What to do when your client has an ugly baby

Ugly babies are my customer service kryptonite. 

No, not actual human babies. An "ugly baby" is a metaphor for an idea, project, product, or anything else that someone is really proud of, but isn't terrific.

For example, a lot of people send me the customer experience vision statements their companies create. It's an honor because vision statements are my thing.

Some are great, some are good, and some are objectively terrible.

It's the terrible ones I struggle with. The person sending it often expects praise and validation, not unvarnished feedback. Sometimes, the truth just comes out.

I've found myself saying, metaphorically of course, "Yowza! That sure is one ugly baby!" before I could catch myself and say something more tactful. Not a great moment.

So I decided to crowdsource this one. I posted my dilemma on LinkedIn and got some terrific advice for handling what I call a “level three” ugly baby problem. Here's what I learned.

This is an adorable baby. You try finding stock images of ugly babies. It’s not easy.

What is a "level three" ugly baby problem?

In my LinkedIn post, I wrote that I believe there are three levels to the ugly baby problem.

Level one is an ugly baby that you observe from afar.

This could be something about the client you observe, but the client hasn't asked for your input on. The simplest solution is usually to just ignore it.

Level two is an ugly baby that's presented to you.

There's a certain expectation that you admire the baby, but the client isn't really looking for feedback. I often default to making an accurate statement that avoids the baby's obvious aesthetic challenges. For example, "It sounds like you've put a lot of effort into this project!"

Level three is when a client asks you to vote for their ugly baby in a "World's Most Beautiful Baby" contest. Or give feedback. Either way, it’s difficult because your client thinks their baby is adorable and wants you to validate this.

How to tactfully respond to an ugly baby

Kaye Chapman, Learning & Development Manager at Comm100, recommends leading with empathy.

"I think sometimes people think being candid means you have to be a bit brutal and trample on people. But there's usually a way through as long as you're empathetic and respectful."

Chapman suggests acknowledging your client's obvious pride while making it clear your constructive feedback is based on your own perceptions.

For instance, you might start off by saying, "I know how important this is to you. There are a few changes that would make it resonate more clearly with me."

Customer service writing expert, Leslie O'Flahavan, suggests the strength of the relationship with your client should play a role in how you respond.

"If we usually agree on which babies are cute/ugly, but they are blindly in love with this particular ugly baby, I'd do my best to explain my objections diplomatically and courteously. Doing so is an investment in our relationship. It demonstrates trust that we can disagree without causing a permanent break."

O'Flahavan is on to something.

I don't experience ugly baby problems with trusted clients I've known for a long time. They usually do great work and I find it easy to tactfully provide constructive feedback when I see an opportunity for improvement. An ugly baby challenge typically occurs in a new relationship or when we haven't been on the same page in previous interactions.

Jenny Dempsey, Customer Experience Manager at FruitStand, suggests asking a lot of questions before sharing any feedback.

"If someone presents something to me that is frightful in my eyes, I ask them lots of questions to understand their view point. Then, I'll usually ask if they are open to feedback and share more factual data or insight that might support them toward another direction."

This approach can be very helpful.

One of the steps in my vision writing process is to use three questions to evaluate a draft vision statement. I've had success helping a client use the three questions to self-evaluate their new vision:

1. Is it simple and easily understood?

2. Is it focused on customers?

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

These questions have often helped a client discover the truth on their own.

Take action

A mentor once told me, "Never make a client feel dumb."

Her words have stuck with me for many years. Pointing out the flaws in someone's ugly baby project is a way of making a client feel dumb if you don't share your feedback tactfully.

Keep an eye out for your next ugly baby challenge. Remember that your client might not see the flaws that you find so obvious.

Try not to make them feel dumb.

How to rapidly improve your service culture

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

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

The CEO announces a service culture initiative. Anxious to comply with the CEO's mandate, the executive team launches into a flurry of activity. Committees, surveys, and more committees produce slogans, banners, and more committees.

A year later, nothing substantial has been accomplished.

The CEO loses interest and announces a customer experience initiative. Never mind that nobody quite knows where service culture ends and customer experience begins.

It ends badly. Your organization can't be customer-focused if your leaders can't focus.

Not every organization is this way.

A few leaders broke the cycle and did it right. They got results and sustained them. The organization, or at least their individual team, became intensely customer-focused in a short time.

Their secret to moving fast is both obvious and counterintuitive.

How rushing hurts customer-focus

My neighbor was in a hurry to get to work one day. It was trash day, and his trash bins were lined up in front of his driveway. The trash truck was at the house next door, leaving just a narrow window for my neighbor to back his car out.

He raced to slip through the narrow space and promptly knocked over one of his bins.

Now he had to stop.

Get out of the car.

Right his trash bin for the approaching trash truck.

Wait as the trash truck blocked his driveway while it emptied his bins.

He could have saved time if he had just backed out of his driveway a little slower to avoid knocking over his bins.

Executives struggle with the same challenge. They’re impatient and don’t take time to set a clear direction or carefully chart a course to get there. Employees get confused and aren’t sure what to do.

There’s a rush of activity, but nothing gets done.

How going slow improves speed

The desert canyon had no clear path. There were several enticing side canyons, and I came to a fork several times. It would be easy to take the wrong turn and get lost.

I was in the wilderness with no cell reception, so getting lost would be bad.

Going slow kept me safe. I stopped each time I was unsure of the right direction. I checked my map, my compass, and the vague trail description I was following. Only when I was sure of the right direction did I begin to move forward again.

Each pause took extra time, but it saved a lot more because I stayed on course.

The executives who build fanatical, customer-focused cultures are methodical about staying on the trail, just like I was that day in the desert.

That's not to be confused with plodding. They still move fast. But these leaders maintain a laser focus on carefully doing what's most important while eliminating unnecessary activity.

One company I worked with, Clio, rapidly grew its service culture with a methodical approach. Their customer-focused culture is profiled in The Service Culture Handbook.

In 2014, I worked with Clio's then director of support, Catherine Hillier, to complete a customer service assessment. The assessment identified specific steps for continued culture growth. 

Rather than attempt to boil the ocean, Clio focused on completing one step at a time.

Some progress came quickly. For example, customer satisfaction jumped from 85 to 93 percent in two months, while increasing customer satisfaction survey responses by 600 percent. (Read more here.)

Other accomplishments came over time.

• In 2017, the support team won the best culture award from ICMI.

• In 2019, the company closed a $250 million Series D funding round.

• In 2020, CEO Jack Newton was named one of Canada's Most Admired CEOs.

• In 2021, Clio was named one of Canada's Top Employers for Young People.

What hasn't changed over the years is Clio continues its relentless customer-focus.

Take Action

The biggest step towards becoming customer-focused is to provide clear direction. You can't be focused if you don't know where you're going. Likewise, it’s far easier to chart a clear course if you have a destination in mind.

This is true for organizations, teams, or individual contributors.

If you're a business leader, start by creating a customer experience vision for your organization or the team you lead. You can use this step-by-step guide.

If you're an individual contributor, you can create your personal customer service vision by taking the Thank You Letter Challenge. It's a short, three-week exercise that can rapidly improve your customer service results.

You'll find more steps and answers in The Service Culture Handbook.

And if you get stuck along the way, you can always contact me for assistance. I'm happy to be your guide as you develop a customer-focused culture.

How to get other departments to care about customers

Do you ever feel like employees in other departments don't care about customers?

Years ago, I worked for a company that sold uniforms embroidered with clients' logos. My job was providing customer service and growing sales.

Getting new uniforms produced and shipped involved a lot of other departments. Many created frustrating customer service problems that cost us business.

• Shipping delays

• Quality issues

• Billing errors

It was frustrating, because people in these departments didn't seem to care.

One day, a chance encounter in the cafeteria completely changed my perspective. The cafeteria was crowded, so Donna and a few other employees from accounting offered me a seat at their table.

I was initially hesitant—accounting had caused me its fair share of problems. But I'm glad I joined them. That lunch changed everything I knew about internal teamwork.

Here's what I learned.

Lesson 1: Build Relationships

Teamwork is a two-way street. You must get to know and appreciate other people if you expect them to know and appreciate you.

My company discouraged relationships. Every interaction with other departments was done either by computer or proxy.

For instance, I set up a new client by entering their information into our customer relationship management (CRM) system. Someone from accounting would use that information to bill the client.

If there was a billing error, I was expected to go to my boss, who would talk to the accounting boss, who would talk to the accountant to work out the issue. That became a giant game of telephone that could literally take several days to resolve.

That day at lunch, I discovered that Donna did the accounting for many of my clients.

A lightbulb went off. No longer did I need to wait a week to solve an accounting issue. I could go straight to my friend Donna and we could figure it out in a few minutes.

It was big company, and nearly two thousand people worked at our facility alone, but I quickly identified key people in other departments. A buyer in merchandising, an expediter in fulfillment, a graphic designer in the art department, and a customer service rep on another team all become part of my network.

I went out of my way to build positive relationships with them because I knew they could help me serve my customers.

Action: Identify important relationships to build with people other departments.

Lesson 2: Listen

Listening to others brings new, unexpected insights. It’s also a sign of respect, and an important way to build relationships. For instance, people in other departments often aren't as uncaring as they seem.

Donna had her own frustrations with the billing process. Carless salespeople often neglected to include the correct billing information or the customer’s purchase order when entering a sale. By listening to her, I realized there were things I could do to make it easier for her to send accurate and timely bills.

So while I was happy to have a direct connection to the accounting department, Donna was just as happy to be able to call me when she needed help.

Listening also helped me improve procedures.

Our art department could take up to two weeks to create the pattern our embroidery machines used to sew a client's logo onto a uniform. Different materials required new embroidery patterns, so the pattern for a polyester-blend, jersey-knit polo shirt would not work on a nylon jacket.

That meant I had to request a new pattern and wait two weeks each time a client ordered a new type of garment for their uniforms.

These delays cost me a lot of business. One day, I met with Cat, one of the graphic artists, to listen to the art department’s challenges and learn more about their work.

Cat showed me that some embroidery patterns could be used on multiple types of garments. She also explained that I could save time by requesting a new logo be designed for multiple types of garments at once. This way, when a client ordered a new item, I already had an embroidery pattern ready for whatever item they ordered.

This insight helped me avoid the two week art set-up delay on more orders, which allowed me to earn more business. The art department was happy because creating the same logo for multiple garment types at once was more efficient.

Action: Listen to people from other departments to understand the challenges they face. You might even learn a few shortcuts.

Lesson 3: Help others win

The best way to get other people to care about your goals is to help them achieve their goals. People in other departments are far more cooperative when they believe you are helping them win.

The production department mandated a minimum order size of six because the smallest embroidery machines stitched logos on six garments at one time. This was a problem because my biggest client ordered thousands of uniforms per year, but they had multiple locations that each had just a handful of employees.

We’d lose the sale when my client wanted to order three shirts for a new, part-time employee or replace a single jacket.

I decided to spend some time talking to people in production, where I learned they were under enormous pressure to operate more efficiently. To them, losing an order for three shirts wasn't as important as keeping their costs down.

Working together, we were able to find a solution.

While my customer placed a lot of small orders, we often received orders from multiple locations at the same time. Production agreed to combine these orders to meet the six item minimum, and then the fulfillment center would separate the items and ship them to their individual locations.

This was easy to do since we already had a process to facilitate sorting items this way. One service my company provided was sorting and bagging uniforms for each individual employee, so they were easier for clients to distribute.

Action: Collaborate with other departments to find win-win solutions.

Epilogue

My job at the uniform company taught me a lot about teamwork.

On one hand, I worked with my network to reduce errors, decrease lead time, and increase sales. On the other hand, I quickly learned my initiative wasn't supported by leadership.

Our general manager was coasting towards retirement and did as little work as possible. The sales director who oversaw our department didn't understand how operational problems hurt sales and actively discouraged me from connecting with people in other departments on my own. My boss, the sales manager, was so scared of his boss (the director) that he would avoid attracting attention at all costs.

The company eventually restructured and our entire department was laid off. By then, I had learned a bonus lesson about teamwork: when leaders absolutely refuse to work together, it's time to go somewhere else.

The day that layoffs were announced, I had taken the day off to interview at another company. Two weeks later, I had a new job.

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Hope is not lost! My new book, The Guaranteed Customer Experience, shows you how to get other departments to buy-in to customer experience.

Win & Retain Customers

Learn More

Lessons from The Overlook: Beware of cheap customers

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.

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We had a last-minute cancellation in December.

In the past, this revenue would have been hard to replace. Guest generally reserve The Overlook four to six weeks in advance.

This time it rebooked the very next day. In fact, The Overlook had three inquiries from potential guests.

The re-booking reflects a broader trend. Revenue at The Overlook was up 31 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. It's been occupied every weekend for several months. (The market is primarily focused on weekend rentals.)

Why did this happen?

There are several factors. We reduced the maximum capacity from eight to six to capture a larger market for smaller groups. The pandemic has shifted travel preferences, with many guests favoring isolated vacation rentals like ours over crowded hotels.

There's one more big factor: we've actively avoided cheap customers.

Cheap customers don’t appreciate the value you provide and they can be dangerous to your business. Here's more about who is a cheap customer, why they're dangerous to your business, and how you can avoid them.

Who is a cheap customer?

Cheapskates are ultra-price-sensitive customers who prioritize low price over everything else. While nearly all customers would rather pay less, cheap customers take thriftiness to another level.

It takes a substantial discount to lure them in. That discount isn’t appreciated, such as a restaurant guest using a 50 percent off coupon and then pretending it’s their birthday to get a free dessert.

They often demand exceptionalisms, which is a request for something extra that couldn’t reasonably be expected. Arriving guests recently called our property management company and asked for someone to come put snow chains on their car. The guests were at least 20 minutes away from The Overlook.

They often take unfair advantage of a business’s goodwill.

One group of cheap guests at The Overlook took every spare roll of toilet paper in the cabin. They also took all the extra soap, shampoo, and paper towels. The items are all small, but the cost of replacing them adds up.

Some months ago, a group of eight people arrived to check in. The guests knew the maximum capacity at The Overlook is six, but they told our property manager they didn't think the two extra guests would be a big deal. They were hoping to skirt the rules and save money.

Fortunately, our property manager was able to re-accommodate the guests at another, larger cabin. Adding two extra guests is a big deal for reasons I’ll explain in just a moment.

Why should you avoid cheap customers?

Cheap customers are generally unprofitable. They cost more to serve, bring in less revenue, and can hurt your reputation.

One of the reasons we reduced our capacity at The Overlook was eight guests tended to cause a lot of damage:

• More dishes were broken.

• Furniture was more likely to be stained or scuffed.

• Small items, like flashlights or our snow shovel, were more likely to go missing.

• More trash was strewn about the property and heaved off our deck.

• We’ve gotten noise complaints from neighbors.

There’s also an issue of accommodation.

The Overlook now has just three beds: two queens and a king. There’s no pullout sofa or air mattress. Where would eight people sleep? Likewise, the dining table has six chairs. Where would eight people eat?

It wouldn’t be comfortable.

That group of eight chose The Overlook because they were trying to get a deal, not because they loved our cabin. Experience tells us they would make a mess and then wouldn’t come back.

Cheap customers are also more likely to spread negative word-of-mouth about a business. A study on restaurants that offered Groupon deals found two effects.

First, restaurants increased their number of Yelp reviews by an average of 84 percent after offering a Groupon deal. Second, those same restaurants on average suffered a 12 percent decrease in their Yelp rating.

Customers using Groupon deals hammered the restaurants with negative reviews.

How can you avoid cheap customers?

The best way to avoid cheap customers is to focus on offering the best value proposition rather than the best price. Cheap customers will only pay rock bottom, while most other customers are willing to pay a little extra if they get a lot more in return.

That's what we did at The Overlook.

We raised our prices 11 percent last year. This put our average nightly rate at the high end of our set of comparable properties.

The higher rate discouraged cheap guests from booking, but our incredible value proposition made The Overlook seem inexpensive to guests who appreciated all the cabin has to offer.

The Overlook is in the mountain town of Idyllwild, where vacation rental guests generally look for several key features:

• Expansive views

• Spa

• Fireplace

• Deck

• Pet-friendly

Most of our competitors have some, but not all of these features. The Overlook has all of them, plus a few extras that are not as common in Idyllwild:

• Air conditioning

• Fully-stocked kitchen with a blender, crockpot, serving platters, and more

• Game room with a ping pong table

• Second game room with shuffleboard, puzzles, and board games

Another way to add value is to eliminate annoying fees and include extras in the regular price.

Popular vacation rental sites such as Airbnb and VRBO charge booking fees that can be 10 percent or more of the rental cost. The Overlook can only be reserved through our property manager, Idyllwild Vacation Cabins, which does not charge a booking fee.

We also include a lot of extras that many vacation rentals charge as separate fees:

• Cleaning

• Spa heating and cleaning

• Snow removal

So our nightly rate might be a bit higher, but our total price ends up a bit lower. Cheap customers won't notice this and avoid our cabin while value-oriented customers recognize the deal they're getting.

I’ve taken the same approach for my keynote presentation business. Travel costs within the continental United States are included in my fee, so clients don’t have to worry about separate bills for air fare, hotels, dining, etc. Many clients have told me they appreciate not having to deal with these additional charges.

Take Action

It's tempting to offer discounts to grow your business, but that brings the risk of attracting cheap customers who won't be loyal and are unprofitable to serve.

You can do better by making your value proposition as strong as possible.

• What additional benefits can you offer?

• Can you remove small fees or include them in your price?

• What can you provide that's better, more, or different than your competitors?

Get even more ideas by downloading the first chapter of my new book, The Guaranteed Experience.

Why do good employees sabotage customer service?

I can't stand it, I know you planned it.

—The Beastie Boys, Sabotage

The message was heartbreaking.

A customer service professional contacted me and admitted she was deliberately providing poor service. It went against her core beliefs, but she did it anyway.

Gaby (not her real name) wanted my advice.

I didn't have any great options to share with Gaby. When she explained why she was sabotaging her customers' experience, I could understand and empathize.

My sense was that Gaby is a good employee who was caught in a bad situation. Read on to discover why otherwise good employees intentionally make service worse, and learn what you can do about it.

Problem #1: Toxic culture

Gaby worked in a toxic culture.

Her colleagues laughed at her when she went out of her way to help a customer. This pressured Gaby to choose between dealing with a customer's anger or getting judged by her peers. 

This is a fairly common issue.

My book, Getting Service Right, explores the causes of poor customer service. One story in the book is about Camille, who like Gaby found herself deliberately providing poor customer service to avoid getting ostracized by her coworkers.

Things didn't improve for Camille until she changed jobs and started working in an organizational culture that valued her commitment to serving customers.

It was the best advice I could give Gaby—find a new job if you can.

Toxic culture is a wide-spread problem. In 2019, I conducted a study on toxic employees. It revealed 83 percent of customer service employees have at least one toxic coworker.

That's four times the average rate that employees in other jobs face.

There are probably one or two ringleaders in any toxic work environment. Their toxicity spreads and influences others to do a poor job.

Your likely best option is to fire them now.

Problem #2: Bad bosses

"You're not going to get away with that shit if you work here."

The fast food manager who said that was interviewing a job applicant. I overheard the conversation because the manager conducted the interview in the dining room at the table right next to mine.

(Side note: conducting interviews in crowded public places is apparently a thing.)

Managers like this demotivate their teams. They upbraid and embarrass employees in front of customers. So many employee decisions are overridden that employees stop trying.

Gaby had a bad boss.

She explained that her coworkers weren't the only ones who pressured her to provide poor customer service. Her supervisor did, too.

You probably aren't reading this if you're a bad boss. But you might have a manager or supervisor who works for you that is. And things will only get worse if you don't put a stop to it.

There’s no magic to detecting a bad boss. Just talk to your employees. Listen and observe.

Problem #3: Chronically broken systems

"They won’t let me escalate it until it’s been six business days."

That’s Sherry. She was a friendly, but completely unhelpful customer service rep that I wrote about in Getting Service Right. Sherry was unhelpful because there was literally nothing she could do to help me. Her company’s strict policies even prevented Sherry from transferring me to a supervisor.

A lot of customer service work involves a certain amount of helplessness.

Customers come to you with problems you didn't create. They're emotional, and they direct those emotions at you. You're expected to deal with their outbursts and make them happy, but you often aren't empowered to do the right thing, which makes customers even angrier.

The movie Groundhog Day is all too real for customer service employees.

The solution is helping customer service agents re-discover their agency. Ask them to share the biggest obstacles that make it difficult to do their jobs. Work with them to find solutions. Be their advocate when other departments need to get involved.

And don’t even think of saying that’s a lost cause. Because as soon as you give up, you’ve given your employees permission to do the same thing.

Take Action

Don't assume an employee is a lost cause.

The next time you see an employee providing poor customer service, ask yourself why. Observe them working. Talk to them and truly listen.

Most employees want to do a good job. You can help them get there if you identify the obstacles standing in their way.

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How to make your vision focus on customers

The Service Culture Handbook helped popularize the concept of a customer service or customer experience vision.

A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that gets everyone on the same page. You can read more about that definition here.

One of the most common challenges when writing a vision is the final statement is too generic. Even worse, it doesn't focus on customers. Here are a few examples:

• "We build trust with our customers through caring and prompt service."

• "Fast, reliable, and knowledgeable customer service."

• "World's best customer service team."

Notice these examples use generic words, such as "prompt," "fast," and "world's best." What they don't do is focus on the results they are trying to achieve for the customer or how the customer benefits.

Many leaders whose teams write these statements know something isn't quite right, but they can't put their finger on it. This post will clarify what went wrong, and help you avoid making the same mistakes.

How to write a customer service vision statement

It's helpful to see an overview of the vision writing process before diving into what can go wrong. I won't go into too much detail in this post, so here are some links if you want to learn more:

• My entire step-by-step guide

• Adapting the process to write a customer experience vision

• Facilitating the the vision writing process with a remote team

There are three key steps in the process:

1. Survey all employees to get their input

2. Gather a cross-functional group of 7-10 people to write the statement

3. Check the statement with key stakeholders

I frequently see a problem at each stage in this process that can cause a vision statement to lack customer-focus. Let's explore each one in detail, and I'll explain how to solve each one.

Get the book

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Mistake #1: Misinterpreting the survey results

The first step when writing a customer service vision statement is to survey all employees who will be covered by the statement. This could be a group of 10, 100, or even thousands of people.

The survey gives everyone a chance to provide some input that will later be used to guide the work of the small team writing the vision. Participants are asked to respond to one question:

“What do you want our customers to think of when they think of the service we provide?”

The survey answers are freeform. Responses can be used to generate a word cloud, which visually depicts which words are used most often.

A challenge occurs when the survey results are misinterpreted.

Here's an example from a team called the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP). They were part of a larger nonprofit, but this particular team helped customers who purchased hybrid or "green" vehicles get rebates from the state that were designed to incentivize consumers to buy these types of vehicles.

The word cloud represents the responses from our employee survey:

You can see many generic words right there in bold, such as "friendly," "like," and "helpful." Vision writing teams are often tempted to put these words directly into the vision statement, so it might turn out like this:

We provide friendly and helpful service that customers like.

Yikes! That's a pretty generic statement that's uninspiring and definitely not focused on customers. It seems to be focused on getting customers to like the team, which should be a by-product of doing a great job.

The solution to this challenge is to go one level deeper. Go past the generic words that are large and bold and look at some of the secondary words that come out in the survey.

In this case, look at the words under the large "customers" on the left side of the word cloud. Here are a few that stand out:

• Easy

• Process

• Resolve

• Contact

• Rebate

These words are more focused on what the team actually does—helping hybrid vehicle buyers get rebates. Now we have some additional insight to share in the vision writing meeting.

Mistake #2: Avoiding the good vision criteria

A good customer service vision statement should meet three tests. During the vision writing meeting, it's essential for the facilitator to use these tests to guide the group's work.

The three criteria for a good vision statement are:

1. It's simple and easily understood.

2. It's focused on customers.

3. It reflects both who you are now, and who you aspire to be in the future.

These criteria should be a failsafe against writing generic statements. For instance, let's imagine we completely whiffed on interpreting the CVRP's word cloud and came up with this generic first draft:

We provide friendly and helpful service that customers like.

Now let’s apply the three criteria to evaluate this draft:

#1 Is it simple and easily understood? No, the statement is overly generic. People who worked for this organization cared deeply about the environment. They saw the green vehicle rebate program as a way to get more people onboard with environmental issues, but the statement above doesn’t capture this.

#2 Is it focused on customers? Not really. The CVRP team truly wanted to get more customers driving "green" vehicles and knew the rebate program they supported was a way to do that.

#3 Does it reflect who we are now and our aspirations for the future? No, it does not. I like to ask teams to imagine the results they're achieving for their customers on a good day, when everything is going well. The vision statement should focus on doing more of that. A good day for the CVRP team would be getting more customers to invest in “green” vehicles.

It can sometimes required a skilled facilitator to bring out these issues in a vision writing meeting. This can be a compelling reason to hire an external professional.

Mistake #3: Ignoring your gut instinct

Customer service leaders often tell me they aren't happy with these generic vision statements that don't focus on customers. They getting a nagging feeling that something's not right.

The final mistake is ignoring that feeling and rolling out the vision anyway.

Part of the vision writing process is a final gut check. The idea is to share the finished statement with key stakeholders who did not help write it. These stakeholders can include executives, middle managers, and influential frontline employees.

A good vision statement will elicit an overwhelmingly positive reaction.

There are times when a draft statement doesn't get that reaction. Some organizational cultures discourage open criticism, but you can still tell there's a problem when people aren't effusive in their praise.

"It's okay," really means it's not okay.

As a facilitator, I like to ask probing questions to get to the heart of that feeling.

One group I worked with was a group of maintenance professionals who created a vision statement that read "We help you get it fixed."

The gut check didn't go so well. There was something about the statement that didn't sit well with stakeholders.

I asked them to share more about their reaction. Was it a particular word, for example?

It took a few questions to get to the heart of the issue, but finally someone spotted it. The word "you" in "We help you get it fixed" felt to employees as if they were putting too much responsibility on the customer.

The solution was taking out the word "you" so the statement became "We help get it fixed." The team loved it.

Don't be afraid to lean in if you write a vision statement that stakeholders don't love. Ask them to help pinpoint what they don't love about it and why. In my experience, it's usually just a word or two that needs changing.

Additional Resources

The CVRP team ultimately came up with a customer service vision statement that met all three criteria and everyone was passionate about.

Make it easy to join the clean vehicle movement.

They recognized that their customers might not be as passionate as they were, so the only way to get the masses to invest in clean vehicles was if the process was easy. So they re-focused their efforts on removing friction.

You can write a brilliant customer service vision statement, too. Here are a few resources to help.

• The Service Culture Handbook, the definitive guide to customer-focus.

• My step-by-step guide to writing a vision.

• You can contact me directly if you get stuck.

You can also hear me describe the process in this short video. (You'll need a LinkedIn Learning subscription to view the entire course.)

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

How to end the conflict between marketing and customer service

Some feuds are timeless.

You have the Capulets and Montagues. The Hatfields and McCoys. And of course, there's marketing and customer service.

What's their beef?

I talked to both departments to get their sides of the story. The answers revealed a fundamental problem that plagues many companies. Here’s what they had to say.

What does marketing want from customer service?

I met with marketing to hear their side of the story. (Yes, all of marketing. Just go with it.) They tell me what they'd like most of all from the customer service department is a little cooperation.

Q: You mention cooperation is an issue. Can you tell me more about that?

"Customer service is always pushing back on everything we do.

"Take the brand style guide as an example.

"We lovingly, painstakingly put our new brand style guide together. It details the correct way to use our logo, our preferred color palettes and fonts, and even the language we should use when communicating externally.

"And this thing cost a mint. We hired expensive consulting firms, expensive research firms, and expensive graphic artists. We even printed the guide on expensive paper so people knew it was important.

"So we give the new guide to customer service and their attitude was like, 'We're busy,' and then I'm pretty sure they just dumped it in a drawer."

Q: What makes you think that?

"Just look at those chat conversations! Is 'bored robot' really our brand voice?!

"Or why do so many customer service reps write their email signature in comic sans font? Show me exactly where in the guide you see comic sans font! You know what, you can't, because it's not there!

"And show me one call where a rep uses the new, on-brand phone greeting and actually sounds like they mean it. All we hear about from customer service is how much talk time the new greeting adds, as if talk time is so bad. 

"You never hear the sales team complaining about talk time, I'll tell you that."

Q: Where are some other places you'd like more cooperation from customer service?

"Social media would be a good start. The social media coordinators are getting tired of endlessly tweeting, 'We're so sorry to hear that. Please email your information to support and we'll be happy to help you.'

"I tried asking customer service to help serve customers via social media, and they went ballistic. Something about workforce management and not having the budget to hire more people and buy more software.

"Oh and can we talk about the website?"

Q: Okay, tell me about the website.

"Well, I don't mean to get back on the branding soap box, but the support side of the website is atrocious.

"We spent a lot of time and money on an awesome website. We hired a video production company to make all these witty explainer videos that everyone loves.

"Then we hired an SEO team to..."

Q: Wait, a what?

"SEO. Search. Engine. Optimization. It improves our reach from organic searches so we can redeploy our cost-per-click ad budget to social media. We’ve been having a lot of success with retargeting campaigns lately."

Q: Um. What exactly is... No, never mind. Please keep going.

"So anyway, the website. It's amazing on the front end and then you get to the support section, which is maintained by customer service, and the whole thing couldn't be more off-brand if it tried. None of the support articles use our officially approved phrases from the brand guide.

"There's not one witty explainer video, either. Not one! I gave customer service the contact info for the video company we hired and they just complained about budget. It's always budget with them.

“And don't even get me started on the support site’s SEO."

Q: Deal. I won't. Is there anything you think customer service is doing well?

"They do have a lot of data. I've never seen so much data. Now that I think of it, it would be nice if they shared some of that data.

"No, not the boring stuff about SLAs, AHT, FCR, or any of those other boring acronyms. I'm talking about the good stuff, like what are customers saying?

"I'm looking for quality and quantity here. Give me a riveting story that aligns with one of our personas, and then give me data to tell me how many customers in that particular demographic feel that way, too!

"Is that really so hard?

"It's not. We found a contact center expert, Nate Brown, who understands a whole lot about branding and he says it's not difficult."

[Editor's note: This is true. Nate Brown did share an easy way to collect this data.]

Q: Okay, do you have time for one more question?

"Sorry. I'm double booked for two meetings and I'm already late to both. Gotta run!"

What does customer service want from marketing?

I sat down with the customer service department after meeting with marketing. Yes, the entire department. Yes, for all companies. (Seriously, this post is much better if you just go with it.)

Anyway, here's what customer service had to say.

Q: Marketing says they want some more help from you. What do you want from marketing?

"Help?! They want help?! Okay, let's talk about help.

"How about giving us more than zero notice when they launch a new promotion? Marketing is always cooking up some new idea that spikes our contact volume.

"The first time we find out about it is when the contacts start coming in, when it's too late to adjust our staffing and our team gets slammed.

"What's even worse is our reps have zero information. Customers know more about the promotion than we do, so our reps feel like idiots."

A: C'mon, it can't be that bad.

"Oh really? How about that time when marketing promised customers this special, limited-edition Szechuan sauce as part of promotion for some random cartoon show. They were really patting themselves on the back about that one, only they forgot to make sure we had enough sauce to give out.

“Nobody got enough Szechuan sauce, and customers freaked. Did they yell at marketing? No. They yelled at us.”

[Editor's note: Yes, this video is real.]

A: Have you shared this with marketing?

"We've tried, but they won't listen. Just last week, we got a ton of complaints about a new product launch.

"So I email marketing and say, 'Hey, we're getting a ton of complaints.' And their response was basically, 'You're customer service, isn't that your job?'

"They were totally dismissive."

A: How many complaints did you get?

"I don't know. A lot, I can tell you that. Everyone was talking about it."

A: Wait, but you have a ton of data. Why don't you have more data on complaints?

"I'd love to help you, but tracking that sort of thing is complicated. We've asked for some new software that will help us do that, but our request got denied. Meanwhile, marketing hired some blogger to write a fluff piece about how marketing and customer service should get along.

"We could have used that money to buy the software we need to get marketing their precious data."

A: Ahem. Let's change the subject.

"Wait! Is it you? Is that why you're writing this article? Is that what this is about?!"

A: So anyway, what else would you like from marketing?

"Resources. Marketing gets all the resources.

"The next time marketing comes up with a new, expensive campaign, it would be nice if they told us about it ahead of time and then paid for some training and collateral so we actually knew what the campaign was all about before our customers. We don’t have the budget to make all those witty explainer videos that marketing loves.

"A little understanding would also be nice. They don't realize we're working on different timelines.

"Marketing is thinking in terms of campaigns and launch dates sometime in the future. Customer service is thinking in terms of how many customers are in queue who want our attention right now.

"We need more resources if we're going to stop what we're doing and do something proactive like train our reps to respond to a new campaign."

How can marketing and customer service work together?

You might be able to tell from these interviews that marketing and customer service have conflicting goals. Marketing is focused on generating new business. Customer service is focused on efficiency.

The real victim of this feud is customer experience. Marketing makes promises that can’t be kept. Customer service isn’t empowered to make things right. They blame each other out of frustration.

The secret to resolving the conflict is creating a shared goal.

Customer experience expert, Jeanne Bliss, describes a metric called “net customer value” that can be used to unite these departments in pursuit of customer-driven growth. It tracks the value of new customers, lost customers, and customers retained in one single number.

Go to the 1:24 mark in this interview to hear her description.

What happens when marketing and customer service get along?

Buc-ee’s is a chain of gas station convenience stores, predominantly located in Texas. It wins and retains customers by doing something so mind-blowingly simple that it’s amazing competitors haven’t caught on.

The restrooms at Buc-ee's are amazing. They have been rated by GasBuddy as the cleanest in America. Several locations have 20 or more stalls in both the women’s and men’s rooms along with dedicated employees whose job is to keep everything spotless.

If you’ve ever been on a road trip, you understand the importance of clean restrooms.

Buc-ee’s can do what other gas stations can’t because it’s marketing and store operations teams (i.e. customer service) work together. Marketing knows clean restrooms are a draw, and advertises them on highway billboards. Store operators know about this important promise and ensure that promise is kept.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg for Buc-ee’s. Some gas stations have over 100 fuel pumps. It has friendly, helpful employees and the largest selection of just about anything you can imagine a gas station convenience store selling.

I wrote about this incredible company in my new book, The Guaranteed Customer Experience. The book comes out in March, but you can download chapter one right now to read about the Buc-ee’s customer experience.

Learn More

Discover how Buc-ee’s uses customer experience to drive away the competition.

Get Chapter 1

What is a customer service exceptionalism?

My wife, Sally, and I visited the Albion River Inn last November. It's located in a remote part of Northern California on a cliff top with breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean.

Pandemic health orders allowed limited dining in restaurants, but we decided it would be safer and more enjoyable to eat our meals in our room. The challenge was our room didn't have a comfortable place to sit and eat a meal.

So Sally contacted the front desk and requested a table and two chairs.

We knew this was a special request. It would be great if the inn could provide the table and chairs and it would be unreasonable of us to be disappointed if our special request was denied.

Yet we both admitted our natural reaction would be disappointment if a table and chairs weren't available. We had just presented the inn with a customer service exceptionalism.

Fortunately, the inn came through and a table and chairs were quickly delivered to our room. It made for some wonderful dining experiences during our stay.

Here's how to spot exceptionalisms, why they are dangerous, and how to handle them.

What are customer service exceptionalisms?

Exceptionalism are situations where a customer asks for something extra or unusual that would not normally be expected. It's an exception to what's customarily provided and it's not something that's readily advertised or offered.

Customer service writing expert, Leslie O'Flahavan, coined the term in response to a great discussion on LinkedIn about what to call this situation.

Asking the inn for a table and chairs was an exceptionalism.

Another example would be a dental patient who calls and asks to reschedule a routine cleaning appointment for later that same day. The patient will either be delighted if the office can grant the request or disappointed if the office is fully booked.

Why are exceptionalisms dangerous?

A customer service exceptionalism is highly likely to end in a service failure since the request is outside what's typically offered or expected. These requests are often difficult if not impossible to grant, yet customers might maintain unreasonable expectations.

Here are a few ways that exceptionalisms can be dangerous.

#1 The request can't be granted

Sometimes, businesses or individual employees don't have the power to grant the request.

Changing a cleaning appointment for later in the day is likely a logistical challenge for the dental office. Many dental offices are running at limited capacity and have to take extra time to sanitize between patients. Accommodating a same-day request that's not an emergency might not be possible without impacting other patients' appointments or compromising patient safety.

#2 There's no procedure

In some cases, a customer's request falls outside of standard operating procedure, which heightens the chances of an error.

A customer picked out a plant at a big box home improvement store, but they didn't have room in their car to take the plant home. So they asked an employee to set the plant aside for a few days until they could borrow a friend's truck and take the plant home.

The employee agreed, but the store didn't have a procedure to care for plants that were set aside from the normal display area. The plant didn't get watered and it died by the time the customer returned to pick it up.

#3 Exceptionalisms create future service failures

Granting an exceptionalism once can cause a customer to expect the same exception again in the future. Other customers might also adopt similar expectations.

This is a challenge for airlines when enforcing carry-on baggage requirements.

If one passenger is allowed to board with an extra bag, passengers who board the same flight later on might be furious if the plane runs out of overhead bin space and they have to check their carry-on.

That passenger who was allowed an extra carry-on might get angry on their next flight if that gate agent won't let them board with the extra bag. In the customer's mind, the exceptionalism is no longer an exception since they were previously allowed an extra carry-on.

How should you handle exceptionalisms?

It's helpful to approach difficult customer service situations by looking at what you can do before, during, and after the situation occurs.

Before customers request an exceptionalism, it's helpful to anticipate potential requests and prepare for them. On a previous visit to the Albion River Inn, the general manager did a wonderful job of this by anticipating our selected room would not be to our liking and proactively offering us a complimentary room upgrade.

During the exceptionalism request, it's essential to empower employees to grant reasonable requests as much as possible.

However, there are times when an exceptionalism cannot be granted. In those situations, the employee should do a few things to prevent customers from getting too disappointed.

1. Listen and respond to the customer's emotions.

2. Treat the customer and their request with respect.

3. Use the partner technique to show the customer you're on their side.

4. Give the customer options.

Giving options is a great technique for defusing potential anger because it gives the customer agency over what happens next. Even if the options aren't great, they are likely to elicit a better reaction than a flat "No."

After the exceptionalism, try to learn from the situation.

• Is this request likely to happen often?

• Can a small change make the request easy to grant?

• Is the request a potential opportunity?

Our request for a table and chairs was a potential opportunity.

Sally and I agreed we would have paid extra to have a table and chairs delivered to our room if this option was offered as an add-on when we booked our stay. Proactively offering this amenity would create two revenue opportunities:

1. Table and chair rentals

2. Additional revenue for the restaurant

The restaurant had limited seating capacity, and quickly filled its reservations each night. The inn could generate more revenue by encouraging guests to dine in their room and making it feel like a benefit rather than a sacrifice.

It was definitely a benefit for us. Just look at this view!

Additional Resources

I’ve recommended The Albion River Inn to many friends over the years. In addition to wonderful views from your room, it’s located near excellent hiking in lush redwood forests. Scotch-lovers will rejoice at the selection of over 150 different bottles of Scotch in the restaurant bar!

Customer service exceptionalisms are an opportunity to manage customer expectations. You can learn more about expectation management from my LinkedIn Learning course.

You'll need a LinkedIn Learning subscription to view the entire course, but a 30-day trial is available.

Set yourself up for success with good customer service from Customer Service: Managing Customer Expectations by Jeff Toister

What's in your Jar of Awesome for 2020?

My wife, Sally, and I have a fun New Year’s tradition.

Throughout the year, whenever something really good or noteworthy happens, we write it down on a piece of paper and stick it in our Jar of Awesome. Yes, there’s an actual jar.

Then, on New Year’s Day, we open the jar and read the notes.

It’s a fun way to remember all the good things that happened during the past year. The notes might be about trips, family events, home projects, professional milestones, or anything else we feel like celebrating.

The Jar of Awesome helps us stay optimistic.

There were a lot of challenges in 2020, but our Jar of Awesome is still pretty full. Each time we look at the jar throughout the year, it’s a visual reminder to be intentional about making great memories.

What’s in your jar?

Take a moment to leave a comment and share one positive memory from 2020. Let’s start 2021 with smiling faces and optimism in our hearts!

How to set a good out-of-office message

Are you taking time off for the holidays? If so, don’t forget to set an out of office message.

With so many holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years, and Festivus, December is a time when people take a few days off from work. Keep in mind that we all don’t take the same days off.

• Some people celebrate Christmas, others don’t.

• Some get two full weeks off, while others just get Christmas and New Years Day.

• Many don’t take any time off at all.

When you are out of the office, it is important to set appropriate expectations about when you might return a phone call or email. Otherwise, someone might anxiously wait for your response and even think a little less of you when they don't hear back.

Here’s how to set a good out of office message.

What makes a good out of office message?

Out of office messages should have three key elements:

• Inform the person you are not responding for a period of time

• Tell the person when you will resume normal communication

• Provide an alternative contact should the person have an urgent need

For out of office emails, it’s helpful to put “Out of Office” in the subject line. Here’s an example of an out of office email:

Subject: Out of office

I am currently out of the office on vacation, returning on Monday, January 4.

If this is an urgent matter, please call or text me at 619-955-7946. Otherwise, I will receive your email when I'm back to work on January 27.

Happy Holidays!
Jeff

Notice I left my own phone number as the alternative contact. It gives people a way to reach me if they really need to, but they’ll know they’re contacting me while I’m on vacation. That’s usually an effective deterrent for all but the most urgent contacts.

What communication channels need an out of office message?

Email is essential. It’s where most of us get the bulk of our business communication, so it’s important to have an email out of office message at a minimum.

An out of office message sets clear expectations that you will not be responding as quickly as you normally would. So whether you set out of office messages on other channels depends on how people normally contact you.

Set up out of office messages for phone, MS Teams, or Slack if you expect a lot of people will try to reach you in any of those channels. When in doubt, set a message anyway.

A phone out of office is as simple as changing your voice message. Teams allows you to set a status message when people contact you. Slack recommends updating your custom status to signal you are out of office.

Text is more difficult. If you have a work-only phone, you can put your phone in do-not-disturb mode and set an auto reply. It’s tough to do if you use the same phone for work and personal reasons.

Social media is also tricky. I’ll sometimes pin a tweet that says I’m out of the office, but people don’t realistically look at your profile before tagging you. So I usually just respond to social media messages when I’m back to work.

How to stop checking messages on vacation

Many people feel compelled to keep checking messages while on vacation. There are a few easy fixes to this problem, but it does take a bit of discipline.

Start by alerting your key contacts a week in advance. Let them know when you’ll be out of the office, and ask them to touch base with anything urgent before then.

Next, don’t respond while on vacation.

You’ve set an out of office message for a reason. It sets a clear expectation that you won’t be responding. So if you start responding anyway, you’ve just changed the expectation and made it okay for people to contact you.

I won’t lie. When I’m on vacation, but able to check messages, I still check at least once daily. I quickly scan messages for anything urgent and only respond when absolutely necessary.

Don’t forget to turn out of office off!

Be sure to turn off your out of office messages when you get back to the office.

It’s mildly embarrassing for people to email you on February 1 and get a message that says, “I’m out of the office until January 1.” Don’t be that person.