Should you share your customer service vision with customers?

I frequently get this question.

Leaders want to get their employees obsessed with customer service. The first step on that journey is creating a customer service vision statement.

Many leaders ask me if they should share the statement with customers. Typically, this means incorporating the vision into advertising, branding, or other marketing messages.

The answer is it depends!

Every organization is unique, so there's no one right answer. Here are some things to consider to help you decide what's right for your situation.

The short answer

Pressed for time? I've created this short video explanation. Keep reading below for a more in-depth answer.

The customer service vision is for employees

A customer service (or customer experience) vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page. You can learn more and see examples here.

Keep in mind the vision is first and foremost for employees. It should clearly guide everyone's actions, regardless of whether you share it with customers.

What's important is that you don't change your vision's wording or meaning just to make it more presentable to an external audience. For this reason, I don't recommend involving customers in the vision writing process.

Marketing the customer service vision

The decision to share the vision as part of your marketing should be based on whether it helps your customers understand the value you provide.

There are three general approaches:

• Share the vision

• Share a different version

• Don't share the vision

Some organizations share the vision directly.

The customer service vision at Navy Federal Credit Union is "Our members are the mission." This statement is also an advertising slogan for the credit union, and is frequently shared with customers.

Here's an example from a commercial where the vision is clearly shared.

Other organizations share an alternative version of the vision with customers.

The customer service vision at JetBlue is "Inspire humanity." The company often incorporates alternative versions of this vision in its advertising that make more sense to customers.

Watch this commercial to see an example. Notice the tagline near the end, "Air on the side of humanity," which is a direct nod to the vision statement.

Still other organizations keep the vision for employees and design separate marketing messages that are more appropriate for customers.

The customer service vision at The Ritz-Carlton chain of luxury hotels is "We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen." The vision isn't exactly a secret, but marketing messages focus on the guest experience.

Guests, not hotel associates, are the star of this commercial that seeks to inspire you to seek adventure and make memories while traveling.

There are some risks involved with this third option.

Marketing messages should still align with the vision statement. It can create confusion for customers and employees alike if they send completely different messages.

For instance, The Ritz-Carlton is marketing luxury travel. This is closely aligned with the vision of “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.”

However, a commercial full of irreverent, sophomoric humor would be completely off base with the vision and wouldn’t make sense for this particular brand.

Customer service vision resources

I've assembled some resources to help you tackle this and other questions surrounding customer service visions.

Start with my step-by-step guide to writing a customer service vision.

Find more guidance on getting your employees obsessed with customer service from The Service Culture Handbook.

Prefer video? This LinkedIn Learning course will walk you through the process of building, growing, and maintaining a customer-focused culture.

Get employees obsessed with service from Leading a Customer-Centric Culture by

Five Mistakes Companies Make with Corporate Values

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.

Please excuse my language. I want to write this plainly.

Most corporate values are bullshit. 

In the majority of companies I observe, values are created via a meaningless corporate exercise. Employees are unaware of them, or if they are, the values do absolutely nothing to guide behavior.

The problem is values are misunderstood and misused. They are not just a set of fancy words to dream up and slap on your website. 

Listing "integrity" as a corporate value doesn't mean your employees will magically act with integrity. Enron, a company made famous for a massive accounting scandal that sent executives to prison, listed integrity among its core values. 

Here are five common mistakes companies make with corporate values, and how you can fix them.

Mistake #1: Executives write them

"We just wrote our values at a retreat," said the executive. "We're really excited about them, but I'm having trouble getting employees to buy-in."

Many leaders have shared this challenge with me.

Employees tend to have a pretty good bullshit meter. The values that leaders dream up while sequestered in a conference room at an executive retreat are frequently boilerplate corporate nonsense.

A 2004 study by Booz Allen and the Aspen Institute found the same themes in almost every company's list of values:

• 90 percent included integrity

• 88 percent included customer focus

• 78 percent included employee focus

The fix is simple. Make value writing a more inclusive process to get a broad range of perspectives in the room. Ask employees at all levels to help write values that actually have meaning.

You can use the same process I use to help companies write their customer service vision statement.

Mistake #2: They're not authentic

A friend lamented her company's new values over lunch one day. She and the rest of her executive team had just written them at an executive retreat, but something didn't feel right.

I asked her to tell me more about communication, which was one of the new values. "Oh, we suck at communication," she said. She explained “communication” had been added simply because it sounded good.

Employees can spot inauthentic values a mile away. 

Values should codify how people really act. Perhaps not all the time, but certainly when things are going well. They should describe actual behaviors, not wistful thinking about how people might act in some distant future.

When writing your corporate values, ask yourself, "Do we regularly do this now?" If the answer is no, then it's not really one of your organization's values.

Mistake #3: Nobody knows them

Let's try a test. 

Try to list your organization's values without looking them up. Now ask your boss, your employees, and your colleagues to do the same thing. See if people can consistently list all of the values.

Values can't guide behavior if they're unknown.

You can fix this by communicating the values repeatedly, using a wide variety of methods. One company I worked with went to great lengths to make sure everyone knew the corporate values:

• The values helped guide the recruiting process.

• They were introduced in new hire training.

• Leaders used the values as a guide when giving feedback.

• Values were part of the performance evaluation process.

• The CEO spoke about the values at quarterly all-hands meetings.

Mistake #4: They're undefined

A client once hired me to evaluate how its new corporate values were working. I conducted my study and then presented both good and bad news to the executive team.

The good news was 95 percent of employees could correctly identify all five corporate values. The remaining five percent got at least three out of five correct.

The bad news is nobody had any idea what the values actually meant. Even the executive team disagreed on their meaning.

One value was integrity.

• The CFO felt integrity meant you don't steal. 

• The CMO felt integrity meant you did the right thing for customers. 

• The CEO felt integrity meant you were a good member of the community.

None of these definitions were inherently bad. They were just different. Values can't consistently guide behavior if they don't have consistent definitions.

This problem can be fixed by attaching clear definitions to each value. 

When I work with companies on defining their culture, I ask leaders to tell stories about everyday behavior that aligns with the values. These stories help leaders communicate these values more effectively.

Mistake #5: They're not prioritized

Your employees will encounter tricky situations where one value comes into conflict with another. They could find themselves at an impasse if the values aren't prioritized.

Disney theme parks provide a great example. Here's how Disney's four values for theme park cast members are prioritized:

1. Safety

2. Courtesy

3. Show

4. Efficiency

I've seen a first-hand example of these prioritized values. Here's an excerpt from Getting Service Right, recounting an experience riding the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride:

Everyone had just belted into their seats when a young boy started crying and protesting that he didn't want to go on the scary ride. The cast member playing the "demented elevator operator" immediately broke out of his character and invited the boy to step off the ride. He assured the boy's concerned mother that he'd keep a close eye on her son while she enjoyed the ride. When we returned and the elevator doors opened, the cast member was waiting with the now-smiling boy standing next to him.

Disney's priorities clearly guided the cast member's actions. Safety is the first priority, and this was evident when he delayed the ride and made sure the boy exited safely. The second priority is courtesy, so the cast member momentarily paused his scripted routine to politely address the young boy and assure the mother her son would be safe. The show is Disney's third priority, so the cast member quickly resumed his act once the first two priorities were addressed.

Take Action

Corporate values don't have to be empty words.

They can become useful guides for hiring, training, and coaching employees. And when employees encounter an expected situation, strong values can help point them in the right direction.

How to Improve Customer Experience by Reducing Friction

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.

There are a lot of product returns on December 26.

In the past, this was a laborious process. Go to a store and you'd wait in a long line, get grilled by the associate, and then be asked to fill out a stack of paperwork. Try to return something by mail and prepare to spend half a day at the post office.

Fast forward to today and things are much easer.

I recently needed to return a camp chair to REI, one of my favorite retailers. The wait in line was less than a minute, and the only information I needed was my phone number. Two minutes later and my money was refunded. (Which I promptly spent in the store.)

This is an example of how smart retailers are improving the customer experience by removing friction from once-tired processes.

Cutting out friction not only makes customers happier, it cuts costs and often increases revenue. Here's how you can do it, too.

What is customer friction?

Friction is any obstacle that gets in the way of a customer's journey. It can be something that slows them down, aggravates them, or prevents them from accomplishing their goal altogether. This includes out-of-stock products, service interruptions, and rude employees.

My business insurance policy came up for renewal a few years ago. Absolutely nothing had changed in my business's circumstances (line of business, number of employees, address, etc.), yet I was required to fill out a lengthy questionnaire just to process the renewal.

Did I mention the questionnaire wasn't digital?!

I had to dig out one of those writing implements people used to use in the old days before computers and the internet. What were they called again? Oh yeah, a "pen." I needed a pen to renew my insurance policy. To add insult to injury, I had to mail my renewal forms.

This process took me from not thinking about my insurance company to actively disliking my insurance company.

Customer experience expert Shep Hyken, in his book The Convenience Revolution, wrote that "friction is what kills the customer experience."

That's exactly what happened with the insurance company. 

Why does friction hurt customer experience?

Friction creates three issues for businesses. It unnecessarily annoys customers, it increases costs, and it reduces revenue over the long run.

Let's look at my insurance policy as an example.

It annoyed me because completing the paperwork was unnecessary, and it took extra time because the forms weren’t digitized.

The insurance company's costs went up because of this process:

• The form had to be printed and mailed.

• Someone had to take time to listen to my feedback.

• An employee had to manually enter what I wrote into the computer system.

The insurance company lost my business as a result. If it was this difficult to renew my policy, I could only imagine the hoops I’d have to jump through if I actually had to file a claim.

I moved my policies to Hiscox after getting a recommendation from a friend.

Wow, what a different experience! Enrollment was easy and the price was much lower, presumably because Hiscox doesn't waste money pushing pointless paperwork.

My Hiscox policy recently came up for renewal. The process? I received an email with my updated documents. No work required on my part.

How can you identify customer friction points?

The best way I know to identify where your customers are experiencing friction is to understand their journey and listen to their feedback along the way.

A university I worked with had a lot of faculty and staff upset about parking. We analyzed the parking department's voice of customer data and found the number one complaint was about annual passes.

At the time, issuing annual parking passes was a manual process. Customers had to visit the campus parking office, where ironically there was no parking. Once there, they had to fill out a lot of paperwork and wait in a long line to get it processed.

We re-imagined the journey from the customer's perspective and quickly saw multiple friction points:

• Completing extra paperwork

• Traveling to the parking office

• Waiting in line

The parking department removed this friction by emailing the necessary paperwork to customers so they could complete it ahead of time. Temporary distribution stations were set up at multiple points on campus during the renewal period, so faculty and staff could hand in their paperwork and quickly get their pass at a place convenient to where they worked.

Customers were suddenly raving about annual pass renewals.

The key is understanding the customer journey, and collecting customer feedback. Here's an interview with customer experience expert, Annette Franz, where she explains how journey mapping is the backbone of customer experience management.

You can get step-by-step guidance for starting your journey mapping from Franz's book, Customer Understanding.

Take action to reduce customer friction

Reducing friction results in happier customers, reduced costs, and increased revenue.

There's another unexpected benefit: your employees will appreciate it. My book, Getting Service Right, devotes an entire chapter to exploring how broken systems frustrate and discourage employees.

You can take a big step forward by starting with your top complaint.

1. Ask your employees to share the most common customer complaints.

2. Identify the root cause of each one.

3. Find solutions that reduce friction.

How to Balance Service and Cost in the Contact Center

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.

There's a constant tension between staffing and cost.

In contact centers, having too few people means customers have to wait too long for someone to answer the phone, start a chat session, or reply to an email. On the flip side, staffing too many agents can waste money.

There has to be a middle ground.

I interviewed Brad Cleveland, customer experience consultant and author of Contact Center Management on Fast Forward, to get his take on contact center staffing and discover some solutions to this challenge.

Brad Cleveland, Author of Contact Center Management on Fast Forward

Cleveland shared some unexpected insights, such as how keeping customers on hold can increase costs. Many customers will simultaneously contact a company via other channels such as chat, email, and social media when they're waiting on hold for a long time. 

I've been guilty of doing this myself. I call it a channel race and the idea is to see which channel solves my problem first.

The challenge from the company's perspective is each of those contacts engages a different agent, which increases costs. It also makes it more difficult to keep track of a customer's story when they're using multiple channels at once.

Here are a few more topics Cleveland discussed in our interview:

• Why companies should make it easier to get a live person on the phone.

• How to save money by reducing wait times.

• How to use existing staffing levels more effectively.

• When cross-training can hurt productivity.

• Why it's essential to forecast for non-phone channels.

Here's the full 21 minute interview.

I also highly recommend Cleveland's book, Contact Center Management on Fast Forward. It's an essential guide for anyone leading a contact center. You can find it on Amazon.

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.