Why You Need to Analyze Survey Comments

I'm putting the finishing touches on the second edition of my book, Getting Service Right. The book was originally called Service Failure, and I've now updated both the title and some of the research.

The cover is one of the most important sales tools for a book, so I worked with Anne Likes Red to come up with a few designs. I then launched a survey to ask readers for their feedback on three cover options. The survey was up for just a few days and a 135 people responded.

Here were the results:

Option A (28%)

Option B (52%)

Option C (20%)

Picking cover option B should be a no-brainer, right? After all, more than half of all survey respondents picked that option.

Without qualitative information, I might have made that mistake. Fortunately, I also included a comment field in the survey. When you analyze the comments to learn why someone chose a particular option, a new pattern emerges.

Searching for Themes

I recently hosted a webinar with Alyona Medelyan, CEO of the customer insight firm Thematic. Medelyan brought actual client data to reveal some interesting insights that a survey score alone wouldn’t show:

• A cable company found customers with modem issues were impacting overall NPS by -2 points.

• Another company discovered one variable that caused customers to spend $140 more per year.

• An airline learned passengers were 4x angrier about missed connections than delayed flights.

The point Medelyan made is we usually get deeper, more actionable insights when we analyze the comments and not just the scores. So I applied this concept to my book cover survey and found two significant themes contained in the comments.

The first was quite a few people chose B because they liked the subtitle below the title better than the way it was shown in option A and C. So it wasn't just the color that's drove people to option B.

The second theme was quite a few people who selected option B mentioned they liked the title arrangement of option B, but preferred the color of option A. There were even a handful who picked B but mentioned they liked the color on option C best.

Suddenly option B isn't such a clear and convincing winner. Here's what happened when I revised the survey results to account for color choice alone:

Option A (40%)

Option B (39%)

Option C (21%)

Now I have two insights:

• People prefer the blue cover shown option A

• People like the title arrangement in option B

Keep in mind I only made adjustments where respondents were explicit in their survey comments. If someone didn't explain why they chose B, they may have done it for the title arrangement, the color, or pure whimsy.

Making a Final Decision

I did a similar survey with my last two book covers, and both times I ended up choosing elements from different options. I did the same thing this time.

Going with option B's title arrangement was a pretty easy decision. There were numerous comments describing option B as the preference without any support for the layout of options A and C.

I ultimately chose the blue color from option A. 

Several survey comments mentioned color theory, and my friend Jim even shared this helpful resource from Quick Sprout. According to the guide, the color blue symbolizes tranquilty and peace and has more positive associations across various cultures than purple and green.

The kicker is the blue is my personal preference. I really like it, and it's important for an author to really like the cover of their book! Here's the final cover:

Cover design by Anne Likes Red, Inc.

It was also important to consider how the cover will look when shown together with my other books on Amazon, in a bookstore, or at a trade show. Here's how it will look displayed next to my other books:

Take Action

You can gain so much more from a survey if you combine the fixed choices (ex: option A, B, or C) with comments. Try analyzing one of your own surveys to see what hidden insight is revealed.

You’ll find a lot of simple analysis techniques in the webinar with Alyona Medelyan from Thematic.

You can also get more help with your survey on this survey resource page.

The Police Interrogation Technique That Calms Angry Customers

You've probably seen the good cop, bad cop technique in the movies.

A suspect is interrogated by two cops. The first one, the bad cop, does their best to intimidate the suspect. They yell, threaten, and generally act like a jerk. Then the good cop intervenes and appears to defend the suspect. The good cop acts like they're on the suspect's side, and suddenly the suspect spills the beans. 

It's a neat trick that can actually work. And there's research that shows us how to use this technique when serving an angry customer.

With a little modification, of course.

Startled Into Compliance

Imagine you were approached by a student in a crowded market who asked you to spend five minutes to fill out a questionnaire for a school project. Would you help them?

I did this multiple times myself for projects in college, and it can be tough work. Researchers in Poland conducted an experiment where just 30 percent of people agreed to assist the student. 

But they increased that number to 56 percent with a second group of participants by adding a new element.

Immediately before encountering the student, participants in the second group were grabbed by the shoulder as they walked through the doorway. The startled people would turn around and see someone wearing dark glasses and carrying a white cane, giving the impression the person who grabbed them was blind. The blind person simply said, "Excuse me." Once the subject realized being grabbed was a mistake, they would turn around and keep walking, where the student would then approach them a few steps later.

Why did this nearly double the amount of people who complied with the student's request?

Psychologists have found that a rapid seesawing of emotions from an extreme negative  to sudden relief makes people more compliant. In the crowded market experiment, the fear of being grabbed by an unseen person quickly turns into relief when the subject sees someone they think is a blind person.

In police interrogations, the good cop, bad cop technique relies on the same mechanism. The bad cop incites extreme negative emotions and then the good cop brings sudden relief by intervening and seemingly getting the bad cop to back off.

Using the Technique in Customer Service

There's an obvious modification here. I'm in no way suggesting that you partner with a colleague and one of you berates the angry customer before the other steps in to smooth things over.

The modification is using this technique when a customer is already riled up at you. Whether or not you like it, you're the "bad cop" in the eyes of a customer who is really angry and perceives that you're part of the problem.

So all you need to do now is introduce someone else to take over and bring relief.

It could be a supervisor, but you could also turn to a colleague. What matters is the new person should appear empathetic to the customer and try to make the customer feel they're on their side. 

In my experience, this often brings a sense of relief that immediately helps the customer calm down.

Make no mistake, this is an advanced technique. For many of us, the natural instinct is to avoid transferring an angry customer to a colleague or supervisor. There are a number of reasons for this:

• It's a matter of pride, and can feel like failure.

• A supervisor or colleague may get agitated with us for transferring the customer.

• A supervisor may not be available and a colleague may not seem sufficient.

The key here is being able to swallow your pride and politely offer to connect the customer with someone who is "better able to assist them." Only you and your coworker will know what you're really doing.

Take Action

I've seen this technique work many times as a frontline employee, as a supervisor, and as a customer waiting in line observing another interaction. More often than not, the customer mysteriously calms down as soon as a new person takes up the interaction.

My advice to you is to try your own experiment. The next time you realize a customer has designated you as the "bad cop," try bringing in a colleague or supervisor to take over the interaction and bring some relief.

Check out my new book, Getting Service Right, for even more solutions to counterintuitive and unusual customer service challenges.

Why Two Stars is the Worst Rating

It's never fun to receive a one-star review.

No business leader likes to see an angry customer posting in public. That one-star review can harm your company's reputation and might discourage new customers. But the reviews you should be really concerned about are the two-stars.

In this short post, I'll attempt to explain why.

Let's start with something a bit counterintuitive: a few negative reviews can help your business. 

Research conducted in 2015 by PowerReviews and Northwestern University found that consumers are most likely to buy from a business with a 4.2-4.5 average star rating. That's because a business with a few negative reviews seems more authentic, and over 80 percent of customers specifically seek out negative reviews. 

(More: How to Respond to Negative Yelp Reviews)

So what's the difference between a one and a two-star review? Let's look at recent reviews from a popular restaurant in San Diego. As of this writing, it has 2,503 reviews and a four-star overall rating.

Here's a one-star review of this restaurant from Travis M:

People often write one-star reviews like this as a way to express anger at a service experience, rather than a true review of the business. When you break it down a bit, you'll notice a few things that detract from the review's credibility.

• The customer didn't actually dine at the restaurant.

• This is the only Yelp review written by this user.

• The nearest Jack In The Box is over a mile away, and is not a comparable alternative.

The reviewer also wrote that getting seated immediately is rare, which indicates some repeat business. If this restaurant was legitimately a one-star experience, why would you keep coming back? Chances are, this customer was really upset about their experience and wanted to punish the business. 

Now let's look at a two-star review from Kat C written just four days earlier:

This review is much more credible than the previous review, for a few reasons:

• Specific details are given, giving a sense the review is accurate.

• Some positives are mentioned, such as the taste of the Kobe burger.

• The reviewer has 91 Yelp reviews.

Unlike the one-star review, this one is a bit more measured. The gist is the service is very slow and the food is hit or miss. And the two-stars make the review feel like the customer was trying to be fair.

Side note: The damning part is the three-star review immediately before this one and the five-star review immediately after it both mention slow service. And despite a four-star average, when you filter for just recent reviews the restaurant's rating dips to about 3.8.

You don't have to take my word for it. Try reading one and two-star reviews of businesses in your area. See which ones tend to be more credible and let me know what you come up with.

Bonus Resource

You can learn more about serving customers via social media from my LinkedIn Learning training video:

Welcome from Serving Customers Using Social Media by Jeff Toister

The Most Important Review Site for Small Businesses

Love them or hate them, online review sites are an important part of small business.

Customers use sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and others to search for businesses like yours, read customer reviews, and even leave feedback. In fact, a 2018 study from BrightLocal found that 86 percent of US consumers use online reviews to help find local businesses.

The challenge is there are so many review sites that it's hard to know where to start. And you have a small business to run, which means you don't have a lot of time to mess around.

Fortunately, I've done the research and found which one site customers rely on the most. Here are the results along with how you can easily take advantage of these insights.

The Most Popular Review Site

I surveyed 1,004 adults in the United States in January 2019 to ask which online review site they rely upon the most. Google is by far the most popular.

There are two caveats to be aware of.

The first caveat suggests Google’s percentage may be overinflated. I used Google Surveys to do this study. It gives you a fairly random demographic sample, but in this case it also increases the likelihood that respondents would prefer Google, since they found my survey on Google. That's a huge grain of sand to keep in mind as you look at the data.

Just to check the results, I conducted an informal survey within my own network. And guess what? Google was still tops, followed by Yelp and then Facebook.

The second caveat suggests Google’s percentage may be underinflated. Think about how you naturally search for a business. I recently went to a used furniture store to look for a new table for The Overlook. When I got there, the store was unexpectedly closed so I needed to find somewhere else to go.

Instinctively, I opened the web browser on my smartphone and Googled "used furniture store." Google instantly gave me a list of stores near my location along with their ratings.

According to HubSpot, Google owns 70 percent of search engine traffic. That number jumps to 85 percent for searches on mobile devices. In other words, Google is how customers search for reviews when they don’t realize they’re searching for reviews. 

What Can You Do About It?

The first thing you should do is claim your free business listing on all the major platforms your customers use to look for you. While Google is the most popular, the other sites get their fair share of traffic, too. Womply has published some helpful guides.

Make sure you respond to every review a customer leaves you. Keep in mind your response isn’t just to the reviewer; it’s a signal to other potential customers that you care about service. BrightLocal's data reveals that 89 percent of customers read business's responses to reviews. 

Now here's where focusing on Google can pay off. Remember how I quickly found a highly-rated used furniture store by searching on my smartphone? 

Google uses reviews to help prioritize which businesses it shows when potential customers search for businesses like yours. So you can improve your search rankings without hiring an internet wizard. All you have to do is work on getting a lot of good reviews for your business. And here's the kicker—unlike Yelp, Google is perfectly okay with you encouraging customers to write reviews!

The company even provides this helpful guide.

More Resources

Here are a few additional resources to help you drive more customers to your business with online reviews.

• How to Attract More Customers with Google My Business

• How to Find Trends In Your Survey Comments

• Using Yelp Reviews to Improve Your Business

You may also benefit from my LinkedIn Learning course, Serving Customers Using Social Media.

Welcome from Serving Customers Using Social Media by Jeff Toister

Things We Could Use More of in 2019

The original title of this post was, "Things I Can Do Without in 2019." 

It was intended to be a mini-revolt against all the customer service predictions we're inevitably seeing right now. Number one on my list was going to be "predictions." 

The list immediately struck a negative, "get off my lawn!" tone. Number three on my list of things I don't want was "negativity," and I quickly realized the irony. So I scrapped the list in favor of something more positive.

It's easy to point out what I don't want, don't like, and generally could do without. 

What about what I want? Surely, there are some things in the world of customer service that we could use more of. Here are three things that come to mind.

Humanity

A lot of people worry about the customer service apocalypse, where we're all replaced by robots and AI. Automation has its place, but human-powered service is still vitally important.

My local bank branch just remodeled its lobby to add in more ATM machines and reduce the number of tellers. A friendly ambassador now greets you as you walk in and encourages you to try the machine. 

Yet when I experienced a problem with the ATM machine immediately outside the bank, the ambassador was unable to assist me. She insisted I had to call customer service (isn't that who she was?) because the branch didn't service the ATM outside, only the ones in the lobby.

In a world of automation, there will always be a role for humans who add human value to the service experience.

That's why I like going to my local True Value hardware store over the big box retailer down the street. The store is overstaffed by conventional retail standards where you usually have to wander the aisles looking for help. At True Value, there's always someone there to quickly help me find the right items for my project. The associate will walk me all over the store until I find everything I need, and give me helpful advice if I have any questions.

What can you do to add humanity to your service in 2019?

Curiosity

For years, I relied on an oft-quoted stat:

• 55 percent of communication comes from body language

• 38 percent of communication comes from tone

• 7 percent of communication comes from words

A mentor shared it with me so I believed it was true. I shared this statistic in my training classes and even came up with exercises to demonstrate the importance of using the right body language and tone.

One day, while doing research for a book, I decided to investigate the source of this data. It turns out this claim was completely untrue! To borrow from the late Paul Harvey, the rest of the story was even more interesting.

Let's infuse our day with a bit more curiosity. What we might learn about service could be amazing!

Commitment

I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "We're going to work on our service culture this year."

The executives making this statement may have the best intentions, but adding "this year" to the end already signals the temporary nature of the initiative. Service culture, should not be a flavor-of-the-month exercise.

Inevitably, the initial enthusiasm of these initiatives devolves into a check-the-box program where someone hangs up a banner, holds a meeting, declares victory, and then moves on without anything really changing. Without commitment, enthusiasm is worthless.

There's a chance you've set some pretty big customer service goals for 2019. 

One way to keep your commitment is to make those goals a part of doing business rather than a separate project. For example, if you have a customer satisfaction goal, can you identify how that goal will impact other business drivers such as revenue, cost reduction, and customer retention?

I set a goal to publish a revised second edition of my first book by April 2. 

Publishing that book is not the finish line. I make a living writing and speaking about customer service. So I've set a revenue target for the book. And I'm already using the book to land more speaking engagements. This pushes the book beyond a fun side project and makes it an essential part of my success.

How can you turn your enthusiasm for the new year into a true commitment?

Take Action

I try to do something with everything I read. I hope you do as well. Here are a few ideas:

• Find a way to demonstrate unexpected human kindness today.

• Use curiosity to guide you to learn something new and useful.

• Take one step towards your goals.

Incidentally, my book is called Getting Service Right. It explores hidden and counterintuitive obstacles to outstanding customer service. You can download a free chapter from the book's website.

The Surprising Reasons Why Video is Better Than Hiring a Trainer

I typically have a lot of conversations with customer service leaders this time of year who want to hire me to conduct training for their team. I almost always try to talk them out of it.

Yes, I realize I'm talking myself out of paying clients. But my goal in these conversations is to be helpful. The surprising truth is video is usually much more effective than hiring an external consultant for frontline customer service training. 

This blog posts lays out the reasons why video can be better.

Why should you believe me?

• I've spent more than 25 years as a customer service trainer.

• I'm a Certified Professional in Learning & Performance (CPLP).

• I'm a past president of the Association for Talent Development’s San Diego chapter.

Two important caveats here:

One: In the interest of full disclosure, I have 18 training videos in the LinkedIn Learning library. I started working with LinkedIn Learning in 2013 when I realized the power of video.

Two: The focus here is on customer service training. I'm in no way suggesting that video is the best way to learn any skill.

Video Costs Less

Let's start with the easy one. Using training videos can run as little as 10 percent of the total cost of hiring an external trainer.

Keep in mind the trainer's fee is just one of the expenses you'll pay:

• Trainer's fee

• Licensing and printing fees for materials

• Labor cost of employees attending training

• Labor cost of employees who provide coverage during training

• Facilities cost

• Catering cost

Here's a simplified cost comparison I worked up for this blog post.

Notice employees are spending far less time in training with the video example. My training videos typically take 50-75 percent less time to complete than a live class.

This is a key part of the cost/benefit equation, and it also leads us to the second area where video is superior.

Video is More Flexible

Hiring an external trainer can be a logistical challenge.

First, there's getting a date on the calendar. My next available date is three months from now. Internally, you likely have busy and slow periods to contend with along with employee vacations and other initiatives competing for time.

The day of training is also complicated. Most businesses don't have the luxury of shutting down their operation to send everyone to training. A typical solution is to divide the team into two or more classes, and then run extra shifts and even overtime to maintain coverage while some people attend the workshop.

But your troubles don't end there. What do you do if someone calls in sick that day? Or what happens when you hire two new employees next month? Those people missed the class entirely.

My training videos are on demand, which means each individual can watch them when convenient. You could assign a few videos to everyone on the team, give them a week to watch them, and have each person watch just a few minutes at a time.

This minimizes the disruption to your operation. And it allows new hires to attend the same training as the rest of the team. Watching the video on demand also has an incredibly important learning benefit. which we’ll get to next.

Video is More Effective

By now, most leaders tell me, "Ok, I understand that video costs less and is more convenient, but I'm willing to spend the money to get the best results."

The surprising response to that is video is still the way to go! Here's a simple exercise to help you understand the problem with a full or half-day live training class.

1. Think about the last customer service seminar or conference you attended.

2. Try to recall about how much material was covered during that time. 

3. Now identify how much material you actually implemented. 

The answer for most people is depressingly low. 

That's because we're typically bombarded with too much information during a live workshop. We learn best when we receive new information in small chunks and have a chance to implement that information repeatedly over time.

This is where video really shines!

All of my video courses are split into short segments that are 3-5 minutes long. The intent is to watch just one or two segments, identify the specific skills they cover, and then go back to work and implement those skills.

For example, in this training plan for learning to serve upset customers, participants start by watching just two videos that total less than 10 minutes. The videos focus on understanding why customers get upset, and how a customer's anger can influence our instinctive fight or flight response.

Participants are then asked to go back to work and spend time implementing what they learned from these short videos. After a few days of practice, people will greatly improve their skills, and they can go back and watch the next video.

This leads to another benefit. Video gives you an opportunity to review content as needed. So if you had a particularly challenging customer, but can't remember that de-escalation technique you learned a few months ago, you can go back and re-watch the video to refresh your skills.

Conclusion

You don't have to believe me. I encourage you to run your own experiment and see how video can improve customer service training. 

Here are some resources that will allow you to try this at little to no cost:

First, you'll need access to either LinkedIn Learning or Lynda.com. You can get a free 30-day trial account if you don't already have a subscription. 

Next, pick a topic from the enormous library. I've already laid out a training plan for using the Working with Upset Customers course, but there are many courses to choose from.

Finally, send your team through the training and see what type of results you get. You can use this primer to learn how to use the videos effectively. 

As always, you can contact me for assistance. I’m happy to have a conversation and walk you through it.

Lessons From The Overlook: Customer Service vs Customer Experience

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.

We recently had some upset guests at The Overlook. This story helps differentiate between customer service and customer experience, and highlights why you need to understand both.

Our guests had originally booked a different cabin with our property management company. That cabin suddenly became unavailable, so our property manager re-accommodated the guests with us.

They were clearly unhappy with the move. When people get upset, research shows they can become more judgmental and less open to ideas. In this case, the guests sent our property manager a slew of nit-picky complaints about The Overlook: there wasn't enough counter space in the bathrooms, there's only one television, etc. 

One complaint really caught our attention. The guests claimed our cabin had just three bedrooms, not four.

We disagree with their count, but serving customers is a perception game. Here's how customer service and customer experience both played a role in this situation.

The “controversial” fourth bedroom. Photo credit: Idyllwild Vacation Cabins

Definitions

Let's start with defining the terms customer service and customer experience. 

The two get mixed up a lot. There's a trend where customer service teams are renaming themselves the Customer Experience Team, but they're doing the same thing they were before. But customer experience is really much broader.

So what's the difference? Here's a simple, concise definition of customer service from the Oxford English Dictionary:

The assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services.

Customer experience is much broader. Here's a definition I really like from Annette Franz:

The sum of all the interactions that a customer has with an organization over the life of the “relationship” with that company… and, especially, the feelings, emotions, and perceptions the customer has about those interactions.

Customer experience encompasses customer service. It also includes product design, product quality, advertising, and many other factors not traditionally considered to be part of customer service.

Service or Experience?

Our guests' complaint about the cabin really having just three bedrooms helps differentiate between customer service and customer experience.

Advertising is part of the customer experience, since it helps set expectations for what a customer will get from your product or service. The Overlook is advertised as a four bedroom cabin:

• There are two bedrooms with queen beds on the main floor.

• There's an en suite master bedroom with a king bed downstairs.

• The fourth bedroom is upstairs from the main floor.

The fourth bedroom has a king-sized bed, a closet, two windows, and its own bathroom. Our guests complained that it wasn't really a bedroom because it doesn't have a door. 

The customer service aspect was our property manager listening to the complaint with an empathetic ear and trying to rectify the situation in some way. Adding a door wasn't a feasible solution during the guests' stay, so they were ultimately offered a discount as compensation for their numerous complaints.

Now let's look at the customer experience aspects that go beyond customer service.

• The bedroom's lack of a door

• The bedroom’s lack of a television

• The way the guests used the bedroom

Our guests' party included young children, and their perception was the kids sleeping in the upstairs room were too loud for the adults because the room didn't have a door. They also complained that the bedroom lacked a television, so what our guests were really looking for was a place for the kids to entertain themselves while not disturbing the rest of the house.

Improving the Guest Experience

It's easy to write-off these complaints. The same guests complained the cabin was dirty because the kids’ white socks had dirt on them after the kids were running around outside in their socks.

Yet there's often a kernel of truth in nearly every complaint.

Their biggest issue was they weren't staying in the cabin they originally wanted. The Overlook was clearly not a great fit for these guests who probably would have been happier in a cabin with a separate TV room where they could stash the kids. Our property manager might steer a similar family to a different cabin the next time guests need to be re-accommodated.

The upstairs bedroom is private and you can't see into it from the main floor, but some guests might still expect anything labeled a bedroom to have a door. So we've updated our advertising to explain that one of the bedrooms is a loft with its own bathroom.

There's a word of caution here, too. 

You could spend a lot of money if you tried to give every guest exactly what they wanted. For example, we could put televisions in every room and add a door to the upstairs bedroom based on the feedback from just one unhappy group of guests. But that would be costly and it wouldn't dramatically improve the experience for our ideal guests who are coming up to the mountains to enjoy the outdoors and the peaceful serenity.

We look at feedback in the context of our customer service vision: Welcome to your mountain retreat. So when some guests shared that they wished there were extra towels since they went hiking during the day and then used the hot tub at night, we saw this as an opportunity to enhance the experience in alignment with our vision. In this case, the cost of the extra towels was a worthwhile investment.

Take Action

Our property manager handled the situation well. The guests were placated in the end, though they probably won't be returning to The Overlook since it’s not a great match with their needs.

We met with our property manager afterwards to discuss the guest experience improvements outlined above. One of the many reasons we like working with Idyllwild Vacation Cabins is the owner, Martha, always looks for a way to improve her guests’ experience.

You can take action in your own business by understanding the difference between customer service and customer experience. Service is important, but you need other elements such as a good product, fair policies, and helpful advertising to create the best experience.

Personality Traits That Inspire the Most Teamwork

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.

A customer service leader recently confided in me that she was having a difficult time hiring new employees.

Sure the job market is really tight right now, but there was an additional challenge with her company's hiring process. The HR department used a pre-hire personality assessment to screen all applicants. Each applicants' results were compared to an "ideal" profile for the job that was supplied by the assessment company.

As an experiment, the leader had her existing employees take the assessment. She was surprised to find that very few of her current employees fit within the assessment company's ideal profile. This meant some of her best employees never would have been hired if HR had been using the assessment then.

A few months ago, I wrote about the danger of using personality assessments to screen job candidates. The bottom line is they are often a poor predictor of success.

So how do you build a cohesive team?

I've uncovered some research that identifies what traits make a team successful. You might be surprised to learn that individual intelligence and talent did not make the list. 

Here's what did.

Social Sensitivity

A study from Anita Williams Woolley, Christopher F. Chabris, Alex Pentland, Nada Hashmi, and Thomas W. Malone found that individual intelligence did not correlate well with team performance. What did matter in their experiments was social sensitivity.

Here's a helpful definition of social sensitivity from AlleyDog.com, which is a website for psychology students.

Social sensitivity describes the proficiency at which an individual can identify, perceive, and understand cues and contexts in social interactions along with being socially respectful to others. 

I recently wrote about the exceptional service culture at the USS Midway Museum in San Diego. In retrospect, part of the museum’s hiring process is screening for social sensitivity.

• Prospective applicants check in with an employee named Gary at the visitor center. How people treat Gary and interact with him is an important part of the interview process.

• Lianne Morton, the museum's HR director, likes to walk people out after the interview. People tend to let down their guard during that brief conversation, giving Morton a glimpse of their true personality.

Other customer service leaders invite applicants to sit down with a few of their potential coworkers for an informal conversation about the work environment. It's a mini-test of how the candidate will contribute to the team dynamics.

Managers can also promote greater social sensitivity among their existing employees.

• Use huddles to get the team together

• Avoid pitting people against each other with internal competitions

• Leverage simple technology to make virtual employees feel included

Dependability

There's something reassuring about working with someone whose word is bond. If they say they'll get something done, they do it, and do it well. You can trust someone who is dependable.

A study from Google found five dynamics that were shared among its highest performing teams. The top dynamic was psychological safety, where team members can do their best work and even take risks without fear. One of the best ways to create this type of environment is to stack the team with socially sensitive members (see above).

Dependability was the number two dynamic shared among Google’s highest performing teams.

I recently wrote about the reasons why some employees are always late. When I talk to customer service leaders, chronic absenteeism and tardiness is frequently a top challenge. 

There are a number of ways to screen job applicants for dependability.

One company I worked with had an office that was difficult to find. Whenever a manager called an applicant to schedule an in-person interview, the manager deliberately avoided mentioning directions to the office. Successful applicants either asked for directions (which were readily provided upon request), or they were resourceful enough to find their way to the office in time for their interview.

People who arrived late because they got stuck in traffic, couldn't find parking, couldn't find the office, or generally didn't anticipate the difficulty of getting there were not considered for the job.

You can also screen applicants for dependability by checking references. Ask former bosses and coworkers to describe the employees' work habits or scan their LinkedIn recommendations. You'll often see indicators of a person's dependability.

Another company gives applicants a small assignment and a short deadline. Applicants who turn in quality work by the deadline demonstrate their dependability, while applicants who can't make it in time or don't produce a quality project are not considered.

Finally, managers need to be a bit tough about dependability. 

Employees who are allowed to be chronically late to work, or are frequently given extensions on work deadlines can develop bad habits quickly. Starting meetings late to accommodate people who don't show up on time tells people that showing up on time doesn't matter.

Like so many traits, you need to demonstrate dependability as a leader if you want your employees to do the same thing.

Purpose

Here are all five dynamics of successful teams from Google's study:

1. Psychological Safety

2. Dependability

3. Structure & Clarity

4. Meaning of Work

5. Impact of Work

We've already covered numbers one and two. The remaining three all boil down to having a clear purpose at work. You can instill a sense of purpose among your team members through a clear and compelling customer service vision.

A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that gets everyone on the same page. 

• It provides clarity about what everyone is working towards, 

• instills a sense of meaning in the work we do each day, 

• and helps us understand the impact we are having on our customers.

I detail a process for creating a customer service vision, getting your employees engaged, and aligning work around your purpose in The Service Culture Handbook.

Here's an overview of the main steps:

1. How to write a customer service vision statement

2. Three questions that get to the heart of employee engagement

3. Customer service alignment assessment

Not coincidentally, creating a customer service vision statement makes an outstanding team building exercise!

Conclusion

Customer service leaders often focus too much on the individual.

They place job ads looking for "rockstar" employees. Incentives are created for individual performance. Employees are given individual scorecards and top achievers are recognized. 

Yet customer service is often a team effort. So if you want better teamwork, it's important to carefully consider how you build your team.

My Most Popular Blog Posts of 2018

As 2018 winds to a close, it's time to take a look back at the past year. 

One thing I like to do is review my blog to see which posts resonated the most with readers. There were a couple of surprises here, including my most popular one.

#1: A Hidden Reason to Be Polite to Rude Customers

Serving angry, obnoxious, or rude customers is one of the most difficult aspects of customer service. This post explored an unexpected reason to keep your cool. It turns out that if you handle the situation correctly, the next customer is more likely to enjoy your service and even empathize with your situation. The key is doing one thing.

#2 How Fast Should a Business Respond to Email?

This research comes from a survey of over 1,200 consumers in the United States. Spoiler alert: businesses should be aiming for a response time of one hour or less. What surprised me was who wanted the fastest response.

#3 What Exactly is a Service Culture?

There are a lot of business concepts we all think we agree upon, but it often turns out we're talking about different things. For example, you'd probably agree that leadership is important. Okay, so what exactly is leadership? Ask a room full of people and you'll get different answers. That's why I thought it was important to define what I mean by service culture.

#4 Nine Ways Your Employees Waste Time at Work

This post started when I found a survey from Salary.com where 57 percent of employees admitted to wasting at least one hour per day at work. I'll add my own commentary and say if that's what people admit to, the real number is probably much higher. That's because our workplace is filled with hidden productivity killers that we're not always fully aware of.

#5 Who First Said "The Customer is Always Right?"

I can't think of a single phrase that makes customer service professionals bristle more than this one. Customers are often wrong. And issues can get worse when a customer is wrong, but digs their heels in and hides behind the "customer is always right" mantra. So I decided to find out who first said this statement. The conclusion was a bit surprising.

How I Create Scenes for My LinkedIn Learning Courses

Note: This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.

One of the great things about training videos is the scenes where actors play out a customer service scenario.

It helps provide viewers with a more concrete example of concepts being shared. 

A common complaint for many training videos is the scenes are unrealistic and cheesy. I've seen plenty of those myself, so this is always in the back of my mind as I work with film producers at LinkedIn Learning to create scenes for my training videos.

Here's how I create scenes for my courses.

Step 1: Start With Something Real

My scenes are based on situations that have really happened.

I like to think of examples that highlight the concept I'm trying to share. It could be from my own experience as a customer, the many jobs I've had serving customers, or a story someone else shared with me.

For a segment on identifying customers' emotional needs, I thought back to the time I was a customer service manager for a catalog company that sold collectibles. Some of the angriest customers were people who ordered something as a gift, only to receive an item that was different than what was expected.

So for this movie, I wrote a brief dialogue based on that experience.

[scene: A contact center employee is talking on the phone with a customer. The customer becomes angry when the employee offers to do an exchange.]

Employee: "I'm so sorry to hear we sent the wrong item. I'd be happy to help you do an exchange and send out the color you ordered."

Customer: An exchange?! I was supposed to give it as a gift tonight. I can't do anything with this!

[end scene]

Here's what it looks like on film (the scene starts at :31):

Identify emotional needs from Customer Service Foundations by Jeff Toister

Step 2: Pick a Setting

The setting for a scene can have a tremendous influence on its authenticity. 

Here I start with a few general ideas and then share them with my producer at LinkedIn Learning. The producer works with the production team to create the right set, cast the scene, and ensure everything can be filmed on time and on budget, so there's a lot of collaboration at this point.

Sometimes, my ideas are easy to execute. The contact center set used in the video above was the same one used for my course, Phone-Based Customer Service. (Fast forward to 2:11 of this video and you'll see the same set, shot from a slightly different angle.)

Other times, the producer will make some suggestions to find a setting that's easier to build or perhaps will show up better on video. 

I originally wanted to do a scene at a movie theater snack bar for my course on Working with Upset Customers, because I had seen a customer get unreasonably angry in that setting. The producer I was working with suggested a coffee shop setting instead, because that set was already built. 

It was a great suggestion, especially because I've seen people lose it in coffee shops, too! Here's a video using that set (the scene starts at :59):

Tending to emotional needs from Working with Upset Customers by Jeff Toister

Notice the video also focuses on emotional needs, but the scenario is different than the first video I showed you. There are often overlapping topics between my courses, so I try to put a slightly different spin on it each time.

Step 3: Cast the Scene

Good acting can make or break the authenticity of a training video scene.

This step is almost entirely in the hands of the producer I'm working with. As a writer, I like to give my producer a general idea of what each character might be like without getting too specific, since there's a lot of diversity in the customer service world. 

The producers at LinkedIn Learning have extensive experience casting for training videos, and I've really been impressed with the choices they've made. The actors in my training videos are consistently talented and professional, and they do a great job bringing the script to life!

Of course, there are times when our production schedule, budget, or some other factors requires some creative casting. The contact center agent in this scene is actually my producer for the course, Sam.

Step 4: Build the Sets

The LinkedIn Learning production team does a terrific job building sets for various scenarios. 

We will sometimes have a conference call or exchange photos of different ideas to make sure we're on the same page, but I've learned to trust the process. Here are behind-the-scenes photos of the four sets we used for scenarios in the Customer Service Foundations course.

Reception Area

Retail Store

Contact Center

Living Room

Step 5: Film the Scenarios

One of the really fun parts of creating a training video is being on the set when the scenes are filmed.

I've worked with several film directors at LinkedIn Learning and have been really impressed at how they put cameras in just the right place, coach the actors through the scene, and capture just the right moments. 

My role on the set is mainly as an observer, though I'll occasionally provide the actors with some suggestions or clarification around the dialogue. The goal is always to make it come out as realistic as possible.

You can see a few more scenes if you fast forward to 1:47 of this video:

Take ownership of problems from Customer Service Foundations by Jeff Toister