What you need to know about internal customer service

"I won't give you that report."

The report tracked the percentage of successful credit card offers made by each sales rep in our contact center. The initiative was created by the marketing department, and a marketing manager controlled access to the report. 

This was more than twenty years ago, when large reports were printed and distributed as physical copies. The data you can get with a few clicks today required someone with access to the right computer system back then.

The manager treated me with open disdain when I called and asked to be added to the distribution list. She worked in the great kingdom of marketing, while I was in the lowly call center.

Withholding the report was a power play.

We've all encountered internal roadblocks like this manager. These are coworkers who should be on our side, but appear to steadfastly work against us. It's frustrating and annoying.

There is a solution.

I eventually got my own copy of the report. And I learned how to overcome the internal stigma of working in the call center to successfully partner with other departments. One program added an extra $1 million per year in additional revenue.

The secret is understanding your most important internal customers, and learning how to become indispensable to them.

What is internal customer service?

A customer is anyone you serve, so internal customer service is serving internal customers. This includes several groups of coworkers:

• People on your team

• Your boss

• People in other departments

It can also include other groups such as contractors, vendors, and partners who work closely with us.

The marketing manager didn't view me as an internal customer, so she was dismissive of my request because it didn’t appear to benefit her. But I was a customer—her department was "selling" the report, and I wanted to buy it.

There are a few qualities that make internal service unique:

• Frequent interactions

• Closer interpersonal relationships (sometimes)

• Two-way service

Two-way service occurs when each party serves the other, so you're each other's customer. 

My mistake in approaching the marketing manager was not recognizing a two-way service relationship. She was a customer for my services as well, since she was responsible for the credit card project and she could benefit if the acceptance rate improved. But I didn’t consider her needs when I requested the report.

Eventually, I was able to share my progress. She gladly added me to the report distribution once she saw that I was helping her numbers look good.

You can identify your own internal customers with the help of this short training video.

Define internal customer service from Customer Service: Serving Internal Customers by Jeff Toister

Identifying your most important internal customers

It's great to have positive relationships with all of your internal customers. There are a few individuals or groups where a great relationship is extra important to your success.

For instance, the marketing manager could have been an important ally for my project. We both shared the same goal of increasing the credit card acceptance rate. My job got more difficult when she refused to put me on the distribution list for the report.

I learned from this experience the next time I worked on a project that involved another department. One example was call center agents were asked to upsell slow-moving products, but were having little success.

A merchandising manager and his team were internal customers for this project. I was there customer, too, I needed their help to identify the right sales pitch for our call center agents to make to customers.

Rather than tell the manager what I needed from him, I started this relationship by asking more about what he was trying to achieve. This led to a few insights:

• Slow-moving products took up valuable space in the warehouse.

• Selling these items freed up cash to invest in better products.

• The manager was evaluated based on how well his purchases sold.

Once I understood these needs, I was able to describe how I could help him achieve his goals. This made him a willing partner who was eager to help me get what I needed to our call center agents could improve their sales.

Can you identify your most important customers and their needs?

Identify key customer relationships from Customer Service: Serving Internal Customers by Jeff Toister

How do you provide outstanding internal customer service?

The fundamentals of customer service are similar, whether your customers are external or internal.

1. Build rapport and establish a positive relationship.

2. Listen carefully to understand your customers' needs.

3. Take action to help your customer succeed.

This was how I approached my relationship with the merchandising manager and his team. I asked to meet with them to kick off our project, and then I listened carefully to their needs.

The call center agents who were asked to upsell these products were also my customer, since I needed to support their performance. I listened to calls, and met with several agents to understand what worked and what didn't. This helped me understand exactly what they needed to do their jobs well.

All that listening helped us identify several solutions that quickly improved sales. The program generated an additional $1 million in revenue over the course of the first year.

Take Action

You can create great relationships with your own internal customers following this same process:

1. List your internal customers

2. Identify your key customers to focus on

3. Listen to their needs, and take action to help them

This lesson stayed with me throughout my corporate career. Whenever I identified an important internal customer, I took time to understand their needs. It became far easier to get what I wanted when I could demonstrate my commitment to helping them get what they wanted.

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Lessons From The Overlook: See the Big Picture

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.

One small mistake caused the whole relationship to unravel.

My wife, Sally, and I had high hopes when we hired a company to install air conditioning at The Overlook. We were looking to find a reliable partner that could service the HVAC system going forward. Our property manager was interested in a referral to serve the more than 50 homes they managed.

The company's general manager made one small mistake when he wrote the estimate. And when that mistake began to unravel, he focused on the wrong details. It soon became a big problem.

This could have been prevented if the general manager had seen the big picture.

Why you should anticipate problems

Service failures can cause customers to actively consider pulling their business. It takes time and money to make things right. You are almost always better off preventing a problem than having to fix it.

The problem the general manager missed was a simple one.

The thermostat at The Overlook is located in the living room. The heat from the afternoon sun tricked the thermostat into thinking the house was hot, so the air conditioner kept running even though the rest of the house was cold.

He spent a lot of time walking the property when he created the estimate. Many other problems were anticipated. His thoroughness was one of the reasons his company won the business, despite being the most expensive bid.

The one mistake shouldn’t have been a big deal. But the problem got worse.

Installation day was a long one. The crew was hoping to get the system installed in one day, because the company was located an hour away. A second day of work would mean two hours of driving.

They were anxious to leave when they started to check the system. The desire to leave quickly overrode the desire to avoid a second trip.

They missed the problem with the thermostat. What they didn’t realize at the time was a second trip would now be inevitable. A trip that would inconvenience the company, and also inconvenience the customer.

Think about the time and effort you put into solving customer problems. How much could you save in time, money, and customer goodwill if those problems were prevented?

How focusing on the little picture can cost you

Getting stuck on a small detail can dramatically increase your costs. Tiny mistakes become huge service failures that drive customers to your competitors.

Sally and I noticed the problem with our AC system the next day. The living room was warm in the afternoon, so it kept running while the rest of the house was cool.

I called the general manager and talked through the issue. He recommended we install some temperature sensors in other rooms. The thermostat could then take an average of all the temperature readings throughout the house and use the average temperature to decide when to run.

We set a time the following Monday for him to come back and meet Sally at the cabin to install the sensors. That was two hours of driving for him, so an extra cost. The Overlook is a two-hour drive from our house, so Sally spent four hours driving plus the extra time on site—effectively the entire day.

He arrived at The Overlook without the sensors. 

They weren't in stock. Rather than re-scheduling the appointment for a time when he had the sensors on-hand, he decided to move forward with the meeting. Sally didn't find out until she was already at the cabin.

The general manager focused on the little picture—keeping the meeting—and lost sight of the fact that he would have to waste two hours and Sally would have to waste an entire day.

He agreed to order the sensors and come back to install them. We tried to handle that appointment remotely, but the technicians sent to do the work couldn't access our smart thermostat without one of us present. Another failure of anticipation.

The technicians just left the sensors at the cabin, which caused another problem. We had guests coming in a few days, and couldn't just leave equipment lying around. Another failure.

This required another visit for Sally. Another day wasted driving to the cabin and back. The general manager saw his profits whittling away, so he initially balked at meeting Sally at the cabin to help install the sensors. He tried to convince Sally that she could do it on her own in "five minutes." Another failure.

He finally relented and agreed to meet her at the cabin. It ended up taking him, an HVAC expert, two hours to get the system working properly, not the five minutes he had promised.

Time and time again, the general manager missed the big picture:

• The thermostat is the key to the whole system.

• We all wanted to minimize time-consuming trips to the cabin.

• A good impression could lead to 50 or more new customers.

Focusing on the big picture can help you avoid problems and repeat problems. It can also help you understand the true value of making things right instead of worrying about small expenses.

Take a moment to think about the big picture from your customer's perspective. How can you help them achieve their goal?

How to focus on the big picture

Customer-focused companies start with a customer experience vision. This is a shared definition of an outstanding experience that gets everyone on the same page.

On an individual level, I recommend the Thank You Letter challenge. It's a powerful visualization exercise that helps you earn positive customer feedback.

Give yourself more time to see the big picture and anticipate problems by slowing down. It’s counterintuitive, but you can often serve customers faster when you go slow.

Think about our AC system. The general manager could have prevented three extra trips to our cabin for his company, plus two extra trips for us, if he had just taken a few minutes to note the location of the thermostat when he created the estimate.

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An Easy Way to Evaluate Your Training

My reputation was getting battered, and I didn't like it.

This was years ago, when I supervised a training department in a contact center. New hires often struggled after completing our initial training program, and their supervisors would conveniently blame my team.

The training program wasn't the problem, but I couldn't prove it. The contact center director wasn’t interested in my perspective when she had multiple supervisors saying their agents had not been properly trained. Feelings became facts in the absence of data.

So I decided to find a way to get the data.

This led me to take a crash course on training evaluation. I didn't discover any of the models popular in the training industry—I'd learn about those several years later. My sole focus was proving new hires had been trained.

The solution turned out to be incredibly simple. It gave me observable, quantifiable data that irrefutably proved new hires had been trained. If they struggled after training, there had to be some other reason.

Here's the simple principle I discovered, and how you can use it to evaluate your training programs as well.

Why is it important to evaluate training?

Evaluation can tell you whether or not training is working, and what needs to be improved. 

This can be done on a program level, where you evaluate the entire training program. Evaluation can also take place on an individual level, where you evaluate whether a participant has been fully trained.

It's an issue that gets executive attention. PwC's 2019 CEO survey discovered that CEOs see a lack of skills as a clear threat to the business:

• 79 percent feel a skill gap is a threat to the business

• 47 percent say a skill gap impacts customer experience

• Just 29 percent believe they have adequate data to address the issue

In my case, my department's credibility was at stake. I needed to find data I could show to our contact center director that proved our training programs were working just fine.

This is where evaluation comes in. (You can find more reasons to evaluate training here.)

How to evaluate training

There's one thing you should do first if you want to evaluate training: set clear learning objectives. The objectives should be specific, observable, and measurable.

This was the approach I took in the contact center.

I asked the supervisors, their managers, and the contact center director to describe what a fully trained agent looked like. The goal was to get their agreement on what an agent should be able to do before they graduated training.

Our agreement centered around the contact center's quality monitoring process. The leadership team agreed that agents needed to achieve passing quality scores on live calls before they graduated new hire training.

The rest was now easy.

New hires already took live calls in class, under the watchful eye of a trainer. The only change we had to make was have the trainer complete a monitoring form for several calls per agent. 

This approach provided a lot of instant benefits:

• Documented each agent had been trained.

• Identified specific skills for agents to improve.

• Tracked areas where the training program needed to improve.

Notice the goals we set centered around agents doing the actual job. Evaluating training based on passing a quiz or getting through a certain amount of content doesn't provide proof that someone has been trained. We need to see them do the work.

You can establish your own training goals using the A-B-C-D method. This model will guide you through a simple process.

More Resources

You can learn more about evaluating training programs from my Measuring Learning Effectiveness course on LinkedIn Learning.

Evaluating learning programs from Measuring Learning Effectiveness by Jeff Toister

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What is the Difference Between Rewards and Recognition?

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 and affiliated sites.

A healthcare CEO recently wrote to me with a question about incentives.

He had read The Service Culture Handbook, and was surprised that I did not include a section on incentivizing employees to align with the culture. The CEO was looking for resources to motivate and reward his team.

A lot of leaders have this same question. My advice is surprising.

• A rewards program is a very bad idea.

• Employees don't need to be motivated.

• Recognition can be helpful, if you do it right.

I've covered this topic in previous posts, so here are a few links if you'd like a refresher:

• How incentives crush motivation

• Why internal competition is a bad idea

• Why you should stop trying to motivate employees

It's important to note that none of the customer-focused companies I researched for The Service Culture Handbook emphasized rewards to incentivize employees. Recognition, however, often does play a role.

This post focuses on the critical difference between those two terms: rewards and recognition.

What are employee rewards?

Rewards and recognition often get conflated, but they're really two different concepts. Recognition can be useful if done correctly, but rewards generally cause harm.

Here's a definition of rewards from my book, Getting Service Right:

Rewards are if-then propositions that are designed to incentivize employees to engage in certain behaviors. The actions or results required to earn the reward are spelled out ahead of time so employees know how to win the prize.

Examples of rewards I've seen customer service leaders use include:

• Cash incentives for earning good survey scores.

• Contests to see who can reply to the most emails.

• Prizes for getting good mystery shopper results.

• Games where employees can earn badges for completing training modules.

• Company swag for achieving perfect attendance for a month.

Rewards typically cause two big problems.

The first is rewards can diminish employees' natural motivation. Offer a $100 gift card for good survey scores one month, and employees will come to expect a $100 gift card for good survey scores going forward. 

The second problem is even worse. Rewards often incentivize the wrong behaviors. For example, offering a reward for good survey scores often leads to manipulated survey results, not better service.

What is employee recognition?

Recognition can be very helpful, if used correctly. Here's a definition from Getting Service Right:

Recognition is given when an employee does something positive as a way of encouraging the employee to repeat the behavior. It can be something tangible—like a gift card or a day off—or something intangible, such as praise from the boss or an employee-of-the-month award. Unlike rewards, the path to earning recognition isn't shared with employees beforehand. It's an unexpected surprise for a job well done.

Examples of recognition I’ve seen customer service leaders use include:

• Praise for helping an upset customer.

• A gift card as a thank you for solving a tough problem.

• Lunch for the team to celebrate a successful project.

• A “wall of fame” where positive customer feedback is displayed.

• Company swag to commemorate a big accomplishment.

Unlike rewards, recognition is difficult to game. That’s because it happens after the behavior occurs and is not predictable. Used in this way, rewards are a clear signal to employees that their performance is valued.

Customer-focused companies I've studied often use peer recognition programs where employees are recognized by coworkers for outstanding contributions. 

Infographic

In summary, rewards often promote unhealthy behaviors while recognition encourages employees to continue positive behaviors.

Here's an infographic you can use to share this concept.

Amazingly Simple Graphic Design Software - Canva

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How to Write Your Vision in a Virtual Meeting

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 and affiliated sites.

A new client is headquartered in Seattle, but they have employees all over the west coast and as far east as Denver.

The client recently gathered a team in Seattle to write the company's customer experience vision statement. They used the step-by-step instructions from The Service Culture Handbook to guide them.

It was expensive and time-consuming to fly people to headquarters, but my client felt it was worthwhile. Participants were motivated by the process and felt the result was truly reflective of the company culture.

Many companies don't have the option to bring employees together right now. Travel budgets are being slashed and in-person gatherings are limited. Employees might be located all over the globe where there are extensive restrictions on international travel.

I'm going to show you how to adapt my vision writing process to a virtual meeting. To keep this post shorter, I'll focus on the changes you need to make to the original process.

What is a customer experience vision?

It is a shared definition of outstanding customer experience that gets everyone on the same page.

Having a customer experience, or CX, vision allows you to align your people, process, and product in the same direction. You can use it to avoid internal conflicts and get everyone focused on delivering a consistently good experience.

Here's an example from Convo, an app-based video relay service for deaf and hard of hearing people:

Our mission is to connect humans through universal communication solutions shaped by visual and cultural experiences.

This statement was created using the process in The Service Culture Handbook. In the book, I called this statement a customer service vision. Over time, I've realized the importance of focusing on the broader customer experience. 

Fortunately, the process for writing a customer experience vision is exactly the same.

Prepare your virtual meeting

The in-person meeting lasts two hours, but I’ve found the virtual meeting should be scheduled for 2.5 hours. It takes a bit more time to get everyone to collaborate virtually.

Aside from adding 30 minutes to the meeting, there are a number of steps you should take beforehand to ensure the meeting is a success.

Some of those steps remain the same, whether you're facilitating virtually or in-person. You can read the full process in this guide, but here's a summary:

1. Get buy-in from senior leaders.

2. Identify existing cultural artifacts.

3. Invite a cross-functional group of 7 to 10 people to participate. (Closer to 7 works better for virtual.)

4. Send out your one-question survey.

5. Identify your primary customer.

The one-question survey is sent to all employees who will be covered by the customer experience vision. Participants are invited to provide a free text response to this question:

What would you like customers to think of when they think about their experience?

Virtual meetings require some extra preparation in addition to the steps above:

1. Video conferencing platform

2. Shareable documents

3. Downloadable handout

Video Conferencing Platform

A video conferencing platform is essential so people can see and hear each other, and see the various draft vision documents you create.

There are three basic criteria for selecting a platform:

1. Compatibility. All participants must be able to access the platform.

2. Audio/Video: Every participant should join with audio and video.

3. Sharing: You’ll need the ability to share websites and presentations.

I've facilitated virtual CX vision writing sessions with both Zoom and MS Teams. Both platforms work well and are easy for participants to use.

The biggest difference between the two is Zoom allows you to create breakout rooms. The breakout room feature allows the meeting to run much closer to the original process, where two teams create their own separate draft visions before joining their ideas together in one statement. 

You'll need to make an adjustment to the process if you aren't able to put people in breakout rooms. I'll go over those adjustments in just a moment.

Shareable Documents

It's easy to use white boards or flip chart paper when facilitating an in-person meeting. While many video conferencing platforms have a whiteboard feature, I prefer to use a shareable online document, such as a Google Doc.

Here are some of the advantages:

• Multiple people can edit the document at once

• The documents automatically save changes

• You can easily access and share the documents outside of the meeting

These are the steps to creating your shareable documents:

1. Create all documents ahead of time, so you have them handy while facilitating the virtual session. All of the documents should be blank.

2. Make sure each document is fully shareable so you can share them with participants and access them yourself during the meeting.

3. You'll need just three documents if you'll be using breakout rooms, labeled as follows:

• Team A

• Team B

• Group

Adjustment for no breakout rooms: Create a shareable document for each participant and one for the entire team. I found it easiest to name the documents after each participant while naming the group document "Group." For example:

• Melanie

• Elijah

• Dennis

• Christina

• Chloe

• Freddy

• Luka

• Group

Downloadable Handout

Each participant should receive a downloadable handout prior to the meeting. The handout contains important information that participants should have access to throughout the session. 

I ask participants to do one of two things so they can easily see it without leaving the virtual meeting:

1. Print out the document, or

2. Display it on a second screen

I've created a Google Doc template that you can use. Here's an overview of the four sections it should contain:

Feedback and artifacts. Include a word cloud image of the one-question survey results. (Refer to this guide for more information.) This section should also contain any existing cultural artifacts, such as the company's mission statement, vision statement, values, brand slogan, or service standards.

Customer profile. Identify your primary customer along with additional examples of customer groups. The CX vision should focus on your primary customer.

Check questions. List the three questions used to quality check a vision statement.

1. Is it simple and easily understood?

2. Is it focused on our customers?

3. Does it reflect both who we are now and who we aspire to be in the future?

Document links. Provide links to all the shareable documents you'll be using in the vision writing session.

Bonus: Participant bios. In larger organizations, the participants in the vision writing meeting might not already know each other. If that's the case, it could be helpful to include very short biographies of each person in the handout. Name and role is good at a minimum. Keep in mind that there is no time built-in to the meeting agenda for introductions.

Preparation Summary

Make sure you complete all of these steps before your vision facilitation meeting:

1. Get buy-in from senior leaders.

2. Identify existing cultural artifacts.

3. Invite a cross-functional group of 7 to 10 people to participate. (Closer to 7 works better for virtual.)

4. Send out your one-question survey.

5. Identify your primary customer.

6. Select a video conferencing platform.

7. Create shareable documents.

8. Make the downloadable handout.

9. Share the video conference login information and downloadable handout with all participants.

Facilitate the vision writing meeting

The meeting to write your customer experience vision should take 2.5 hours. The process for facilitating a virtual meeting is largely the same as the original, with three small changes:

• Jump In

• Virtual Facilitation

• Breakouts vs. No Breakouts

Jump In

Start the meeting right on time and get to business. You will feel time pressure throughout the meeting, and you do not want to add to it. The time pressure is by design, since a little pressure makes it easier to get participants' gut reactions.

Here are a few tips:

• Start the video conference a few minutes early to welcome people.

• Begin the meeting promptly, even if people are late.

• Skip introductions. I’ve found them to be unnecessary and time-consuming.

As a facilitator, part of your role is to keep things moving!

Virtual Facilitation

Running a virtual meeting of any kind takes a little more energy than running that same meeting in person. We lack the visual cues of seeing each other's body language. You can't just grab a marker and draw an illustration on the whiteboard.

Here are a few general tips for effective virtual facilitation:

• Make sure all participants are visible on their web cameras.

• Call on people from time-to-time to ensure everyone participates.

• Keep the meeting moving, but be patient as people work with the technology.

Breakouts vs. No Breakouts

The original process breaks the group into two groups and gives each group 15 minutes to write a draft vision. This can be followed if your video conferencing platform allows you to create breakout rooms, but you'll need to make a few adjustments if this feature is not available.

Breakout Rooms

This works nearly identical to the in-person process. One small change is you should have created three shareable documents prior to the meeting, labeled Team A, Team B, and Group.

Here's what to do when it comes time to divide people into groups to draft vision statements:

1. Form two teams (A & B) of roughly equal numbers.

2. Ask each person to open the shareable document for their team (A or B).

3. Put participants in their breakout rooms and give them 15 minutes to write a draft vision statement.

4. Participants should type their draft directly onto the shareable document.

5. Pop into each breakout room from time-to-time to check on progress, answer questions, and remind people of how much time they have remaining.

At the end of the 15 minutes:

1. Go into each team's shareable document.

2. Copy their draft vision statement.

3. Paste the draft vision statement into the Group document.

You can then share the Group document with everyone and resume the normal meeting agenda.

No Breakout Rooms

You'll need to make a few more modifications to the process when the video conferencing platform you're using does not have breakout rooms. I took a remote facilitation idea from leadership expert, Grace Judson, and slightly modified it.

You should have created a shareable document for each participant plus a "Group" document prior to the meeting.

1. Ask each person to access their own shareable document.

2. Give participants five minutes to write a draft vision statement.

3. At the end of the five minutes, copy and paste each person's draft statement into the Group document (keeping the author anonymous).

You can then share the Group document with everyone. Here's where we make one more modification to the facilitation process:

1. Have participants quickly read all the statements.

2. Ask people to identify common themes.

3. Discuss what elements, words, or phrases people particularly like, and why.

The remaining process remains the same.

Need Extra Help?

There's a lot here. The process can seem intimidating at first. But don't worry, I'm here to help!

• Feel free to contact me with your questions.

• You can also schedule a call to walk through the process.

There's one last danger I want to point out. 

Each step in the process has been carefully chosen and tested. While you might be tempted to make some modifications, experience suggests that's a bad idea.

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Why you need to identify your primary customer

Updated: June 27, 2024

"I'm sure he's stealing," said the manager. "But I can't fire him."

I was visiting with the parking manager at a busy hospital location. We watched as the cashier served a steady stream of cars.

The manager suspected the cashier was stealing a small amount of cash each shift. He needed to investigate to get proof.

Our client, the hospital's facility manager, said no.

The cashier was was popular. People would line up at his gate, even when the line was shorter at another exit. He had even been featured on the local news.

The client felt the cashier was good for public relations. He was willing to overlook a small revenue shortfall.

The parking manager respected the client's wishes. After all, the hospital was his primary customer.

I want to help you identify your primary customer. Knowing your primary customer can lead to unexpected decisions such as letting a suspected thief keep on stealing.

Who is a customer?

A customer is anyone you serve. It could be someone who buys your products or services, but there are many other groups who could be considered a customer as well.

Here are just a few examples from the hospital parking operation:

• Hospital leaders (the client)

• Employees who work at the hospital

• Delivery drivers

• Patients

• Visitors

Think about the people you serve. The list might include groups that aren't traditionally considered to be customers, but fall under the definition of someone you serve:

• Vendors

• Contractors

• Coworkers

In some businesses, like hotels or nonprofits, identifying your customers is even more complicated.

The parking company served hospitals, office buildings, hotels, stadiums, airports, and other venues with paid parking. Here's an example of their customer list:

The parking manager at this specific hospital knew the client prioritized service over revenue.

It was located next to a large university. The hospital’s parking lots and garages would become full of students if it didn’t charge a nominal fee. That would make parking more difficult for patients, visitors, and employees.

The client hired the parking company to control access.

Most employees had monthly passes. Patients and visitors could get validated or reduced-rate parking. The average fee collected was just $2.

That’s why the long line of happy customers was far more important to our client than the $10 or so that might be missing from the cashier’s till each day.

Proving theft was difficult anyway.

The client insisted the parking lot’s exit gate be kept in the raised position during busy times. This allowed cars to exit much more quickly, but it prevented the parking manager from getting an accurate count of cars that exited.

The normal procedure was to note the number of times the gate was raised and lowered and compare that to the amount of fees collected at the end of the day. This was impossible to do when the gate stayed in the up position.

Create your own customer list to better understand the different groups you serve. This short training video walks you through the steps.

Identifying your customers from Customer Service Foundations by Madecraft and Jeff Toister

Who is your primary customer?

The primary customer ultimately pays the bills and drives your business. This is a type of customer, not to be confused with target customers or customer segments.

For example, let's say you manage a museum. Your primary customer is a visitor. You might have several target customer segments that you try to attract:

• General public

• School groups

• Tour groups

Each segment might include several sub-segments with different needs. For instance, the general public could be further divided into different groups:

• Members

• Locals who visit occasionally

• Vacationers from out of town

You could probably slice and dice these groups even more, but you get the idea. Overall, visitors are the museum's primary customer because that's who the museum exists to serve.

There are other customers the museum has to care for. Here are just a few:

• Referral partners such as hotels, tour organizers, and schools.

• Donors who help fund the museum.

• Members of the press who write stories about new exhibits.

All of these groups are important, but it's critical for museum employees to know that visitors are the primary customer.

There are two reasons why.

Focus

Your customer experience vision should focus on your primary customer. This is a shared definition of an outstanding experience that gets everyone on the same page.

At a museum, the vision influences all sorts of decisions including the layout, the curation of exhibits, the way exhibits are displayed, the recruitment of volunteers, and the way employees and volunteers interact with visitors.

A museum that creates an amazing experience for visitors will likely keep referral partners, donors, and the press quite happy as well. On the other hand, a poor experience will make it more difficult to attract partners, donors, or good press.

Prioritization

You sometimes need to prioritize the needs of one customer group over another.

Imagine a generous donor wants to fund a new museum exhibit. The exhibit is of personal interest to the donor, but would have limited appeal to the museum's visitors. Building the exhibit would also require another exhibit to be removed, potentially one that visitors really liked.

Taking a donation could be tempting, but in this case it would hurt the primary customer.

How can you identify your primary customer?

The best way to identify your primary customer is to think about the person or group of people who is most essential to your business. Without them, your business would not exist.

This is easy in some businesses. In a retail clothing store, that would be the people who buy your clothes. At a bank, it would be customers who deposit and borrow money.

It can be trickier in other industries.

A florist might take orders through a national service and deliver the floral arrangements to local recipients. Who is the primary customer, the national service or the local recipients?

The answer depends on which group is the ultimate economic driver.

It might be the national service if the vast majority of the florist's business comes through this partnership. Perhaps it's an exclusive relationship.

On the other hand, the primary customer would be the recipients if the florist also has its own local customers that it serves directly. The florist might supply local restaurants, hotels, and other businesses in addition to serving walk-in customers and taking delivery orders direct from the consumer.

Try to identify the group of customers who are most essential to your business. These are the people your business is naturally built around, and without whom your business would not exist.

Next Steps

Build a strong service culture requires you to focus on your primary customer.

Once you identify your primary customer, create a customer experience vision that focuses on what you do for them. You can use my step-by-step guide.

Are you ready to go all-in on service culture? Learn how: The Service Culture Handbook

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Two insights that will improve first contact resolution

Updated: June 17, 2024

The cheerful agent helped a customer set up her voice mail greeting. The customer was ready to end the call when the agent asked, "Do you ever need to set an out-of-office message?"

"As a matter of fact," said the customer, "I'm going on vacation in a few weeks."

It took an extra minute to walk through the out-of-office process, but it saved the customer from having to call again in a few weeks.

That's the power of first contact resolution:

• Improved service: It saved the customer future hassle.

• Reduced cost: It saved the company the cost of a future call.

It seems obvious that this should be tracked and measured, but it often isn't. 

My advice might surprise you: I don't care if you measure first contact resolution or not. What really matters is two insights that can help you achieve the one-and-done nirvana.

But first, a little background.

What is first contact resolution?

First contact resolution (FCR) involves solving the customer's issue on the first contact so they don't have to contact you again. 

That's what the agent did in the voice mail example—anticipated a future customer need and solved that problem on the same call so the customer didn't need to call back sometime later.

FCR can create an immensely better customer experience. It can also save your company a ton of money. 

Let's say 100 customers call your company for support. Your FCR rate is 80 percent, which means you solve 80 out of those 100 issues (100 x 80%) on the first call.

Pretty good, right?

Well… It also means 20 of those 100 customers will need to call at least one more time to solve their issue. Some of those customers might need three or more calls to get a result.

Here’s a sample calculation of the call volume for those 100 initial calls:

100 first calls
x 80% FCR
80 issues handled on one call

100 first calls
-80 handled on one call
20 issues requiring 2+ calls

20 issues requiring 2+ calls
x 2.5 average calls to resolve
50 calls

80 calls
+50 calls
130 calls

In this example, failing to help the customer the first time increased call volume by 30 percent!

I know what you're thinking. "If Jeff's math holds up, it seems insane not to measure this, right?" The challenge is FCR is difficult to measure accurately.

Why is FCR so hard to measure?

There are a number of factors that make FCR very difficult to measure accurately. Here are just a few examples:

• What counts as a repeat contact?

• Can those repeat contacts be easily tracked?

• How can you tell repeat contacts from contacts related to new issues?

• Can you track contacts on the same issue over multiple channels?

• Do you count self-service attempts or conversations with bots? (Customers do.)

• Are escalations counted as a second contact?

• Does a follow-up call or email count as a second contact or is it part of the same conversation?

A lot of executives get hung up on these questions. They don’t trust numbers that feel too squishy or convoluted. FCR isn't a precise metric, so they decide not to measure it.

The good news is whether or not you measure it, you can improve FCR if you have two insights:

• What drives repeat contacts?

• What behaviors prevent them?

What drives repeat contacts?

This insight can help you and your employees identify situations where additional contacts are more likely. Once you know about them, these drivers can be signals to take action.

For instance, the cheerful agent knew customers who needed help setting up their voice mail were likely to call back for help setting an out-of-office message. This insight prompted a proactive offer of assistance.

There are a few universal drivers that cause repeat contacts.

My research indicates 80 percent of Twitter complaints come from customers who are either waiting for a resolution or a response. So faster service will almost always reduce repeat contacts.

Be careful here.

One contact center gets an avalanche of customer emails. The repeat contact driver for the email agents is working too fast. Agents respond within the one hour standard, but frequently fail to careful read each email and understand what the customer is asking. This means it often takes three or more emails to resolve a customer’s issue.

Most drivers are probably specific to your organization.

• Is there a particular product feature that confuses customers?

• Do specific policies generate repeat contacts?

• Is there a specific service that's unreliable?

You don't need a lot of rocket science to discover this insight. 

One way to get actionable data is to ask your employees why customers are re-contacting your company. This can be a five minute exercise in a team huddle, where employees share what they've been hearing.

Try building a "top ten" list and then discussing ways to prevent a second contact. Make sure each agent can identify the top ten.

This leads us to the second insight you'll need.

What behaviors prevent repeat contacts?

The second insight is understanding the behaviors that help prevent repeat contacts from happening.

The right behaviors are sometimes obvious. Let's go back to the voice mail example. 

• Driver: setting an out-of-office message

• Behavior: ask customer if they ever need an out-of-office message.

What about the email example where agents failed to fully read customer emails? The solution might seem obvious, but it wasn’t to the agents or their manager. That’s because the manager closely monitored productivity and little else.

Here’s the insight that would help:

• Driver: working too fast and misunderstanding customers.

• Behavior: take the time to understand what each customer is asking.

It can take a little more digging in other situations. You might even need to experiment with different approaches. Keep in mind the solution might span multiple channels or teams.

For example, I recently checked into a hotel and discovered the iron in my room was damaged. I called guest service and asked for a replacement iron, but it never came. So I called again a few hours later.

The hotel associate volunteered that the hotel's housekeeping department was changing shifts the first time I called, so my initial request was likely missed. 

She clearly knew the driver behind multiple housekeeping requests, but she didn’t know what behavior would fix it. A quick meeting between the housekeeping and guest service departments might be required to "iron out" a way to prevent this issue from happening.

One quick fix for contact centers is to add “prevent repeat contacts” to the quality monitoring process. You don’t have to measure FCR to do this. You just need to know whether agents use the behaviors that are likely to prevent second contacts.

Take Action

This makes a great meeting or training topic to share with your team.

1. Ask your employees why customers have to contact us again. (Drivers)

2. Determine how to prevent repeat contacts in those situations. (Behaviors)

Focusing on FCR is one way companies can improve customer retention. You can get more ideas for winning and retaining customers from my book, The Guaranteed Customer Experience.

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All You Need to Know About Training Remote Employees

I've been getting a lot of questions about remote training.

The shift to work-from-home has caused leaders to re-think how employees are trained. Onboarding new hires, re-skilling existing employees, or just meeting ongoing development needs is a challenge.

My experience with virtual training started in the late 1990s, and I ran my first full-time virtual training program in 2002. As a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP), I've seen what works, and what doesn't.

This post summarizes all you need to know in just three principles. I've also included resources and examples to help you out.

1. Train to solve a problem

We train employees because we are trying to solve a problem. In the workplace, that problem is fundamentally connected to helping employees do their jobs. That doesn’t change when your leaners are remote.

Here are just a few examples of common training programs and the problems they solve:

• New hire training: do a job effectively.

• Software training: use software productively.

• Customer service training: deliver outstanding service.

The challenge is words like "effectively," "productively," and "outstanding," are too vague and subjective. Assessing subjective qualities becomes even more difficult when we aren’t in the same physical space with our learners. We need a concrete way to define whether someone has been fully trained.

The solution is to create clear learning objectives.

Here are two learning objectives I helped a client create for their new hire training program using the A-B-C-D model. The new hires were contact center agents who answered customer calls.

1. New hires will achieve a 100 percent monitoring score on four consecutive live calls.

2. New hires will be available to take live calls for 5 or more hours in one day.

Employees had to complete both objectives to pass the training.

The learning objectives helped my client do two things. First, it was now easy to evaluate whether someone had been trained. Second, it allowed the training program to be laser-focused on helping employees achieve the course objectives.

More on that second part in a moment. First, I recommend you try to create your own learning objectives for a program you are working on.

You can use the the A-B-C-D model to write learning objectives like the ones above.

Some people might feel pressure from a boss or senior leader to just wing it and implement training without clearly understanding the problem. Here's a short LinkedIn Learning video that describes how to communicate with project sponsors.

Communicating with project sponsors from Instructional Design: Needs Analysis by Jeff Toister

Bonus tip: Training will only solve problems that are caused by an employee's lack of knowledge, skill, or ability. In many cases, training isn’t the right solution, or at least not the only one. Here's how to spot whether employees need training.

2. Bad in-person training will be bad virtual training

A class that is boring and ineffective when delivered in-person won't magically improve when you move to remote training. In fact, it will likely get worse.

I asked people on LinkedIn to share what they dislike the most about participating in training. There were a lot of great responses. Here are some common complaints:

• Boring lectures

• Takes too long

• Not enough relevant content

• Content not tailored to the audience

• Lack of hands-on or practice opportunities

There are two ways to fix this.

First, see principle number one above. Your employees are more likely to sense the training is a waste of time if it isn't clearly connected to helping them solve a problem. You need learning objectives before you move forward!

Second, training programs should be laser-focused on helping employees achieve the objectives.

I once designed a training program to help employees use a new software program. The approach was extremely simple:

1. Highlight the differences between the new software program and the old one.

2. Use the new software in class perform common tasks.

3. Identify job aids and other resources to help if employees got stuck.

No boring lectures. No death by PowerPoint. No theory. Employees were using the new software within the first five minutes of the class and were able to use it to do their jobs in less than an hour.

You can improve your own training program by focusing on helping employees achieve the learning objectives. 

My LinkedIn Learning course on Adult Learning Principles can provide some more insight.

Welcome from Instructional Design: Adult Learners by Jeff Toister

3. Adapt what you'd do in person

Adult learning principles remain constant, whether you are training someone in person or remotely. An easy way to improve remote training is to think about best practices you use when training in-person and adapt them to the technology.

Let's look at webinars versus an in-person class as an example.

Imagine you are facilitating an in-person class starts at 9am. What are you doing at 8:55? Hopefully, your classroom is all set up and you are spending that time greeting participants as they come in. This immediately helps break the ice and builds energy for the upcoming training.

Why not do the same thing for a webinar?

Open the webinar room 5-10 minutes early and greet participants as they login. I often use this time to test out the webinar features we'll be using and make sure participants can hear and see me.

What are some other things you might do in person?

• Ask participants to complete a pre-assignment.

• Give participants a handout.

• Have participants work in groups.

• Facilitate a group discussion.

• Demonstrate a specific skill.

• Assign hands-on activities.

• Invite participants to share their knowledge.

You can do all of these things when facilitating remote training! In fact, there are some advantages of going remote that make it my preferred way to deliver customer service training.

Here's an example of a webinar that I co-facilitated with ProcedureFlow’s Micah Peterson that demonstrates many of the ways you can adapt to remote technology.

Take Action

Going remote does not mean doing 100 percent of your training via webinar. There's some early research that shows spending too much time on video chats can be exhausting.

I like to give participants self-paced, hands-on assignments in between sessions. If they do need to watch a lecture, I’d rather them get access to that lecture on video so they can watch it on their own time. (And I always keep the segments very short.)

Your training will be much better if you keep your learners in mind.

1. What problem are you helping them solve?

2. What will make the training effective?

3. How can you adapt to the technology?

To learn how to quickly create great training courses, I recommend my How to Design and Deliver Training Programs video on LinkedIn Learning.

Training programs that get results from How to Design and Deliver Training Programs by Jeff Toister

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Is There a Huge Miss in Your Reopening Plan?

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.

The shipping clerk leaned across the counter to hand the customer a receipt. The customer instinctively leaned in to take it. 

In an instant, the recommended six feet of social distancing was compromised.

You can see examples like this everywhere. There are awkward interactions in stores, restaurants, and other businesses as people consciously try to keep their distance, while unconsciously moving together. 

Regulations, enhanced procedures, and training won't suddenly make us safe if people stick to their old ways.

As Dallas-area businesses reopened in early May, Mark Cuban hired secret shoppers to conduct physical audits at approximately 300 businesses. The audits revealed just 60 percent of mandatory safety precautions were being followed.

Large chains and small businesses alike faired poorly. The auditors found just 4 percent of businesses were following all of the necessary regulations.

This could easily be your business. Here's an important consideration before you reopen.

Social distancing is not a habit

Keeping six feet apart, wearing masks, and frequently washing hands are all new behaviors. People have spent their entire lives interacting with other people one way. Now we're suddenly asked to change.

Our precautions can quickly unravel.

My neighbors have a new puppy. The dog is undeniably cute and is natural a magnet for other people. In the blink of an eye, I witnessed the mom, the dad, their two children, and children from two other families cluster in a tight circle to pet the dog.

Kids and adults from three families were all mixed in the blink of an eye. 

The safety precautions your business takes can break down just as quickly. Here are a few instances that I’ve witnessed in the past two months:

• Customers get too close to each other while waiting in line.

• A barista forgets to wash his hands after ringing up an order.

• A customer is coughing as he walks into a store without a mask.

• Regular sanitation schedules get missed during a hectic rush.

• An employee hands a customer a receipt.

One of the best ways I've seen to prevent this problem is to use subtle nudging. Think of a "subtle nudge" as a polite and obvious reminder right at the time of need.

Here are a few examples:

• Simple, obvious signs at entrances and in key locations.

• Human reminders, such as a greeter at the front of a store.

• One-way traffic flow in grocery stores and other larger buildings.

• Stickers or tape on the ground, marking six feet of distance at cashier lines.

• Friendly employees who gently remind customers to stay safe.

Another solution is to make it harder for problems to occur.

My wife, Sally, and I own a vacation rental cabin called The Overlook. Our property manager is limiting bookings to allow 48 to 72 hours between guests. This gives cleaning crews more time to properly sanitize the cabin in between visitors.

Retail expert, Bob Phibbs, recommends creating a short video to explain the safety precautions your business is implementing. The video can give customers confidence in your business and serve as another gentle reminder. The video can be shared via email, social media, and on your website to have the widest impact.

People naturally resist rules

There are some customers and employees who understand the rules, but don't want to follow them. Studies have shown that people become more resistant to regulations when the rules appear to restrict our freedoms.

In an experiment published in 2004, participants were asked to choose between four granola bars. Researchers found the highest percentage of people chose one desirable granola bar when they first read an opinion from an expert recommending against it.

Gavan Fitzsimons, one of the study's authors, recently shared advice for reframing the way we communicate safety procedures. He suggests the communication change from "mandatory regulations" to focus on empowering individuals to make safer choices. 

For instance, a sign at the entrance of your store might read "how to protect yourself and your loved ones" along with reminders to wear a mask and stay six feet apart. You can see more in this short video.

People are more likely to flout the rules when they see their leaders doing it. 

In San Francisco, an anti-mask league that included several public officials organized a public meeting with over 2,000 attendees. The mayor, the city's health officer, and other government officials were photographed without masks while attending another event. This was despite public orders limiting the size of gatherings and making it mandatory for people to wear a mask in public.

These incidents, of course, took place during the 1918 flu pandemic.

History can be a great reminder about human nature. People are more likely to follow the example of leaders. You can set a positive example in a number of ways:

• Follow all required safety procedures.

• Encourage employees to follow safety procedures.

• Empathize with employees and customers over new restrictions.

• Gently nudge employees and customers who are not acting safely.

• Treat resistant customers with respect, but ensure safety is not an option.

What if customer refuse to comply with safety rules?

Some customers might flat out refuse to comply with safety rules. Just like 1918, there has been widespread resistance to wearing masks in public. People derisively mock social distancing guidelines. Leaders need to make two decisions to prepare for this event.

First, will rules be strictly enforced? 

On one hand, a lack of enforcement can turn rules into mere suggestions, where customers don't feel obligated to comply. This could put the safety of others into jeopardy and cause the business to run afoul of regulations and health orders.

On the other hand, a strict enforcement policy could put employees in a difficult and uncomfortable position. There have even been isolated reports of violence against employees enforcing safety rules.

This leads us to the second decision: how to protect employees. 

Employees should know their options for protecting themselves and coworkers, particularly in situations where a customer becomes belligerent. This typically involves contacting security or the police to intervene.

Resources for reopening

Start by checking federal, state, and local regulations and recommendations. Make sure you are operating both safely and legally.

Social conformity can be contagious, where the actions of leaders, employees, and customers influence others to follow safety guidelines. The more people you can get onboard, the easier it will be to help everyone stay safe. Chapter three of my book, Getting Service Right, provides more insight and examples on this phenomenon.

Here are a few more resources:

• The National Retail Federation published a useful checklist for reopening.

• Customer experience expert, Jeannie Walters, published this helpful guide to employee experience.

• Brand leadership expert, Denise Lee Yohn, wrote another useful guide to resetting with employees.

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How to be a hero to your customers

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.

Heroism is a misunderstood concept.

Countless customer service employees have told me they can't be a hero. According to them, their job doesn't allow it.

"I'm a cashier/receptionist/call center rep/etc.," they say. "There's hardly ever an opportunity to be a hero to customers. Most of my interactions are routine."

Customer experience expert and keynote speaker, Adam Toporek, believes all customer service employees can be heroes. He's the author of Be Your Customer's Hero, a book that shows anyone how they can be a hero to their customers.

Toporek and I recently discussed how to apply the concepts from his book.

Here are a few of the topic we discussed:

• What is a customer hero?

• Can you be a hero with every customer?

• What is the difference between proactive and reactive service?

• Why are high-intensity experiences so critical?

• How can employees be heroes when they aren't empowered?

You can watch the full interview of scroll down to read some highlights.

What is a customer hero?

"A customer hero is someone who is there when you need them," says Toporek.

I once left my iPad in an airport restaurant. The server found my device and sprinted through the terminal after me, handing me the iPad just as I reached my gate. 

That was definitely a hero moment. Toporek explained that same server likely has many more hero moments that just aren't as recognizable.

For example, airport restaurant servers often wait on guests who have a tight timeline to eat before catching a flight. "The hero," says Toporek, "is the waiter or waitress who actually takes note of that, speeds up your order, makes sure they expedite it in the kitchen, checks in with you multiple times, and then proactively brings you the check at the same time they bring you the food to make sure that you're ahead of the curve."

Toporek is right. As someone who has eaten in a lot of airport restaurants, I see servers who provide that type of heroic service that all day long.

Think about situations where you can anticipate a customer's needs, and proactively address them. It doesn't have to be a major moment or a rare occasion. All you have to do is be there for someone when they need you.

Go to the 3:56 mark in the interview for Toporek's explanation.

Can you be a hero with every customer?

Realistically? Probably not. But that shouldn't stop you from trying.

Remember that a hero is someone who is there when they are needed. We have the ability to do more for our customers than we realize. 

• You can be friendly.

• You can be attentive.

• You can anticipate issues.

• You can use your expertise to guide customers.

• You can follow-up and close the loop.

Toporek explains the concept of closing the loop at 17:54.

What is the difference between proactive and reactive service?

Proactive service means doing things to anticipate problems and avoid them, something Toporek calls "forward resolving." Reactive service involves reacting to a customer's request.

I love M&M's candy. Here are two experiences that illustrate the differences between proactive and reactive service.

The first one happened in a candy shop. The cashier noticed I was looking at M&M's and proactively mentioned that the store had just stocked some new flavors. "I like the jalapeno M&M's," he said. "They're a lot better than you think."

He was right. They were delicious. That cashier was a hero.

A few weeks later I was in my local drug store searching for more jalapeno M&M's. There was a candy display right in front of the cash register that looked pretty bare. The cashier saw me searching but said nothing until I went to the counter and asked if the store had any jalapeno M&M's. 

He reacted by bringing me the last bag the store had in stock, which for some reason had been put behind the counter. I never would have gotten what I came in for if I hadn't asked.

Go to the 5:30 mark to hear Toporek talk about proactive service.

Why are high-intensity experiences so critical?

Toporek spent some time in the interview talking about the importance of being a customer hero during high-intensity experiences.

These are situations when emotions are running high.

People remember experiences based on the intensity of the memory. That makes high-intensity experiences extremely memorable, whether it's good or bad.

Leaving an iPad in an airport restaurant is a great example. I had no idea that I had left my iPad behind until I saw the server running toward me with it. As soon as I saw her, I instantly understood what had happened and felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

Relief is the most important emotion in high-intensity situations.

The challenge with high-intensity situations is many of us don’t encounter many. And when they do happen, we might be so caught up in routine or policy that we miss the opportunity to come to someone's aid.

Go to the 8:42 mark to listen to Toporek explain high-intensity situations.

How can employees be heroes when they aren't empowered?

Employees definitely face a lot of barriers when serving customers.

They might lack resources and training, or have incentives that encourage them to work against a customer's best interests. But Toporek suggests employees can still be attentive.

"A lot of being the hero is personal accountability and personal awareness," says Toporek. "You can always do that."

According to Toporek, being attentive frequently uncovers opportunities to serve that might otherwise be missed. "Do as much as you can, up to your level of empowerment."

I can relate. The cashier who pointed out the jalapeno M&M's was attentive. He did something simple to create a better experience for me just by paying attention.

Hear Toporek discuss some solutions at the 11:53 mark.

Additional Resources

Be Your Customer’s Hero is on my recommended reading list, and I encourage you to pick up a copy for yourself and your team.

Toporek is also an outstanding keynote speaker, and I frequently recommend him to clients when I'm already booked on the date of their event or they want another customer experience speaker for their next event.

Finally, check out Toporek's outstanding Crack the Customer Code podcast that he co-hosts with Jeannie Walters. It’s the podcast that got me to listen to podcasts.

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