Lessons from The Overlook: Conduct business reviews

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.

Back in January, we made some big changes to The Overlook.

You can read all about the changes here, but these are the highlights:

• Reduced the bedrooms from four to three.

• Converted the former master bedroom into a game room.

• Upgraded lamps and furniture throughout the cabin.

The changes dropped our maximum occupancy to six people, down from eight. We also lowered our nightly rate from $250 per night to $225.

Our goal was to increase revenue by 10 percent. There's a bigger market for cabins that sleep six versus cabins that sleep eight. We thought we could get enough additional bookings to offset the $25 lower rate.

The big question now is whether the changes worked. The only way to find out is to conduct a business review. 

Here's how we did ours and why you should do one, too.

Why should you conduct a business review?

A business review helps you evaluate your strategies, tactics, and other business decisions. It allows you to make course-corrections when things aren't working, or strengthen new initiatives that are going well.

A plan often looks very different once it's executed than it originally did on paper.

It was a year ago when we made our initial plans to reduce the number of bedrooms at The Overlook and add a second game room. (We already had a ping pong room in a converted garage.)

Our plans represented a risk even if there hadn't been a pandemic. We knew we were losing out on many potential repeat guests if we made our capacity smaller, and would have to earn a lot of new business to make up for it.

A business review helped us evaluate those decisions.

There's likely a lot of decisions in your business that could benefit from an honest review. Examples might include:

• Did that new training program work?

• Is the new computer system improving efficiency?

• Are we getting more actionable insight from our voice of customer program?

• How did adding a live chat service channel affect our phone volume?

• Is our new recruiting plan yielding better hires?

Whatever you decided to do at the start of the year, now is a great time to evaluate those plans and see if they're working.

How do you conduct a business review?

There are three simple questions that can guide your review process.

1. What are our goals?

2. Are we on track to accomplish them?

3. Why?

That last question will help you understand whether your decisions are paying off, or if you need to make adjustments to your plan. Sometimes, you find the decision was a good one and you still need to make some changes.

That's what happened at The Overlook. Here is our revenue goal along with our results year-to-date (YTD):

• Goal: 10% revenue increase

• YTD Actual: 10% increase

• Status: On target

Even though the results look pretty good, asking "Why?" can help you really understand what's happening and spot any signs of trouble.

One of our key performance indicators is the average number of nights booked per month. Here are our results compared to 2019:

• 2019: 9.3

• 2020: 10.4

Looks good, right? Not necessarily.

We need to average 11.4 nights per month to be on pace for a 10 percent revenue increase over the entire year. That's because we lowered our rates from $250 to $225, so we're collecting $25 less per night.

A few unusual factors initially made it difficult to hit the 11.4 mark so far this year:

• We lost out on repeat customers when we converted to three bedrooms in January.

• The pandemic temporarily shut us down in April.

• The cabin was closed for 10 days so it could be painted in June.

This trend could spell trouble in the future if we aren't able to increase our nights per month.

Fortunately, our results have looked better lately. Here are the numbers for the past three months, including our projection for September:

• July: 13 nights

• August: 22 nights

• September: 18 nights

When should you adjust your plans?

There are often opportunities for improvement, even when things are going well.

For example, we've decided to take another look at our rates. We initially lowered the nightly by $25 when we dropped down to a three-bedroom cabin.

A competitive analysis against similar cabins revealed that our rates are now too low for all that we offer. The Overlook has more selling features and more bookings that most of its competitors, but many other cabins still charge more. So we've just raised our nightly rate back to $250.

We'll have to evaluate that decision in a few months.

Take Action

What decisions have you made that should be reviewed?

It could be your annual business plan, a new investment, or a new strategy. Whatever it was, take the time to compare your goals to then results you achieved. Even when things look good, a business review might help you identify additional opportunities for improvement.

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When customer service training is the lazy way out

The assistant called on behalf of her boss.

Ashley (not her real name) had been instructed to round up some quotes for customer service training. She had dutifully performed an internet search for customer service trainers and discovered some of my courses on LinkedIn Learning.

The boss had given Ashley simple instructions. Find some trainers, learn about their standard training program, and find out how much the training costs.

I asked a few questions to learn more about the training request and what problem the company was trying to solve. It was quickly apparent that the biggest problem was Ashley's boss was being lazy.

He was falling short on one of his most fundamental responsibilities as a leader. The manager failed to provide a clear vision to Ashley. He had also failed to provide a clear vision to the employees he wanted trained. In fact, he wasn’t sure what he wanted—he just hoped that hiring a trainer would make it better.

Here's how I knew the manager was being lazy, and how you can avoid falling into the same trap.

Questions to ask before requesting training

There's a list of questions I like to ask potential clients who contact me for customer service training. Here are the questions I asked Ashley along with her answers.

Why is this project important?
"I don't really know. I think it's because some employees have lost focus. We recently rolled out a new accounting software program that's caused some internal challenges, so that might have something to do with it."

How will your boss evaluate success?
"I don't know. He just told me to get some quotes."

What do people need to do that they aren't doing now?
"We have some rules of conduct that some employees haven't acknowledged. I guess they should be following those."

Are there any factors besides training that might impact performance?
"I'm not sure."

Notice Ashley gave vague answers to all of these questions. It's not her fault—her boss gave her this assignment without giving her complete information.

Leaders need to provide clear direction, but clarity often takes time. Time to clarify what good performance looks like. Time to observe employees and talk to them. Time to identify the root cause of an issue. Time to articulate a clear vision.

Ashley’s boss was being lazy when he tried to skip all that.

Let's look at how another customer service leader answered those same questions. This particular leader clearly spent much more time getting clarity about what she wanted.

Why is this project important?
"Our team doesn't have the best reputation, and we're trying to change that. Frankly, my boss has given me a mandate to improve our survey scores and reduce customer complaints. We're working on a comprehensive initiative to improve service. This includes improving processes, upgrading our self-service technology, and giving our employees new skills to better serve customers."

How will you evaluate success?
"Two primary ways. One is by observing customer interactions with our employees to see if there's been a change in behavior. The second is from feedback shared on our customer service survey. My boss gave me a target score to achieve, and I'd like to achieve it."

What do people need to do that they aren't doing now?
"My team often gets flustered when there's a line of customers waiting, which often leads to more customer complaints. Our survey results indicate wait times are our biggest source of dissatisfaction. I'd like to give my team skills to help prevent customers from getting upset."

Are there any factors besides training that might impact performance?
"We're working on ways to reduce the lines, or get more staff when the line gets too long. We've also invested in new self-service technology that should help us serve customers faster. And we are implementing some new procedures to make our service more convenient for customers."

Notice how much more clarity this leader had about her team's training needs. And she's not leaning on training in isolation. Her training request was one aspect of a multi-pronged approach to improving service.

How do you know if employees need training?

Training is fundamentally about solving problems. Employees are given training to help them overcome a challenge so they can improve their job performance.

The trick is knowing whether or not training is the right solution.

Training can only fix gaps in knowledge, skills, or ability. This means an employee is lacking one or more of those things thats needed to get the job done.

• Knowledge: the information needed to do the job.

• Skills: the techniques needed to do the job.

• Abilities: the degree to which employees can use their skills.

A leader should clarify that the reason employees aren't performing is one or more gaps in knowledge, skills, or abilities, before requesting training. At minimum, the leader should engage a training professional to help identify the specific gap rather than prescribe a generic training program.

Here's more information on diagnosing when an employee needs training.

Ashley's boss hadn't yet determined what performance needed to improve, or why employees weren't already performing at the desired level. Without that information, it's difficult to know if training will have any impact, or just be a waste of time.

There have been many occasions in my career when I've been asked to conduct training, but the real problem turned out to be something else. It takes extra effort to find those answers, effort that lazy managers try to avoid.

Additional Resources

You can avoid being a lazy manager like Ashley’s boss by putting in the effort to achieve clarity for yourself and your team. Start by answering these questions the next time you are considering training.

1. Why is this project important?

2. How will we evaluate success?

3. What do employees need to do that they're not doing now?

4. What factors besides training might impact performance?

5. What are the gaps in knowledge, skills, or abilities?

Feel free to contact me if you get stuck. I'm happy to schedule a call and walk you through these questions.

You might discover that you need some training on how to find the answers to these questions. One option is my needs analysis course on LinkedIn Learning, which has been taken by more than 35,000 people. It can help you identify whether employees need training, and if they do, what training they need.

The course follows a training request from a senior leader and highlights various techniques for investigating the root cause of the problem. You'll see how an analysis can be done quickly, and how this upfront effort can save time and money.

The course is free with your LinkedIn Learning subscription. A 30-day trial is available if you’re not already a subscriber. Here's a preview of the course:

Welcome from Instructional Design: Needs Analysis by Jeff Toister

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Chip Bell: How to get inside your customer's brain

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.

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Customers are notoriously bad at describing their needs.

They tell confusing stories, share irrelevant details, and often fail to reveal important data. Often, customers just don't know what they want.

This makes it incredibly difficult to make improvements, or create new products, services, and solutions.

Customer service author and keynote speaker, Chip Bell, has a new book that addresses this issue head-on. The book is called Inside Your Customer's Imagination, and it contains five secrets for working with your customers to create breakthrough solutions.

Bell and I had a chance to discuss his new book, and he shared some fun stories and fantastic insight!

Here are a few of the topics we covered:

• Why do customers struggle to describe what they want?

• What is customer co-creation?

• What makes something a breakthrough product, service, or solution?

• How can multiple perspectives lead to new insights?

• Why do we need to ask better questions?

Bell covered a lot more during our conversation. You can watch the full, 20 minute interview or read some of the highlights below.

Why do customers struggle to describe what they want?

Asking customers their needs sounds pretty straightforward. The challenge is customers notoriously struggle to describe what they really want.

Bell explains that breakthrough ideas are so new, customers don't know they exist. "Nobody wanted a bicycle, nobody wanted a fax machine," he explained. It's only afterwards, when something new and useful is available, customers are glad to have it.

This creates an opportunity for savvy marketers, customer service professionals, and other customer experience experts to work with customers to uncover hidden needs.

Go to the :47 mark to hear Bell explain more.

What is co-creation, and how does it help develop new ideas?

Bell described customer co-creation as a process of including customers in product development. The idea is to work with them, so that their perspective is included.

"Customer experience is already co-created," said Bell. "We make up the experience with the customer, but we don't always treat the customer as if they're an equal partner." Inviting customers to partner with you in the creation process opens up new opportunities.

For instance, my Customer Service Tip of the Week email was co-created with a client. We were brainstorming ways to reinforce a training program I had just delivered and stumbled upon an idea to send a weekly tip via email. It was easy to set up and worked so well that now anyone can subscribe for free.

"We're creating with the customer," said Bell. "Not just on behalf of or for the customer."

You can hear more at 2:27 in the conversation.

What makes something a breakthrough product, service, or solution?

It's something completely new, or a new feature that's added to something that already exists.

Bell told a story about working with a pizza company, where members of a customer focus group unexpectedly brought up the pizza box as an opportunity to do something different. Customers came up with a variety of examples such as turning the box into a puzzle or a Halloween mask.

Another story was the origin of the Frisbee. Go to the 6:12 mark of the interview to hear Bell describe the unusual way the Frisbee was invented.

How can getting multiple data sources paint a clearer picture?

Bell shared a story from the book about a hotel general manager who bought breakfast for local taxi cab drivers once per quarter. The breakfast was a focus group designed to uncover what hotel guests were saying about their experience.

The general manager realized that taxi drivers often heard unvarnished feedback about a guest's hotel stay on the ride from the hotel to the airport. This feedback might never be shared with an hotel employee or in a survey, but was readily offered in a casual conversation during the cab ride.

Bell calls this "eccentric listening," where you try to gather information from unusual perspectives. "You're talking about out of the ordinary questioning," said Bell.

He shares more about the concept at 9:05.

Why do we need to ask better questions?

Many of the questions we routinely ask customers have lost meaning.

"How are you today?" is almost always answered with "fine" or "good," without the other person revealing how they are really doing. Likewise, a cashier asking, "Did you find everything alright?" expects customers to say "Yes," and is flummoxed by anyone who answers "No."

Bell and I shared amusing examples about staying in hotels, where "How was your stay?" has become one of those rote questions.

"We treat questions like, 'How was your stay?' as a greeting," said Bell. It's not really an interrogatory. It's got a question mark, but it's not really a question. It's like another version of 'hello.'"

Go to 12:40 to see more from this great exchange.

Get the Book

Bell is an accomplished storyteller, and his skills are on full display in Inside Your Customer's Imagination.

The book is filled with amusing anecdotes, backed up by practical suggestions and advice you can put to use right away. The book is currently available on Amazon in hardcover, Kindle, and audiobook.

If you're looking for more business books or interviews like this one, check out my Recommended Reading list. It contains my recommended customer service and customer experience books, along with exclusive interviews with authors such as Shep Hyken, Jeanne Bliss, and Matt Dixon.

Report: Companies routinely ignore customer emails

Email remains a strong customer service channel despite its age.

The convenience is perfect for non-urgent issues. You quickly type out your message, send it, and then go on with your day until you get a response.

Email is good for companies, too. Employees can serve far more customers per hour than on live channels such as phone or chat, while also avoiding the potential for public scrutiny that comes with social media.

Unfortunately, many companies still struggle to get email right.

According to a new report from Netomi, a company that provides an artificial intelligence platform for customer service, 70 percent of publicly traded consumer products and retail companies failed to respond to email. Those that did respond often did poorly.

This post shares some highlights from the report along with some surefire strategies for improving this important channel.

About the email response study

Researchers identified 973 publicly traded companies on the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange. An attempt was made to either find a customer service email address, or a web form that allowed customers to send the company email-like messages. (Most customer service web forms turn the resulting conversation into an email exchange.)

Companies that did support email were sent a short message asking for information about the company's return policy.

You can read the full report here, or keep scrolling to see some highlights.

Results of the email response study

On the whole, companies faired poorly.

Some companies made it difficult to find their email address or a web form to contact customer service, while 17 percent did not support email at all. Costco stands out by explaining that this is a conscious decision.

Of the companies that did offer customers a way to contact them via email, 70 percent failed to respond. This mirrors the results of a similar study conducted by SuperOffice that found 62 percent of companies ignored their emails.

Companies that did respond often failed to meet even basic expectations. The average response time was 36 hours, even though my own study of over 3,200 consumers shows companies should respond to emails within one hour.

Too many responses were impersonal.

• 28.4 percent failed to use the customer's name.

• 27.6 percent failed to include the name of the employee responding.

The study also found customers were eight times more likely to get a response when emailing a company on a weekday. This is a huge miss for companies, since many customers handle service issues on nights and weekends when they have more personal time.

How to improve email responsiveness

Companies that offer email as a support channel should do it well or risk alienating their customers. Otherwise, take a cue from Costco and opt out completely.

One reason Costco enjoys a stellar reputation for outstanding service is it plays to its strengths. It doesn't risk disappointing customers by offering something, like email support, that it isn't prepared to do exceptionally.

If you do offer email support, there are a few quick fixes that will immediately improve your responsiveness and the quality of your service.

Audit for dead zones. Check your website, product packaging, instruction manuals, and other sources to make a list of all the places where a customer service email address or web form is advertised. Make sure all of these sources point to an actively monitored inbox. A surprising number of customer service emails never get answered because nobody ever sees them!

Monitor response time. In most cases, companies should aim to respond to customer emails within one hour. Meeting this standard requires you to actually monitor your response time. Take note of general trends, along with individual employees who are too slow to respond. Investigate potential problems to identify and address root causes.

Respond thoroughly. Support agents often unwittingly compound their company's email problems by going too fast. This causes them to misunderstand customer issues and respond with incomplete information. The inevitable result is the customer has to email again, which adds to the contact volume and makes it harder to respond quickly. A counterintuitive solution is to take a few extra seconds to fully understand the customer's needs, and compose a thorough response eliminates the need for additional emails.

You can get more ideas an information about responding faster and better to customer emails from this webinar.

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How to show your smile while wearing a mask

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.

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Your smile is hard to see if you are wearing a mask.

That's been a challenge for customer service employees in restaurants, retail stores, and other places that serve customers in-person. Employees wearing masks find themselves using exaggerated hand gestures or emphasizing a positive tone of voice to indicate good cheer.

There's another way to put on a welcoming face for customers: the smize.

The term, credited to Tyra Banks, means smile with your eyes. Here's why the eyes matter, a quick explanation from Banks on how to smize, and a little background on why the smile is so important.

Why the eyes matter when you smile

Psychologist Paul Ekman has done extensive research into the science of smiles. According to Ekman, a genuine smile engages two muscles. One is the zygomatic major, which controls the mouth. The other is the orbicularis oculi, which surrounds the eye and narrows our eyes a bit when we smile.

Fake smiles that do not communicate true happiness will still show in our mouth, but doesn't have the same effect on our eyes.

A 2019 study conducted by researchers Hassan Ugail and Ahmad Al-dahoud used computer software to map people's faces while they were smiling. The software cataloged both fake and authentic smiles to gauge the difference. The results showed that real smiles generate 10 percent more movement in our eyes.

How to smile with your eyes

Creator and host of America's Next Top Model, Tyra Banks, demonstrates the smize in this short video.

There's one small change I recommend for customer service.

The smize that Banks is referring to involves not actually smiling. While that might work on a fashion show runway, it's helpful to give a real smile in a customer service situation.

Even when customers can't see your face, it's easier to make a real smile show through your eyes.

Why authentic smiles matter

My book, Getting Service Right, explores hidden obstacles to outstanding customer service. One challenge, detailed in chapter 10, is emotional contagion.

The idea that people choose their own attitudes isn't entirely accurate. In the short term, we can "catch" an attitude from someone else. That's one reason it's so difficult to serve an upset customer—their negative attitude can influence ours before we're consciously aware of it!

This concept also works with positive attitudes. That gives a genuine smile simple, but extraordinary power to “infect” our customers with a more positive mood. Psychologist, Guy Winch, shared this explanation in an article for Psychology Today:

"Authentic smiles have the power to elicit a reflexive response in the recipient-they smile back. Consequently, we can induce a better mood in others simply by flashing them authentic smiles."

Smiling really works! Try smiling at another person, and you'll often see them smiling right back without.

Take action

Smizing can take a little practice. Fortunately, there are plenty of opportunities:

• Try it in a mirror at home

• Practice smizing with friends and family

• Work on your smize when you're a customer and wearing a mask

One thing that Banks suggests is to focus on something that gives you true joy. Hopefully, it's the customer you're serving, but sometimes we need to think of something else. When you are focusing on joy, your smize will come naturally.

Just for fun, can you tell a real smile from a fake one? Try this smile quiz to find out.

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How to increase sales and productivity with stable shifts

Retail schedules can wreck havoc on employees' lives.

A few years ago, the New York Times published this heart-breaking story about a Starbucks barista whose work schedule made it a struggle to find a place to live, care for her young son, and go to school. She would often get her weekly schedule with just a few days notice, and her hours were wildly erratic. One schedule had her working until 11pm one evening and then reporting at 4am the next day.

Her story is sadly too common in retail and fast food industries.

Unpredictable schedules have a cascading effect. Employees struggle to escape poverty when they can't go to school or work a second job. Arranging childcare is a challenge when the parent works ever-changing hours. Showing up with a smile, or showing up at all, is a daily challenge.

This practice doesn't just harm employees. It hurts business. These ever-changing schedules often shrink profits in unseen ways.

This post highlights the results of a 2015 experiment that shows how more stable employee schedules are good for business. The lessons are incredibly relevant right now.

About the Experiment

A group of academic researchers partnered with the Gap to study the effects of more stable scheduling on retail performance. The experiment tested a number of changes to employee scheduling:

• Schedules were published two weeks in advance

• Employees could swap shifts with each other

• Shift start and end times were standardized

• Part-time associates were given at least 20 hours per week

• On-call shifts were eliminated

On-call shifts require an employee to be available to work, but the shift might be cancelled just a few hours before it begins. This can be an extra burden because you can’t make any other commitments, but you aren’t guaranteed to get paid.

Two results really stood out:

• Sales increased 7 percent

• Productivity increased 5 percent

You can read the full report, or keep reading below for a synopsis.

Why don't companies offer stable schedules?

Labor is one of the biggest expenses for most retailers. The chaotic work schedules are created by algorithms designed to operate stores with as few employees as possible in an effort to keep costs low.

The formulas typically use several variables to forecast each store's scheduling needs for the week. Common variables include:

• Regular sales patterns

• Planned promotions

• Merchandising tasks (ex: setting up a new display)

• Employee training

• Receiving and stocking inventory

These algorithms place a premium on flexibility to control costs, allowing new shifts to be added or deleted on short notice. Decision-making is centralized, and store managers are often given little, if any, discretion to alter these schedules.

Unfortunately, these formulas inevitably allocate too few hours to stores.

How scheduling algorithms fail

There are a few different ways that scheduling algorithms cause stores to be short-staffed.

The estimates for various merchandising tasks are often inaccurate. One large retailer estimated the hours required to complete a new product display by timing how long it took employees to create a sample. The estimate was almost always too low because the sample was created in a corporate conference room, not on a busy retail floor with constant interruptions from customers.

Store managers aren’t add additional hours, so they’re forced to “borrow” staffing from other tasks. This typically comes at the expense of sales and customer service.

Some algorithms fail to account for overlapping needs.

Saturday morning was the busiest day of the week for one retail store. It was also the day when the weekly stock shipment arrived. The store lacked a back stock area to store new product, which meant new shipments had to be put on the sales floor immediately. The store manager wasn't given enough hours to handle the stock shipment and adequately serve customers, so sales ultimately suffered.

There many other hidden costs of a lean schedule:

• Theft goes up with fewer associates on the sales floor.

• Customers purchase less when they can’t get timely assistance.

• Inventory is harder to manage.

Inventory can be really sneaky. Customers often move inventory around a store, such as leaving clothing in a fitting room or deciding against a purchase while at the cash register. The store can lose sales if employees aren't available to quickly re-shelve those items.

How to implement stable shifts

Retail businesses will always need flexibility to meet changes in demand. The secret is to start with a core schedule and flex up by adding more hours.

All employees, including part-time workers, are given a core schedule. These are predictable days and hours when they can be expected to work each week.

Flexibility is achieved by adding hours when needed. Part-time employees are often open to working more hours, and can be given additional shifts or asked to work longer. Full-time employees can occasionally be asked to work overtime when the store is really busy.

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Erica Mancuso: Why customers should get the benefit of the doubt

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.

We've all experienced an outrageous customer.

Perhaps they lied or exaggerated. They might have been unreasonably angry. Others make a mistake and then blame you for the problem. Some are too obstinate to cooperate as you try to help them.

It's natural to be dismissive. Why should you have to serve someone who lies, throws a tantrum, blames you, and then refuses to be part of the solution?

Erica Mancuso has a counterintuitive suggestion. When customers are outrageous, we should give them the benefit of the doubt.

Mancuso is one of ICMI's top 50 thought leaders to follow on Twitter, and the Director of Offer Management at nThrive. We recently had a conversation about the importance of giving customers the benefit of the doubt.

Here are a few of the questions that Mancuso answered:

• What does it mean to assume good intent?

• Are there things that make it more difficult?

• How do you get a customer to be more rational?

• How do you get out of the mindset that customers are just being jerks?

• Why is it important to assume a customer has good intentions?

You can watch the full interview or read the highlights below.

What does it mean to assume good intent?

"Most people when they go to work everyday, they're not trying to complain about everything," said Mancuso. "They're trying to get a job done."

She explained that customers contact customer service because they're frustrated about a problem. Their primary goal is to get the problem resolved and to feel better about it.

Mancuso shared that it's natural for customers to exaggerate when they're upset. "Sure, will they embellish things a little bit? Maybe. Haven't we all done that as customers at some point in time? We do."

Assuming good intent requires us to look beyond the customer's outrageous behavior and realize what's behind it.

"The client has good intentions," said Mancuso. "They're not trying to wreck my day. They just want the issue resolved."

See more at the :29 in the interview.

Are there things that make it more difficult to assume good intent?

Situations where a customer appears to be lying or obviously exaggerating can be especially difficult.

In my book, Getting Service Right, I shared a story about Paul, a night club manager who took a call from an unreasonable customer. The customer's credit card company had issued a fraud alert, and the customer angrily accused one of Paul's employees of stealing the card number. Paul knew this wasn't true, and he struggled with his instinctive reaction to dismiss the customer's concerns.

Mancuso described this as a common challenge. "We all tend to embellish things when we're frustrated."

It can be tempting to catch a customer in a lie, or point out how they're wrong. However, that tactic usually makes things worse, not better.

Go to 3:31 in the interview to hear more.

How do you bring a customer back to a more rational place?

Mancuso recommends asking specific questions to redirect the conversation.

For example, if a customer tells you something "never works" ask them specifically how many times the error occurred and what they were doing when they noticed it.

The key is to partner with the customer to gather facts and avoid accusing them of anything. "You do it in an empathetic way," said Mancuso. "You don't want the person on the other end to feel like an idiot."

Using specific questions echos similar advice contact center expert, Myra Golden, shared with me in our interview. Golden suggests starting with three closed-ended questions such as "Are you using a Mac or a PC?" to help the customer regain a more rational mindset.

Hear more on this topic at 5:02.

How do you get out of the mindset that customers are just being jerks?

Mancuso suggests that customer service professionals be willing to learn from their experiences. It's important to reflect on situations where a customer is exaggerating and think about better ways to handle them.

"Let's not shy away from these difficult conversations," said Mancuso. "They're going to help you grow as a professional."

One of the biggest obstacles is taking it personally when a customer directs their anger towards you. "You have to understand they're not angry at you, they're angry at the situation."

Not taking it personally can be easier said than done. Outrageous customers often trigger our fight or flight instinct, which is our natural urge to either argue with the customer or get away from them.

Go to the 8:12 mark to hear more.

Why is it important to assume a customer's intentions are good?

"You tend to be more empathetic when you assume good intent," said Mancuso. Empathy is a core customer service skill used to help customers feel better.

Mancuso explained that feelings are a powerful part of the customer experience. "We know that their overall experience with a company is one third what happens and two thirds how you make them feel."

Assuming good intentions often helps you wade through the customer's exaggerations and understand what's really bothering them. It's the mark of a true professional when you can regulate your own emotions and find a way to help the customer feel great at the end of the conversation.

Hear more at 11:23 in the interview.

Additional Resources

Mancuso shared some additional tips for serving upset customers in this article published by ICMI.

You can get even more ideas from my LinkedIn Learning course, Working with Upset Customers. You'll need a LinkedIn Learning subscription to view the entire program, but a 30-day trial is available.

Manage upset customers like a pro from Working with Upset Customers by Jeff Toister

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How to adjust to new customer expectations

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.

The lone cashier answered the phone while she rang up another customer's purchase. She seemed detached from both interactions, as she split her focus between the customer in front of her and the one on the phone.

I could only hear one side of the phone conversation. "The truck comes in today," said the cashier. (Scans an item.)

"I don't know what's on it." (Scans another item.)

"About half will be stocked by tonight." (Scan.)

"I don't know what's on it." (Points out order total to customer in front of her.)

"It will be here in about an hour." (Mouths "thank you" to customer in front of her as she hands him a receipt.)

This has become a normal service interaction. Companies are woefully understaffed. Customers can't get the information they want. Inventory is unpredictable and shipments are frequently delayed.

Are customers okay with this? The short answer is, "No."

How customer expectations have shifted

I launched a LinkedIn poll to ask people whether their expectations as a customer had shifted during the pandemic. It's a small sample size, just 143 participants, but the responses are revealing.

The comments point to two general trends.

1. Customers are making a concerted effort to be more patient and empathetic.

2. They also expect businesses to continue treating them as valued customers, and do a better job of communicating changes to normal service levels.

Kate: "My empathy has increased. Maybe most of all for the farmers from whom I buy my food. But for everyone–I think it’s a safe assumption that every business or customer support person I interact with is struggling in some way, facing some hardship."

Rama: "I don't expect less–I do understand that every part of a transaction may have slowed down, but that just means I expect communication to be improved. Not necessarily more personal or faster; just complete information, even if it's in autoresponder format."

Margie: "I think I’m getting a bit tired of hearing from businesses, 'Well due to COVID our wait times will be longer...' 'Due to COVID..this and that...' It’s as if COVID is the excuse for everything. How long is this a viable excuse for service issues?"

Namecca: "My patience has drastically increased. As an efficiency lunatic, I used to see all the flaws in the process and get frustrated in traffic, in line, at the store, etc. Now it just is what it is. Flexible, more compassion and definitely more deliberate actions in my personal life. I still expect that people show up to do a good job but when they don't or can't I am more forgiving for sure."

Bryan: "It's heartbreaking to see so many businesses, mostly restaurants, fold during this time. I both respect and understand the levels of change they have to bring everyday to just survive."

Resources to improve service

Nearly every company was in some sort of survival mode in March. They were either fighting to stay in business, like restaurants, or were completely overwhelmed with business, like grocery stores.

Now we're more than five months into the pandemic. Companies need a better, more long-term solution. The alternative is losing even more customers to competitors that are better able to adapt.

The starting point is a customer service vision. This is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page. If you want your team to be great, you must first define greatness.

These resources can help you:

• Guide: How to write your vision in a virtual meeting

• Video: Leading a customer-centric culture

• Book: The Service Culture Handbook

Another essential step is to better manage customer expectations. This includes clear, proactive communication to let customers know what's changed.

This LinkedIn Learning course can help you. You can access the course with your LinkedIn Learning subscription or get a 30-day trial.

Understand the impact of unpleasant surprises from Customer Service: Managing Customer Expectations by Jeff Toister

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Alexander Salas: Why quizzes are a poor way to measure training

How do you evaluate customer service training?

Most trainers don't measure it beyond tracking attendance and giving people a smile survey at the end of every class. Employees attend training, then go back to work without any proof they learned something useful.

Some trainers use gut instinct.

For instance, a learner who asks fewer questions or displays greater confidence as the training goes along is considered trained. Never mind that some people who are completely incapable of doing the job ask no questions and display amazing amounts of confidence.

Still other trainers use quizzes. Participants are given tests to assess their knowledge of the content. The thought is a good quiz score indicates the person can do the job.

But can they?

I recently discussed the use of quizzes with Alexander Salas, Chief of Awesomeness at eLearning Launch, an online academy for instructional designers. We discussed the reasons why quizzes are often a poor way to measure training, and what trainers can do instead.

Here are a few questions Salas addressed in our conversation:

• Why are quizzes a poor way to measure training?

• What should we do instead of quizzing learners?

• Why should companies avoid corporate universities?

• What metrics should I use to evaluate training?

• How do I justify my training programs to executives?

You can watch the full interview or read some of the highlights below.

Why are quizzes a poor way to measure training?

"In terms of workplace learning, you have to ask yourself why you are asking people to take a quiz," said Salas. 

The goal of training is rarely for people to acquire and retain information. We usually give them information so they can use it to do a better job. That's where quizzes fall short—they don't show us whether an employee can do better work as a result of training.

Salas also discussed the challenge people have retaining information they learn in a training. A quiz might assess your knowledge level today, but two weeks later learners might have forgotten a lot of the knowledge they learned if it wasn't reinforced on the job in some way.

You can hear more on this topic at the 1:17 mark in the interview.

What should we be doing instead of quizzes to evaluate training?

Training should be evaluated by having participants demonstrate the performance you expect to see on the job. This can be done in a controlled training setting, or through on-the-job observations after training.

"Ideally, what you want to do is understand your purpose," said Salas. "What is your scope? Where are you ending?"

Salas argues that a quiz makes sense if your end goal is for people to have knowledge. Unless you're in academics, that's rarely the objective in the workplace.

In most cases, you really want people to be able to do something with that information. For example, if you want people to build better rapport with customers, then being able to identify rapport-building techniques on a multiple choice quiz is not enough. 

Your evaluation plan should include participants demonstrating that they are able to build rapport, either in an in-class simulation or with real customers.

This evaluation process starts when you first design a training program.

Decide what a fully trained person looks like, and then work backwards to create a program to get people to that goal. That picture of a fully trained person should describe what the person should be able to demonstrate after the training is complete. (Here's a guide to help you do that.)

Go to 2:27 in the interview to hear more.

Why should companies avoid corporate universities?

Salas argues that too many companies mirror academia when they set up a training function. "What is school called in the business world? Training."

Training departments are often called corporate universities. Content is organized in a series of classes. Classes are often grouped into "certificate" programs to reward participants for completing a certain amount of content. Quizzes are used to assess learning, just like in school.

I once ran a corporate university that was set up this way. Being a results person, I studied whether taking a certain number of classes correlated with better job performance. There turned out to be no correlation at all.

Some people who attended every class were indeed successful, while others who attended every class were mediocre performers. There were other employees that never went to a class, yet were objectively high performers.

This insight caused me to scrap the corporate university approach. 

What we did instead was focus on helping employees improve their job performance. We assessed employee skills gaps at an individual level, and created customized plans to help people grow.

Salas shares more at the 11:20 mark.

What metrics can we use to evaluate training?

"There's an evolution that you want professionals to go through," said Salas. "If they're beginners, and they're in customer service training programs, you want them to perform at a specific standard."

For example, if an employee is expected to respond to emails with a certain level of quality, there should be a clear standard that defines what a quality email looks like. Once that's defined, the employee's training should be evaluated by whether or not they can demonstrate the ability to write emails according to the quality standard.

More veteran employees might be evaluated a little differently. According to Salas, "You want them to progress to a level where they start creating their own improvements to the workflow, improvements to the way they do their work."

Using the same email example, you might evaluate an employee's learning by their contributions to updating or writing knowledge base articles that can help the entire team work faster and more accurately.

Go to 14:47 in the interview to hear more.

How do I justify my training programs to executives?

Salas suggests the process starts up front, when executives request training. "The question that you pose, when you get that request, is 'What do you want out of the training? Do you want performance, or do you want knowledge?'"

Trainers can then tailor the training program and evaluation strategy to meeting the executive sponsor's expectations.

We talk more about this at 17:39 in the interview.

Additional Resources

Salas provides elearning consulting at Style Learn and runs an online academy for instructional designers at eLearning Launch.

He's also a good person to follow on LinkedIn for content and though-provoking questions around training and instructional design.

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Myra Golden: How to Improve Your Call Control Skills

Call control is part art, part science.

It's the ability to politely, yet quickly move along a customer service call. These skills were originally a big part of call center agent training back when talk time, or handle time, was considered an essential metric.

Today, fewer contact centers are holding agents accountable for the length of each call, but call control still remains an important skill.

• Customers don't want to waste time.

• Quicker calls generally lead to higher satisfaction.

• Faster calls allow you to serve more customers.

I interviewed contact center expert, Myra Golden, to get tips on call control skills. Golden is a certified master de-escalation instructor and customer experience designer who has an impressive call control course on LinkedIn Learning.

Here are just a few topics we covered in our conversation:

• What is call control?

• Why do calls take longer than they should?

• How do you use call control skills with upset customers?

• How can contact centers make call control easier for agents?

• What can agents do to make customers feel great, but still keep the call on track?

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

What is call control?

Golden offered a succinct definition of call control.

"Call control is the art of politely moving a call forward to closure."

Many customer calls go on longer than they need to. Some customers are upset, while others are just extra talkative.

Years ago, when I had my first full-time job as a contact center agent, I had a regular customer who was quite the talker. He could talk to me for an hour about the smallest of issues. The customer wasn't angry—he just seemed to have a lot of time on his hands.

He was also an important customer who worked for one of my biggest accounts, so I felt I had to stay on the phone as long as he wanted.

One day, an experienced colleague pulled me aside and explained how the long phone calls were keeping me away from other customers. He had just taken a call from another customer of mine who didn't want to wait to speak to me.

It was then that I realized that I needed a better way to keep my important customer happy, while avoiding friction with other customers and my coworkers.

You can hear more of Golden's definition of call control at the :52 second mark of the interview.

Why do calls take longer than they should?

"A lot of the time, it's the customer," said Golden. "They don't know how to get to the point. They want to tell you the backstory and the journey of how they got there."

That was my important customer. He could talk for days about the smallest thing.

Of course, there are many times when the customer service professional causes a call to go on too long. One example is when we don't provide enough information.

"We lose control when we don't proactively answer the customer's questions," said Golden. For example, if you tell a customer someone will get back to them, that invites a number of follow-up questions.

• Who will reach out?

• How will they contact the customer?

• When will they reach out?

It's better to use clear and specific language up front to set expectations, so the customer doesn't need to ask a lot of follow-up questions. For example, you could tell a customer, “I will give you a call back by Monday at 4pm with an update.”

Hear more about why calls take too long at the 3:24 mark of the interview.

How do you use call control skills with upset customers?

Customer service professionals frequently try to speed up the call when they encounter an upset customer. They try to get straight to the point and solve the problem quickly.

Unfortunately, this often backfires.

Customers are more judgmental and less open to ideas when they're angry. An upset customer might resist your suggestions for a quick solution, which ends up prolonging the call.

"When a person is upset, they are very often in the emotional side of their brain," said Golden. The solution is finding a way to help soothe the customer's emotions and get them back to their rational brain. It’s counterintuitive to spend extra time soothing the customer, but this often helps the call go shorter.

Golden has some very good suggestions for doing this. Check out her full explanation at 6:09 in the interview.

How can contact centers make call control easier for agents?

Contact center agents are often hampered by cumbersome procedures or inflexible systems. Golden relayed a story about her own experience as a contact center manager.

When Golden listened to agent calls, she quickly noticed a problem.

"My agents had to ask seven questions before they could get to the problem," said Golden. This made the calls sound more like an interview or even an interrogation, rather than a conversation.

The key to fixing this problem is using a call flow and computer system that is flexible enough to allow you to solve the issue in a non-linear fashion.

"If the customer started out with their story, you could jump right to notes and record while they talk," said Golden. You could then go back and ask for the required information once the customer had shared their story. This led to a more conversational tone, and also limited the amount of times a rep had to interrupt the customer to get required information.

Hear more at the 9:57 mark in the interview.

What can agents do to keep calls on track?

Golden provided several suggestions that can be used, depending on the situation.

When a customer is friendly and talkative, she recommends giving a polite, but minimal response. "I live in Oklahoma. During tornado season, you'd be surprised at how many people ask about the weather. I could talk for 20 minutes about that."

A minimal response to a question about tornadoes might be, "Yes, we did have tornados last night, but fortunately the damage was minimal."

You can then redirect the call back to the issue at hand. I really could have used that technique with my talkative customer back in the day!

Golden gives some additional tips for getting a call back on track when the customer is really angry. Check them out at 13:37 in the interview.

Additional Resources

You can get more resources, check out Golden's blog, and learn more about Golden's customer service training programs on her website.

Golden's LinkedIn Learning course on call control is outstanding, and I highly recommend it for anyone who serves customers over the phone.