meetings were the biggest drain on their time.
Meetings should have a clear purpose, a set agenda, and a carefully curated invite list. Otherwise, skip it.
Formal Training
A lot of formal training classes are wasted.
Participants arrive without a clear idea of what the training is about, how it will impact their job performance, or what they need to do to implement what they learn.
Even worse, existing work procedures, old habits, and even the boss can counter what was learned in training, making it difficult to develop new habits.
You can dramatically improve training by using the 70-20-10 rule to create more consistent learning experiences. This works by aligning what's taught in training with feedback from the manager and the employee's actual work.
Useless Email
I once cobbled together a few email studies, ran the numbers, and discovered that the average U.S. worker wasted 24 percent of their day on useless email.
The problem comes from misuse.
Many emails are incomplete and poorly written. People are in a hurry so they skim and scan messages, missing important information. That generates a ton of back and forth.
The email provider Front analyzed email boxes and learned the average email conversation takes 4.5 messages.
The counterintuitive solution is to slow down and give email more attention. It may take slightly longer to read and respond to each message, but you'll receive far fewer emails overall.
Checking Email Constantly
People tend to check their email constantly throughout the day.
This feels productive because you are really, really busy. It isn't. What's really happening is you are constantly starting and stopping tasks and not giving email your full attention. That leads to the useless email problem discussed above.
Timothy Ferriss has some pretty extreme takes on email management in his bestselling book, The 4-Hour Workweek. I've adapted some of them to check email just a few times a day and it's made an amazing impact on my productivity.
Multitasking
Constantly checking email is just one way we try to multitask throughout the day.
Customer service professionals in particular are guilty of running multiple software programs simultaneously for both personal and business. Many of us keep our cell phone perched on our desk, which constantly invites personal distractions.
Multitasking inevitably leads to more errors and less productivity even though it makes us feel busy. You can experience this yourself by taking a Stroop Test.
You can reduce multitasking by reducing distractions, such as pop-up messaging notifications. You will also make some progress through a conscious effort to focus on one task at a time, though many people find this initially difficult as multitasking can be addictive.
Software
There's a software solution for just about everything.
The problem is many of these software programs don't talk to each other. It's not uncommon for a contact center employee to have to use five to seven different programs just to do their jobs.
All that switching back and forth between software programs creates a lot of multitasking. It also causes a lot of repetitive work, where employees have to enter the same information in multiple places to keep all the records up to date.
The best fix here has nothing to do with the employee. Smart companies are making their employees' jobs simpler by providing a unified desktop that puts multiple software programs in one interface.
Messaging
Email isn't the only form of communication that sucks up a lot of time.
Many workplaces have an instant messaging or internal chat app that allows employees to interrupt each other from across the room or even across the country. If we're honest, most of the times we "ping" a coworker we're really asking for something that's not urgent.
My controversial suggestion is to shut it down. Most workplaces don't have a real business case for instant messaging that overrides the negative impact of constant distractions. And if you really need someone's attention, there's other ways to do it.
Inboxes
I can still remember reading David Allen's time management book, Getting Things Done, way back in 2001. It truly was a game-changer for me.
One piece of advice that really stuck was limiting the number of inboxes we have. An inbox is any place you have to look for new information, messages, or assignments.
Examples include our email inbox, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, text, voicemail, physical mailbox, and a physical inbox. Most of us have more than ten. (Try doing your own count, it may be scary!)
You can automatically save time by eliminating or combining your inboxes. For instance, you can use the same software program to manage multiple email addresses so all of your emails go to one place.
Take Action
We're addicted to these time wasters for a variety of reasons.
Take meetings for example. Have you ever tried to pushback on an unnecessary meeting that had no clear purpose and no agenda? People act like you are being some kind of jerk.
I suggest two things.
First, if you're the boss, you need to set an example. It's pretty hard to take your employees to task for wasting time if you are constantly sending half-baked emails and scheduling useless meetings.
Second, focus on incremental progress if you want to make a change or help your employees become more productive. Pick just one small thing to try and work on it for a few weeks. Make it a habit and then reflect on how it has helped you before taking on something new.
Over time, you'll be amazed at how much more productive your team can become.
Report: Small Banks Are More Customer-Centric
A few years ago, I was having a conversation with the CEO of a small local credit union. The credit union had hired me to conduct a customer service assessment and I had asked him about his vision for serving credit union members in the future.
The CEO remarked that his biggest wish was to have more branches.
Members enjoyed the credit union's highly-rated service. The challenge was the credit union only had a few locations, which made it difficult to conveniently serve members who were on the go or who lived more than a few miles away from a branch.
A new report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) shows branches and ATM machines are just about the only place where credit unions and community banks lag behind larger financial institutions.
The also report hints at some lessons for any business that's planning to grow in 2018.
ACSI Banking Report Highlights
Smaller is better when it comes to service quality, according to the ACSI report. Here's the breakdown of overall customer service ratings by size of bank.
Some of this may be residual impact from Wells Fargo's fake account scandal. Yet businesses across all industries tend struggle with scaling a service culture as they grow.
In banking, for example, there are fundamentally different challenges managing 100 branches than there are managing 10. Maintaining consistent hiring and training practices becomes difficult. Executive leadership begins to have fewer interactions with the front lines or customers.
The inevitable focus drifts to technology, policy, and process as companies get larger and more complex.
The ACSI ratings for banks and credit unions bear this out. Notice the higher ratings for tellers and other in-branch staff.
The same held true for contact centers.
The only areas where larger banks had a clear customer service advantage was customer satisfaction ratings for the number of locations of branches and ATMs.
Solutions and Takeaways
Many small businesses have a special community feel that's difficult for larger organizations to replicate.
A company in my neighborhood, Ideal Service, provides plumbing, heating, HVAC, and electrical service to customers like me. Each summer, Ideal sponsors a concert series in the local park where the owner, Don Teemsma, and his employees serve free hot dogs.
(I captured some of Teemsma's service secrets in this 2017 interview.)
Big companies could certainly do something similar, though those company leaders might not think to unless the company had a clear customer service vision that focused on building ties with the local community.
A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that points everyone in the same direction. It's essential to have one if you want to keep things consistent as your business grows.
Any business with multiple branches, stores, restaurants, or other types of locations can also take a page from small businesses by training employees to create a warm and welcoming environment.
Start with the 10 and 5 rule, where every customer within ten feet gets a greeting.
Give employees skills such as the Five Question Technique to help them build authentic rapport with customers and encourage your team to learn and use customer names.
One challenge in larger businesses is employees are not very observant. They consistently miss opportunities to serve because their focus is locked in on some task.
You can help employees improve their powers of observation with this short video from my Innovative Customer Service Techniques course.
You'll need a subscription to view the entire course on LinkedIn Learning.
Should Survey Rating Scales Be Even or Odd?
There's a long-running debate about customer service survey rating scales.
Some people think they should be even, such as a survey that asks customers to rate their satisfaction on a scale of 1-4.
Others think survey scales should be odd, making the customer satisfaction scale go from 1-5.
Let's take a look at both arguments where you'll see there's one clear answer.
The Case for Even Rating Scales
Proponents of an even survey scale argue this design forces customers to choose a positive or negative response.
There's no room for wishy-washy, neutral ratings. A customer is either satisfied or unsatisfied. Here's how that breaks down on a 1-4 scale:
1=highly dissatisfied
2=dissatisfied
3=satisfied
4=highly satisfied
Some people might even point to the simplicity of the thumbs up, thumbs down rating scales that many surveys now use. Even Netflix recently ditched its five star rating system in favor of this one.
There's a glaring hole in this argument: bias.
A good survey shouldn't lead customers to one answer or another. It should allow customers to give their actual response, even if its neutral. The whole argument for even scales is making customers adjust their rating.
This is why even scales made my list of nine underhanded ways to boost your survey scores.
The Case for Odd Rating Scales
This argument is based on math.
An odd-numbered scale contains a statistical mid-point. Here's how that breaks down on a 1-5 scale:
1=highly dissatisfied
2=dissatisfied
3=neutral (mid-point)
4=satisfied
5=highly satisfied
The neutral mid-point is the reason the creators of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) advocate a scale of 0-10 rather than 1-10. It's also the reason the inventors of the Customer Effort Score (CES) advocate a scale of 1-7 instead of 1-6 or 1-8.
Conclusion
A good customer service survey starts with a clear purpose.
Are you doing a survey to get actionable feedback or are you just trying to make your scores look good? My advice is to stick with an odd-numbered rating scale if you want unbiased customer feedback that will help you improve your company's customer service.
Why Sexual Harassment is a Customer Service Issue
Bryce (not his real name) dreaded coming to work.
A regular customer frequently complimented Bryce on his appearance and made sexually suggestive comments. It made Bryce feel so uncomfortable he went to his manager for help.
Bryce's manager was unsympathetic.
Putting up with the customer's offensive behavior was part of the job, he told Bryce. The customer did over a million dollars in business every year and the manager didn't want to jeopardize the revenue.
Stories like Bryce's are common. Employees in many industries are routinely subjected to sexual harassment from customers. Make no mistake—this is illegal.
Companies that fail to protect employees face a number of consequences:
Financial liability
Negative publicity
Employee turnover
Here's what you need to know to protect your employees and your company.
What is Sexual Harassment?
The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission provides this overview:
It is unlawful to harass a person (an applicant or employee) because of that person’s sex.
This includes any unwelcome behavior such as sexual advances, jokes, requests for sexual favors, or inappropriate touching. The behavior can become illegal when one of two things happen:
An employee (or job applicant) must submit to the unwelcome behavior as a condition of employment or continued employment.
The behavior is so pervasive that it unreasonably interferes with a person's ability to do their job.
Alisa Shorago, an attorney who provides harassment prevention training through Shorago Training Services, provides some clarity on how this definition applies to customer service:
"Under federal law, companies may be held legally liable for harassing acts by third parties, which includes customers and clients. The legal standard for third parties like customers is that a company is liable for harassment if the employee suing can prove that 1) any supervisor in the company knew or should have known about the harassment and 2) the company failed to take prompt and effective action."
Look back to Bryce's situation and you can see that his manager failing to act on Bryce's complaint exposed the company to potential liability.
Common Workplace Issues
Jenny Dempsey has seen it all.
"Marriage proposals. Coffee dates. Dinner dates. Phone numbers to call. Skype names to chat. Phrases like, 'You’re so hot in your email signature picture', 'Wow, I didn’t know customer service people were so attractive' and 'Your phone voice is really sexy' are not uncommon. I’ve received questions like, 'What are you wearing?', 'What are you doing tonight?, Can I come over?', 'Can I add you to Facebook?', and 'Do you have a boyfriend?' while helping someone troubleshoot problems in their account."
She is a longtime customer support leader and was recently named one of ICMI's Top 50 thought leaders to follow on Twitter. (Follow her here.) Like Bryce, Jenny enjoys serving customers but finds harassment to be very frustrating.
"In customer service, it is not uncommon to have your photograph listed in an email signature in tickets or in the bubble on live chat. I believe it brings a more personal connection to the interaction. Some days, however, I want to remove my photograph simply because of the comments I receive."
Harassment is rampant in other industries, such as restaurants. A recent article from Eater reported that 78 percent of restaurant workers have been harassed by a customer.
According to Patrick Maguire, a hospitality consultant and author of the Server Not Servant blog, harassment often prevents a dilemma for servers.
"Persistent, unwanted, flirtatious advances are one of the most common concerns from servers in restaurants and bars."
Maguire explains that in customer service, we're trained to be polite and accommodating and to avoid taking it personally when we encounter an obnoxious customer. Unfortunately, a harassing customer might misconstrue a polite response to their inappropriate behavior as an invitation to continue.
"The most frequent offenders are aggressive men harassing women, and many [female servers] tolerate too much, and aren't direct and clear enough about drawing boundaries. Obviously, every situation is unique, and not all guys can take a 'hint,' but a firm, confident response to an unwanted interruption is often more effective than a tepid, 'polite' brush off. When in doubt, escalate (to management) early rather than suffering through an insufferable creep's annoying advances."
Dempsey agrees that the normal expectations for a customer service professional can make it difficult to deal with a boorish customer.
"I feel if I say the wrong thing or put up boundaries, the customer may become irate or cancel service. I typically add a note of, 'thank you for your kind words' or I’ll make a joke out of it by giving them 867-5309 when they ask for my phone number. For better or for worse, I let the comments slide. If it is incredibly inappropriate, I will ask them to either change their language or the chat or call will be disconnected. It rarely gets to that level, but I’m sure there is more I could be doing even with the initial questions or phrases that I receive, however, I don’t feel I really can do much."
Some jobs can put employees in particularly compromising positions.
Several of my clients manage apartment communities or have maintenance technicians who do repair work in customers' homes. These employees often find themselves face-to-face with scantily clad customers who make sexual advances when they arrive to perform repair work. Some even worry about being accused of wrongdoing themselves.
Take Action to Protect Employees
Customer service leaders have an obligation to protect employees from harassing customers.
Make sure employees know about the company's anti-harassment policy. Provide regular training and open forums to discuss challenging issues.
With my housing clients, we discussed specific tactics for handling uncomfortable situations. The goal was to empower employees with good options so they could provide outstanding service while avoiding harassment.
Maguire gives similar advice for restaurant managers. "Hospitality professionals should frequently discuss effective strategies to deal with boorish behavior so they're ready with specific language and actions when they need to employ them."
Leaders should also encourage employees to come to them with potential issues, so they can be handled quickly before they escalate into something bigger.
Shorago recommends customer service leaders be prepared to handle complaints effectively.
"As with all other company leaders, customer service leaders should always take an employee's report of harassment seriously and immediately follow the company's procedures for reporting harassment complaints. They should also make sure the employee is not being punished in any way for making that complaint to ensure no illegal retaliation is occurring."
Improve Your Training With Greater Consistency
My client was surprised by how much training her company was doing.
She had to document the number of training hours employees participated in to receive funds from a state program. At first, she kept track of attendance at classes the company held, such as the customer service program I was hired to facilitate.
My client soon realized there was so much more.
That weekly team meeting was training because it kept employees up to date on critical information. On-the-job training was definitely training, even if much of it was informal. A product briefing from one of the company's scientists was training, too.
Tracking all this training helped my client boost her training hours. It also highlighted another issue. Was all of that training sending the same message?
Training Defined
Think about the training that happens in your own organization. Take a closer look and there's probably much more than you think:
Training is any activity that helps employees develop knowledge, skills, and abilities to improve their job performance.
According to the Association for Talent Development (ATD), training is much broader than just delivering classes. There are ten major focus areas in the ATD Competency Model for trainers:
Training Delivery
Instructional Design
Performance Improvement
Change Management
Knowledge Management
Coaching
Integrated Talent Management
Managing Learning Programs
Evaluating Learning Impact
Learning Technologies
Coaching is a fabulous example. Here's how the ATD Competency Model defines it:
"Uses an interactive process to help individuals develop rapidly and produce results; improves others' ability to set goals, take action, make better decisions, and make full use of their natural strengths."
Good managers do this every day. While they might not think of coaching as training, that's exactly what they are doing.
Knowledge Management is a hot topic in the world of customer service. We want to give employees access to product, policy, and procedure information in real-time so they can quickly serve their customers.
It's also training. Here's the definition from the ATD Competency Model:
"Captures, distributes, and archives intellectual capital in a way that encourages knowledge sharing and collaboration in the organization."
The Need for Consistency
Imagine all of those training components in your organization. You have formal training, coaching from the manager, a knowledge base, and perhaps much more.
There's something in training called the 70-20-10 rule that explains how they all work together. This is a rough guide for how employees learn new knowledge, skills, and abilities they use on the job:
70 percent comes from experience
20 percent comes from a boss or mentor
10 percent comes from formal training
These percentages aren't fixed, but they're roughly accurate (like the 80/20 rule). A challenge occurs when these pieces are misaligned.
Let's say you manage a nursery that sells plants, tools, and other gardening supplies. Your customer service reps use product knowledge to help customers select the right plants, fertilizers, and other items for their home garden projects.
How will you ensure your reps are as helpful as possible?
The old way of thinking would be to hold a training class and hope for the best. But the 70-20-10 rule tells us that's just a small piece of the puzzle.
What if employees struggle to remember critical information?
Who will train employees who missed the class?
What if employees have a hard time undoing old habits?
A better approach would be to align multiple training components.
A formal class could introduce specific skills, such as asking customers probing questions about their projects and using the knowledge base to quickly find answers.
As the manager, you would regularly coach your employees to reinforce the training. This would help people retain what was taught and build their skills even more.
Your nursery sells too many products for employees to memorize the answers to every question, so you'll also need a robust knowledge base. This will allow employees to quickly access authoritative, accurate answers to customer questions.
Additional Resources
You can greatly expand the impact of training if you think holistically.
This blog post explains how to use the 70-20-10 rule to improve your customer service training by 900 percent.
Here's a short training video that explains how to handle a training request. In it, I share a five question framework to help uncover additional solutions that might help employees perform.
The video is a segment from my online course, How to Design and Develop Training Programs. You can view it on Lynda.com or LinkedIn Learning.
3 Types of Fatigue That Can Destroy Customer Service
Many customer service employees view the holidays with dread.
It is supposed to be a joyous, festive time. The reality for many of us is our already busy days are filled with holiday activities such as baking, writing holiday cards, getting our Christmas shopping done, and attending a multitude of holiday parties.
Some customer service employees experience all that coupled with their absolute busiest time of year. They log countless hours of overtime. Each workday is a never-ending line of customers.
It's exhausting.
There are three types of fatigue in particular that are dangerous this time of year. Here is an overview of each one and how it may harm your customer service.
Lack of Sleep
Health care professionals generally recommend adults get seven to nine hours of sleep per night. A 2013 Gallup poll found that 40 percent of us get less than that.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists concentration and memory as the two highest-reported effects of insufficient sleep. We see this in customer service when employees have difficulty concentrating on your needs or remembering to call you back as promised.
Many of us overdose on coffee to compensate for a lack of sleep. Studies show too much caffeine can lead to difficulty sleeping, which makes the problem even worse.
How much employees sleep is largely outside of our control, though there are a few things we can do.
Share this blog post with employees and discuss it.
Try to keep employee schedules as predictable as possible.
Schedule holiday parties in January. (I've done this several times and they are often so much more fun!)
Directed Attention Fatigue
Customer service employees are besieged by distractions.
We're asked to multitask. The average contact center agent juggles five to seven computer programs using two monitors. Our daily world is filled with buzzes, beeps, screen flashes, and other signals that constantly capture and redirect our attention.
Over time, those distractions cause fatigue in the parts of of our brain that focus attention and block out external stimuli. This is known as Directed Attention Fatigue, or DAF. Some psychiatrists refer to it as Attention Deficit Trait (ADT) and suggest the symptoms are very similar to ADD.
Here are a few signs from DAF from Bernadine Cimprich:
Distractibility
Irritability
Impatience
Indecisiveness
Difficult starting and finishing tasks
All of these can be detrimental to outstanding customer service. This makes it essential for customer service leaders to help employees avoid or recover from DAF.
There are only a few things that are known to work:
Promote a workplace free of unnecessary distractions.
Reconsider whether using two computer monitors is a good solution.
Encourage employees to take breaks outside, since nature is known for its restorative qualities.
Set up a quiet room at work to give employees a place to unwind.
Empathy Fatigue
Customer service employees are supposed to care about customers.
We're expected to listen intently, try to understand customers' feelings and emotions, and take action to show we really understand.
Demonstrating too much empathy can be exhausting. The resulting fatigue is referred to as empathy fatigue, compassion fatigue, or even burnout. Here are just a few symptoms from Psychology Today:
Feeling burdened by the suffering of others
Blaming others for their suffering
Isolating yourself
Loss of pleasure in life
Difficulty concentrating
This is another list that clearly isn't conducive to outstanding service.
My study on contact center agent burnout revealed a few factors that can lessen the risk. It is likely these same factors are applicable in other customer service environments, too:
Customer Focus. Burnout risk goes down when employees believe their company is customer-focused.
Empowerment. Employees are less likely to face burnout when they feel empowered to help their customers.
Quality. Better products and services mean fewer upset customers, which means less empathy is needed. Elite companies are relentless about avoiding angry customers in the first place.
Conclusions
In his article, The Dopamine Economy, Umair Haque explains how many of our habits are unhealthy for our mental well-being. A lack of sleep, constant distractions, and an inability to truly focus result.
These habits become ingrained because they trigger dopamine releases in our brain. This makes these unhealthy habits incredibly addictive.
One way to break the cycle and recover is to schedule an unplug event. You can try this on your next two-day weekend.
Here's how it works:
Avoid all digital media. That means your smart phone, your computer, and even the television.
Spend time outdoors. Try going for a walk or a hike where you can get some fresh air and observe natural beauty.
Engage with friends. Have a game night, invite some friends over for dinner, or do something else that allows you to spend quality time with other people.
The first day won't be easy, but it gets better. By the end of the weekend, you'll likely feel more refreshed and focused than you have in a long time.