How to go virtual when your live event gets cancelled

The coronavirus is having a huge impact on the meeting business.

Many conferences are being cancelled or postponed. Other events are still moving forward, but organizers are monitoring high cancellation rates.

Preventing the spread of the disease is understandably the first priority. We want to keep ourselves, our family, our friends, and our communities safe.

Yet business must continue.

A number of clients have asked me about hosting a webinar in lieu of an in-person event. It's certainly safer than getting a large group of people together in the same room, but clients also worry the webinar won't be as impactful.

Here are some tips for making your webinar great. 

Pick the right platform

Hosting a great webinar starts with picking the right platform. I look for three things when selecting a platform to use:

1. Is it easy for participants to use?

2. Does it include interactive features such as polling and chat?

3. Is it reliable?

I currently use Zoom because it checks all the boxes.

First-time users have to take a moment to download the Zoom software, which is a minor inconvenience. After that, I found it works exceptionally well. Webinar participants quickly figure out the intuitive features.

One thing I really like about Zoom is how it easily handles video. I like to turn on my webcam when I'm presenting so participants can see me. It makes it feel more personal.

Other platforms I've tried slow down considerably when you use video, but Zoom seems to work without a hiccup. And if you have more than one presenter, Zoom will automatically focus the video on the person talking.

Check out more audio, video, and lighting tools to make your webinar look and sound great.

Make it interactive

We've all been victimized by a boring webinar, where some monotone presenter drones on over text-heavy slides. It's no fun at all!

A good webinar should be just as engaging as a live event, even if that engagement is a little bit different. I aim for some form of audience interaction every five minutes to keep things lively and prevent participants from tuning out.

Here are just a few ways you can make your webinar interactive:

• Polling

• Chat

• Q&A

• Individual exercises

Here’s an example of an individual exercise. Participants are given 30 seconds and asked to try and solve the puzzle on their own. The activity reinforces the concept that solutions sometimes seem impossible until we change our perspective.

Use good visuals

Think about the most memorable presentations you've attended. There's a good chance the presenter used really clear visuals that were light on text and high on impact (if they used any visuals at all).

Here's an example of a slide I used in a recent webinar to spur a conversation about things you should never say to a customer:

Notice I didn't create a bulleted list of examples! The participants actually created that list themselves via chat, which made it much more interactive.

Provide additional tools

One thing I always like to do is provide additional tools or resources to help participants dive deeper into the webinar topic.

For example, in a recent webinar about hidden obstacles to outstanding customer service, I offered participants a workbook with ten training exercises they could implement with their team.

I use Join By Text to make it really easy for participants to get the download. Participants text a special keyword to the number and they’re prompted to share an email address. The workbook is then automatically emailed to them. (Go ahead, try it!)

This only works in the United States, so I set up a landing page on my website that allows people outside the US to also get the resource.

Record it!

One of the great advantages of hosting a webinar is it's easy to record.

This enables you to share it with participants who could not attend the live event. It also lets people who did attend go back and review the material as a refresher.

Here's an example of a webinar I did on microlearning with Bryan Naas from Lessonly.

Let's do a webinar!

Are you looking for an impactful customer service keynote speaker, but don't want to risk a live event?

I've put together a special offer to make holding a webinar easy.

• Convenient: I’ll host the webinar for you and handle registration.

• Customized: We will customize the content to your audience.

• Interactive: The live webinar will feature many interactive activities to enhance learning.

Jeanne Bliss: How to Get Your CEO to Care About Customer Experience

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's probably the number one question I get in presentations.

Someone will invariably ask, "How do I get my CEO to care about customer experience?" The person will go on to explain their CEO, or other executives, just care about the numbers.

I've struggled to provide a good answer to help get buy-in for customer experience (CX) when it’s not already obvious.

So I turned to CX pioneer and bestselling author, Jeanne Bliss, for some advice. Bliss shared some wonderfully practical tips in our interview and I'm really fired up to share it!

CX Pioneer and bestselling author, Jeanne Bliss. (Photo courtesy of Customer Bliss.)

Here are just a few topics we covered:

• What metrics does your CEO truly care about?

• Why are we losing customers?

• What should be included in an executive dashboard?

• How can silos obscure CX problems?

• What is leadership bravery, and why do we need it?

You can watch the full, 22 minute interview or just skim the highlights below.

What metrics do executives care about?

You ultimately need to tie CX to the company's financials. Unfortunately, many common CX metrics fall short.

For example, a transactional survey score might tell you if customers were generally happy when they visited your store, called customer service, or tried out your latest product. But there's no direct connection to revenue.

Bliss recommends getting your CFO to help you answer the following questions:

• What's the volume and expected value of customers we gained?

• What’s the volume and expected value of customers we lost?

• What's the net change in customer value?

It's important to gain consensus from the rest of the executive team on how new and lost customer numbers are calculated, along with their relative value.

You can then boil down the numbers to a metric your CEO will likely care about: net customer growth. 

Bliss shared an example from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. In the past, a St. Jude leader might organize a fun run event to raise money, and report the percentage increase in participants. Now the organization reports the net increase in number of donors, and tracks what activities brought more donors in.

Bliss recommends reporting customer growth data in numbers of customers and expected dollar value, rather than just percentages. She suggests that a percentage can be too abstract to demonstrate a clear financial impact.

Calculating this number is the first step. Attaching it to a clear story is step two.

Why are we losing customers?

There’s a great moment in our interview where Bliss describes the utopia of a CEO pounding on the boardroom table and demanding to know why the company is losing customers.

“Why?! Why?! Why are we losing customers?!”

Finding the answer to that question requires us to reframe the stories we share to focus on your customers' goals. Focusing on your customers' goals makes it easier to draw a line of sight between net customer growth and customer experience.

Bliss shared the example of Bombardier Aerospace, which sells planes to high net worth individuals. Those buyers don’t care a lot about internally-focused data such as the sales process or how many spare parts are in stock.

Private jet customers have somewhere to go, and they need to get there fast. Bliss helped Bombardier reframe its customer stories to focus on how it would keep customers flying. That’s far more important to customers than a survey or the lead time on a needed part.

Bliss described how executive dashboards often contain red, yellow, and green dots to indicate key performance metrics that are doing well (green), in the danger zone (yellow), or failing (red). She said something that really stuck with me:

When you're measuring the wrong stuff, you're going to get a green dot for stuff that's a red dot for the customer.

Learn more from Jeanne Bliss

Did you skip all the way down here without watching the interview? Do yourself a favor and go watch the full interview here. Bliss is both insightful and entertaining.

You can see more videos from Bliss on her website, including her three principles for improving lives. I think you’ll also enjoy her description of the “find your three blocks long” concept.

Bliss has written a number of books, and I'm a big fan of Would You Do That to Your Mother? It describes how to navigate away from burning customers with "gotcha moments" to earning their loyalty through "we've got your back" moments.

Why you need to follow the service culture recipe

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.

My friend, Sarah, is a baker.

She's taught me that baking is all about precision. You have to follow the recipe precisely to get the expected result. The outcome might be disappointing if you're off on your measurements, omit an ingredient, or fail to bake at the right temperature.

Even the smallest changes can make a difference. 

For example, Sarah's famous peanut butter cookies taste a lot more buttery if she lets the butter warm up to room temperature before mixing it into the cookie dough. (Note to self: ask Sarah for more peanut butter cookies.)

Baking is an important metaphor for building a service culture. 

A lot of leaders discover The Service Culture Handbook, and pick and choose which concepts they want to try. Inevitably, they're disappointed with the results.

Just like baking, you need to follow the recipe if you want a strong service culture.

Sarah Levine baking a pirate ship birthday cake.

Why picking and choosing steps doesn't work

The customer service leader was stuck.

She found my phone number in The Service Culture Handbook (page xiii) and sent me a text. Service leaders often call, text, or email me for advice. These conversations help me learn about the challenges they face implementing a customer-focused culture.

This particular leader was trying to write a customer service vision for her company.

A vision is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that gets everyone on the same page. It's the cornerstone of a customer-focused culture and the focal point of the entire book.

She had a good idea of what the vision should communicate, but was struggling to get the words just right. I asked her a few questions about the process she was following and learned she was trying to write it on her own.

I’ve called this the biggest mistake when writing a vision.

The process outlined in the book is an inclusive one. It solicits input from all employees, and the relies on a cross-functional group of senior leaders, middle managers, and individual contributors to write the statement. It’s designed to avoid blind spots by getting multiple perspectives.

When leaders skip steps in the process, like writing the vision on their own, they inevitably struggle:

• The vision statement ends up full of empty marketing jargon.

• Employees don't buy-in.

• Months are spent on a process that should take two weeks.

Getting buy-in, maintaining momentum, and seeing real change is difficult. Skipping steps won't make it any easier.

The leader and I talked through the process. We reviewed the steps together and she came up with a plan. It was tough for her—she instinctively wanted to do things a different way.

But she stuck with it and followed the recipe.

In the end, she and her team created a vision statement that everyone was proud of. The vision was a simple sentence that described the culture and captured the company’s aspirations for being even more customer-focused in the future.

How was the service culture process created?

This is a fair question. Many customer service "experts" are guilty of creating advice out of thin air and then passing it off as wisdom without acknowledging that it's untested.

Here I took another lesson from Sarah.

Sarah does a lot of experimenting when she creates a new recipe. She tries new ideas, makes adjustments, and keeps working until the recipe is perfected. 

Then she tries to make it even better.

I created the service culture process based on my work as an internal training director and then later as a consultant. It's been developed over the course of 20 years after working with hundreds of leaders and thousands of employees. 

When I wrote the book, I researched customer-focused companies I admired, but had not worked with. I talked to leaders and experts, and further refined the process based on what I learned from them.

The process has been proven to work.

But I’m not satisfied. I continue to make adjustments based on feedback I receive from leaders. For example, I've recently changed the name of the customer service vision to "customer experience vision." It's a small change that makes an important distinction.

Is this the only way to build a service culture?

Of course not!

There are a lot of recipes for peanut butter cookies. Sarah's are the best I've tasted, but there are other recipes that make pretty good cookies as well.

The important distinction here is if you want to make Sarah's peanut butter cookies, you had better follow Sarah's recipe precisely. 

Building your service culture is the same way. Pick a proven recipe and stick to it and you're more likely to get a great result.

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Why I'm Finally Releasing The Service Culture Handbook on Audible

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.

Starting today, The Service Culture Handbook is available as an audiobook.

The book was originally published in March, 2017. It's been available as a paperback and an ebook for three years and has become a bestseller. So you might be wondering why it's just now coming out on Audible.

The answer is reader feedback. 

I was originally against the idea of an audiobook because I didn't think that format would be a good experience. I was wrong.

The Service Culture Handbook is a step-by-step guide. It is intended to be read one chapter or even one section at a time. Readers are encouraged to put down the book and implement the steps to get their employees obsessed with service.

My original thinking was people wouldn't do that with an audiobook. I imagined they'd passively listen on their morning commute until the book ended, or they got to work, whichever came first.

Fortunately, I put my phone number and email address in the book so I could easily connect with readers. People have generously shared their feedback with me and I've learned quite a bit.

For example, some people want to hear the book all the way through to get an idea of the process, and then revisit individual chapters. Having the ability to listen to the book while driving, taking the train, flying, or even walking the dog makes this easier than reading a paperback or ebook. 

A client who hired me for a keynote presentation told me her executive team prefers to listen to speakers' audiobooks before a presentation. It helps them easily identify some of the main ideas to focus on with their team as they prepare them to attend my keynote.

At least one person told me they listen to audiobooks while running. That’s really tough to do with a paperback!

Others just prefer audio. They can still go through the book one chapter at a time, but now they'll be able to do that in their preferred format. 

A few people need audio because they are either blind or visually impaired. Until now, the only way they could access the book would be to use a special software program that reads the book to them. I've been told it sounds like a robot and isn't particularly engaging.

That led to another concern—quality.

Many people have asked if I narrated the book myself. I did not. Once I realized there was a need for an audiobook, I wanted to ensure the production was professional quality. I wasn't convinced I could easily do that on my own.

Fortunately, I was able to partner with Tantor Media, one of the most respected names in the audiobook business. Tantor helped me find a talented professional, Roger Wayne, to narrate the book. Tantor also ensured the production was studio quality.

I promise you won't hear my dog barking in the background!

So please download the book and give it a listen if audiobooks are your thing. Or don't if you don't enjoy audiobooks. The great news is you now have the option.

Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback about the format. I appreciate you!

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Seven Ways to Optimize Your Existing Service Channels

I always call to order pizza.

My favorite pizza place, Mountain Mike's, has an online ordering system. But that would require me to create an account, remember a password, and click through a bunch of options each time I wanted to place an order.

That seems like too much trouble since I don't order pizza very often.

Instead, I call and a friendly employee answers right away. The employee uses caller ID to identify me and pull up my order history. All I have to say is, "I'll have the usual, please!"

That's an optimized service channel! 

There's a good chance you are supporting multiple service channels in your business. Here seven ways you can optimize your existing service channels.

1. Identify your customers

Caller ID isn't new technology, yet my pizza place is one of the few companies I regularly do business with that uses it effectively.

Most of the time, I find myself endlessly repeating my account information.

• Name

• Phone number

• Address

• Mother’s maiden name

• Favorite ice cream flavor

• Which Ninja Turtle do I most identify with?

You'll make your customers a lot happier if you can keep that stuff to a minimum.

Capture unique identifiers such as phone number and social media handles, and use that information to skip unnecessary identity verifications at the start of each contact.

2. Forecast all channels

Contact centers traditionally forecast phone volume, so staffing can be adjusted to meet the expected demand. For some reason, this doesn't happen in other service channels.

One study by contact center consulting firm, Services Triad, found a sharp drop off in forecasting for email and social media:

Contact center leaders routinely tell me they struggle to keep up with demand in non-phone channels like chat, social, and particularly email. You can improve performance by staffing to demand in all service channels, not just phone.

3. Monitor all channels 

There's a good chance you monitor your agents' phone calls and routinely give them feedback. But what about emails, chat sessions, or social media posts?

As a young contact center manager, I learned the hard way that written communication must be monitored. When I started monitoring my agents' emails, I discovered 50 percent had errors!

Quality isn't just a phone thing. Contact center leaders should monitor all channels, coach agents on their performance, and identify trends. You might be missing a lot of issues if you don’t!

4. Empower agents equally

If a customer emails your company, will they get the same level of service as if they chatted or contacted you via social media?

Many social media teams are empowered to do much more for customers than other teams are allowed to do. This encourages customers to voice their complaints on social media rather than using a more private channel.

Meanwhile, agents working for outsourcers, particularly chat and phone agents, seem to be the least empowered. They’re encumbered by strict rules and onerous scripts.

You can audit this by identifying common customer issues and determine whether they can quickly be resolved via each channel you serve. This exercise might yield some surprises!

5. Track conversations across channels

It seems natural when you start a conversation with a friend on social media, resume the conversation via text, and keep the conversation going when you see the friend in person.

Companies struggle to do that.

Here's where you need a customer service software solution that puts all conversations in one easy place. You want your agents to quickly see that last phone call, email, and chat conversation along with recent orders and other account history.

This saves customers from repeating themselves, which in turn makes contacts go a lot faster. And that's more satisfying for customers and employees alike.

6. Use a consistent brand voice

Do your agents come across as playful on social media, but sound like robots on the phone? 

Contact centers should use a consistent brand voice across all channels. The idea is to represent your brand using similar words and tone regardless of how you're communicating with customers.

Customer service writing expert, Leslie O'Flahavan, provides some great examples in this short video.

Write in your company's brand voice from Customer Service: Serving Customers Through Chat and Text by Leslie O'Flahavan

7. Dump underperforming channels

Your business doesn't need to serve customers via every channel imaginable. In fact, you'd be better off avoiding channels where there's no demand or you can't effectively deliver service.

Costco, Trader Joe's, and In-N-Out Burger are all known for being customer-focused organizations. Yet try to engage any of them on Twitter and you'll realize none of those companies are tweeting. That's just not their strength.

A contact center leader told recently told me her team supports chat, but they get very few chat requests. She has a challenge staffing for such low demand, where an agent needs to be available just in case a chat comes in.

That agent is probably better deployed to another channel, like email, that has far more consistent and predictable volume.

Take Action

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it's a good start. Each of these tips can help you serve customers more efficiently and consistently. 

You'll also reduce channel racing. This happens when a customer doesn't trust a particular channel, so they start contacting your company via multiple channels to see which one best serves their needs. 

For example, a customer waiting on hold might tweet their frustration, send an email to the company, and start a chat session with another rep. That means one problem ultimately engages four agents rather than one, all because the customer didn't trust any one channel to handle their issue.

Optimizing all of your service channels will quickly improve the customer experience and reduce your servicing costs.

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Quickly Solve Service Problems with Five Whys

New hires were struggling in the contact center.

The reason was a mystery to the customer service leader. Her company had a comprehensive training program, a dedicated trainer, and supportive supervisors. Yet it was taking new employees too long to get up to speed.

The leader and her team had been working on the issue for months. She finally asked for my advice, and was surprised when I helped her find the solution in just a few minutes.

Is it because I'm a wizard? 

No, not really. I simply used a problem-solving technique called the Five Whys. You can use it to quickly get to the heart of many customer service challenges.

Here's what it is, and how you can use it too.

How does the Five Whys technique work?

Many customer service challenges aren't clearly defined, which makes them hard to solve. Here are a few examples:

• We're getting too many complaints.

• Employee turnover is too high.

• We need to get everyone on the same page.

You need something much more specific if you want to solve the problem.

For example, why are we getting too many complaints? The solution will be completely different if the root cause is a defective product versus surly employees.

The Five Whys technique works by asking the question "Why," until you get to the real root of the issue. The average is thought to be five times, hence the name "Five Whys."

Here's how I used this technique to help the customer service leader diagnose why new hires were struggling to do their jobs:

Me: Why do you think new hires are struggling?
Leader: New hires are making a lot of mistakes.

Me: Why are they making mistakes?
Leader: They don't remember basic procedures.

Me: Why don't they remember basic procedures?
Leader: We don't spend enough time reinforcing basic procedures in training.

Me: Why don't you spend enough time reinforcing basic procedures in training?
Leader: Because we spend a lot of time covering exceptions and special processes.

Me: Why do you spend so much time covering exceptions and special processes?
Leader: Because we want agents to be aware of them.

The third question was the lightbulb moment. It was an insight that was only obvious in hindsight: new hires weren’t getting adequate training on the skills they needed most.

The fourth question brought a little more clarity and then the last question was the show stopper. 

The current training program inundated new hires with procedures they might use once every three months. By the leader’s own admission, this was more for awareness since customer service agents were likely to forget them.

The heart of the issue was these procedures were given equal time with more common procedures that were used on a daily basis. The result was new hires weren't getting a chance to master the basics. 

Armed with this insight, the customer service leader completely transformed the training program.

The new focus emphasized the basics so employees could master skills they would use every day. New hires were then taught to identify exceptions and ask for help, which is what they had been doing any way. Agents didn’t need to know what the specific exception was, only that it didn’t fit in with standard procedures.

The result was fewer mistakes, shorter training time, and better productivity.

Take Action

Try using the Five Whys technique to solve one of your own customer service challenges. Ask the question, "Why?" until you get to the heart of the problem.

Learn how to quickly diagnose and solve more customer service issues with my LinkedIn Learning courses, Quick Fixes to Attain Excellent Customer Service. Here’s a preview:

Welcome from Quick Fixes to Attain Excellent Customer Service by Jeff Toister

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Why You Need a Customer Experience Vision

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 some confusion between customer service and experience.

I know I've contributed to it. For years, I've talked about having a customer service vision—a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page—as the cornerstone of a customer-focused culture.

Yet I've recently started calling it a customer experience vision.

One reason is I wrote The Service Culture Handbook from a customer service perspective, but the concepts apply equally well to customer experience. Book Authority put the book at #14 on its list of best customer experience books of all time.

Customer feedback has also shaped my thinking. 

I've heard from hundreds of business leaders who are working on their vision statements. The place where most people get stuck is thinking too much about their service, and not enough about their customers' experience.

So here's why you need a customer experience vision, whether you're focused on experience or just customer service.

What's the difference between service and customer experience?

A lot of customers talk about service and experience interchangeably. That's okay for customers, but it's limiting for business leaders.

Customer service is the assistance a company provides to help people buy or use its products. Customer experience is the sum of all interactions a customer has with a company.

I'm writing this from my favorite local coffee shop. The barista provides great customer service by being cheerful, quickly making drinks, and calling people when their drink is ready. 

The coffee shop provides a great experience by having strong wifi, ample seating, and music at just the right level to help you feel vibrant, yet focused. The parking lot outside, which is entirely out of the coffee shop's control, is also part of my experience when I come here.

You’ll miss a lot if you own the coffee shop and you only focus on making sure your baristas are friendly, efficient, and helpful. Here’s a more in-depth explanation that highlights additional differences between the two concepts.

Why do we need a customer experience vision?

In a word, silos.

They plague companies big and small. People tend to approach their jobs with a very narrow focus, especially if they don't have regular customer contact. Marketing does marketing, operations does operations, service does service, etc.

Here's an example of someone who technically did their job correctly, but completely missed the big picture.

A customer experience vision gets everyone on the same page. It describes the type of experience you want your customer to have, and provides a beacon for everyone to work towards.

• Product Development

• Manufacturing

• Marketing

• Operations

• Customer Service

Even finance, human resources, and IT departments, teams that don’t traditionally talk to customers, can become customer-focused when they operate under a common vision.

Why change the name to a customer experience vision?

Focusing on customer experience creates a better statement, even if you're just writing your vision for a customer service team. There are three qualities of an outstanding vision:

1. Simple and easily understood.

2. Focused on customers.

3. Reflects both who we are now and who we aspire to be in the future.

Many leaders have told me they struggled with the second part, keeping it focused on customers. People naturally default to thinking of themselves, even when writing a vision statement.

For example, one small business owner recently told me his team was stuck on adjectives that describe customer service such as helpful, friendly, and efficient. My advice was to reframe the discussion to think about why you are doing those things.

Here are a few examples:

The vision at food distribution company, KeHE, is "We serve to make lives better." The company tries to improve the lives of all its stakeholders through the distribution of fresh, natural, organic, and specialty foods.

Equipment financing company, GreatAmerica, defines its vision as, "We help our customers achieve greater success." The company's primary customers are office equipment dealers, and GreatAmerica is trying to help those businesses become more successful.

The USS Midway Museum is a retired naval aircraft carrier that has been rated as the top tourist attraction in San Diego. The customer experience vision at the Midway is "Preserve the historic USS Midway and the legacy of those who serve; Inspire and Educate future generations; and Entertain our museum guests." The people who work there are passionate about educating people on what it was like to serve on the ship.

Aren't they really the same thing?

Fundamentally, yes. There's no difference between a good customer experience vision or a customer service vision. In fact, the process for writing one is exactly the same.

You can still call it a customer service vision if you want. Depending on the audience in front of me, I will too.

Keep in mind that companies already use other statements as their customer experience or customer service vision:

• Mission

• Corporate vision

• Values

• Brand slogan

• Customer service motto

Whatever you call it, focusing on your customer's experience makes it better.

Take Action

Here are a few resources to help you write your vision statement.

• Use this step-by-step guide

• Refer to chapter three of The Service Culture Handbook

• Watch this short how-to video (LinkedIn Learning access may be required)

Write a customer service vision from Leading a Customer-Centric Culture by

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How to Improve New Hire Training

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

A customer service leader recently emailed me for some training advice.

Their onboarding program for new hires included three days of product training. The leader felt new hires were not engaged during the training and frequently failed to retain much of the content. 

He was hoping for a way to get people more excited about three days of product training, but that's not the advice I gave him. Three days of boring, irrelevant content was the problem.

So what should he do?

I interviewed JD Dillon, Chief Learning Officer at Axonify, a company that provides a platform to enable effective microlearning. Dillon gave some excellent suggestions, and I've added a few of my own.

The Interview

You can watch the video of the full 22-minute interview or scroll down to read the highlights.

Ways to Improve New Hire Training

Dillon and I tackled a number of issues in our conversation. Here are some of the top challenges that we discussed.

Why do companies fail to properly train new hires?

Dillon points out that many leaders feel pressed for time. 

They don't think they can spare the necessary moments to create a learning plan, spend time with new hires, evaluate their progress, and provide constructive feedback.

The alternative is a disaster.

Without proper training, employees make more mistakes, are slower to reach peak performance, and are more likely to quit. All of this takes far more of the manager's time than training people right in the first place.

What is the difference between onboarding and new hire training?

Both are important, but there's an essential difference.

Onboarding starts the day an employee is hired, and becomes an ongoing process. For practical purposes, I mark the end of onboarding as the point where an employee is fully trained to do their job. 

There's a lot of stuff that's included in onboarding:

• New hire paperwork

• Compliance stuff

• Tours and orientations

• Getting new hires set up with work tools

• Giving people access to buildings, networks, etc.

Training is also a part of onboarding, where new hires learn the specific knowledge and skills necessary to do their jobs. 

You can learn more from my LinkedIn Learning course, Running Company Onboarding.

What are some common flaws with new hire programs?

There are a number of common challenges that are easily fixed.

The first is creating clear learning objectives. Many new hire programs are content-focused, and the desired results are ill-defined. Once you identify exactly what a fully trained person should be able to do, you can work backwards to create more effective training. 

You can use this worksheet to create your learning objectives.

Another challenge is access to information. Dumping three days worth of product knowledge on a hapless group of new employees is a recipe for disaster. People quickly forget information they don't immediately use.

Dillon suggests finding easy ways to give employees just-in-time access to the information they need. At the 13:25 mark in our interview, he shares an example of a grocery store using the computerized scale in the deli to give employees quick access to how-to information.

A third flaw is a lack of assessment. You need a way to determine whether or not someone is trained.

How can you assess whether someone is trained?

The answer to this question relies on having clear learning objectives (see above). 

Once you clearly define what a fully trained employee should be able to do, you can assess whether they've been trained by observing them doing their jobs.

For example, when I've created new hire training programs for contact center agents, new agents were considered fully trained once they could meet basic quality standards while handling live contacts.

More Training Resources

I've gathered a list of resources that can make it easy for you to create effective new hire training programs.

Start by checking out Dillon's personal website, which has a lot of great insight on improving workplace learning.

If I could buy just one book on how to train, it would be Tellling Ain't Training by Harold D. Stolovitch and Erica J. Keeps. It provides clear and comprehensive information for building simple, yet highly effective training lessons.

Finally, my How to Design and Deliver Training Programs course on LinkedIn Learning can guide you step-by-step through quickly creating an effective training program.

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Five Ways to Deliver a Better Experience on the Phone

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A recent blog post outlined the increasing demand for phone skills.

Automation and self-service have ensured that the calls agents get are more complicated than ever. Meanwhile, the phone is still the most popular channel for customers who wish to reach a live agent.

All this means the phone is definitely not dead.

So what are you going to do about it? Here are five steps you can take to improve the customer experience for people who call your company.

Solution #1: Reduce Wait Times

Customers hate to wait. Nothing makes our call feel less important than listening to a recorded voice on loop tell us that our call is important.

When customers call, it's likely because their issue is urgent, complex, or both.

The obvious solution is to add additional staffing, but companies worry about costs. Contact center expert, Brad Cleveland, has some great suggestions for making extra staff pay for themselves.

You can also add a callback option, where customers can opt to receive a callback when an agent is ready rather than waiting on hold.

Solution #2: Make the Wait Seem Shorter

There are times when you can't reduce the actual wait time. Perhaps it's an unexpected spike in calls, or a storm has prevented half your team from coming in.

You can still make the wait seem shorter. Here are a few ideas:

• Avoid looping hold messages.

• Let people know the approximate wait time.

• Make button pushing count.

That last one is critical. If your interactive voice response (IVR) system asks a customer to punch in information like an account number, they had better not have to repeat it when they get a live agent on the phone. 

Solution #3: Answer with a Live Person

Raise your hand if you've ever yelled, "Human! Human! Human!" into a phone. 

Customers find it extremely frustrating to have a clumsy IVR act as a roadblock between them and service. They're likely calling because they already tried self-service and it didn't work, or they feel their issue is so urgent or complicated that it needs a live agent.

Some companies have skipped the IVR altogether and have a live human answer their phones. It costs a little more on the front end, but it's a breath of fresh air for your customers.

Solution #4: Improve First Contact Resolution

Customers really get aggravated when they think their issue is resolved, only to realize they have to call back again a short while later.

This is where first contact resolution (FCR) comes in. Focusing your agents on FCR delivers two big wins:

• Customers don't have to call back.

• Reducing repeat contacts reduces your contact volume.

Don't get hung up on measurement. It’s very hard to come up with an accurate way to measure FCR. Frankly, it doesn’t matter that much. 

It's the idea of preventing the next call that counts. Work with your agents to identify the reasons customers might have to call a second time and brainstorm ways to prevent that from happening. If you want to measure something, including “call prevention” as an item in your monitoring process.

For example, let’s say a customer calls with a question about setting up the voicemail on her new phone. Is there a reason that the customer might have to call back? Perhaps the follow-up is the show the customer how to set an out of office message.

Ready for the really good news? Average handle time tends to stay the same when you focus on FCR.

Solution #5: Reduce Transfers

It can be frustrating to call a company, tell the agent your story, and then get transferred to another agent where you have to tell your story all over again.

Some transfers are necessary, but many can be prevented.

Identify the top reasons calls must be transferred to another department, team, or tier level. See if there are ways the initial agent can handle more of those issues with just a little more training, resources, or authority.

This empowers your frontline agents to provide better service, and frees up your experienced agents to spend more time on the really complicated stuff.

Take Action

The phone is not new or exciting, so it might be tempting to short-change this channel. Yet the phone is still the most critical channel for most contact centers.

Customers don't want to call you. They feel they have to because:

• Their issue is urgent.

• The problem seems complex.

• Another channel didn't work.

This makes the case for providing the very best experience over the phone.

For even more ways to improve the phone experience, I recommend The Effortless Experience by Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick DeLisi. It's chock-full of activities you can use to engage your agents and make things easier for your customers.

Does Your Company Need a Chief Experience Officer?

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Customer Experience futurist, Blake Morgan, recently wrote an article for Forbes titled, "The Case Against a Chief Customer Officer."

In it, Morgan argues that creating the role of Chief Customer Officer or Chief Experience Officer (CCO and CXO, respectively) is often just paying lip service to the idea of customer-centricity. It's a solid point.

I posted the article on LinkedIn and there was a lively discussion. Some people agreed Morgan was spot-on, while others disagreed and advocated for a CXO role. Unfortunately, data and examples were slim.

So I decided to find some data, or at least a few examples, that could answer whether having a CXO makes sense.

Do customer-centric companies have a CXO?

The short answer is not necessarily.

Some do, but not all. And there's a huge variable that seems to determine whether this role is actually successful. (More on that in a moment.)

I'll be the first to admit my study is narrow, but it's a start. There are 11 customer-centric companies profiled in my book, The Service Culture Handbook, so I decided to examine them.

How many of these companies have a senior level executive whose title is CCO, CXO, or something substantially similar?

The answer is 36 percent, or 4 out of 11.

When does having a CXO make sense?

Another way to look at the small sample of customer-focused companies from The Service Culture Handbook is 7 out of 11 do not have a CXO. Yet these companies like REI, Shake Shack, and Zendesk are all highly customer-focused.

There's one variable that seems to determine whether a CXO role makes sense for a company: whether or not that person has functional responsibilities.

All of the CXOs in Service Culture companies oversee some specific function. 

Ian Deason, Sr. Vice President of Customer Experience at JetBlue, oversees all customer-facing operations. This includes the airports, customer support, and inflight departments.

Brooke Skinner Rickettes, Chief Experience Officer at Cars.com, is in charge of marketing. She also leads strategy for product and design.

I've talked with several CXOs off the record who were without any functional responsibilities. In each case, they expressed frustration about being unable to effectively influence other parts of the company. It seemed the CEO had delegated customer experience by creating the role, and other executives ignored it because it wasn't their responsibility.

Take Action

The real question for your business is not, "Should we add a CXO?"

Adding one doesn’t automatically make your company more customer-centric. Not having one doesn’t mean your company can’t have a strong service culture, either.

A better question is, "What governance structure best fits our strategy?" It doesn't make sense to create a CXO position if they don't have a specific role to play.