Lessons From The Overlook: Why We Aren't On Airbnb

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.

People often ask us how we advertise The Overlook. They want to know if they can find the cabin on Airbnb, VRBO, TripAdvisor, or other popular vacation rental websites. 

You won't find The Overlook advertised in any of those places. Our rentals are booked exclusively through our property manager, Idyllwild Vacation Cabins.

It's not uncommon to use a third party to generate sales for a business. Here are just a few examples:

• Hotels, airlines, and rental car companies all list with various travel websites. 

• Many companies use outsourced contact centers to handle sales and service. 

• Restaurants use OpenTable and Yelp to handle reservations. 

Deciding which third party to use can be tricky. Each one comes with it's own pros and cons. Here's why we decided not to list on any of the major vacation home rental websites.

Drawback #1: Owner Fees

The major third-party websites charge a guest booking fee in exchange for advertising your property. Here are the fees for three of the biggest players:

Keep in mind this fee is on top of 35 percent fee we're already paying our property management company. So we'd have to pay an additional 3-8 percent to one of those websites for each booking.

Some people don't realize that vacation rental property management is much more expensive than the typical 10 percent fee a property management might take to manage a condo or house. A normal fee for a vacation rental is 30-35 percent because a vacation rental manager handles multiple guests per month and provides more services. In our case, the fee includes a lot:

• Advertising and marketing

• Credit card fees

• Guest screening

• Cleaning

• Pre-arrival inspection

• Post-checkout inspection

• Laundering towels and sheets

• Stocking the home with toilet paper, soap, paper towels, etc.

• 24/7 guest service

• Coordination of maintenance and repair projects

Sites like Airbnb and VRBO only handle advertising and marketing plus credit card fees, so we'd still need our property manager. That means the only way to justify the extra booking fees would be to get an significant lift in occupancy. 

Keep in mind The Overlook is located in Idyllwild, where the market is typically for two and three-night weekend rentals. So the maximum expected occupancy is roughly 40 percent if The Overlook rents each weekend for three nights. The quirk is a guest who rents just Friday and Saturday nights pretty much ensures there won't be any additional rentals that week.

Here is our average occupancy for the past year.

We're just about at capacity during the busy season, so listing on another third-party site wouldn't give us any significant lift. It might even cannibalize existing rentals and just increase our costs.

The entire town is slower during the off-season, so it's uncertain if listing on another website would yield a significant revenue gain.

Drawback #2: Guest Booking Fees

Idyllwild Vacation Cabins does not charge our guests a booking fee. The other sites charge a fee ranging from 8.5-12 percent, which increases our guests' costs.

Here's an example of what a guest would pay for a three night stay if we listed The Overlook on Airbnb compared to what they pay now.

Guests booking through Airbnb would pay an additional $92.50 without receiving any additional value. While we aren't trying to be the low-cost leader, our pricing strategy is designed to provide exceptional value to our guests.

Our list rental price also includes a few extras that most vacation rentals charge extra for:

• House cleaning

• Spa cleaning

• Snow removal

Pro-tip: Many vacation rentals maintain their own websites. If you find a place on Airbnb, VRBO, or TripAdvisor that you'd like to book, it's worth trying to contact the property through the owner's website so you don't have to pay the booking fee. For example, you can find our cabin here.

Drawback #3: Consistency

Idyllwild Vacation Cabins manages more than 40 rental properties in the Idyllwild area. The company's strategy is focused on direct to consumer rentals rather than relying on Airbnb, VRBO, TripAdvisor, and other sites.

This allows the company to avoid paying costly subscription and booking fees. It also means avoiding the additional administrative burden of actively managing and reconciling listings for the same property on multiple sites.

Instead, the company attracts guests through a lot of repeat business, outstanding search engine marketing, and a storefront in the town of Idyllwild. They also provide responsive, helpful, human service and take time to get to know guests so they can help them choose the ideal property to rent.

We'd be creating an exception to normal procedure if we insisted on listing The Overlook on Airbnb or a similar site. Exceptions can often lead to inconsistent results when you are working with a service provider.

Our Plan for Now

Businesses generally try to increase profits by increasing revenue and cutting costs. The Overlook is no exception. 

Last year was our first year of ownership, which brought a lot of normal startup costs such as furnishings, repairs, and extra maintenance. We also built a game room. Those costs should go down this year.

Idyllwild had a very hot summer in 2017, which drove down our bookings during the slow season because people don't flock to the mountains when it's hot. The Overlook also doesn't have air conditioning, which makes our place uncomfortable in the summer for some guests. We should get a few more bookings since we found a way to keep the house cooler.

Finally, having a year under our belts opens up the opportunity for repeat guests. We'll keep an eye on that since we expect a slight uptick in occupancy due to last year's guests making plans with us again this year.

We'll see how it goes.

Is Chat Ready to Grow Up?

My credit card recently expired, which meant updating accounts such as Netflix, cable, etc. where the card was used for automatic payment.

It was a strangely inconsistent process from company to company.

My cable company's website wasn't working, so I had to contact a live agent. I opted for chat, hoping this would be the most convenient. It was not a great experience.

I waited for two minutes to get connected with an agent. Once the agent came online, her responses were so clearly templated that I sincerely questioned whether she was a human or a bot. She replied "I am a robot :) beep beep," which tells me she was (probably) a human.

There was also a long lag between her responses. I later learned she was handling three chat sessions at the same time. The chat session took 10 minutes just to update my credit card expiration date.

This experience is similar to what many chat customers encounter every day. If your company offers live chat, it's time to do better.

Chat Satisfaction is Down

Customer satisfaction for chat was down in 2017. 

The LiveChat Customer Service Report 2018 shows an overall chat satisfaction decline from 86.35 percent in 2016 to 83.54 percent last year. Comm100's Live Chat Benchmark Report 2018 showed a similar decline from 84.06 percent down to 80.68.

Two major pain points are average wait times and average chat length, both of which I experienced in my chat with the cable company. Here are the averages for 2017 from the LiveChat report:

• Wait time: 51 seconds 

• Chat length: 11 minutes, 34 seconds

Companies should drive those numbers way down if they want to modernize their chat channel. Keep in mind that customer satisfaction with wait time is a function of the actual wait combined with how that wait was spent.

Best Practices to Speed Up Chat

I reached out to leading chat providers such as Comm100, LiveChat, and Zendesk to learn some best practices.

Leverage Chatbots

Comm100 launched a chatbot in 2017. Its clients were able to use the chatbot to handle 20 percent of their chat volume, on average. Let's go back to my credit card example. The agent added no humanity (recall I initially couldn't tell if she was human) to what was really a simple transaction. A chatbot could have handled the same issue with no wait time and no lag. This also would have freed up the agent to assist another customer with a more complicated issue.

Integrate Customer Data

Szymon Klimczak, CMO at LiveChat suggests leveraging available information. "Building a positive experience is all about using the available data appropriately. Hence, knowing your customers really well seems to be the key to success." For instance, I was signed into my cable company account when I initiated my chat session, so the chat program could have been programmed to recognize that data and allowed that chat agent skip the four questions she used to verify my identity.

Route Intelligently

Tony Sandhu, Comm100's Customer Success Manager, suggests making sure chats get routed to the best available agent, rather than just assigning chats on a random or round robin basis. "Long wait times can be eliminated by using intelligent routing rules that automatically route requests based on departments, customer value, or competency of agents."

Share Content 

Caitlin Henehan, Zendesk’s Vice President and General Manager for Chat, describes how sharing helpful content in chat helped one client solve issues faster. “The ability to send video, screenshots, and links to help articles via chat has allowed our customer TeamSnap to reduce their work time per issue by 20% and increase customer satisfaction."

Limit Simultaneous Chats

The number of simultaneous chats an agent can handle at one time should be capped to improve customer satisfaction, reduce lag time, and prevent errors. The exact number varies from company to company and should be determined by working closely with your agents to observe what's most efficient. In my cable company example, running three chats at once created a negative experience because the agent took took long to respond and wasn't able to inject any personality into her initial responses.

Take Action!

Chat has the potential to be a really great channel if used correctly.

Evaluate your own chat function from the outside in by conducting a mystery shopping exercise to experience what your customers experience. Look for opportunities to apply best practices to reduce customer wait times, increase customer engagement, and solve problems faster.

Customer Experience Pain Point: Updating a Credit Card Expiration Date

Your credit or debit card expires every few years. When it does, one of the required chores is updating all the accounts that card is linked to for automatic payments.

This recently happened to me. What's fascinating is how widely this experience varies from company to company. No company did it perfectly, though some (Netflix) handled it much, much better than others.

You'd think companies would make it easier for us to pay them. Instead, updating a credit card expiration date often generates unnecessary contacts and customer frustration. 

Here are a few examples:

Winner: Netflix

I logged into my Netflix account and discovered my credit card was already updated.

How did Netflix pull off this magic? They subscribe to a credit card updater service that handled it automatically. This saved me some effort and ensured Netflix would continue to get paid.

The only thing that would have made it better was a proactive notification. Netflix would have saved me the trouble of logging into the billing section of my account by emailing a message that told me my new credit card expiration date was already on file. 

Average Experience

Most companies were fairly straightforward. Login, find the billing section of my account, and enter the new credit card expiration date. 

It took less than one minute on average from start to finish for each company. That's not too bad though Netflix clearly does it better.

My worry for these companies is what happens when they have customers who aren't as proactive as I am? Chances are there are a lot of service interruptions that generate unnecessary customer friction. Those service interruptions also slow down the company's cash flow and add to the cost of servicing each account.

Worst Experience

The cable company won this one. Again. (I've had a challenge updating my credit card expiration date in the past.)

The company did one thing well. It mailed a proactive notice reminding me my card was about to expire. That was smart business.

The difficulty occurred when I tried to make this update online. I couldn't. I tried several times over a few hours and repeatedly got this message:

Poor grammar aside, a broken self-service process is bound to generate unnecessary contacts. It was time to check this chore off my list, so I opted for live chat.

The chat session took a full ten minutes to complete. (Yes, I'm the nerd who times these things.) Most of that was lag time because the agent was chatting with two other customers concurrently and I had to wait for her responses. 

Ironically, my cable company recently sent a promotion for its home security service. The unnecessary friction required to update an expiring credit card is enough to convince me the home security service would not be a good experience.

Take Action

Does your company keep customer credit or debit cards on file for automatic billing?

If so, audit your process. Follow your customer's journey to see how easy (or difficult the process is). Do some extra research when an account is suspended for nonpayment to find out whether the issue could have been prevented.

The way I see it, there are three best practices for companies to follow.

1. Subscribe to an updater service so card information gets updated automatically.

2. Send out proactive notifications to give customers the peace of mind that their account is up-to-date.

3. Make it very easy for customers to update payment information on their own.

The result will be happier customers and fewer missed payments!

Goal Setting Mistakes That Will Crush Your Service Culture

The new executive looked with dismay at the list of strategic goals the CEO had shared. They were designed to help the organization create a service culture, yet she knew the list was not very strategic nor did it contain actual goals.

One goal was "provide customer service training for employees." Merely ticking the box to show she completed the training task wasn't going to create a service culture. 

The CEO either didn't understand or didn't care since the goals had already been shared with the board. His chief concern was making sure the training happened sometime during the fiscal year.

Unfortunately, this executive is not alone. I periodically ask individuals and leaders to share their goals with me; they are rarely well-written. 

Goals are intended to focus behavior and motivate people to give extra effort towards achieving them. Good goals can reinforce a service culture by getting everyone to work together towards a specific achievement.

In many cases, poorly-conceived goals can crush a service culture by focusing employees on uninspiring tasks such as "provide customer service training." 

Here are five common goal setting mistakes and how to avoid them.

Five Common Goal Setting Mistakes

Look carefully and you'll see these are all connected to the SMART goal model. Here's a quick review:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Relevant

• Time-bound

Mistake #1: Not Specific

Goals are often written in vague terms that make it difficult to understand exactly what the organization or team is trying to achieve. Here are some real examples:

• "Improve customer service"

• "Continue drive towards standardization"

• "Increase support capability"

Vague, non-specific goals don't effectively focus behavior that because people aren't really sure what "improve customer service" means.

The fix is to make it specific. For instance, think of why you want to improve customer service and what specific impact that might have on the organization. Examples might include:

• Reduce customer churn

• Increase first contact resolution

• Improve the net promoter score (NPS)

Mistake #2: Not Measurable

Many goals lack a specific measurement, which makes it impossible to tell whether or not the goal has been achieved. None of these have a specific number connected to them:

• Reduce customer churn

• Increase first contact resolution

• Improve the NPS score

It's hard to focus our performance if we don't know what counts as success. The fix here is to put a number to it.

• Reduce customer churn by 5 percent

• Increase first contact resolution by 10 percent

• Improve NPS score to 55

Mistake #3: Not Attainable

A stretch goal may get employees to give a little extra effort. When that goal feels completely out of reach, employees may either give up or engage in unethical behavior.

It hurts a service culture when employees stop trying. It kills a service culture when employees do things like enter fake survey results or deliberately alter their numbers.

Wells Fargo provides a recent cautionary tale of what happens when you set unrealistic goals. Thousands of employees collectively opened more than two million phony customer accounts in an effort to meet a sales target of eight financial products per customer.

The fix is to set goals that require some effort to achieve yet are well within reach if employees work hard and execute correctly. Improving the NPS to 55 is probably unrealistic if it sits at -10 right now. It's probably attainable if the current score is 50.

Mistake #4: Irrelevant

Goals can cause problems when they are connected to something other than the customer service vision or the organization's strategic plan.

Here are a few real examples:

• "Improve reporting"

• "Win an award"

• "Expand staff"

Keep in mind that goals are intended to focus behavior. So behavior may focus on something other than the customer service vision or strategic plan if they aren't expressly aligned.

The fix is to choose goals that represent progress towards the customer service vision. One way to do this is by asking the question, "Why?" to a non-aligned goal statement.

For instance:

• Why do you want to improve reporting? Perhaps you want to spot trends more easily. 

• Why do you want to spot trends? So you can identify problems and fix them.

• Why do you want to fix problems? So you can reduce customer churn.

In that case, you might set a SMART goal around reducing customer churn and outline specific ways you want to improve reporting to help you achieve that goal.

Mistake #5: Not Time-Bound

I know a lot of people who want to write a book. Most never do. 

One of the reasons they never do is they don't set a specific time by when that book will be written. That makes it easy to avoid creating any concrete plans. 

My goal was to write a bestselling book in 2017 and I set a book launch date of April 4. Having this specific target caused me to write a detailed action plan designed to help me achieve my goal. And I did—The Service Culture Handbook hit the 800-CEO-READ bestseller list for April.

In a customer service context, let's say you want to reduce repeat contacts by 20 percent. A SMART goal should specify when you hope to achieve this by so you can set some specific plans to get there. For example:

Reduce average monthly repeat customer contacts by 20 percent by July 31, 2018.

Take Action!

One immediate step is to review your goals against the SMART model. You can learn more about SMART goals and download a helpful worksheet here.

If you want to go deeper, make sure your goals align with these good goal characteristics.

An Egregious Case of Survey Begging

Survey begging is a scourge on customer service.

This is when an employee asks a customer to give a positive score on a survey by explaining how it will directly benefit the customer, the employee, or both.

For example, here's a receipt from the now defunct Sports Authority that clearly indicates what score the customer is supposed to give. The cashier backed this up with a verbal entreaty to mark the survey "highly satisfied."

I recently experienced one of the most egregious examples I've seen. I'm sharing it with you now as a cautionary tale.

My wife, Sally, and I were checking out of a hotel and went to the front desk to get our receipt. The associate helping us looked me straight in the eye and said, "You may get a survey; I'd appreciate it if you gave us all tens."

Never mind this was a violation of the hotel's policy. It was poor customer service to so blatantly ask for a good survey score. Worst of all was the associate never asked any basic questions to see if those tens were merited, such as "How was your stay?"

I often learn more about what motivates employees to do this so I replied, "Did you just ask me to fill out a survey and give you all tens?"

"Yes," he replied with a smile.

"You don't want me to fill out a survey."

"Why not?" he asked.

I proceeded to tell him my experience was definitely not all tens. The reason I was at the front desk checking out was I never received my receipt via email. A ten experience would involve me getting that email so I could skip the minor inconvenience of stopping at the front desk. (Pro travel tip: you don't need to actually check out at most hotels. You'll be checked out automatically.)

I also told the associate I did not receive any confirmation that loyalty points had been added to my account in return for opting out of housekeeping service one night during my stay. That would have happened automatically if my experience was a ten.

So far I thought I was doing the guy a favor. I was giving him honest and direct feedback rather than sharing it in a survey where my score would certainly be lower than a ten. There were more issues, such minor cleanliness and maintenance problems with my room, but the associate had already heard all he wanted to hear.

"Thank you," he said. "I'll be sure to share that feedback with my manager. I'd also appreciate it if you mentioned me in the survey and gave me a 10 for listening to you and respecting you as a man."

Wow. 

I had just witnessed the elusive double survey beg! This associate doubled down by appealing to some sort of bro code in hopes that I would give him a perfect survey score.

How Survey Begging Hurts Your Business

Survey begging can discourage honest feedback that would otherwise alert you to an issue. It's also a huge turn-off to many customers. 

In my case, my stay was mediocre. Nothing to rave about and a few minor complaints that didn't really seem worth mentioning unless someone asked. I gladly would have shared my honest feedback with the associate if he had handled things differently. He may even have earned my repeat business with an assurance that things would be improved. 

Not now. Mediocre experience + survey begging = do not return.

There's no way I'm the only guest this happened to that day. There's a good chance that hotel loses five repeat guests per day from survey begging. Maybe more, it's hard to tell.

The worst part is there is no data point out there to capture why this hotel is losing customers. 

Take Action!

Customer service leaders should take time to explain the purpose of a survey to their employees. They should make it crystal clear that the point is to get honest feedback that will help improve service, not land a target score.

Sadly, customer service leaders often cause employees to beg for survey scores through incentives, punitive policies, and other actions that focus on getting a certain score. 

You can find examples of ways leaders accidentally prompt survey begging plus several tactics to get employees by reading here.

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A Hidden Reason to Be Polite to Rude Customers

I distinctly remember the first time I apologized on behalf of America.

It was 1995 and I was living in Dublin, Ireland. I wandered into a gift shop near Grafton Street to purchase some Waterford crystal to send home to my mom.

As I walked around the shop, I observed another customer berating an associate. This lady was RUDE. She obnoxiously demeaned the employee while constantly stating that she was an American.

As if being American entitled her to treat people with utter disrespect.

The associate politely tried her best to help the customer. She was calm, patient, and kind, though I could tell she was unnerved by the customer's outrageous behavior. Amazingly, she kept her cool until the customer eventually stormed off.

The customer was an embarrassment. What if word got out that all Americans are this boorish? As an American, I felt compelled to apologize to the associate for the rude customer and assure her that we aren't all this way.

A study published in the May 2017 Journal of Service Research suggests the retail associate's reaction to the rude customer prompted me to be supportive.

Here's why that's a thing.

Our Instinctive Reaction to Rude Customers

Being polite to a rude customer is not easy. It's not even natural.

Most of us instinctively experience the fight or flight reaction. Our normal response to a rude person is to fight back (with words, presumably) or flee the situation. The norms of customer service don't allow us to do that.

We're supposed to smile and take it, just like the retail associate did when confronted by that rude customer.

It can get even worse when other customers are watching. A demeaning customer might trigger feelings of embarrassment that cause us to lash out in defense of our pride. It's a completely normal reaction, yet completely unacceptable in customer service.

The amount of emotional intelligence required to be good at customer service seems severely underestimated when you consider situations like this!

It takes a lot of effort to be polite to a rude customer, though my experience in Ireland shows there's an added benefit to making the effort to be polite in the face of rudeness.

The next customer will like you even more.

Why do customers think they can be rude?

There are a number of causes for customers’ rude behavior.

One is a basic bit of psychology. The emotional part of our brain can act as a sort of gatekeeper for the rational part of our brain. When people get upset about something, such as a frustrating service failure, our emotional brain takes over and clouds our rational judgment.

That’s why you can see a customer getting very angry over something that doesn’t seem like a big deal.

Another is the notion in American service culture that the customer is always right. Some people take this to mean the customer is superior to the employee, and people often act this way.

I did some research to discover the origin of “the customer is always right” saying. My discovery might surprise you—that’s not the original quote! It had been changed over time.

The original saying reminded employees not to argue with customers, even when they’re wrong.

The Best Way to Handle Rude Customers

Researchers have discovered an unexpected benefit to being polite, yet assertive while serving a rude customer.

The study was authored by Alex Henkel, Johannes Boegerhausen, Rafaeli Anat, and Jos Lemmink. They conducted a series of experiments to see how an observer reacted to a customer being rude to an employee.

In one experiment, participants watched a video of a customer service interaction where the customer was rude. The video showed the employee reacting one of four ways:

• The employee was rude to the customer

• The employee was polite to the customer

• The employee politely, yet assertively admonished the customer

• The employee asked the customer to leave

Participants were then asked to evaluate the employee's customer service. Compared to the rude employee, researchers found observers rated the polite employee 65 percent higher. The polite and assertive employee was rated 69 percent higher than the rude employee.

This shows that politeness in the face of incivility prompts observing customers to feel compassion for the employee.

So treating a rude customer with respect isn't just about serving that customer, it's about serving every other customer who happens to be watching!

 Here are a few steps you can take:

1. Recognize your own, instinctive reaction to a rude person.

2. Resist the temptation to act rudely back to the customer.

3. Calmly and politely assist the customer.

4. If the customer crosses the line and becomes abusive, assertively ask the customer to stop.

5. Remain professional at all times.

While this seems like simple advice, I’ll be the first to admit it’s easier said than done. When I did research for my book, Getting Service Right, I learned that negative emotions from rude customers can be highly contagious!

Take Action

It can be tempting to ignore rude customers who complain about your business online, but that’s a mistake. People observing your responses will like your business more if you reply in a polite and assertive way.

There are a few other ways that replying to online reviews can attract more customers.

The hardest part about serving a rude customer, whether in person, or online, is controlling your natural instincts. You can start by learning to recognize the Fight or Flight Instinct. This short video will show you how.

Recognizing your natural instincts from Working with Upset Customers by Jeff Toister and Madecraft

Serving rude customers isn't easy, but you'll find most other customers will be on your side if you handle the situation correctly.

How to Get the Most Out of Training Videos

The battery on my solar-powered keyboard died a few weeks ago.

Naturally, I searched YouTube for a video on how to replace it. A short video helped me learn how to remove the old battery, determine what special type of battery I needed to order, and install it.

Voila! My keyboard works again.

There's a good chance you've done something similar. If so, you've discovered the secrets to getting the most out of a training video.

Training videos work best when they are short and focused on something immediately useful. Yet most people take a different approach when using training videos to learn something for work.

They succumb to the popcorn method and just watch the entire video straight through. Here are some tips to help you learn faster and learn more from training videos.

Tip #1: Make it Immediately Useful

Most people watch a training video because it sounds interesting.

The problem is our brains tend to lose information that's not immediately applicable. So if you watch a training video that might be relevant someday, you'll probably have to watch it again when that day comes because you forgot the original lesson.

A better approach is to only watch videos that are immediately useful.

Taylor needed to create a screen capture video for a work project using a software program called Camtasia. She'd never used Camtasia before, so searched the LinkedIn Learning library for Camtasia courses and found one that fit.

The course walked her step-by-step through her project and she was able to complete it successfully.

Tip #2: Leverage Micro-Learning

Most people watch a training video all the way through. This can take a lot of time, with many videos ranging from twenty minutes to over an hour!

A better approach is to focus on one skill at a time. Learn that skill, apply the skill at work to reinforce the learning, and then move on to the next topic.

Most of the courses on LinkedIn Learning are divided into two to five minute segments to make this easy. For instance, imagine you wanted to improve your customer service survey. You might watch this short video on establishing a survey goal.

The best practice would be to create your survey goal before watching the next segment. This makes it much easier to remember the lesson.

Tip #3: Apply What You Learn

Most people will watch a video without any specific intention to apply the lessons. They just hope a good idea or two will stick.

It seems strange to consume training without having a plan to apply that training, yet that's what people do.

A better approach is to immediately apply what you learn in a video. Taylor learned the basics of Camtasia because she actually used the software to create a project. I changed the battery on my keyboard so I didn't have to buy a new keyboard.

Many training videos have exercises or worksheets that accompany them. I try to include an activity of some kind at the end of every video segment in my courses. 

You'll rapidly improve your learning if you use these exercises to apply each lesson.

Tip #4: Skip to Relevant Topics

Most people watch a training video all the way through, even when it covers topics that are not relevant. Frankly, this can be pretty boring.

A better approach is to skip over content that isn't relevant and go straight to the good stuff.

There are literally hours of training video on Camtasia in the LinkedIn Learning library. Taylor would still be watching those videos if she didn't select the most relevant segments that were applicable to her specific project!

All my training videos have titles and descriptions for each segment in the course so you can skip to the topics that are most relevant to you. This also gives you the ability to revisit key topics if you need a refresher.

Tip #5: Make it Relevant

Many people get hung up on the scenes shown in training videos. They'll say, "That video shows a restaurant scene, but I don't work in a restaurant so it's not relevant to me."

A better approach is to find a way to make that generic scene relevant to you. Don't get hung up on whether a particular scene is a precise match with your work environment. Focus instead on the skills and techniques being shared and then imagine how you can apply those in your own environment.

Doing this, you'll quickly find that customer service skills are essentially the same across most situations. You just need to adapt those skills to your specific needs.

Take Action!

I like to include a short movie at the start of my training courses that explain exactly how to get the most out of the video. Here's an example from my Serving Internal Customers course:

Welcome from Customer Service: Serving Internal Customers by

My suggestion is to do your homework before watching your next training video. Try to apply these tips and notice how they change the way you learn!

Lessons From the Overlook: Interview with Dr. Fred van Bennekom

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.

You can get a false sense of security when things are going well.

Sally and I have owned The Overlook for a little over a year now. Revenue is up, guests are happy, and we feel like we've gotten a handle on operations. 

That's dangerous.

Right when you think you know it all, something happens to remind you that you don't. For us, it was a group of guests in December who did some minor damage and stole a few items including a bluetooth speaker from the game room.

The damage has been fixed and the game room has a new speaker, but I still used the opportunity to seek some advice.

I called Dr. Fred van Bennekom, a customer service expert whose company, Great Brook Consulting, helps companies listen to their customers.

Van Bennekom recently sold a vacation rental property in Harpswell, Maine that he had owned for more than ten years. (You can see photos and a short video tour here.) He had plenty of lessons to share.

Before the theft.

After the theft. Why was the picture off the wall?!

Interview with Dr. Fred van Bennekom

Q: How have customer expectations changed since you first bought your property?

"Customer expectations have changed dramatically in the past ten years. Ten years ago, house rentals were a cottage industry. People did it, but it wasn't widely known.

"If there were some rough edges in the property or the furnishings, people were okay with it. I think it reinforced the idea they were getting a bargain.

"Today, HomeAway has TV ads of a family renting this gorgeous house on the ocean with an in-ground pool so they can bring their dog on vacation. How many of the homes in HomeAway's inventory actually look like the house in the ad? Probably very few, but that ad creates a certain expectation.

"People today are less tolerant of rough edges. Even kitschy furniture that used to be a plus can now be viewed as a negative. People expect to rent a 3-bedroom house on the ocean at about the same price as a hotel room—but have the amenities and services of a hotel."

Q: Have you seen a shift in guest demographics?

"In later years, I started to have more guests who didn't really understand how renting a house is different than renting a hotel room.

"For example, we provide a set of linens and towels for each guest plus a few extra towels. In a hotel, the housekeeper will come each day and change your towels or you can call the front desk and ask for more.

"It's different in a rental house. You need to wash your own towels if they get dirty and we do have a washer and dryer. 

"I got a call one Tuesday night after 10pm. My guests had checked in over the weekend and now wanted to wash the towels but they were complaining that the washing machine was not working. 

"The washing machine worked just fine, but they didn't know how to turn on the water shut off valve. I think they rented an apartment and weren't familiar with how things work in a house.

"I put instructions for things like this in the house guide and even email a copy to guests at booking, but they don't always read it. By the way, two days later this guest called because the dishwasher wasn’t working. The kitchen is directly over the washer, and he had apparently turned off the hot water valve to the kitchen sink when trying to get the washer working and didn’t turn it back on."

Q: Did you do anything different over the years as guest expectations changed?

"When I first bought the house, it was not customary to provide guests with consumables such as paper towels, toilet paper, and dish soap.

"The next year, I went on a trip to Ireland with my family where we rented a house. The very first thing we had to do was go out and buy consumables; there were none in the house. I realized this was a hassle for guests so I decided to provide all the basic consumables at my rental property. You can buy these pretty cheaply in bulk at Costco. 

"That year, the Costco-size supply of toilet paper was left in plain view and someone took it all! People would also throw smaller bottles of laundry detergent into their car. After that, I started providing “starter supplies” of consumables. I put two rolls of toilet paper in each bathroom, and I bought a really big laundry bottle and kept refilling it."

Q: Speaking of taking things, what was your experience with theft and damage?

"The first year we had the place we outfitted it with cute little knickknacks, but we quickly realized things get lost, damaged, or stolen—not sure which. My wife and I played a game called, “What ever happened to the…?” You shouldn't put anything in your vacation rental that you really don't want to lose.

"The one I really remember was my Maine Gazetter—a large, detailed atlas of the state. I’d owned it for decades and had my own notations on the map, so I was really disappointed to lose it."

"One summer, someone once forgot to lower the umbrella on the deck table. There was a major windstorm and the whole table blew off the deck! I put a picture of that on the front cover of the house guide as if to say, 'this is why you need to know this information.'

"An off-season renter got into some sort of fight with her boyfriend and he broke four of the rugged dining chairs and damaged several walls. She tried to glue the legs back on one of the chairs but it completely fell apart. 

"I also found coins and sand in the dryer, as if someone had gotten their pants wet and then just tossed them in the dryer without cleaning them off or emptying the pockets. The dryer’s bushings died a few months later, no doubt from the sand.

"Those experiences reinforced the practice of communicating with guests and having your property manager inspect the place so you can charge the guest out of their security deposit when there is damage or theft."

Q: What was the toughest part about owning a vacation rental property?

"The stress of having to deal with crisis situations when you don't have resolutions and knowing at any time the phone might ring with some new crisis.

"I once got a call on Monday that there was no water at the house. I live 2.5 hours away, so I had to work with my property manager to diagnose the problem. We had guests arriving that Thursday for their kid’s college graduation, so I had to reach out and tell them I wasn't sure whether there would be running water when they arrived.

"It turned out that the well pump had died. Fortunately, I was able to get it fixed in 24 hours, but the work pales in comparison to the stress."

Q: What did you like best about owning a vacation rental property?

"I actually enjoyed interacting with renters during the sales process. It was nice having conversations with people about the local area and helping them make plans.

"Maybe only one out of ten guests was a major headache. The rest were really enjoyable. But, boy, those ‘ones’ wear on you after a few years. That’s why we sold."

How to Find Trends in Your Survey Comments

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.