Introducing My New Book: Customer Service Tip of the Week

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Thousands of customer service professionals around the world subscribe to the Customer Service Tip of the Week email. Now you can get over 52 of my favorite tips in one book!

Introducing the Customer Service Tip of the Week book. 

It's a sourcebook full of tips and reminders to help keep your skills sharp. Use it to discover new ideas or reinforce the concepts you learned in training.

How to Use the Book

If we're honest with ourselves, there are certain aspects of our service skills that can get a little rusty if we don't work on them.

Bad habits can get formed. Other priorities get in the way of our development. Sometimes, we're all guilty of a little overconfidence.

That's where the weekly tip comes in.

It allows you to stay sharp by focusing on just one simple thing. You can rebuild your skills over the course of the week in that area and then move on to something else the following week.

The book makes finding tips easy.

• Browse tips by category

• Find tips by the specific issue you are trying to solve

• Go in order, starting with #1

Special Features

The Customer Service Tip of the Week book has a few special features.

On the back cover and scattered throughout the book, you'll find quotes from frontline professionals and customer service leaders who use the tips on a regular basis.

Pages 12-13 contain a grid listing 10 service challenges and suggest tips to help solve them. These challenges are the top issues shared by weekly email subscribers.

The book is only available in paperback. I tested an e-book version and couldn't get the user experience right. After all, it's designed to be a quick reference guide that you might keep on your desk.

Obviously, an audio book was out of the question for a quick-reference type of book!

I recognize many customer service teams have limited budgets, so I managed to keep the price point low. The book retails for just $9.95 and quantity discounts can get the price down to just $6.96 per copy when you buy 25 books.

• Amazon (single copies)

• BookPal (quantity discounts)

Get It Signed!

You can easily turn your book into a signed copy.

1. Buy the book

2. Email your mailing address to me: jeff [at] toistersolutions [dot] com

3. I will send you an autographed bookplate

Why Some Employees Are Always Late

Many years ago, a coworker and I decided to walk across the street to the deli to grab a quick lunch. It was a hectic day and we both planned to eat at our desks.

”We'll be back in three minutes," she told her assistant.

"No, we won't." I replied. There was no way we were going to be back from the deli that quickly. My colleague insisted we were just walking across the street, ordering sandwiches, and coming right back.

"It will still take longer than that," I replied. She relented a bit and told her assistant we'd be back in five minutes rather than three. 

Being the kind of person who would time that sort of thing, I started my watch. From start to finish, the entire errand took us 15 minutes. This was three times longer than my coworker had promised.

Chances are, you routinely make similar promises or you know someone who does. 

Tardiness can be dangerous in a customer service setting. We might promise to get something done for a customer and then fall short of expectations when we're late. Or employees might be chronically late to work, which puts pressure on coworkers to pick up the slack until they finally arrive.

Here are some reasons why it happens.

We're Unrealistic About Time

There are numerous studies showing that people are generally bad at estimating how long a task will take. Here are just a few examples:

• People underestimated how long it takes to get gas by 51% (Konecni & Ebbesen,1976)

• Students underestimated how long it would take to complete their honors thesis by 39% (Buehler, Griffin, and Ross, 1994)

• People underestimated how long it would take to complete their Christmas shopping by 12% (Buehler and Griffin, 2003)

Put these results in everyday customer service contexts and you can see a recipe for disaster. Chronically late employees underestimate:

• How long it will take to get to work.

• How long it will take to finish a project for their boss.

• How long it will take to complete a task for a customer.

Type Bs Are Overly Optimistic

You may have heard of Type A and Type B personalities. Here are the definitions from the American Psychological Association:

Type A: a personality pattern characterized by chronic competitiveness, high levels of achievement motivation, impatience and a distorted sense of time urgency, polyphasic activity [i.e. multitasking], and aggressiveness and hostility.

Type B: a personality pattern characterized by low levels of competitiveness and frustration, an easygoing approach, and a lack of aggressiveness and hostility.

It's easy to imagine that many customer service employees fall closer to Type B on the personality spectrum. There's just one small problem—those people are much more likely to be late.

Studies conducted by psychologist Jeff Conte compared how Type A and B personality types perceived how long it took for one minute to elapse. Type As were pretty spot-on, guessing on average 58 seconds. Type Bs, on average, let 77 seconds go by before they felt one minute was up—33 percent more time than Type As.

This suggests it can take coaching, planning, and a great deal of patience to help some of your customer service employees develop a more realistic sense of time.

We Don’t Plan for the Unexpected

The way we structure our work day often becomes a recipe for tardiness.

Some people are unrealistic about their commute. They might leave their home 30 minutes before work starts because it takes 30 minutes to drive there. But that doesn't take into account a stop at the coffee shop, time spent looking for a parking space, and time walking into the building and to their workstation. 

Back-to-back meetings put pressure on our calendar, especially if the first meeting runs late or we must inevitably answer the call of nature. Most people don’t start dialing into a phone or web conference until the meeting start time, even though it can sometimes take a few minutes to get connected.

Many customer service employees have work schedules that don't allow enough time for essential tasks. For example, a contact center employee might need to document notes after speaking to a customer, but they'll struggle to keep up if they're expected to be immediately available to take another call.

Overcoming Tardiness

There are a few things you can do to overcome chronic tardiness.

Perhaps the biggest change is to decide that being on time is important. People who are chronically late often have a more laid-back approach to deadlines. So there's no incentive to change until they adopt a different attitude about being on time.

I’m a stickler for starting on time whenever I facilitate a meeting or a workshop. This quickly sends the signal that the start time is the start time, and I’ve noticed that people generally arrive on time after that expectation is set.

Another way to improve timeliness is to measure how long tasks actually take, and use that information to plan more realistically in the future. So if you think it takes just five minutes to walk across the street to get a sandwich, but each time you do it actually takes 15 minutes, you can adjust your planning.

You can also avoid disappointing customers by using the right language to set realistic expectations about how long something might take. For example, I like to pad my promised delivery date a bit just in case something unexpected comes up. This provides a bonus of frequently allowing me to get things done earlier than my customers expect.

Interview with Shep Hyken about The Convenience Revolution

NYT bestselling author and customer service expert Shep Hyken has a new book coming out October 2, just in time for Customer Service Week.

It's called The Convenience Revolution.

The book focuses on the next wave of service—making it easier for customers to do business with you. It's chock-full of case studies from top companies, both big and small. The best part is it contains practical ideas that can allow businesses of any size to out-service the competition.

Shep shares six convenience principles and invites readers to decide which principles work best for their business:

1. Reduce Friction

2. Self-Service

3. Technology

4. Subscription

5. Delivery

6. Access

I recently had a chance to interview Shep and discuss his new book.

Shep's always an entertaining interview, and he shared lots of great examples and ideas. You can order the book now.

• Buy on Amazon (hardcover, Kindle, or audio)

• Buy on 800-CEO-READ (discounts on multiple hardcover copies)

The Best Time to Provide Service Culture Training

Updated: March 24, 2023

Your service culture initiative will eventually involve training. The big question is, "When?"

Customer service leaders frequently ask me for advice on service culture training. My answer almost invariably surprises them:

“You aren't ready just yet. There are a few steps you should take first."

There is essential pre-work that should be done before any service culture training program. You'll know it's time to train when you've completed these three steps.

Step 1: Define Your Culture

Imagine you decided to invest in new accounting software for your company. There are a lot of different products on the market, so you decide to conduct a search for the best option.

Is that the time to train employees on the new accounting software?

Of course not! You must first decide which software you're going to acquire and then install the software so employees can actually use it before training them.

Service culture is the same way. 

There's no sense sending employees to training until you've defined your culture with a shared definition of outstanding service called a customer service vision. 

The vision should be the basis for your service culture training.

Without one, your training will be generic. “We’re sending everyone to generic training!” isn’t an exciting rallying cry.

You can create a customer service vision in one meeting. It takes just two hours if you follow this step-by-step guide.

Step 2: Create Learning Objectives

Let's go back to the accounting software analogy.

Imagine you've selected a software vendor and installed the new software so it's ready for employees to use. Now is surely the time to train employees, right?

Not so fast!

You must first know exactly what you want employees to do with the software. This might involve mapping out the various tasks employees will perform in the software and then designing a curriculum to teach employees those specific skills.

Service culture training is the same way.

You must start by identifying what you want your employees to know and do after completing the training.

I always advise clients to focus their service culture training program on helping employees answer three questions:

1. What is the customer service vision?

2. What does it mean?

3. How do I personally contribute?

Using these questions as a guide will make your training much more specific and focused.

Helpful tool —> Learning objective worksheet

Step 3: Plan for Sustainability

Okay, let's go back to the accounting software analogy one more time.

Imagine you implement the software and design a training program for your employees. Surely, now it's time to train, right?!

Not necessarily.

You want to time the training so employees learn to use the software right before they start using it. If you do the training too far in advance, employees will inevitably forget what they learned and they'll need to be trained again.

Service culture training works the same way.

Before you train employees, you want to be sure that their work environment will help sustain and reinforce the training.

This means aligning two things with the training program:

1. The employees' daily work.

2. Messaging from the employees' boss.

Examples of daily work include policies and procedures, resources, and tools.

Imagine the service culture training encourages employees to go "above and beyond" for customers. Are your employees allowed to go above and beyond? Do they have the resources and tools necessary to exceed expectations?

The training will fall flat if employees aren’t empowered.

Likewise, managers must be aligned with the training as well. A boss who constantly harps on employees to be efficient and control costs will probably override a service culture training program that encourages employees to find ways to "surprise and delight" the people they serve.

Guide —> 7 ways leaders can model great customer service

Take Action

The most customer-focused leaders I see have the patience to commit their organization to the process.

It may feel like slow-going at first, but you'll soon pick up steam and will suddenly be surprised at your momentum!

When you’re ready, The Service Culture Handbook can help guide your journey.

How to Get Customer Feedback Without a Survey

Updated: December 15, 2023

I frequently use subscriber feedback to improve my Customer Service Tip of the Week email newsletter. Yet I've never used a survey.

Customers are inundated with surveys, so think carefully before rolling out yet another one. You can get a lot of useful voice of customer feedback from several alternative sources.

Here are five ways to collect and use customer feedback without a survey.

Issue Alerts

Create a process to alert you to issues in real-time.

My weekly email will occasionally have a small issue such as a typo or a broken hyperlink. I try to proofread each email and test all the links, but problems occasionally do happen.

Typos are my kryptonite.

Thankfully, I can count on subscribers to let me know when there is an error. It's usually just a handful of people who email me about the problem, but that's all the feedback I need. Keep in mind most customers won't bother to tell you about small issues, but that doesn't mean they don't notice!

I have a process in place where I can flag a problem and fix it the next time I send out the same tip. In some cases, such as a broken hyperlink, I may re-send the email with the correction, although I try not to do this very often because I don't like swamping people's inboxes with extra emails.

Discussion question: What process do you have in place to allow your frontline agents to resolve or report problems?

Investigate Icebergs

A customer service iceberg is an issue that seems small and isolated on the surface, but is actually a sign of a much larger and more dangerous problem that's hidden from view.

Someone recently emailed me to let me know she had tried to sign-up for the Customer Service Tip of the Week email, but never received a confirmation. This was a classic iceberg because it was easy to dismiss the problem as a one-off where maybe she just missed the email or the confirmation wound up in a spam folder. 

I was tempted to just manually subscribe her to my list, but I decided to investigate. 

My research led me to a helpful exchange with a support agent at MailChimp, the company that powers my newsletter. With his help, I identified a technical setting in my account that would make my emails more recognizable to corporate email servers.

Here comes the kicker—my weekly subscription rate instantly doubled!

Some of those extra subscribers undoubtedly came from a marketing campaign I was running. But some of that huge increase was certainly due to this technical issue. I never would have found it if I hadn't investigated the iceberg that came from just one email.

Discussion question: What do frontline employees do when they encounter a strange or unusual problem? Are they trained to search for and identify icebergs?

Invite Conversation

There are a few books that have absolutely changed the game for me. One was Kevin Kruse's book, Unlimited Clients.

A key piece of advice in the book was to invite conversation with your customers. The first version of the book had Kevin's phone number and email address right on the cover, and I can tell you from experience he actually responded!

So I took Kevin's advice and added a special invitation to the welcome email I sent to new subscribers. 

Subscribers have always been able to reply to any email and send a message directly to my personal email address. However, this invitation substantially increased the number of people who actually emailed me.

It's not everyone. (Thankfully—I don't know if I could keep up!) But a couple times a day I get an email from a new subscriber who tells me a little about themselves.

It helps me learn more about them and I often try to share something helpful in response. I've also learned those subscribers are more likely to share their feedback as they begin to receive the weekly tips.

Discussion Question: How can you invite individual customers to engage in a one-on-one conversation?

Catalog Unstructured Data

Something really amazing happens when you take all those individual conversations you have with customers and categorize them.

I went through hundreds of emails from subscribers and categorized the customer service challenges they shared with me. When I decided to put my weekly tips in a book, I put the top ten challenges in a chart and identified tips that could help with each one.

Going through several hundred emails may seem like a lot of work, but it really doesn't take that much time. I probably spent an hour. 

It goes even faster if you catalog feedback from individual customers as it comes in. A lot of customer service software platforms have a tagging feature that allows agents to do this on the fly. If your technology won't do it, you can have agents use a spreadsheet or even a piece of paper.

Here are some resources for capturing unstructured data:

• Give your agents a “CX Magic Button”

• Try applying sentiment analysis

Discussion Question: How can you capture and analyze unstructured data?

Be a Customer

I learn a lot by subscribing to my own email.

This was a trick I learned from working in the catalog industry. Catalog companies would mail themselves a copy of each catalog so they could time how long it took to arrive and could verify each catalog arrived in good condition.

Subscribing to my own email allows me to do something similar.

For example, the Customer Service Tip of the Week goes out each Monday at 8:45 am Pacific time. One week, the email didn't arrive as expected. I double-checked the system and discovered I had set that particular email for 8:45 pm. 

Oops! Fortunately, I was able to quickly change the send time and the email went out only a few minutes later than normal.

Discussion Question: What can you learn from being your own customer?

Take Action

Here are all the discussion questions in one spot:

1. What process do you have in place to allow your frontline agents to resolve or report problems?

2. What do frontline employees do when they encounter a strange or unusual problem?

3. How can you invite individual customers to engage in a one-on-one conversation?

4. How can you capture and analyze unstructured data?

5. What can you learn from being your own customer?

All of these questions can yield terrific customer feedback without ever resorting to a survey! Best of all, the feedback you get from these sources can often be quickly used to make improvements.

You can get five more survey alternatives from this old post.

And, if you really want to use a survey, my course on LinkedIn Learning can guide you. Here's a short preview.

Welcome from Using Customer Surveys to Improve Service by Jeff Toister

The First Step to Fix Poor Customer Service

Note: This post originally appeared on LInkedIn.

I've talked to a lot of customer service leaders recently who want to improve customer service, but aren't sure where to start.

One of their biggest challenges is they struggle to articulate exactly what "improve" means. Here are some actual statements I've heard:

• "We want to deliver world class customer service."

• "We need to get back to the basics."

• "Things need to get better around here."

The challenge with all of those statements is they aren't clearly defined. You'll struggle to take action if you can't be specific about what you want to do.

It's helpful to imagine you wanted to go on a road trip. You'd need two data points to plug into your GPS:

1. Your destination

2. Your current location

This calculation is exactly the same for improving customer service. You need to know what success looks like (your destination) and you must understand where you are now (your current location).

Here's how to find both.

Define Success

This can be done in general terms through a customer service vision, which is a shared definition of outstanding service that points everyone in the same direction.

You'll need to get more specific if you want to improve. Start by thinking about what's concerning you most about your team's current customer service.

• Is customer satisfaction too low?

• Is service quality inconsistent?

• Are you getting too many complaints?

• Does it take too long to resolve issues?

• Do customers have to frequently contact your team multiple times?

Whatever the issue, try to focus on something specific and clearly define what success would look like. That includes putting a specific measurement to it.

For example, perhaps you'd like your team's average customer satisfaction rating to be 85 percent on your customer service survey by the end of March. That's a specific, non-ambiguous destination.

You can't skip this step. If you aren't measuring customer service right now, there's no way to improve it. Just like your GPS will be confused if you ask it for directions but don't provide a destination. 

Find something important to your organization and start measuring it to establish a baseline.

Identify Your Current Location

Now you need to measure where you are now.

Let's say you want to achieve an 85 percent average on your customer service survey. You can find your current location by simply looking at your current average survey score. 

This step should be relatively simple if you've clearly established your destination. Did you skip that step? Then go back and try again! You need a destination to plan your route.

Determine the Gap

The last step is to determine the gap between your destination and your current location.

Let's say your goal is to increase first contact resolution to 95 percent. Your current first contact resolution rate is 82 percent. That makes your gap 13 percentage points.

It may be helpful to express your gap in a SMART goal statement. A SMART goal fits five criteria:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Relevant (to your customer service vision)

• Time-Bound

Example: "Improve the average monthly first contact resolution rate from 82 percent to 95 percent by July 31, 2018."

You can use this SMART goal primer to help you. This short video can also provide more instructions on finding your customer service gap.

Identifying performance gaps from Quick Fixes for Poor Customer Service by Jeff Toister

Looking for the next step? 

Watch the full Quick Fixes for Poor Customer Service course on LinkedIn Learning or download this Quick Fixes worksheet to find solutions for closing the gap and reaching your destination.

Lessons From the Overlook: Know Your Neighbors

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've probably heard horror stories about bad neighbors. Perhaps you've even been unlucky enough to experience this issue yourself.

It's a particularly thorny issue for vacation rental owners. 

My hometown of San Diego is a popular tourist destination with quite a few vacation rental properties. Many residents have complained about loud parties, rude or even intoxicated guests, vehicles blocking driveways, and other nuisances from people renting a house next door.

The problem has gotten so bad that the San Diego city council recently created extreme regulations that will effectively put many vacation rental owners out of business.

Idyllwild isn't immune to complaints about renters, as you'll see in just a moment. 

While you may not be in the vacation rental business, your company almost certainly has neighbors if you have a physical location. Here's how we learned just how important a good relationship can be.

Guests have sometimes blocked our neighbors' driveways, even though there is room to park four vehicles on the gravel and asphalt areas at The Overlook.

Why Good Neighbors Are Good For Business

There are many ways a neighbor can help or harm your business.

A friendly neighbor can keep an eye out on your property and alert you to anything suspicious. This can be very comforting for Sally and me since The Overlook is a two-hour drive away from where we live. We know our property management company is very diligent about watching the property, but it's nice to have an extra set of eyes on things.

During the recent Cranston fire, we relied on updates from people in our neighborhood who stayed behind to keep tabs on the fire. Fortunately, The Overlook was unharmed, but we were very worried as the flames grew closer. The "on-the-ground" intel was extremely helpful.

A unhappy neighbor can also harm your business.

They'll be less likely to look out for your property or help you in an emergency. Complaints from neighbors can draw scrutiny from local authorities and even lead to fines if your business is not compliant with local regulations. 

How We Created Relationships

The Overlook has full-time residents living on both sides of us.

When Sally and I first bought the property, we visited both neighbors to introduce ourselves. The Overlook had been a vacation rental before we bought it, but we still wanted to create a good first impression. So we brought over some homemade fudge and a card with our contact information on it.

Our visit turned into a short history lesson when we learned one of our neighbors had helped build an addition to The Overlook many years ago when his sister owned the property! He and his wife's grandson runs a painting business in Idyllwild, and we've used his services for a couple of small projects. 

We told our neighbors we wanted them to feel comfortable calling us if they ever experienced an issue with a guest. It would be much better to hear about something quickly so we could handle it proactively, rather than letting an annoyance fester and create long-term damage to the relationship.

I hadn't heard any complaints at all, so I recently contacted our neighbors just to check in. It was a good thing I did.

Both of our neighbors told me they have had a few issues with guests blocking their driveways. There's plenty of room for four vehicles at The Overlook, so we worked with our property manager to provide clearer parking instructions and even a photo of the parking area.

One of our neighbors also told us about a loud group that clearly had more than the maximum of eight guests that we allow. They had left a lot of trash on both our property and hers (which she graciously cleaned up) and were really annoying.

This same group caused damage and stole some items last December. Had we heard about these issues sooner, we may have been able to proactively address the situation and possibly avoid annoyance for our neighbor and theft and damage for us.

The feedback made me realize that I needed to be more proactive about maintaining relationships with our neighbors. People can be naturally reluctant to complain or raise an issue if they don't feel comfortable. So I'll now be checking in with them more often so they won't hesitate to call us or our property manager when a guest is causing a problem.

Take Action

You can apply this lesson in your own business.

Start by identifying the value of having good relationships with your neighbors. Some businesses share a common area or a parking lot. One business I know of shares tools with other neighboring businesses and even allows one company to borrow its forklift!

Here are some action steps you can take once you identify the value of great neighborly relations:

1. Identify your neighbors.

2. Proactively make contact to start developing a relationship.

3. Discuss areas of mutual interest or concern.

And of course, don't forget to maintain the relationship. That valuable lesson could have saved us some theft and damage at The Overlook!

New Training Video: How to Get Great Customer Service

The lightbulb moment happened in a convenience store.

I had gone in to buy a Coke on a hot summer day. As I approached the counter, I noticed everything about the cashier's body language suggested he didn't want to be there. His shoulders were slumped forward, he looked disheveled, and had a bored expression on his face. 

The cashier was ignoring customers as he heated a burrito in the store's microwave.

You've probably experienced this same scene yourself. What the cashier was doing versus what he ought to have been doing was easy to see. But that won't change the basic fact that the cashier wasn't acting like Mr. Customer Service.

My lightbulb went off when I realized he probably felt exactly like I did—tired, hot, and a little unhappy to be there. 

We've all been in that position. Sometimes, a little jolt is all we need to get back on track. That's why I was buying that cold, refreshing Coke. I decided to give the cashier a jolt as well.

I put on a big smile and greeted the cashier in my friendliest voice, "How's it going?!"

Service Tips for Customers

The cashier's demeanor instantly changed.

He looked as if a weight had literally been lifted off his shoulders. He approached the cash register, broke into a smile, and greeted me in return. The rest of that very short transaction was pleasant.

The experience helped me realize that customer service works best when both the customer and the employee are on the same wavelength. Sure employees are supposed to be friendly and helpful, but they're also human. 

And humans sometimes have bad days.

It occurred to me that we could get better customer service if we used some of the same skills we want customer service professional to use. So I created a series of exercises to test this out.

• Make the first move (what I did in the convenience store)

• Introduce yourself to share your name with people who serve you

• Empathize with the people who serve you

I started to try out these techniques and they worked! Employees were friendlier, I started getting "extras" more often, and problems become easier to solve. These techniques don't work 100% of the time, but I noticed I received good service more often.

The New Training Video

Many years later, I now have the chance to share some of my favorite techniques in my new LinkedIn Learning training video. The course reveals essential skills you can use to get great customer service.

The content is broken down into three main categories:

• Build relationships

• Earn extraordinary service

• Solve problems

Best of all, you can build your own customer service skills while completing these exercises. Here's a short preview:

Get great customer service from How to Get Great Customer Service by Jeff Toister

Additional Resources

You'll need a LinkedIn Learning or Lynda.com account to access the full video. If you don't already have one, treat yourself to a complimentary 30-day LinkedIn Learning trial.

The new course marks the release of my 19th training video. You can access all of those courses on LinkedIn Learning or learn more about how you can leverage the power of training videos here.

How to Create Good Customer Service Goals

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

"I have six minutes to solve their problem, and it's not enough time."

The technical support agent was sharing her struggle with her contact center's talk time goal. She was expected to average six minutes per phone call, regardless of the call's complexity. 

It was especially difficult, she explained, when the customer was really upset and she had to choose between helping the customer feel better and just telling the customer what to do.

The six minute goal was intended to motivate employees like this agent to work more efficiently. The real impact was it caused her stress and negatively impacted the service she provided.

Customer service teams have a lot of goals. Here's how to write ones that will help drive the right performance.

Hallmarks of Bad Goal

Customer service leaders often struggle to set goals that drive the right behaviors.

One customer service team leader wanted employees to focus on outstanding customer service, so he set this goal:

Customer service representatives who earn a satisfied rating on 95 percent or more of their customer service surveys each month will receive a $100 bonus.

The result was exactly the opposite of great service. Employees engaged in survey begging to directly ask customers for a good rating. A few even learned to transfer upset customers to colleagues in another department so they wouldn't risk getting dinged with a poor survey score.

Look carefully at that goal and you can see it has three hallmarks that are common among bad goals:

1. It diverted attention away from customer service.

2. It rewarded individualism.

3. It relied on extrinsic motivation.

Employees on this team weren't trying to provide great service, they were trying to earn the bonus. So whenever there was a conflict between good service and earning the bonus, the employees would try to earn the bonus.

The goal also promoted individualism, which caused employees to undermine their colleagues by transferring angry customers to them.

Finally, the $100 bonus was a form of intrinsic motivation. The employees cared about the incentive, not about the customer in this scenario.

The Good Goal Criteria

I noticed an interesting trend while researching customer-focused companies for The Service Culture Handbook.

Most companies I profiled used goals, but they approached them very differently than most organizations. For example, one company I worked with had this customer service survey goal:

The team will earn a satisfied rating on 85 percent of customer service surveys by the end of this month.

This goal met the three criteria of good customer service goals:

1. It focused attention on customer service.

2. It rewarded teamwork.

3. It relied on intrinsic motivation.

Let's break this down a bit, starting with focus. The team's leader reviewed survey feedback with her team on a regular basis. The review sessions weren't focused on the score; rather they consistently looked for opportunities to improve as a team and were naturally motivated to improve service.

Some opportunities were out of the team's control, such as an issue with one of the company's products. In this case, the team leader took the feedback to the product development team so they had clear data to guide future improvements.

Other opportunities were within the team's control. Since the entire team shared the same goal, they were motivated to help each other.

For example, one common complaint were calls that had to be escalated from a tier one team that handled basic requests to a tier two team that handled more complicated issues. Customers didn't like being transferred and sometimes grew even more frustrated when they had to wait on hold.

So the tier one and tier two teams looked at the top reasons for transferring a call and identified several that could be prevented just by giving the tier one team a little extra information.

This behavior wouldn't have happened if the two teams were competing for individual rewards.

I've also noticed customer-focused leaders rarely use incentives. That's because realize customer service employees are generally motivated to provide great customer service. Incentives only get in the way.

Take Action

Try evaluating your team's customer service goals agains the good goal criteria:

1. Do they focus attention on customer service?

2. Do they reward teamwork?

3. Do they rely on intrinsic motivation?

For some advanced work:

• Explore the distinction between goals and KPIs.

• You can even use this worksheet to set SMART goals.

One Change That Will Help You Rock Customer Email

Responding to customer email is a vexing challenge.

Many companies I know struggle to keep up with the volume. It can be difficult to balance customer demands for fast responses while handling other channels at the same time. Emails often require additional research before responding, which also takes extra time.

I recently partnered with customer service writing expert Leslie O'Flahavan to facilitate a webinar on meeting customer demands for speed while still sounding like a human. We kicked off the webinar with an audience poll that revealed a simple solution for many companies to respond both faster and better.

You can watch the webinar replay here or keep reading below to see the solution.

The Revealing Data

We asked webinar participants how they currently manage customer email. Notice that 61 percent have agents respond to email in between other tasks.

This typically happens in between phone calls. There are frequently lulls in between calls during an agent's shift. That's because phone calls tend to come in waves with peaks and valleys rather than a nice, steady stream. So all agents may be busy one moment and then things quiet down a few moments later.

That downtime in between calls can feel like waste if the agent isn't doing anything, so contact centers often give agents tasks to do while they're waiting for the next call.

Email seems like a natural fit for this sort of work. It fulfills a real need, but isn't time-sensitive like an incoming phone call. So the theory is an agent can work on email until the next call comes in and then put the email aside while they take the call.

This is actually a hidden problem.

The Hidden Problem

It may be easiest to highlight the problem with a little brain teaser designed by Shane Frederick. Read the problem below try to quickly think about your intuitive answer. 

A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

The answer is below, but think about your response for a moment. Most people instinctively get this problem wrong because we aren't always good at perceiving the answers to mildly tricky challenges at first glance. 

If you guessed the answer is $.10, you'd be like most people, though that's not the correct answer.

The answer is $.05. If the bat and ball cost $1.10 total and the bat costs $1.00 more than the ball, then $.05 (ball) plus $1.05 (bat) = $1.10.

Now, think of this same challenge in a customer service context. 

Customers are notoriously poor at telling their story. So when an agent is reading emails in between calls, they are trying to quickly and intuitively grasp the meaning of a poorly written story before the next call comes in.

Here's an example that Leslie shared in the webinar. Try reading it quickly and intuitively think about what the customer wants.

The answer is much easier to find when you take your time. In this case, the customer wants to be sure his online order gets completed.

Now imagine a customer service agent reading this in a hurry. They may be tempted to zero in on the error messages the customer described. Or they may just find the whole thing confusing and have to re-read the email several times.

What we're really doing when we ask agents to respond to emails in between phone calls is asking agents to split their attention between two important tasks. Time and time again, I've seen this result in more errors and less productivity.

The Simple Solution

You can quickly solve this problem by giving your agents time to focus exclusively on emails.

The way many contact centers do this is by assigning agents to either a phone or email queue. Agents are then moved from one queue to the other as volume demands it. 

For example, if phone volume suddenly spikes, agents can be moved from the email queue to the phone queue to help with the additional volume. Then, as volume subsides, some agents can be moved back to the email queue.

When one client experimented with this they noticed quality and productivity gains in both email and phone!

That's because agents assigned to the email queue could really focus. They grasped the customers' needs much faster and were able to get into the rhythm of writing fast and helpful responses. This also ensured agents were able to solve customers' issue on the first email far more often.

The phone agents were also kept busier because there were fewer people sitting around waiting for the next call. And when calls did come in, they found themselves focused and ready rather than needing a second to mentally transition from an email they were writing.

Of course, you don't need to take my word for it! Conduct an experiment and try it out for yourself over a two week period. Note any changes to agent productivity, contact quality, and even agent morale.