How to Grow Your Service Culture with Team Champions

Scaling culture is a big challenge in customer-focused organizations.

It's easy when there are just a handful of employees. The boss is also the owner, chief executive, and head culture cheerleader. The culture is easy to discuss, share, and reinforce when the group is small.

Those dynamics change as the company grows. Different departments are created. Executives no longer have directly, daily contact with everyone.

Team champions are a solution I'm increasingly seeing.

Champions, also known as culture ambassadors, are people who help promote the culture in their individual departments or teams. They are typically peers rather than the boss, so can add another voice to the conversation.

Team Champions at GreatAmerica

GreatAmerica is an equipment financing company that uses team champions to help promote its customer-focused culture. I spent some time with the organization last December learning about its service culture and sharing strategies for continued growth.

The organization follows the steps outlined in The Service Culture Handbook:

1. There’s a clear customer service vision

2. Employees are engaged with the vision

3. Operations are aligned around the vision

Sean McCallum, one of GreatAmerica's team champions, was kind enough to join me for a conversation to talk about how the program helps keep the culture strong.

Here are a few things we discussed:

• What is a team champions program?

• How do team champions help promote the culture?

• Why is it helpful to have peers champion the culture?

• How can team champions make your culture more authentic?

• What are the qualities that make a team champion?

Check out the interview to learn how you can implement a team champions program in your organization.

Why Phone Skills Are in High Demand

Vinyl records, fanny packs, and the phone are all making a comeback.

When I started working in the catalog industry nearly 25 years ago, people would call and ask to be sent a catalog. It was a simple call that was easy for a customer service rep to handle quickly. 

Today, that catalog is online and nobody needs to call for it. The order gets placed online as well, eliminating the need for phone order takers. Customers can also track shipments, update billing information, and reset a password without live assistance.

Yet the phone isn't dead.

At least one source reveals phone volume is increasing, and the trend is expected to continue. And it’s a double-whammy. With the simple stuff moving to self-service, the calls are getting more complicated and taking longer to resolve.

Here's why phone skills are in high demand right now.

Why phone skills are necessary

There are three things creating a need for more phone skills. Volume is increasing, calls are getting more complicated, and phone skills are no longer native.

Let's focus on that last one for a moment.

I spent a lot of time on the phone with my friends when I was a kid. This was well before texting, emailing, or even cell phones. We'd sometimes talk for hours, so communicating that way became second nature.

Things have changed. 

People entering today's workforce have rarely used the "phone app" on their phone. Texting, social media, and messaging apps have taken the place of that.

This means phone skills are far less commonplace than they used to be, but employers haven’t necessarily caught on. A recent study from Axonify revealed that 23 percent of contact center agents receive no formal training.

Meanwhile, phone volume is growing.

The 2020 Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report discovered that the phone is still the highest volume channel for contact centers. According to a survey of contact center managers conducted for the report, phone volume is expected to grow 25 percent in 2020.

The report also shared some important context about the service channels customers choose:

• 69 percent of customers prefer self-service.

• 63 percent of customers almost always start with self-service.

This tells us a few things about the calls customers are making:

• They are more urgent.

• The issues are more complex.

• Customers might have already tried another channel.

There are some complicated feelings that go with urgency, complexity, and using multiple channels:

• Urgency and complexity creates anxiety.

• Channel-switching creates frustration.

Navigating these emotions while providing friendly and efficient service is a real challenge for inexperienced and untrained agents.

The phone skills agents need

I hear from a lot of customer service leaders who are searching for phone skills training. In general, there are three skills that are most in demand.

Rapport-building

Establishing rapport over the phone can be difficult without experience. You can't see each other's body language, so the words we choose and our tone of voice carry extra weight.

There are two techniques that are highly effective. The first is to imagine the customer is sitting right in front of you. This reminds you to do a few critical things:

• Sit up straight.

• Smile.

• Eliminate distractions and focus on the person.

Doing all that has the effect of making you sound more positive and in tune with what the customer is saying.

The second technique is called the Five Question Technique. It works by thinking of five questions ahead of time that can help you break the ice (i.e. build rapport) and uncover hidden customer needs.

De-Escalation

Angry or upset customers pose a huge challenge over the phone. People tend to get more judgmental and less open to ideas when they're angry, which makes it much more difficult to solve their problem.

Unfortunately, de-escalation can be difficult when we can't actually see the person. People tend to fly off the handle a lot more when they aren't face-to-face with the person helping them. They can’t see our smile or our empathetic body language.

One of my favorite de-escalation techniques is the LAURA technique. It's an acronym that outlines five specific steps you can take, but it's also a persona. Think of a kind, patient, unflappable customer service rep named Laura. Try to emulate her and you'll probably do well.

Visual Communication

It's hard to get customers to see certain things when you can't just show it to them.

For example, let's say you need a customer's account number from their bill. If you're in person, you can simply ask them to hand you their bill, or you could point to the account number on the page.

That doesn't work over the phone. A different set of skills are needed to help the customer quickly see what you want them to see.

This short video explains how to use visual communication techniques.

Use advanced communication techniques from Phone-Based Customer Service by Jeff Toister

Take Action

There's one piece of advice I often share that surprises people: don't hire a trainer.

That's right. I don't think you should hire me, or any other external trainer for that matter. (It's entirely different if you have an expert phone skills trainer in-house.) I recommend video instead.

You can read more about why here, but here are the two big reasons:

• The training will be more effective if you do it in short bursts over time.

• You can save 90 percent or more by not hiring me directly.

To get you started, check out my LinkedIn Learning course, Phone-Based Customer Service. You can access it with your LinkedIn Learning subscription or get a 30-day trial account.

Phone service still matters from Phone-Based Customer Service by Jeff Toister

Improve Customer Focus with Whole Company Support

Imagine contacting customer service and getting connected with the CEO. 

That's a real possibility if you reach out to customer service software provider, Help Scout. CEO Nick Francis is one of many employees outside the customer support department who regularly answer customer emails and chats.

It's a program called whole company support, and it promotes an incredible level of customer intimacy.

I recently interviewed Kristi Thompson, a Culture Specialist at Help Scout, to learn more about how whole company support helps create a more customer-focused company.

Kristi Thompson, Culture Specialist at Help Scout.

The Interview

We touched on a number of topics in our <20 minute interview. 

• What is whole company support?

• What are the benefits?

• How do you make it easy for people when support is not their regular job?

You can watch the full interview or scroll below to read a synopsis.

What is whole company support?

Whole company support, also known as all-hands support, occurs when employees outside the support team spend time serving customers via various channels such as phone, email, and chat.

At Help Scout, whole company support primarily involves responding to customer emails. The advantage of focusing on email is it allows people to take extra time to research and compose their response and then check what they wrote with a support team member before sending it to a customer.

Other companies include live support such as phone or in-person in their whole company support programs. For example, hotels often have members of the executive team stationed in the lobby to assist guests during busy times.

What are the benefits of whole company support?

Thompson outlined four key benefits that Help Scout gains from offering whole company support. She pointed out that the program is not intended to supplement the support team's staff. Rather, the program is purely about maintaining customer focus.

• It keeps the customer at the center of everything they do.

• Employees develop a deeper understanding of Help Scout products.

• It shortens the feedback loop when employees have a direct customer connection.

• Work is more rewarding because you're connected to your customers.

I can personally vouch for that last benefit.

One of my volunteer activities is performing trail maintenance at Mission Trails Regional Park in San Diego. It's incredibly rewarding when a group of hikers passes by and they pause to thank us for the work we're doing.

Take Action

Flexibility is key if you want to run an effective whole company support program. Employees will be more likely to participate if they find it rewarding and helpful, rather than a mandatory task that has to be crossed-off their to-do list.

Thompson shared a few tips on how Help Scout makes its program work:

• Incorporate it into new hire training for all employees.

• Encourage people to schedule regular shifts so it becomes a habit.

• Provide resources and assistance to make it less intimidating.

You can read more details about Help Scout's whole company support program from this helpful article.

Lesson from The Overlook: Invest in Your Product

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a periodic 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.

Does your product look tired, shabby, or out-of-date?

That was a challenge my wife, Sally, and I faced at The Overlook. The cabin came fully furnished when we bought it in 2016, but it would be a stretch to say that all of the furnishings were high quality. 

We initially replaced the dishes and glasses, so everything would be uniform. Stained linens and rugs were tossed in favor of new ones. New patio furniture suddenly made the deck far more inviting.

Our big splurge was transforming an old garage into a ping pong room.

There were also some mismatched, second-hand furniture pieces that were adequate, but not fantastic. We decided to hold off on replacing those until we learned more about our guests' habits and our own preferences.

We’ve recently replaced some furniture and lamps, and we’re glad we did.

Investing in your product is often necessary to improve or even maintain a positive customer experience. Here's what we did, and why you should consider an investment as well.

A new look at The Overlook

The first big change was converting the master bedroom into a game room.

Sally and I decided to reduce the maximum capacity at The Overlook from eight guests down to six. You can read more about our rationale here, but essentially we thought fewer guests would translate to less damage and more profit.

The master bedroom was on the bottom floor of the three level cabin, and we decided to turn that room into a game room based on guest feedback:

• Parents prefer to sleep in one of the bedrooms on the main floor to be closer to kids and the center of the house.

• Couples tell us it feels more equitable for everyone to have a similar room, versus one couple getting a much larger room than everyone else.

• Access to the spa is off the former master bedroom, so there was a small issue of privacy.

The new game room has shuffleboard, a six-seat table that's perfect for playing games or working a puzzle, and a bluetooth speaker so people can play music. We'll soon be adding a television and better lighting.

The hope is this creates a new selling point for guests.

The other significant change we made was in the great room. There was a large dining table, a too-large area rug, and a large media center that all conspired to make the room feel smaller.

We replaced the dining table, area rug, media console, and updated the lamps (the old ones were wobbly) to create a more unified look and make the space feel more open. The coffee table had previously been replaced, and now the media console and coffee table matched.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time to take a very good after photo on this visit.

That antler chandelier above the dining table? It’s a little wobbly, difficult for the cleaning crew to dust, and is not our style. The replacement has already been ordered and it just needs to be installed.

We traveled to the cabin in early January, when we had a small window of time to make the changes in between guest bookings. Another challenge arose as we worked—one of the beds on the main floor was broken.

I won't speculate on how it got that way, but it needed to be replaced. We had a new bed frame delivered two days later, thanks to the magic of Amazon. The bed is made by Zinus, and is a low-cost but well-made item with excellent assembly instructions. 

Why investing in your product is necessary

Investing in your product isn't always easy. Cashflow is tight in many businesses, especially small ones. Last year's meager profit immediately gets swallowed by this year's big project.

We had a great December. Probably our best month ever. But we poured all that money, and then some, right back into the cabin.

Customers have high expectations and won’t tolerate a lousy product. Those expectations come from a number of places:

• Your competitors. Does your product look tired by comparison?

• Past experience. Have your products become worn, less functional, or outdated over time?

• Promises. Does your advertising communicate a false promise?

Sadly, customers don't always understand the constraints of running a business. They don't care whether cash is tight or margins are slim. They simply expect a good product.

We used our vision, Welcome to your mountain retreat, and guest feedback to guide our updates. Tough decisions needed to be made about where to spend money, so we targeted the areas we felt would yield the biggest bang for the buck.

An unexpected epilogue

Sally and I got The Overlook updated and ready on a Wednesday, just in time for our weekend guests who were expected to arrive on Friday.

A funny thing happened when the guests did arrive.

There were eight people total: six adults and two kids. Our maximum capacity is now six guests. The Overlook has just three beds with no pullout sofa sleepers or air mattresses, so there was really no place for two of them to sleep.

Did they get confused by the transition and book a stay thinking The Overlook still slept eight people? It turns out the guests knew the max was six, but they thought they could save a few dollars and squeeze in two extra people anyway.

Guests like that are more likely to cause damage, steal snow shovels (it’s happened twice), generate noise complaints from our neighbors, and put dirty dishes back in the cupboard. (Yes, people really do that.) Those are exactly the people we’re trying to avoid with the new version of The Overlook.

Fortunately, our property manager was able to re-accommodate them at a larger cabin. We lost out on the revenue, but protecting the cabin from damage is a higher priority. We want it to look fantastic for our next guests.

Visit The Overlook website to learn more about the cabin or to book it for a quiet mountain getaway.

Why a Slight Delay Can Prevent Service Failures

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

It took 12 emails to get a resolution.

I was having a problem with my scheduling software, but the support rep couldn't replicate the issue. My guess was the problem was caused by the latest iPhone update. The rep insisted she was using the same version of iPhone operating software, so that couldn't be the reason.

It took several more emails until the rep finally checked her iPhone software and realized she was running an older version. This new information quickly led to a solution.

The rep's overconfidence had caused unnecessary friction.

The rep is not alone. Many employees provide the wrong answer without stopping to verify a simple detail, often with disastrous consequences.

Here's why it happens and what you can do about it.

The Overconfidence Problem

In November of 2017, Belen Aldecosea was flying home to Florida. She called the airline ahead of time to verify her emotional support hamster, Pebbles, was allowed on the plane. The airline's customer service rep assured Aldecosea that Pebbles could fly.

That was wrong.

The airline's policy prohibited rodents from flying. The overconfident rep hadn't bothered to verify the policy and simply gave Aldecosea what they thought was the answer.

When she got to the airport, Aldecosea discovered Pebbles wasn't allowed to fly. The story ended tragically when she flushed Pebbles down the toilet in an airport restroom.

Controversy ensued. Aldecosea claimed an airline employee told her to do it. The airline denies it. The one area where there’s no disagreement is Aldecosea brought her hamster to the airport because an airline employee gave her the wrong answer.

There are smaller problems caused by employee overconfidence every day:

• Problems take longer to solve

• Customers receive inaccurate information

• Employees create service failures

Why would an employee be overconfident?

There are many causes of employee overconfidence. This is different than laziness or apathy, where an employee simply doesn't care. An overconfident employee is wrong even though they firmly believe they're right.

I detailed some of the causes in my book, Getting Service Right, and in this blog post. Here's a summary:

Inexperience

A lack of experience can cause employees to overrate their abilities. Here's a short passage from Getting Service Right that explains it.

In a series of experiments, David Dunning and Justin Kruger discovered that the less someone knows about a topic, the more they tend to overrate their knowledge. Dunning and Kruger discovered that only people in the top quartile in terms of knowledge typically avoid overrating themselves.

I've run a similar experiment many times with consistent results. I ask a room full of customer service reps to rate the customer service they personally deliver on a scale of 1–5, with 5 being best. Next, I ask the reps to look around the room and assign a rating to the entire team. On average, the reps rate themselves a 4 while rating the team a 3. The math doesn't add up—and it shows that most reps believe they're better than their peers.

Experience

Too much experience can also cause overconfidence. When our brains spot a familiar pattern, we instinctively stop listening and fill in the blank. For example, how would you complete this sentence?

Singing in the ________.

There's a really good chance your brain instinctively came up with an answer without giving it very much thought. I'd wager that most people reading this will instantly fill in the blank with "rain," as in "singing in the rain."

No doubt, right?

Unfortunately, that’s not the answer I was looking for. It might be the correct answer most of the time, but the word I was thinking of was "shower." 

Now go back to customer service. It's easy to imagine a rep instinctively jumping to an answer that's right most of the time, but not always.

Ego

Some customer service reps simply want to be right.

Being absolutely confident in an answer makes them feel like an expert. Having to pause and look something up can feel like weakness when your ego is on the line.

Overcoming Overconfidence

The technique I like to use is pause and be sure.

I wish I had a catchier name for it, but the name describes exactly what you should do in any situation where you can't be verifiably confident in an answer.

1. Pause

2. Verify the answer to be sure.

Here's an example. 

A friend of mine has a poultry allergy. When we dine out, she always has to ask if what she ordered has any poultry in it.

Let's say my friend orders steak, potatoes, and glazed carrots. An overconfident server might look at the menu, see no mention of poultry, and confidently tell my friend the dish is poultry-free.

A server using the pause and be sure method would double check with the kitchen, where they might be surprised to discovered the glazed carrots are made with chicken broth. Not a good option for my friend with a poultry allergy.

Take Action

Customer-focused reps think about the consequences of being wrong.

• An upset customer.

• Wasted time.

• Something worse?

Verifying the correct answer rarely takes an inordinate amount of time. Checking a recipe with the kitchen, searching a knowledge base article, or pausing to ask a supervisor all typically take just a moment.

That slight pause can save you a lot of time in the long run.

Report: New Hires Lack Customer Service Training

My orientation lasted 15 minutes.

I was a teenager, and this was my first day on my first job. It was a retail clothing store and I had miraculously been hired despite having no experience.

The supervisor spent 15 minutes giving me an orientation to the men's department before announcing she was going on break. She handed me the key to the dressing room and left me by myself.

Predictably, my first customer encounter ended in a service failure.

You can hear the full story if you have access to LinkedIn Learning, but the gist is I didn't yet know our products, policies, or procedures. My entire work history was just 15 minutes long, so I hadn’t even learned basic customer service skills.

That was nearly 30 years ago. According to a new report, this is still a problem today.

One of the biggest reasons we routinely get poor service from customer service employees is they've never been trained.

About the Report

The report was commissioned in June of 2019 by the microlearning company, Axonify, and a company called Ipsos provided the research.

The study surveyed 1,000 Americans who work full or part-time as frontline employees in a variety of industries including retail, contact centers, and insurance.

You can read the full report or skip to my analysis below.

New Hire Training Needs to Improve

The report called out several areas where new hire training can be improved. The first, and most obvious, is a lack of training.

Employees aren't being trained

The only formal training I received at the clothing store was a loss-prevention seminar I attended after having been on the job for about two months. Ironically, I learned that following shady-looking people around the store to prevent them from stealing was called “customer servicing.”

I never received any formal training on actual customer service or the products we sold. My boss once told me to greet everyone who came into my department, but that was about it. What I did learn came through experience.

According to the Axonify report, a lack of training is still a real problem:

• 31 percent of retail employees aren't trained

• 23 percent of contact center agents receive no training

A lack of training creates several big problems:

• Revenue decreases because employees can't sell effectively.

• Costs go up because untrained employees take longer to do their jobs.

• Turnover goes up because a lack of training makes the job less desirable.

Employees need training if they're going to do their jobs well.

It doesn't have to be long, expensive, or complicated. You can quickly create an effective training program with a simple checklist.

There’s no time for training

Many companies fail to train employees because leaders think that training takes too much time. They envision long, boring seminars that take employees away from their jobs.

According to the Axonify report, employees want short, practical training modules:

• 90 percent want to be able to connect with critical information anytime, anywhere.

• 72 percent want training they can complete in a few minutes at work.

The best training often combines short, focused lessons with on-the-job application.

That's why my LinkedIn Learning training videos are filmed in short segments that are each just 3-5 minutes long. Each segment contains a hands-on activity, so you can watch a short lesson and then immediately apply what you learned back on the job.

Called microlearning, this technique can help you train faster and better.

Training is wasted

Think of the last time you went to a formal training class. What percentage of the content did you apply on the job? 

It might have been just one or two techniques that made the class worthwhile. But this also means the rest of the class was wasted.

What if you could have learned the good stuff without having to sit through everything else?

The content we learn in a training class, but never apply on the job, is called scrap learning. Estimates of scrap learning in the typical training program range from 45 to 80 percent.

Training content often goes to waste when it's not personalized, relevant, or delivered effectively. Here are some more results from the Axonify report:

• 91 percent want training that's easy to complete and understand

• 89 percent want personalized and relevant training

• 87 percent want to apply training on the job

My Customer Service Tip of the Week email is an example of training that fits all these criteria. Here's how many customer service leaders use it:

1. Subscribers receive a weekly tip that's easy to read and understand.

2. Teams discuss the tip to make it personalized and relevant to their situation.

3. Employees immediately apply the tip on the job to sharpen their skills.

Take Action

Successful, customer-focused organizations succeed in part because they invest in training their employees. Training doesn't have to be long, complicated, or expensive. It just has to be effective.

I've compiled this list of free customer service training resources to make it easy for you to give your employees the training they need.

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.