Why You Need More Breaks During the Holidays

Advertising disclosure: This blog participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

"You've ruined Christmas!"

I've lost count how many times angry customers yelled that at me when I was working in retail, first in a clothing store and later in a call center. You've probably heard customers say the same thing if you've worked during the holiday season.

Getting yelled at is hard enough. It's extra painful when a self-righteous customer is using you as a human punching bag because some tchotchke they wanted to buy as a gift wasn't available.

Frankly, it's exhausting.

Three bad things happen to customer service employees when they're exhausted:

• They can't think clearly.

• It's harder to be friendly.

• They struggle to even care.

Even during normal times of the year, service quality decreases after lunch, when employees are more fatigued.

Let's take a closer look at why your employees need extra rest during the holidays.

Exhaustion hurts clear thinking

Customer service employees must think on their feet. They need to be quick and resourceful problem solvers to keep customers happy.

Clear thinking gets difficult when we're tired.

A study of British office workers published in 2009 found that people who worked more than 55 hours per week showed decreased memory, vocabulary, and cognitive reasoning skills compared to those who worked 40 hours or less.

Memory, vocabulary, and cognitive skills are all critical to service.

This is especially true today, when customers are increasingly using self-service to handle simple transactions. This means our employees have to handle complicated issues more often.

That's hard to do when you're tired.

Fatigue makes it hard to be friendly

Shopping or dining out during the holiday season is supposed to be festive and fun. Part of that customer experience includes friendly and outgoing employees who help spread cheer. 

It's tough to act warm and friendly when you're exhausted. 

Putting a smile on your face when you don't feel like smiling is called surface acting. You can see a great example from this 1979 commercial from Pacific Southwest Airlines.

Arlie Hochschild first coined the term, "emotional labor," in the book The Managed Heart. It refers to the effort required to act happy when you don't feel that way. The bigger the gap between how we actually feel and the friendly emotions we’re trying to display, the more emotional labor we have to exert.

Like any type of labor, exerting too much wears you down and makes things even worse.

Weary employees struggle to care

Customer service employees are expected to empathize with customers. Listen to their problems, offer a few words of encouragement, and act like they truly care.

This gets a lot harder when you're tired.

Empathy fatigue, or compassion fatigue, is physical and mental exhaustion that comes from caring for others over a long period of time. I explored the concept more in-depth in this post, but here are a few symptoms:

• Difficulty concentrating

• Blaming others (i.e. customers) for their problems

• Feeling hopeless

None of those exactly scream "happy holidays!"

How to overcome holiday exhaustion

There are several ways to help keep employees fresh, focused, and happy during the busy holiday season.

The first is to offer more breaks.

Supervisors often discourage employees from taking rest or lunch breaks during busy times. Legal issues aside, this can backfire and reduce productivity and service quality. Try giving employees more breaks instead, and you’ll likely see employees work fast while making fewer errors.

Micro-breaks are another solution.

In his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, author Daniel Pink suggests taking short breaks to regroup from difficult situations. It could be a quick trip to the water cooler, a short walk around the office, or just standing up from your desk to stretch for a moment. 

Varying work assignments can also help.

When I managed a contact center, a lot of off-the phone work would pile up while we were deluged with customer calls. When call volumes died down, this work became a nice change of pace for agents who needed a break from upset customers.

I have one more suggestion for you: hold your holiday party in January.

I've done this myself, and there are several important benefits to moving the traditional holiday party out of December.

• Cost. Event space is cheaper in January.

• Attendance. There will be fewer scheduling conflicts with other holiday events.

• Morale. January holiday parties are more fun because we’re not worn down!

The holiday season should be fun. Give yourself, and your employees, a few extra breaks and you'll keep that holiday spirit alive!

How to Reinforce Your Service Culture With Rituals

Advertising disclosure: This blog participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

What typically happens at the start of a meeting in your company?

Meetings probably begin with a leader recapping a few key performance indicators that you could have easily read yourself. Then people go around the room and give updates. Not exactly inspiring. 

Leaders at Schneider Electric North America start meetings differently. Meetings begin by talking about customers, whether it's sharing a story, or discussing customer feedback. 

It's one of several rituals the organization uses to maintain its customer focus.

I interviewed Kyle Hamm, Schneider Electric's Vice President of Customer Transformation. He explained how his company uses rituals like this to keep employees obsessed with customer experience.

Keep reading to watch the interview and discover how you can use rituals to reinforce your own service culture.

Kyle Hamm

Vice President of Customer Transformation at Schneider Electric North America

What is a service culture ritual?

The term ritual sometimes has a spiritual or religious connotation, but that's not the context here. 

A service culture ritual is a habit that reinforces the customer-focused culture. It can be something done by a group, such as the way you start a meeting. Rituals can also be individual, such as the way you start your day.

In their book, Rituals for Work, authors Kursat Ozenc and Margaret Hagan offer this definition:

Actions that a person or group does repeatedly, following a similar pattern or script in which they've imbued symbolism and meaning.

I researched a lot of customer-focused companies when I wrote The Service Culture Handbook. Here are just a few examples of rituals I uncovered:

• JetBlue executives travel to each location once per quarter to talk about culture.

• Zendesk employees do "ride-alongs" with customer support.

• Cars.com employees review and discuss customer surveys comments daily.

How Schneider Electric Uses Rituals to Reinforce Culture

My conversation with Hamm covered a wide range of topics around creating and leveraging service culture rituals.

• Why customer-centric rituals are important

• How to start a meeting with customer focus

• Why stories are helpful ways to communicate culture

• How senior leaders can legitimize and promote rituals

• When to use rituals to reinforce the culture

• How to create personal rituals to improve your own customer focus

Check out the interview here.

Additional Resources

Here are some additional resources to help you learn more about using rituals to reinforce your service culture.

Brand leadership expert, Denise Lee Yohn, recently wrote this helpful post about using rituals and artifacts to reinforce your culture.

The book, Rituals for Work, walks you through creating your own rituals.

Finally, how would you like to improve those meetings? Team Effectiveness Expert, Melanie Proshchenko, has a great course on LinkedIn Learning called Working in Harmony as a Senior Team. It's full of ideas for getting senior leaders to work more closely together, including ways to make those meetings more effective.

Take the Thank You Letter Challenge, Thanksgiving Edition

This Thursday is Thanksgiving in the United States.

It's traditionally a time to gather with family, enjoy a bountiful feast, and be thankful. One thing I'm always thankful for is customer service.

In past years, I've written posts expressing my gratitude for the many customer service professionals who make a difference in our lives, such as this one thanking all the service professionals who work on Thanksgiving Day.

This year, I'm inviting you to join me in taking the Thank You Letter Challenge.

What is the Thank You Letter Challenge?

The challenge is a powerful visualization exercise that asks you to imagine the type of service you'd like to provide to your customers, and then work to make that service a reality.

Terry, a customer service manager, took the challenge a few years ago and shared this with me:

"I did receive a thank you, verbally that was almost verbatim to what I had written down. The letter kept my attitude in the right spot every day and reminded me of the level of customer service I choose to deliver each and every day. It essentially became my mission statement."

Here's how to participate in this year's Thank You Letter Challenge:

1. Write a thank you letter to yourself that you'd hope to receive from a customer

2. Read the letter at the start of each day for 21 days

3. Try to receive a real version of the letter

Customer experience expert, Nate Brown, shared this example with me:

Dear UL EHS,

Thank you for everything you do to make my job better and easier. Because of your technology and your people, I'm able to focus on serving my patients. We can hardly imagine life without you!

Sincerely,
Sara

Nate explained that Sara is the occupational health persona for his company, UL EHS.

Starting on November 28, I'll be doing the challenge with you. Here's the letter I wrote that represents the type of feedback I'd like to receive:

Dear Jeff,

Thank you for helping me get my employees obsessed with service. We have a strong and growing culture, and your assistance is helping us along the way.

A. Client

Stay on Track with Automated Reminders

A challenge like this might inspire you, but it's easy to forget to read your letter during the hectic holiday season. That's why I've created a simple email reminder system.

You'll receive a reminder email each day for 21 days.

Each email will contain a reminder as well as a tip for making your thank you letter become a reality. The emails will simply stop after day 21, so there's no need to unsubscribe. 

You can sign up here.

Thanksgiving Twist: Thank Others

I'm adding a bonus challenge for Thanksgiving. It involves thanking others.

Each day during the 21-day Thank You Letter Challenge, I challenge you to express sincere appreciation to a customer service professional who serves you. You can express your gratitude in a number of ways:

• Send an email

• Make a call

• Thank them them face-to-face

• Recognize someone by name in a survey

• Send an old school thank you card

You never know when a small gesture like saying “thank you” can boost someone’s spirits and make their day. It feels great to be recognized for a job well done!

Please let me know how it goes. You can leave a comment or contact me directly to share the results of your Thank You Letter Challenge.

What questions should you ask on a customer survey?

Updated: June 12, 2023

Customer service surveys are too long.

Some have 10, 20, or even 30 questions. I've seen one with over 100. It takes customers a long time to answer that many questions.

This causes a few problems:

• Customers get annoyed.

• Many people abandon the survey.

• You get a lot of data that isn't useful.

There is a solution. 

I'm going to show you how to dramatically shorten your customer service survey. Shorter surveys are easier for customers to complete and far less annoying. 

You'll also get better, more useful data.

What is the purpose of a customer service survey?

A survey should help you identify actionable customer feedback. It should help you spot problems so you can fix them. The survey should also let you know what's working, so you can keep doing those things well.

Long surveys often lack a clear purpose. The survey gets bloated with irrelevant questions that someone thinks might be somehow useful.

Here are a few discussion questions that will help you understand your survey’s purpose:

• Why do you want to survey your customers?

• What do you hope to learn from them?

• What will you do with this data?

Knowing the answers to these questions can help you focus your survey and make it shorter. Here's a short video that can help you.

Establishing a survey goal from Using Customer Surveys to Improve Service by

What can you learn without a survey?

You can often get data about your customer’s experience without relying on a survey. Getting this data from other sources allows you to eliminate survey questions.

Restaurants and retail stores typically include a survey invitation at the bottom of the receipt. Many of those surveys ask you to identify information that’s already known:

• Store location

• Time of day

• Items purchased

Those questions can be eliminated if you tie that data to the survey on the backend.

This has an added benefit—customers have notoriously faulty memories and often make mistakes when answering these questions.

There's another source of data you might be overlooking if you survey customers after they contact your customer service department: your customers' own words.

Customers give direct feedback when they call, email, chat, Tweet, or using any other channel to complain or get help.

Check out this interview with customer experience expert Nate Brown, where he shares a simple way to collect and analyze this feedback.

What are the best questions to ask on a customer service survey?

You can get plenty of actionable data from your customers with just two questions. A two-question survey is easy on your customers makes analyzing the data a breeze.

Here are the two must-have questions:

1. Rating scale

2. Free text explanation

The rating scale can be any survey type. Functionally, they’re very similar. (Read more on different survey types here.)

This Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey Suunto is a great example. The survey was sent six months after I registered a new watch, which gave me enough time to really experience using it on a daily basis.

The survey has a clear goal to identify what causes people to spread positive or negative word-of-mouth about Suunto and its products.

For example, I answered 9 to the first question (which means I'm a promoter), but I also used the free text question to describe a small issue I had with the battery life indicator on my watch.

You can use the same two question approach with most common survey types:

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

• Customer Effort Score (CES)

• Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The rating scale tells you if the customer is happy, neutral, or upset. You can use the comments to learn more about individual customers, or search the text for trends.

Here's an example of a great NPS survey from Ecobee. It starts with a rating question:

The rating you give then triggers a comment box that asks you to provide more detail:

Ecobee's Senior Director of Customer Experience and Operations, Andrew Gaichuk, told me he and his team analyze survey comments to identify trends.

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

Analyzing survey comments like this is surprisingly easy.

Suunto and Ecobee can identify the specific customer giving the feedback because the survey is triggered when a customer registers a new product. This allows them to follow-up with customers if there's a problem, or to ask more questions if they want to get additional information.

Companies don't always have access to each customer's contact information. You can add an optional third question if that's your situation. The third question allows customers to opt-in to a follow-up contact.

Here’s a sample CSAT survey that contains the third question:

Can you have more than three survey questions? 

The short answer is yes, but think carefully before making your survey any longer. Here are a few things to consider:

• Do you have a clear purpose for asking this question?

• Is this the only way to get the answer?

• Do you have plan to use the data you collect?

If you answered "no" to any of the above, you probably don't need the question on your survey.

One survey mistake that adds extra questions is to make assumptions about what’s important to your customers. For example, a restaurant might ask questions like these:

• “Were you greeted promptly?”

• “Was your order correct?”

• “How would you rate the food quality?”

Those may or may not be the issues your customers truly care about. You can focus on what truly matters to customers by analyzing the comments in your two-question survey.

Most online review sites use the same two question format.

For example, I was able to review the Yelp comments for a popular San Diego restaurant and quickly learned that reservations were the number one service issue.

Take Action

Asking a customer to take a survey is like asking them to do you a favor. It's a good idea to make that favor as easy to grant as possible.

Here are some additional resources to help you improve your customer surveys:

• Training video: Using Customer Surveys to Improve Service

• Blog post: I took every survey for a week. The results weren't good.

• Resource: Customer service survey resources

How Surveys Can Make Service Failures Worse

My local car dealership struggles with service.

On multiple occasions, I've arrived for an appointment only to learn a needed part didn't arrive as expected. That meant I had to drive home and come back another day.

The mechanic once badly scratched my car's front fender and didn't say anything—I noticed the damage just as I was getting in the car. The dealer fixed it, but my car was in the body shop for a few days.

A recent experience was the last straw.

I called to make a service appointment and asked how long it would take. The employee informed me it would be two hours, but when I arrived, the service advisor told me it would take four hours. 

That was time I didn't have.

You'd think the dealership would be interested in learning from mistakes and finding a way to keep my business.

In reality, what matters most to the dealer is my survey score. An employee has directly asked me to give a good rating on their survey after every one of these service failures.

Unfortunately, they aren't alone. Here's how surveys can make service failures worse. 

Does your survey focus on the wrong thing?

Surveys should focus on the experience itself, not just the customer service employees who are there to help when things go wrong.

For example, I recently bought an inflight internet pass to use while I was flying cross country. The internet was spotty the entire trip and my connection repeatedly dropped, so I emailed customer service to ask for a refund.

The customer service rep responded quickly and offered a credit for a future flight, which I accepted as a fair compromise.

I received a survey the next day. It asked me to evaluate the support employee, but not my experience using the company's product.

From a customer perspective, I had already shared all the feedback the company needs to know:

• The service failure itself

• My satisfaction with the resolution

We had ended the poor experience on a high note. Now the survey reminded me of the bad experience all over again. As Shep Hyken recently wrote, the survey shouldn’t be the last thing the customer remembers about you.

The day after the latest service failure at the dealership, I received this text from my service advisor:

The message was clearly automated, but it still comes across as completely oblivious.

• It’s an example of survey begging.

• I already shared my feedback with the service advisor directly.

• He knows it wasn't an exceptional service experience.

You can prevent this problem by establishing a clear purpose before creating a survey. Understand who you want to survey, why you want to survey them, and what you plan to do with that information.

This short video explains how to set a survey goal.

Establishing a survey goal from Using Customer Surveys to Improve Service by Jeff Toister

Should you even send a survey?

There are situations when a survey is a bad idea. For example, some companies send a survey after each customer service interaction. That could really infuriate a customer who has to contact support multiple times to resolve the same issue.

That text from my service advisor was another poor example. It re-hashed the memory of the service failure and made it even fresher in my mind.

Our ensuing text exchange tells me he still doesn't get it.

The last thing I said to him when we spoke in person was, "I'm tired of you wasting my time. I'm taking my business to another dealer."

He still hasn't apologized. Now he's inviting me to come back in like nothing happened?!

The good news is many customer service survey platforms can be configured with rules that determine when to send a survey and when not to. For example, you can:

• Limit the amount of surveys a customer is sent in a certain time period

• Avoid sending multiple surveys for the same issue

• Prevent surveys from being sent when they're not warranted

This last one is tricky.

Some companies have found that unscrupulous employees will prevent surveys from going out just to keep their average higher. I never received the promised survey from the dealership, which leads me to believe that’s what’s happening here. The service advisor anticipates a low score and might have prevented it from going out.

Does your survey inspire action?

It's frustrating for customers to give the same feedback over and over again. You need to use your surveys to identify issues and take action to fix them. Otherwise, you're just wasting your customers' time.

You probably see a lot of survey invitations at the bottom of receipts. A 2016 study from Interaction Metrics found that 68 percent those surveys “are total garbage.” The questions are so manipulative and the surveys so badly designed that they yield little useful information.

I once spoke with an executive who proudly announced her company had implemented a new survey. "What are you doing with the data?" I asked.

She explained that the survey scores were shared in a monthly executive meeting. There was a long pause, since I expected her to continue. No. That was it.

The survey was a waste of time in a number of ways:

• It didn't have a comment field so customers could explain their ratings.

• The company wasn't analyzing survey data to identify trends.

• Nobody was taking any action to improve service.

My local dealership has experienced the same issue.

I’ve directly shared my concerns about service quality multiple times. The service advisor knows about it. Several of his colleagues do, too. I’ve talked with at least two of his bosses.

And yet, after every poor experience, someone awkwardly approaches me and asks me to be nice on the survey. Meanwhile, nothing gets better.

The sad part is the issues are fixable.

I called another dealership to book an appointment for the service my car still needed. The employee was careful to advise me that the appointment would take approximately four hours, and he gave me the option to wait, get a loaner car, or have Uber take me somewhere.

Take Action

Now is a good time to take a hard look at the surveys you offer. Ask yourself:

• Why are we surveying our customers?

• How are we using this data to improve the experience?

• What aspects of these surveys could be annoying?

You can learn more about customer service surveys and get tools to create a great one on this resource page.

How the Best Retailers Rely on Smart Employees

"Thanks for coming in today and checking us out!"

This was my first introduction to an Amazon bookstore. It was a very un-Amazon experience. The idea of being in a physical bookstore owned by Amazon was a bit strange. Interacting with a real Amazon employee was even more unusual. 

We talked for a moment, and she explained the store had re-opened earlier that day after being remodeled. She seemed genuinely excited to be there.

There were a few more unusual aspects about this store.

The displays were highly curated, and the shelves were lightly stocked to showcase each individual book. Helpful employees could be found around every corner.

The store is an example of how successful retailers understand the connection between experience and helpful, skilled, and smart employees.

Why traditional retailers are struggling

Things seem gloomy for brick and mortar retailers.

Once popular chains like Sears, Toys R Us, and Forever 21 have gone bankrupt. Other chains such as Walgreens, Gap, and Macy's are closing hundreds of stores. 

Some blame the Internet, but that's just an excuse. The real issue is many retailers have long neglected their frontline employees.

They hire too few and train too little. The employees they do have are often stuck doing transactional tasks like cashiering that wastes their talent and adds little human value. Cashiers are rapidly being replaced by automation, where you pay for your purchases at a kiosk or via an app.

Plenty of other retailers are growing. Look carefully, and you'll see them staffing physical stores in a much different way.

How employees can make a difference in retail

I recently traveled to Seattle to explore the future of customer service. My journey took me to three stores that exemplify the modern retail experience.

The first store I visited was the original Amazon Books, in Seattle's University Village mall. The store opened in 2015 with a long line of customers waiting at the door.

Things were quieter during my visit, which meant it was easy to get attention from employees like the one who greeted me. I quickly noticed several ways that Amazon put its staff in a position to succeed.

• Staffing levels were at least double what you'd expect in a traditional bookstore.

• Product selection was lean, making it easier to keep items in stock.

• Fewer products made it easier for employees to know what they were selling.

This is the Trader Joe's formula for success. The grocer has become famous for its tightly curated product selection and smaller stores filled with helpful, knowledgeable employees.

I wound up buying two books that day that weren't on my radar. And I bought them both on Amazon's website because I prefer ebooks. The physical store was a showcase.

My next stop was a Bonobos Guideshop.

These stores take showcasing to a completely different level. You go to the store to find the perfect size, fit, and fabric, and then your order is shipped to you.

Guideshop employees are called Guides, and that's exactly what they do.

A helpful Guide greeted me as soon as I walked in. He asked a few questions about what I was looking for, pulled up my account to confirm my sizing, and got me started in a dressing room with a few options. Throughout the process, he used his product knowledge to make suggestions about different cuts and styles.

The impressive part of the Bonobos experience is how Guides are able to give you personal attention. Guideshop employees are primarily there to help customers, which is refreshing in retail where most clothing store employees are either focused on laying out stock or working the register.

My final stop was REI's flagship store.

I'm an unabashed REI fan, so this was a pretty big deal for me. Please excuse me for going a little fanboy here. From a retailing perspective, REI absolutely nails it. 

The experience starts with the entrance. There's no doubt this store is all about the outdoors.

You walk down a winding, tree-lined concrete path, crossing over the mountain bike test trail. Climb a short flight of stairs and then head inside the store where you’re greeted by Ernie, the VW camper.

Stroll past Ernie, and you'll see the first of two fireplaces inside. Flannel-covered pillows are strewn about the rocks, just begging you to take a seat and rest a moment.

There's another fireplace upstairs.

And a fire pit outside the front entrance. Get me some marshmallows!

Aside from the impressive layout, employees are what really makes REI stand out as an amazing retailer.

There was an associate giving a snowboarding class in the middle of the store. A small group of customers gathered around a snowboard display as the associate used a whiteboard to discuss various techniques.

Another associate gave a detailed explanation on the various types of headlamps available to a customer who was planning a nighttime hike. I now know headlamps are not all the same!

Everywhere I turned, there was an employee available to answer a question or help me out. The beauty of shopping at REI is employees don't just work there. They love the outdoors and are eager to share their knowledge.

I eventually made a few selections and headed towards the cash registers. 

David, my cashier, used his knowledge and passion to make the experience more than a transaction. He gave me a quick history lesson about the store and shared some tips for getting the most out of my REI membership. 

Our conversation was way more interesting than the typical "Find everything alright?" or "How's your day going?" that you get from most cashiers.

Take Action

The future of retail is based on experience, and employees are at the center.

Think about what your physical location can offer that's unique and can't easily be offered online. Find ways to leverage smart, talented employees to make the experience better.

The low hanging fruit is on the sales floor. You can increase sales, improve customer service, and decrease theft by having helpful employees readily available like Amazon Books, Bonobos, and REI.

Leading retailers also create unique experiences or offer services that bring more customers in. Here are a few examples:

• CVS has Minute Clinics that offer in-store health care.

• Petsmart is adding doggy day camps to select stores.

• Sur la Table offers in-store cooking classes.

These experiences are all powered by employees who have specialized knowledge and skills, and offer value beyond the typical transaction. Find a way to help your employees do the same, and you’ll go far.

Is Automation Good or Bad for Customer Experience?

The discussion about automation often focuses on jobs.

A 2019 study by Indeed showed 60 percent of Americans think automation will put a significant number of jobs at risk. This certainly includes customer service jobs. You see machines replacing humans in parking garages, at supermarkets, and in customer service departments.

But is automation making customer experience any better? I recently took a trip to Seattle to find out.

Seattle is home to two of the largest companies driving automated customer service: Amazon and Starbucks. The travel industry is also increasingly automated, giving me more opportunities to experience automation through the eyes of a customer.

The hope is my conclusions are illuminating for both companies and employees.

Automation is already here

The transition to automation has been happening for a long time. 

Air travel is a great example. I bought my plane ticket to Seattle on the Alaska Airlines website, checked in for my flight via the airline's app, and used the app to pull up my boarding pass when I got to the airport. 

The TSA agent at airport security was the first human I interacted with on my journey. This is nothing new. It's been possible for more than 10 years:

• 1995: Alaska Airlines became the first North American carrier to sell tickets online.

• 1999: Alaska became the first airline in the world to enable online check-in.

• 2007: Continental Airlines debuted mobile boarding passes.

When I arrived in Seattle, I bought my fare for the light rail from a kiosk. You had to buy individual subway tokens from a cashier when I lived in Boston in the mid-90s, but those days are long gone.

However, I did notice one helpful employee assisting another passenger.

You pass through the parking garage on the way from the terminal to the light rail station, where there are several kiosks where you can pay for parking. These kiosks were widely used by the mid-2000s.

In fact, there's a good chance you regularly use automation that has replaced a human customer service employee at some point in history.

• Withdrawing cash from a bank

• Making dinner reservations

• Renting a movie

• Buying gas

• Paying bills

So automation isn’t new. It’s evolving.

Automation can remove friction

Waiting in line is one of the worst parts of the customer journey.

Airlines have already solved much of this (see above). My journey to Seattle gave me several opportunities to see how other companies are eliminating the line.

I checked in to the downtown Courtyard hotel via Marriott's Bonvoy app when I landed in Seattle. When I arrived at the hotel, I by-passed the front desk and used the app once again to access my mobile key. (Full disclosure: my wife works for Marriott.)

It was a strange experience. 

On one hand, it was convenient to go straight to my room without waiting in line at the front desk. On the other hand, I somehow felt less welcome by skipping the check-in patter you typically get from the front desk associate.

The hotel's elevator had a security feature that doesn't allow you to select a floor until you insert a room key. Of course, I had no key since I was using the app, so there was a small moment of worry.

Fortunately, the security feature was disabled and the elevator worked without a key.

I got to my room, dropped my bag, and headed back out. The afternoon fatigue was getting to me, so I decided to go to Starbucks.

Lines can also be a problem at Starbucks. Based on my own experiments, the percentage of customers who enter the store, see the line, and turn right back around increases dramatically once the line reaches eight people.

You can prevent this problem by ordering ahead via the Starbucks app. 

The barista was setting my drink on the counter just as I walked in the door. There were four people in line, so I saved a little time by ordering ahead. 

The experience was convenient, but it was also disconnected from the Starbucks mission: "To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time." 

Nothing inspired or nurtured my human spirit. Two baristas were standing and talking by the counter when I picked up the drink. I looked at them and smiled, ready to exchange a pleasant greeting, but neither even looked my way.

The next stop was Amazon's cashierless market, Amazon Go. 

You enter the store by using the Amazon Go app to open an automated gate. I had downloaded app before my trip and was greeted with a helpful tutorial that showed me how the store worked.

My favorite part of the tutorial was the final screen. Amazon perfectly anticipated the feeling I would get when I had finished shopping and was ready to leave the store without stopping to pay for anything.

Shopping was amazingly easy.

The app automatically tracks the items you remove from the shelf as you shop. It's also smart enough to identify when you put an unwanted item back. There are no cashiers—you just walk out of the store with your purchases once you're done.

Prices were also significantly cheaper than similar items at nearby convenience stores. Making the experience easier at a lower price is Amazon's specialty, and competitors should be worried.

Employees were the one thing missing from the experience. 

I didn't notice any employees when I first entered the store. After a moment, I spotted a couple of employees stocking shelves and talking to each other. Neither said anything to me.

Then I noticed another employee as I walked out. He was standing by the automated gate, I suppose to help people who were trying to figure out how to get in.

He gave me a curt nod as I walked out.

Automation is sure to continue replacing cashiers. It speeds up the process and makes the experience more convenient for customers. One study by QSR found that using kiosks to take orders in fast food restaurants increased the average check by 15 to 30 percent over human cashiers.

I also think cashiers can find more ways to add human value to their jobs.

A CVS near my home stood out in a comparison versus Walgreens and Right Aid in part because of a friendly, helpful cashier. He greeted customers on the way in, and took time to make each purchase a little more than a transaction.

The cashier at my local True Value will get a colleague to swap out my bbq propane tank while she's ringing me up, so I don't have to wait for it once I've completed my purchase.

Automation augments the customer experience

Years ago, I had a client in downtown Los Angeles. I took the train from San Diego to LA's Union Station, and then caught a cab to get to my client.

The trouble would start at the end of the day when I wanted to get back to the train station.

I had to call the cab company at least 30 minutes before I needed a cab to actually arrive. The driver frequently got lost, which led to awkward calls to the cab dispatcher. Once we got to the train station, it would always take a few minutes to settle the bill via my company credit card. 

In Seattle, I used Lyft to go from my hotel to the University Village shopping center. Another Lyft quickly got me back downtown. It was a far superior experience than taking a taxi.

Here are just some of the friction points that Lyft removes:

• Finding a ride (or scheduling one)

• Getting a ride quickly

• Letting me know exactly where the driver is

• Calculating the fare ahead of time

• Paying for the ride

It's still up to a human to deliver great service and drive you to your destination once you're in the car. Lyft drivers are almost always friendly and interesting to talk to, which makes the trip go faster.

Of course, Lyft is hard at work to replace drivers with autonomous vehicles. This means ride hailing will be fully automated in the near future.

Back at my hotel, I decided I wanted to request a late check out for the following day. There was no obvious place to do this on the app, so a live human would be needed. I decided to skip the messaging feature in the app and go to the front desk.

I have a LinkedIn Learning course on how to get great customer service. One secret I can tell you is a special request is more likely to be granted in person than via messaging. My late checkout request was quickly granted.

There are many instances like this where automation and humans work together to create a better overall experience.

The thermostat at The Overlook, a vacation rental cabin my wife and I own, recently emailed me about a possible issue the day before guests were checking in. The message was part of Ecobee's automated monitoring system:

"There may be a problem with the Furnace. For the past 2 hours the thermostat has been calling for heat, but the room temperature has decreased by 3.0F."

The problem turned out to be a bad furnace motor. A new one would take a week to arrive, so our property manager provided our guests with extra space heaters to keep them warm during their stay.

Automation identified the issue, but it took people to fix it.

Conclusion

Back to the question at hand: Is automation go or bad for customer experience?

The answer is automation is generally good. There are many instances where automation markedly improves the customer experience by removing friction and making it more efficient. 

Yet automation is not a total solution. 

During nearly every part of my trip to Seattle, a human made the experience better, or would have made one better if a person had been available. Studies show that customers prefer to have a human readily available when using self-service, even if they choose not to contact the human for help.

There's insight here, too, for customer service employees worried about losing their jobs. Jobs that are repetitive, routine, and monotonous are likely to be automated sooner than later. This includes cashiers, drivers, and clerks.

The secret is finding a way to bring something uniquely human to what you do.

I stopped by the world famous Pike Place Fish Company while I was in Seattle. It's not just a market, it's an experience that's powered by employees who go out of their way to connect with the people they serve.

Take a moment to think about your own job. How can you bring something uniquely you to the way you serve customers?

How to Deal with Difficult Customers

Difficult customers are frustrating.

They can be angry, demanding, or even rude. They expect you to go the extra mile, but rarely show any appreciation. You might make 99 people happy per day, but it's the one difficult customer that you go home thinking about.

The top request I get as a customer service trainer is for techniques to better serve these difficult people.

You might be surprised at my advice—I won't tell you to not take it personally.

A person berating you over a service failure you didn't cause is personal. Demeaning you because of this insane idea that customers are superior to the people serving them is personal.

You still have an obligation to help difficult customers, because that’s the job. But let’s not pretend it’s not personal, or that you’re not human. Serving difficult customers is not easy.

What I can give you is a step-by-step guide you can use right away.

Who is a difficult customer?

A difficult customer is someone who takes an unreasonable amount of effort to serve. They take up extra time, time that could be spent serving other customers who now have to wait longer to be helped. These customers also have a tendency to infect customer service employees with negative attitudes.

In my experience, difficult customers typically fall into one of three categories:

• Angry customers upset about a real or perceived service failure.

• Demanding customers who want more than what's fair.

• Rude customers who are condescending or mean.

Some customers can be all three together.

I once witnessed an angry customer in the post office who unfairly demanded compensation for a mistake that wasn't the postal service's fault. He was extremely rude to the manager as he berated her for something she had no control over.

How to help difficult customers

The proven techniques in this step-by-step guide below will help you defuse angry customers, de-escalate tense situations, and get more people to treat you with respect.

It starts with changing your mindset.

Step One: Change Your Mindset

I have a small confession to make.

The phrase "deal with difficult customers" bothers me. I only used it as the title for this blog post because that's what people tend to search for.

I don't like the idea of "dealing with someone" because it means trying to get them out of your face. This creates a naturally combative relationship with customers where we instinctively become dismissive of their issues.

That only makes things worse.

The best way to help your most difficult customers is to change your mindset from "dealing" with them to this:

Help customers through challenging situations.

This isn't easy!

• Customers sometimes treat us as a human punching bag.

• Their frustrations about personal problems add fuel to their anger fire.

• You might not be empowered to do what the customer wants, or even to do what's right.

You can't fix every issue or make every customer happy. What you can do is try to leave each customer better off at the end of the interaction than they were at the beginning.

Here's your first skill-building activity:

Thank You Letter Challenge

1. Imagine you helped a customer who faced a challenging situation.

2. You worked hard and left them better off at the end of the interaction.

3. Write the thank you letter you'd like to receive from that person.

I do this exercise on a regular basis. Each week, I talk to customer service leaders who are trying to build, grow, and sustain a customer-focused culture. Many are overwhelmed by all the different ideas they’ve heard, so I try to make things simple and actionable.

Here's the latest thank you letter I wrote:

The next steps are very important:

1. Read your thank you letter at the start of every day for 21 days.

2. Serve each customer the way you describe in your letter.

3. Try to receive the same feedback from a real customer.

Here's the feedback I received from a CEO who had read The Service Culture Handbook. He had contacted me for advice on implementing some of the concepts.

Dear Jeff,

There is no question in my mind that we are becoming a better company in part because of your teachings. Thank you very much.

The Thank You Letter Challenge is a powerful visualization exercise that helps you see things from your customer's perspective. It helps you change your reaction from "dealing with a difficult customer" to "helping a customer facing a challenging situation."

I have a bonus resource for you to make this even easier!

It’s a free daily email reminder. You'll receive a reminder each day for 21 days, along with tips and suggestions for making your thank you letter come to life.

Step Two: Recognize your fight or flight response

You have an instinctive reaction whenever you encounter an angry, demanding, or rude person. Your fight or flight response kicks in and you might feel a powerful, natural urge to either argue with the person (i.e. fight) or get away from them (i.e. flight).

Obviously, neither is a good idea in customer service.

You may recognize some of the most common symptoms. Think about a recent time when you served a difficult customer. Did you experience any of these?

• Tunnel vision

• Flushed face

• Increased heart rate

You can get a list of more symptoms here.

In my book, Getting Service Right, I share a story about Paul, an experienced customer service professional who struggled with the fight or flight instinct after a customer called and falsely accused one of Paul's coworkers of stealing his credit card.

"I could feel my blood pressure going up. I could feel my face get flush. I got to the point where I was so done with him. I started doing everything I could to get him off the phone."

Paul fought the urge to give in to this instinct, but it was a struggle.

You can see an example of a customer service employee experiencing the fight or flight instinct in this short video. Watch what happens when the coffee shop barista first encounters an angry customer who accuses him of screwing up her drink.

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

Here's your second skill-building activity: recognize the fight or flight instinct.

Try to do the following the next time you encounter a difficult customer:

1. Recognize the fight or flight instinct

2. Pause briefly to collect yourself

3. Refocus on helping the customer be better off at the end of the interaction

Step Three: Use the LAURA technique

This is a technique you can use to defuse angry customers and refocus on finding a solution. LAURA is an acronym that outlines specific service steps, but it also serves as a quick reminder. 

Picture a kind and patient professional named Laura who never seems to get rattled by a difficult customer. She's an empathetic listener, and always finds a way to make customers feel better. 

These are the specific steps outlined by the LAURA acronym:

L = Listen. Our instinct is to jump into action and solve the problem, but you'll get a better result if you take a moment to listen. Let the customer talk or vent, and try to understand what's really bothering them.

A = Acknowledge. Customers can be extra difficult to serve when they are experiencing strong emotions. You can help them feel better by validating their emotions with a sincere acknowledgement. For example: "I apologize for this error." Or, "I'm sorry you've had such a difficult experience."

U = Understand. Customers often do a poor job of telling their story, so try to understand what they really need. For example, in technical support, studies show the thing customers need even more than fixing their issue is to feel relief about whatever problem that issue was causing.

R = Relate. Empathy comes from understanding what someone is experiencing and being able to relate to their emotions. You don't have to agree, or even think the customer is right, just try to imagine a time when you experienced something similar and show your customer that you get where they're coming from.

A = Act. It's time to take action once you've addressed your customer's emotions. Avoid getting caught up in the blame game and instead re-focus on working with your customer to find a solution.

Here's a video example of both good and bad way to help a customer facing a difficult situation. If you'd like, you can skip to 1:28 of the video to see the barista using the LAURA technique.

Your third activity: Practice the LAURA technique.

Use the LAURA technique the next time you encounter an angry, demanding, or rude customer. Start with the first step, Listen.

Most people instinctively want to avoid listening when they encounter someone who triggers our fight or flight response. They try to skip all the way ahead to finding a solution, which can make matters worse.

Just taking an extra moment to really listen to a customer can work wonders.

How to prevent difficult customers

Wouldn't it be great if you could prevent customers from becoming angry, demanding, or rude in the first place? The good news is there are techniques you can use to help customers avoid difficult situations.

Well, sometimes. 

The techniques below won't prevent all customers from getting angry. After all, some customers will get mad at anything. I've seen customers get mad at Ben & Jerry's on free ice cream day.

One of my favorite techniques is rapport. Customers are more friendly, open, and forgiving of mistakes when they like, know, and trust us. The key is rapport must be genuine.

 Here is a short list of additional techniques, along with a link to more information on how to use it.

1. Thank customers after minor service failures (video)

2. Use the iceberg technique to solve problems (article)

3. Prevent outbursts with the preemptive acknowledgement (article)

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The Unexpected Way to Improve Self-Service

We've all experienced a self-service fail.

Perhaps you've found yourself yelling "Human! Human! Human!" into a phone. 

Maybe you've sat at a parking garage exit trying to get the machine to read your ticket while an impatient line of drivers behind you honk to signal their displeasure. 

Surely you've spent an eternity exploring a website to find the answer to the simplest of questions. When you couldn't find it, you spent another eternity finding the "contact us" page.

Or you might have angrily muttered under your breath, "I did place the item in the bagging area!" while using the self-checkout lane at the grocery store. 

Those terrible experiences are all designed to save costs by taking human employees out of the equation. Self-service is fine when it works, but it often doesn't.

Customers really hate when it doesn't.

Many will take their business elsewhere, buy less per visit, or spread negative word-of-mouth. Studies have found widespread theft among self-checkout customers at grocery stores.

There is a counterintuitive solution. 

Researchers have found companies can improve self-service customer satisfaction, increase sales, and keep costs low by making a human readily available.

The solution to self-service problems

Harvard researchers Michelle A. Shell and Ryan W. Buell conducted a series of experiments to test how human contact can reduce customer anxiety. They discovered that merely giving people the option to connect with a human while using self-service increased customer satisfaction and improved sales. 

Here's a summary of two of the experiments.

Experiment 1: Retirement Planning

In the first experiment, participants engaged in a retirement planning simulation. They were asked to allocate investments in a fictitious retirement portfolio over the course of several rounds using a simulated online portal.

Participants were divided into two groups: low-anxiety and high anxiety. 

• The low-anxiety group experienced normal returns on their simulated portfolio.

• The high-anxiety group experienced returns that were far worse than normal.

Participants in both groups were given an assessment to evaluate their anxiety levels at several times during the experiment. As expected, participants in the high-anxiety group with lower than expected returns experienced much higher levels of anxiety.

The participants were further divided into three groups, with each group receiving different types of self-service support: 

• Group only had access to a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for support.

• Another group had access to FAQs and could chat with an expert.

• The third group had access to FAQs and could chat with a peer investor.

The high-anxiety group that had access to an expert reported 20 percent higher satisfaction with their investment choices than the group that had no access to a human:

The surprising discovery? Only 16 percent of the group that had access to an expert actually contacted the expert for help!

Experiment 2: Credit Union Loans

This experiment was conducted with real customers. A credit union tested whether loan applicants sms text updates throughout the approval process impacted whether customers ultimately accepted the loan once they were approved.

Loan applicants were divided into three groups. The first group received no updates. The second group received updates via text like this one:

“Hi John, my name is Rachel and I will be working on your loan application. A decision will be returned to you by Wednesday and I’ll text you updates along the way. Thank you for working with us!”

The third group also received updates via text, but these updates contained the loan officer’s phone number and an invitation to contact them. Here’s an example:

“Hi John, my name is Rachel and I will be working on your loan application. A decision will be returned to you by Wednesday and I’ll text you updates along the way. Feel free to contact me at 555-5555 with any questions. Thank you for working with us!”

Once again, a more personalized approach yielded better results. The third group had a far higher percentage of approved customers accept the loan offer:

How to get customers to like self-service

The key to helping customers use and enjoy self-service is making a human readily available. Keep in mind that many customers prefer self-service for simple tasks, and they won't contact a human unless they feel it's necessary.

It's just comforting to know someone is there.

The payroll provider, Gusto, sets a great example by making contact information very clear and obvious on its help page. Notice the phone number and “contact us” link in the top right corner:

The wine tracking app, Vivino, has a clear "contact us" link on its in-app support page.

Side note: there’s a small fail here, because the "contact us" link takes you to a chat bot. Research from CGS revealed that 86 percent of consumers prefer humans over chat bots.

Airlines, grocery stores, and other businesses often station an employee near a bank of self-service machines to provide help when needed. Here’s an example from the self-checkout line at an Ikea:

One word of caution: make sure employees who help customers with self-service kiosks follow these steps to avoid sabotaging the experience.

Subscribers can sign themselves up to receive my Customer Service Tip of the Week email. Many receive the email without ever contacting me, but I'm still easy to reach. 

Subscribers can reply to any email and it goes straight to my personal email address. My phone number is also included in every message.

Executives sometimes worry that customers will inundate them with contacts if they make a human readily available. In reality, the contact rate is very low. Less than one percent of Customer Service Tip of the Week subscribers email me each week, and rarely do I get a call.

I even include my phone number and email address in every book I write. It makes me look like a generous guy, but very few people actually contact me.

Take Action

Conduct a review of any place where you offer self-service, whether it's online, on an app, or in-person. You can use this guide to look for opportunities to make connecting with a human even easier.

As a bonus tip, try personalizing all of your communication channels.

Phone and in-person are easy, but its helpful to make the name of the employee clearly visible in written channels like email, chat, text, and social media.

T-Mobile provides a great example of personalizing contacts via Twitter. The support team personalizes each message with a card that humanizes the individual agent:

Those are not problems we ever want to see you experiencing. I would love to dig into things with you, DM me so we can get to the bottom of things. https://t.co/jUueWiMypn ^AmandaCross

— T-Mobile Help (@TMobileHelp) October 7, 2019

You can learn a little more about Amanda when you click on the card:

Customers want convenience, but they also want friendly, helpful service from a live human when things get tricky. Strike the balance between the two and you'll keep costs low and satisfaction high.

Lessons From The Overlook: Be Flexible

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.

It's been awhile since I've shared an update about The Overlook.

A lot has happened since we put the cabin up for sale at the end of May. The summer is typically our slow season, yet we had our busiest July and August ever. Then there was a small fire that closed us down for all of September. 

The one thing that did not happen was a sale. We still own the cabin and now we think we have an even better plan (more on that in a moment).

The biggest lesson from the summer is you have to be flexible.

Beware of solution jumping

Solution jumping occurs when you instinctively identify a solution without fully understanding the problem. The danger is you could miss better opportunities or fail to solve the problem at all because your solution did not address the root cause. 

We initially jumped to a solution when we decided to sell The Overlook.

The problem we thought we were trying to solve was the cabin was too big:

• It has four bedrooms, which is too much for us personally.

• Damage increases and utility costs go up when we have more than six guests (our maximum is eight).

• Larger cabins typically rent less often than smaller cabins.

Our plan was to sell The Overlook at a profit, buy a smaller cabin, and pocket the difference. We ran the numbers and found that a smaller cabin with a lower nightly rate would likely bring in more revenue per month.

It looked like a good plan on paper, but several factors made it hard to execute:

• The market softened shortly after we put the cabin up for sale.

• A high number of rentals made it hard for our agent to show the cabin to buyers.

• We didn't find any smaller cabins that we really liked.

And then there was the fire over Labor Day weekend. 

A guest was using the grill and had it positioned against the side of the house. Some grease caught fire inside the grill and ignited the wood siding. The fire spread into the eaves before it was extinguished.

Photo credit: Idyllwild Vacation Cabins

It could have been a lot worse, but there was enough damage that we had to take The Overlook off the rental market for the month of September. 

This is where flexibility comes in.

We could have made a bad decision if we locked in on selling the place. We might have slashed the asking price to sell The Overlook quickly and then found ourselves losing a lot of money trying to upgrade the next cabin to our standards.

How flexibility can create new opportunities

You can often discover unexpected solutions if you maintain your flexibility and resist the urge to jump to a solution. It is important to understand the problem first.

We initially thought our problem was The Overlook was too big. We now realize our maximum capacity of eight guests was the issue. 

• There are just six seats at the dining table.

• The living area is comfortable for four to six, but not eight.

• Damage and utility costs go up when we have eight guests.

Advertising The Overlook as a four bedroom cabin for eight guests also limited our market.

Almost all of our renters are groups: large families, groups of friends, or several couples traveling together. These groups travel almost exclusively on weekends. Smaller cabins get more rentals during the week because a smaller party requires fewer people to make plans together.

The Overlook still had a number of advantages that other cabins we saw for sale did not have. The biggest one we could not replace was the view:

This thinking opened up another possibility. What if we reduced the capacity at The Overlook from eight to six? 

Our property manager has another cabin that has two bedrooms and a large game room downstairs. It rents extremely well. We know we can do something similar at The Overlook.

So that’s our plan.

We'll reduce our capacity to six by turning the large master bedroom into a game room and entertainment space. This should allow us to create an even better guest experience while reducing damage and utility costs. 

The changes should also increase our revenue as we expect to pick up more rentals during the week and throughout the summer.

The changes will take several months to implement. 

We're heading into our busy season, and there are already a number of rentals on the book for guests who expect four bedrooms. The good news is we have a clear path forward towards a better solution than we originally imagined.

Take Action

You can use flexible thinking to make similar strides in your own business.

The next time you face a challenging problem, resist the urge to jump to a solution. Take time to truly understand the problem you are trying to solve. Come up with alternative approaches, even if they don't seem feasible at first. 

And above all else, stick to your vision.

Our vision at The Overlook is welcome to your mountain retreat. We think these changes will bring us even closer to fulfilling that vision for our guests.