Three ways to immediately improve your customer experience

Today's customers are increasingly unhappy.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index has steadily declined for the past four years. By the end of 2021, it had reached its lowest point since 2005.

What's causing the decline?

A survey conducted by Toister Performance Solutions in April 2022 aimed to find out. Over 1,500 consumers across the United States were asked about their experiences with companies.

The results point to three ways that companies can immediately improve their customer experience.

#1 Listen to your customers

In an era of endless surveys, customer listening is severely lacking.

The survey found that 30 percent of Americans feel companies rarely understand their needs. Another 44 percent thought companies understand their needs just some of the time.

Think about the impact when a company hasn't listened to your needs as a customer:

  • Your favorite feature was removed from a product you loved.

  • A salesperson pushes a sale without listening to what you want.

  • You have to repeat your story three times when calling customer service.

Companies and employees who don’t listen can’t understand their customers. That creates unmet expectations, frustration, and an incentive for customers to try out the competition.

It seems dead simple, but customer listening is underrated. Here are some resources that can help you improve:


#2: Keep your promises

Companies promise the moon, but in the end you feel like you got mooned.

Service failures are rampant.

The survey found that 21 percent of Americans have been disappointed by a product or service that they purchased in the past week. This includes defective products, faulty services, and unmet expectations.

This often comes from an accountability gap between marketing, sales, and operations. Examples are everywhere:

  • False or misleading advertising

  • Salespeople who lie or exaggerate to get a sale

  • Defective products

  • Services that fall short of expectations

  • Employees who don't call you back

You can avoid these disappointments by keeping the promises you make to your customers. Here are some resources to help you:

#3: Recover from service failures

Problems are inevitable, but many companies fail to recover.

The survey discovered that 14 percent of Americans have experienced an unresolved service failure in the past week.

It's an insult to injury when a company breaks a promise and then fails to adequately fix it. These repeated service failures cost customers time, money, and aggravation.

  • You have to contact a company five times to fix a billing issue.

  • A product breaks while under warranty, but the company won't fix it.

  • An airline cancels your flight and leaves you stranded.

Service recovery is ultimately about restoring trust. You can earn your customer's repeat business if you can get them to trust in your ability to avoid another service failure in the future.

Here are some resources that can help:

Conclusion

There's a reason the basics never go out of style. That's why I'm advising my clients to do a few things really, really well:

  1. Promise: Win customers by promising to solve their problems

  2. Action: Earn trust by taking decisive action to keep your promises

  3. Recovery: Restore trust with a flawless recovery in the event of a service failure

You can get a step-by-step guide for implementing these concepts in The Guaranteed Customer Experience.

How to motivate employees to learn new customer service skills

I once delivered the same customer service workshop over 200 times in a two-year period. Thousands of employees attended.

Over time, I learned I could split the classes into three distinct groups:

  • Motivated: Enthusiastic employees who were eager to learn.

  • Neutral: Employees who willing to go along, but weren't fully engaged.

  • Hostile: Upset employees who used the class to air their grievances.

I was the same trainer each time. The survey results were almost always extremely positive, even with the hostile classes. Yet it was only the motivated employees who I could count on to go back to work and implement new skills.

So what was different?

The big variable was the manager. The motivated employees all had a manager who did three specific things that the other managers didn't do.

I’m going to share their secrets with you along with a tool I use to put these secrets into action.

Secret #1: Preparation

"It's too hot in here. That's my first complaint."

The employee made it clear she didn't want to be in the customer service training class. We had a few moments before the workshop began, so I spent some time talking to her.

She hadn't been told what the class was about or why she was attending. "Mandatory training" was all her manager had given her. So she had arrived expecting to be upset.

This happened a lot.

Employees often showed up to training without a clear idea why. All they knew was the trainer was from corporate (me) and they were required to attend. It wasn't a great set-up.

A few classes were different.

Those employees had been thoroughly prepared by their manager. Specifically, they knew the answers to three important questions:

  1. What is the training about?

  2. Why is the training important?

  3. What will I be expected to do with that I learn today?

#2: Attendance

A lot of managers chose not to attend the training with their employees. Most said they were too busy, which is manager code for "not a priority."

Employees resented this because they felt their manager should be there. The hostile classes used their manager's absence as an opportunity to air grievances.

The motivated group was different. Their manager was always there.

They kicked off the class by reinforcing what the class was about, why the class was important, and how it was going to help them all.

These managers participated and encouraged their team to get involved, too. They knew they would have to reinforce the new skills with their team after the class ended, so they learned all they could.

Secret #3: Follow-up

Many managers never followed-up with their employees after the training. They didn't coach their employees or give them any feedback. These managers couldn't reinforce the training because they didn't attend.

As a result, their employees quickly reverted back to their old habits.

The motivated group of employees were different.

Their managers instinctively understood the 70-20-10 rule, which says that employees learn more from their manager and their job experiences than they do from formal training.

These managers always reinforced the skills learned in training. Having attended the training themselves, they were very familiar with the content. They coached employees, gave feedback, and celebrated wins.

The motivated employees' managers often asked me for more tools and resources. My free Customer Service Tip of the Week email was created when a manager asked me for a resource to help remind her team of the skills we covered in class.

Conclusion

The managers whose employees were motivated to learn did three specific things:

  1. Preparation: they prepared employees for training.

  2. Attendance: they participated in the training, too.

  3. Follow-up: they reinforced the concepts taught in training.

I've created a workshop planning tool to help you implement these three secrets the next time your employees need training. You can download it here.

The tools works in nearly every training situation:

  • Live, in-person training

  • Live, webinar-based training

  • E-learning or other self-paced learning

You can learn more about using the tool from this short video.

How to help customer service employees move away from scripts

I recently had to contact technical support. My external hard drive was failing, and I wanted to recover the files.

The rep clearly had to follow a script. Unfortunately, none of his scripted troubleshooting steps fixed the issue.

Then, it got awkward.

He told me that he was willing to "delight me" by offering free access to the company's file recovery software.

"Delight" was an intentionally chosen word, and not by the rep. It was clear somebody in management picked that word. Someone who had never spoken to a customer.

We both laughed a bit, sensing the awkwardness. I good-naturedly told the rep that I would be delighted if the software actually helped me recover the files.

I sensed the rep wanted to say more, but he couldn't.

Saddling your employees with scripts like this is a terrible idea, though you might be scared to give them more independence. What if they say or do the wrong thing?

Here's how to make the transition with confidence.

Why are customer service scripts a bad idea?

There are many reasons to avoid rigid scripts. Here are three big ones.

First, scripts are an obstacle to building rapport. That's the feeling customers get when they like and trust you. It's hard to create that feeling when a script gets in the way.

  • Customer: "Hi, my name is Alicia. How are you today?"

  • Agent (sticking with the script): "May I please have your customer id number?"

Scripts are also a roadblock to listening.

  • Customer: "I've already rebooted my machine."

  • Agent (sticking to the script): "Please reboot your machine."

A third issue is scripts can be downright silly. 

I once purchased a pack of chewing gum at the grocery store. The cashier dutifully stuck the script that required her to offer carryout assistance to every customer. "Would you like help out with that?" she asked.

What can you give your employees instead of scripts?

Scripts are a relic of the transactional customer service era, where we trained employees to act like robots and expected all customer interactions to be the same.

It's time to make the leap to a more visionary form of customer service.

That starts with a customer experience vision. You can't anticipate every conceivable situation with a script, so a vision gives your employees a compass that always points them in the right direction.

The next step is to give your employees broad service guidelines that fit with the vision. This can help you trim a 37-step service process down to just a few broad guidelines or service standards.

Here's a sample set of guidelines:

  1. Welcome each customer.

  2. Identify their needs.

  3. Efficiently serve each customer.

  4. Look for additional opportunities to serve.

This frees employees to be themselves while focusing on their customers. It also allows employees to adapt their approach to each individual customer's needs.

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can learn more about creating guidelines or service standards from this short video. 

Your company might also have a brand style guide that shows employees how to communicate using a consistent brand voice. It's a good idea to provide your team with training on how to do that.

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can learn more from this short video from customer service writing expert, Leslie O'Flahavan.

Finally, consider giving your team some training to supplement their skills. For instance, you can help your employees uncover customer needs more efficiently with with listening skills training.

How can you prevent employees from saying the wrong thing?

The short version is you can't prevent the occasional misstatement, but it's less likely than you might think. And there are a lot of benefits to allowing your employees to sound and act like real humans.

A few of my extended family members recently gathered at a restaurant. My nephew asked about a particular item and our server quickly advised against ordering it.

"It's craptastic," she explained.

That exchange might send shivers down the spine of any manager, unless you happened to be watching the server's customers. We all laughed at her joke, while appreciating her honesty.

Our server had already established rapport with us, and used good judgment on what to say. This wasn't a random pet phrase that she unleashed on customers willy-nilly.

She was also far from disgruntled. Our server clearly liked the food and enthusiastically made several other suggestions that she said were her favorites.

The rest of our meal was filled with similar exchanges. Our server was attentive, helpful, and a lot of fun. All our meals were terrific, just as she promised, and we had a great experience.

There's no way my family would have had that much fun if our server was required to stick to a script for the entire interaction.

Conclusion

Stop being afraid.

Make the leap from transactional interactions to visionary service. Trust yourself to hire good people and then trust those people to take care of your customers.

Yes, it takes a little extra work in the beginning to ensure your team is well-trained. That extra work will quickly pay off when your employees consistently deliver great customer service.

How to gain customer service skills when you're not working

It's hard to build customer service skills when you can't practice.

Perhaps you're a student, in-between jobs, or transitioning into a new career. Whatever the situation, you want to practice the essential customer service skills that will help you succeed in your new job.

Fortunately, there's a way to do it, even if you aren’t currently serving customers.

A lot of customer service boils down to good people skills. So you can practice your core service skills in any situation where you're interacting with other people.

One of those opportunities is when you are the customer. Here are a few of my favorite exercises for building rapport, listening, and problem-solving skills.

Grow your rapport skills

Rapport is essential to great customer service. It's a process of creating a personal connection with another person so they know, like, and trust you.

It also makes service more fun when we get along with the other person. Here are three exercises you can use to practice your rapport skills while you are a customer.

Exercise #1: Make the first move

Practice your best greeting by greeting customer service employees, even if that means you must greet them first. For instance, you might approach an employee in a retail store to ask for assistance or ask a cashier how they're doing before they ask you.

Exercise #2: Full attention

Practice giving customers your full attention by giving service providers your full attention. Put your cell phone away and eliminate other distractions while someone is serving you. This will make it easier to make a connection and build with the other person.

Exercise #3: Introduce yourself

There are many situations where a service provider introduces themselves to customers. When this happens to you, practice introducing yourself to the employee. Get comfortable sharing your name and learning the name of the person who is helping you.

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can watch this short video to learn more about these exercises.

Elevate your listening skills

Customer service professionals are in the business of helping customers. That starts with listening carefully to identify opportunities to serve.

You can practice your ability to identify customer needs by spotting opportunities to be helpful to the people serving you.

This exercise is called Make Their Day. It works by doing just two things:

  1. Look for opportunities to be helpful to the person serving you.

  2. Take action to make their day easier.

Here are a few examples:

  • Return unwanted clothing to their displays after you use the dressing room in a retail store.

  • Gather account numbers and other necessary information before calling customer service.

  • Clean your table when you are finished eating at a fast food restaurant.

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can watch this short video to learn more about this exercise.

Sharpen your problem-solving skills

The real work begins after we build rapport and listen to our customers needs. Now we need to take action and provide solutions.

Here are two exercises that can help you develop your customer service problem-solving skills.


Exercise #1: Refocus on solutions

It's easy to focus on blame when you experience a service failure, but it's that blame that causes customers to get upset. You can practice the art of defusing emotional situations by refocusing the conversation on finding a solution to the issue.


Exercise #2: Admit your mistakes

Customers often make mistakes that contribute to service failures, but we're reluctant to admit it. You can improve your problem-solving skills (and get better service), when you admit any mistakes you made and politely ask a customer service employee for assistance.


LinkedIn Learning subscribers can watch this short video to learn more about these exercises.

Conclusion

You don't have to wait to get a job in customer service to build your skills. Everyday interactions are often opportunities to practice various techniques.

Here are a few more resources that can help:

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can find even more exercises in my course, How to Get Great Customer Service. If you don’t have a subscription, a 30-day trial is available. You might also get access through your local library.

If you want to take your skills to the next level, you can try my Customer Service Foundations course on LinkedIn Learning. It covers all the essential service skills and provides you with a nice certificate of completion that you can add to your LinkedIn profile.

You might also consider volunteering at a thrift store, museum, community theatre, or other organization where you can interact with the public. Many volunteer opportunities offer flexible scheduling without any long-term commitments.

Lessons from The Overlook: Know when to leave

Note: Lessons from The Overlook was a periodic update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It was a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. This will likely be the last one. You can find past updates here.

Here's the short version: Sally and I sold The Overlook.

My wife and I owned the vacation rental cabin in the mountain town of Idyllwild, California for just over five years. Now we've sold the cabin and exited the vacation rental business.

I'm not sure if we'll get back in, but I know it's the right decision for now.

Deciding when to sell a business or quit a job can be tough. I asked people on LinkedIn how they made the decision and got a lot of great responses.

Here are some of those crowd-sourced suggestions along with the process Sally and I used to know it was time to leave.

Why did you start?

There must be something gnawing at you if you're reading this. Something doesn’t feel right, but what is it? And is leaving really the best decision?

It can help to go back to the beginning. You probably imagined a bright and happy future when you started the adventure, but now something is different.

Ask yourself this about your current situation:

Why did you start in the first place?

Sally and I bought The Overlook because we wanted an investment we cared about. We imagined that owning a vacation rental gave us a number of advantages:

  1. We could enjoy the cabin ourselves.

  2. Our local property manager would minimize the hassle of owning a home.

  3. It was a chance to apply the customer experience concepts I write about.

Looking back on why we bought the cabin, we realized we weren’t getting the first two advantages.

Is your current situation fulfilling?

Once you understand why you started, it becomes easier to evaluate whether working in that job or owning that company is fulfilling. All you have to do is compare what you want to what you’re getting.

According to Erin Shrimpton, an organizational psychologist, sometimes you just know. "It can be a gut feeling. But it can also come from clear signs that whatever you are doing isn’t serving you any more."

Others responding to my LinkedIn post described changes that made their situation no longer fulfilling. Here are some popular responses:

  • The culture had changed.

  • They were no longer learning or growing.

  • Poor leadership.

  • The job was eliminated (or in danger of being eliminated).

  • It was taking a toll on their physical and mental health.

A lot of the reasons for leaving were negative, but not all. Some people prioritized family needs over work. Others moved out of town or wanted to embark on a new career.

For Sally and me, The Overlook became a lot more work than fun.

We weren't staying at the cabin very often. The times we did visit were mostly spent doing chores and maintenance.

Our relationship with our property manager deteriorated after multiple maintenance and guest damage issues that went unfixed and unreported. We searched for a new manager, but there weren't any better options.

The headaches were really starting to add up.

Is it fixable?

It's good to re-evaluate the situation one last time before making the leap. The grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence.

We tried to fix The Overlook a couple of years ago.

Our assumption was a smaller cabin would cause fewer headaches. So we put The Overlook up for sale and searched for another property, but we never found anything we liked.

That led us to a plan B, which was keeping The Overlook but making some changes. We turned one of the bedrooms into a game room, added air conditioning for the hot summers, and upgraded some of the furniture.

It worked for awhile. We spent more time enjoying the cabin. Revenue increased substantially. Maintenance issues subsided for a bit.

But the problems eventually returned. We started spending less time at the cabin as we pursued other interests. Our property manager got stretched thin and wasn’t taking good care of our place, and we still couldn’t find a better option.

The last straw was when the same pipe burst for a second time this winter, after our property manager repeatedly failed to follow the proper water shut-off procedure before a freeze.

It was time to get out.

Conclusion

Deciding to leave can be difficult, but there’s no sense sticking around when you know it’s time to go.

I can only imagine the consequences if we had waited too long to sell The Overlook. Our costs were rising. The vacation rental market was softening. A small group of locals launched a misinformation campaign in an effort to ban vacation rentals altogether.

None of that was going to be fun.

Instead, Sally and I sold the cabin for a nice profit. We instantly felt a sense of relief when the sale closed. And now we have much more time on our calendar to devote to other things we enjoy.

How long should new hire training last for customer service employees?

New hire training is under pressure.

Executives want to shorten it. Training costs time and money. The faster new employees can get to work, the better.

New employees want it to be longer. They complain about not getting enough support. Some quickly leave.

I asked people on LinkedIn how long they thought new hire training should last, adding the caveat that I knew it was a trick question. There was a lot of discussion.

Responses generally fell into two categories.

Some felt new hire training is ongoing and should never end. While that's great in theory, try asking your CEO to fund unlimited training. (Spoiler alert: it won't go well.)

The second group offered an arbitrary number based on what they're doing in their company. "Our new hires get four weeks, so four weeks is ideal" was a common type of answer.

The arbitrariness is a problem. How do we know four weeks is the right amount? Especially when our CEO thinks it should be three, but our new hires are asking for five.

A few smarties knew the answer. New hire training should last for a finite amount of time, but how long exactly varies by company and position.

Here's how to find that number for your new hires.

What is new hire training?

Here's my preferred definition of new hire training:

The process of helping a new employee develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities they need to do their job independently at a minimally proficient level.

This definition illustrates why executives are eager to end training quickly. New hires can't work independently until they're trained, so someone else has to spend time helping them. That's costly.

When should new hire training end?

The definition of new hire training contains clues about when it should end:

  • Independence: the employee can do the job on their own.

  • Minimally proficient: they can do their job at or above the minimum standard.

There are a couple of things I’d like to point out here.

First, notice there’s no discussion of content. It doesn’t matter how much (or how little) content you cover in training. What matters most is performance. (More on why that matters in a moment.)

Second, keep in mind "minimally proficient" still leaves plenty of room for ongoing development. We hope and expect new hires to continue getting better at the job, but the new hire portion ends when they can meet the minimum job standards on their own.

So the key to fixing an end-point for new hire training is deciding what minimally proficient looks like.

That's fairly easy in some businesses. Contact centers have rigorous quality assurance processes they use to evaluate all their agents against existing standards. Those same standards can be used to evaluate whether a new hire is trained.

No such standards exist in other businesses, which speaks to a larger problem. How can you evaluate your employees without clear performance standards?

One solution is to create learning objectives using the ABCD model.

How do you decide how much training time you need?

New hire training should last for a specific amount of time. This number should not be arbitrary, so we need clear data that tells us how long we really need.

But first, clean up your training program.

New hire training should be focused on helping new employees do their job independently at a minimally proficient level. Check your existing program for two issues that need to be fixed:

  1. Cut anything that's not helping you achieve the goal. (There’s probably a lot.)

  2. Spend more time helping new hires build the skills they really need.

Next, run a test.

Time how long it takes new hires, on average, to become minimally proficient at their jobs. (That's when new hire training officially ends.)

Use this data to make the case for a specific amount of new hire training. It might help to keep a daily log on each participant, so you can document exactly what they learned and how long it took them to learn it.

There is some good news.

In my experience, new hire training often ends up much shorter after we clean it up. Focusing on achieving specific goals while eliminating unnecessary content often makes the training far more effective.

Finally, it's time to manage the program.

You'll likely have some outliers. Some people will catch on far faster than average, while others will need much more time, if they catch on at all.

It's okay for people to progress through training faster, as long as they can demonstrate the ability to meet the same standards as everyone else.

The slow ones might need more coaching. That's okay, too, as long as they can ultimately do their job with a reasonable amount of extra help. Hiring great people is difficult, and you want to protect your investment.

Take notes about what causes those people to succeed or struggle. You can use that data to provide personalized assistance and continuously improve your program.

Conclusion

There will always be pressure to improve efficiency in business. This approach can help you convince your CEO that’s exactly what you’re doing.

Clearly defining the new hire training period and documenting how long training actually takes can give you two important selling points:

  1. You can improve the efficiency of your training program.

  2. You'll have real data to justify your recommendations for training time.

Why great service recovery doesn't need to be free

Updated: February 9, 2024

Many customer service employees automatically offer free or discounted food, products, or services when something goes wrong.

  • Didn't like your meal? Here's a free dessert.

  • Not happy with your car wash? Next one's on us.

  • Shipment take too long to arrive? Get 20 percent off your next order.

As counterintuitive as it might seem, freebies and discounts can make service recovery worse, not better. Here's why we focus on free, and why that's a problem.

Why do we give freebies to angry customers?

Sometimes, a freebie is an appropriate way to resolve a service failure. Giving a customer a free cup of coffee to apologize for a long delay can be a small token of appreciation.

On the other hand, freebies can easily be overused.

I once worked for a company that managed the parking for a variety of hotels. The hotels’ front desk employees would give away free parking whenever a hotel guest experienced the slightest issue.

  • Room dirty? Here's free parking.

  • Swimming pool too crowded? Parking's on us.

  • Breakfast not delicious? We'll pick up the parking tab.

Parking had nothing to do with housekeeping, the swimming pool, or the hotel restaurant. But front desk employees knew free parking would hit the parking company's budget, not theirs. And it would usually make the guest go away.

Getting the guest to go away was the real reason for free parking.

Unfortunately, a lot of important things get neglected when a freebie is used to get an angry guest to calm down, stop complaining, and go away:

  • We don't listen enough to the customer's problem.

  • The root cause of the issue doesn't get investigated.

  • Steps aren't taken to ensure the issue doesn't happen again.

Using freebies and discounts to get customers to go away is completely missing the point.

It’s also not effective. A 2023 study conducted by Ilona E. De Hooge and Laura M. Straeter found that gifts lose value when offered as part of an apology.

In one experiment, the researchers found that 44 percent fewer people accepted a gift when it was offered as an apology for an error rather than a token of appreciation.

Your goal should be to get upset customers to go away. Service recovery should be about getting the customer to come back. To do that, you need to focus on rebuilding trust.

Why trust is essential to service recovery

There's a scene in one of my LinkedIn Learning courses where a coffee shop customer gets unreasonably angry because her vanilla latte doesn't have enough vanilla.

The scene is actually shown twice.

In the first version, the barista does everything wrong and makes the customer even angrier. You get the feeling the customer won't be coming back because she doesn’t trust the coffee shop will get it right the next time.

In the second version, the barista soothes the customer's angry emotions, but he also does something else that's equally important. He starts rebuilding trust with the customer by convincing her the coffee shop will make her next vanilla latte just the way she likes it.

She’s far more likely to return after this encounter than in the first scene.

Check out both versions of the scene for yourself.

  • Version 1: advance to :49

  • Version 2: advance to 2:27

How to rebuild trust with angry customers

It's important to defuse a customer's anger before jumping to solutions. In the coffee shop scene, the barista did a few things to de-escalate the customer's anger.

  1. He started with a service mindset.

  2. He caught his fight or flight response from taking over.

  3. He used the LAURA technique to empathize with the customer.

(You can find an explanation of all those techniques here.)

Listening is important part of defusing an angry customer. Part of that listening should focus on identifying the problem the customer is trying to solve.

The coffee shop customer wanted a latte with a lot of vanilla, and she initially felt slighted that her drink wasn't made the way she liked it. The customer even mentioned a competitor, signaling her intent to take her business somewhere else.

How did the barista fix this?

He sought to rebuild trust by working with the customer to make a vanilla latte exactly the way she liked it. Go back to the scene at 2:52 in the video and you'll see the barista proposing a taste test to make sure the latte tastes just right.

Conclusion

Freebies or discounts are sometimes helpful service recovery tools, but not always.

Notice that the barista focused on solving the customer’s problem, not giving away a free drink. The customer keeping the original drink was incidental, since the barista would have thrown it out anyway.

Check your own motivations before offering a freebie. Are you trying to get the customer to go away, or is this part of an effort to restore trust and earn the customer's future business?

Retain more customers

The Guaranteed Customer Experience shows you how to earn customer trust.

Get Chapter 1

Why your people are the key to getting great customer feedback

"How was everything?"

The hotel associate asked this standard question as I was checking out. Most guests probably say, "fine" without even thinking, but I had some constructive feedback to share.

Yet I hesitated. Three other hotel employees had ignored the feedback I gave them throughout my stay. Would this fourth employee do the same?

I decided to test the waters. "It was just okay," I said. Adding, "The room was nice."

My response barely registered. "Okay, well, you're all set!" replied the employee, a bit too dismissively.

The hotel sent an automated email the next day. It contained a link to a 19-question survey and assured me that "your insight is truly invaluable."

It's a common mistake.

Companies over-rely on surveys while under-utilizing employees who can capture insights that are more timely, more detailed, and far more actionable.

When are customers sharing feedback?

I had shared feedback with hotel employees at several times during my stay.

It started when my wife and I first checked-in, and the employee asked, “How are you today?” We replied honestly, telling the employee we were tired from a full day of driving. This could have been a cue to engage in conversation or point out some of the hotel’s amenities that could help us relax, but she just stuck to the script and continued the check-in process.

Nearly every conversation a customer has with an employee contains some form of feedback. Customers often describe:

  • The problem they're trying to solve.

  • How they feel about it.

  • What they'd like to be done.

The questions customers ask can also include feedback.

  • “Do you carry Fuji apples?” might indicate those apples are hard to find.

  • “Can I get some extra ketchup?” could mean ketchup servings are too meager.

  • “Why do you need the name of my first pet?” might signal the customer is annoyed with your verification process.

The hotel advertised a chef-prepared breakfast that was included with our stay. Twice, we asked employees what was on the menu that morning and both times the employee had no idea. These questions should have signaled to the employees that they should spend more time learning the daily menu.

Employees sometimes ask direct questions, and then ignore the answers.

  • Hotel: How was your stay?

  • Restaurant: How was your meal?

  • Retail shop: Did you find everything okay?

Most customers respond to these questions the same way. "Fine," they say. And sometimes, things are fine.

But not always. Any employee looking for subtle service cues might sense things are far from fine, and use that feedback to make things better.

Why do employees miss out on feedback?

There are a few things I've noticed from observing and talking to thousands of customer service employees.

First, employees are too transactional.

They lack an overarching customer experience vision to guide them. So a cashier who asks, "Did you find everything okay?" is really asking the question as a pleasantry rather than a burning desire to help the customer get exactly what they needed.

Second, employees are trained not to listen.

This seems counterintuitive at first, until you watch employees in action. Many are scurrying from customer to customer and don't feel they have the time to spend connecting with each person they serve. Listening takes time and patience, and employees won't do that if they don't think they're allowed to spend the time.

Third, employees are trained not to share feedback.

Many employees have told me they tried sharing customer feedback with their boss or another department, but nobody seemed to care or do anything with it. After awhile, employees realize it's futile and they stop trying.

How can you act on feedback customers share with employees?

Andy, a server at my favorite restaurant, stopped by my table to ask the question he's asked thousands of times, "How is everything so far?"

My reply was honest, but reserved. "It's just okay."

Most servers would smile and move along, but not Andy. He picked up on my hesitation and knew something was wrong. So he asked more questions.

I told him I didn't care for the lasagna, which was usually one of my favorite dishes. Concerned, Andy alerted the owner, who was mingling with guests in the dining room that evening.

The owner came to the table and asked some more questions. By asking me for detailed feedback, the restaurant owner discovered a new chef hadn't mastered the lasagna recipe and needed some additional coaching.

It was an easy issue to fix immediately, no surveys required. I ordered the lasagna again the next time I dined at the restaurant and it was fantastic.

Andy did three things that all employees should be trained to do:

  1. Care about what customers tell you.

  2. Pay attention to customers' unspoken service cues.

  3. Act on the feedback you receive.

The feedback customers share doesn't have to be limited to individual interactions. There are several ways you can organize, track, and analyze this feedback.

  • Brainstorm a list of top issues in a team meeting.

  • Start an internal Slack channel where employees can share insights.

  • Give employees a dedicated tool to capture what they're hearing.

Conclusion

Encouraging employees to pay close attention to customer feedback results in better service, happier customers, and more business.

It allows you to do several things a survey can't do:

  • Identify issues immediately.

  • Get additional details directly from the customer.

  • Attempt service recovery before the interaction is completed.

How observing subtle cues can improve customer service

Last December, I visited three bicycle shops to search for a new bike. I wanted a hybrid bike that was easy to maintain and fun to ride.

The employee at the first shop immediately focused what they had in stock, which wasn't much. He didn't ask any questions and barely answered mine.

The employee at the second bike shop answered my questions, but didn't go deeper to truly understand my needs.

Tyler, the employee who helped me at Trek Bicycle San Diego, was different.

He listened to my needs and paid attention to what really mattered to me. I wound up buying my first Trek bike after being loyal to another brand for many years.

Tyler clearly possessed a customer service superpower: the ability to identify my unspoken service cues. Here's how you can do it, too.

What are service cues?

Service cues are unspoken customer needs. They're often found in the specific words a customer chooses, their tone of voice, their body language, and their actions.

They're often very subtle, but they can be the keys to a customer's heart.

A classic example is a lost customer. They don't ask for directions, but you can still tell they're lost. They have a slightly confused look on their face while slowly looking around, as if searching for a sign or landmark.

How to identify service cues

The "I'm lost" look might be easy to identify, but some service cues are much more subtle. You have to really pay attention to what customers say, how they say it, and what they do.

Here are three techniques that can help.

#1 Listen

You have to listen carefully to what your customers are saying.

I told the employee at each bike shop I was replacing an older bike that used gears, brakes, and other components that wore out easily. The old bike was getting difficult to maintain and spent too much time in the shop.

The employee at the first shop didn't listen. He immediately showed me bikes with the same components as the one I was replacing.

The employee at the second shop listened to my questions and answered each one, but he didn't dive any deeper to learn more about my concerns or why they were important to me.

Tyler at the Trek shop did a great job of listening. He quickly understood my desire to spend more time riding and less time repairing and showed me a few bikes with features that made them more durable.

You can develop your own listening skills using this guide.

#2 Interpret

Once you get really good at listening to the customers, the next step is interpreting the hidden messages behind their words.

Pay close attention to:

  • Tone of voice: What emotions do they convey?

  • Word choice: Are there any hidden meanings?

  • Body language: What do their facial expressions, posture, and hand gestures say?

The employee at the first shop missed this completely because he wasn't listening.

The employee at the second shop answered my questions, but pick up on my concerns about my bike spending too much time in the shop. My real goal was to spend more time riding and less time and money getting my bike fixed.

Tyler at Trek San Diego picked up on my concerns about maintenance.

He steered me towards bikes that were easier to maintain. He also showed me the onsite repair shop, pointed out their excellent pricing, and explained they typically had a fast two-day turnaround time on repairs. (Other local bike shops were averaging a week or longer.)

Building your interpretation skills takes practice.

Side-by-side coaching is one of the best ways to help your employees. Have employees observe you serving customers and then give employees feedback after you observe them. These skills are rarely taught in training, but they should be.

#3 Observe

Speaking of observing, you can learn a lot by paying attention to what customers do.

The employees at the first two bike shops didn't observe anything. I didn't test ride any bikes at the first shop and the employee at the second shop went to help other customers while I test rode a few bikes behind the store.

Tyler was very observant.

He watched me test ride a bike that he helped me select and could see that I clearly enjoyed it. The observation also helped him see that the frame size and seat position were just right, but the front brakes were slightly rubbing.

By taking a moment to observe me, Tyler saw me falling in love with my soon-to-be new bike. He also observed a minor concern with the front brakes that had to be fixed to close the deal.

Tyler quickly pointed out the brakes were easily adjusted.

Observations like this often come from procedures. Unlike the other shops, Trek San Diego had a thorough procedure for customers to test ride bikes, including a safety check and the sales associate watching the process.

Conclusion

I love my new Trek bike and have been riding more than ever.

The other shops sold great bikes, too, but customer service closed the deal. Tyler took the time to observe my service cues and help me find the perfect bike for me.

Spotting service cues can be the difference between winning or losing a sale, retaining or keeping a customer, and making or breaking a reputation.

Help your employees do a better job of observing service cues:

  • Emphasize listening skills.

  • Train them to interpret customers' subtle signals.

  • Create procedures that help employees observe their customers.

3 reasons to stop conflating customer service with customer experience

"You're pissing me off!"

The one-sentence email came from the company president. He was upset that the phones had been ringing all day, and blamed me for what was happening.

Our phone lines rang throughout the office whenever a customer was holding for more than a minute. Everyone, including the president, was expected to drop what they were doing and answer the phone.

The president thought it was my job to stop the surge since I was the customer service manager. So did my coworkers in other departments, who were openly grousing about having to take so many calls.

In reality, there wasn't much I could do.

Ironically, the phones were ringing off the hook due to mistakes my colleagues had made. The president, who was upset at me, had made the most critical blunders. It was a miserable experience to get blamed for their failures.

That experience happened over 20 years ago, but it's still fresh in my mind. It's something I think about every time someone conflates customer service with customer experience.

Here's why we need to stop doing that.

Customer service vs. customer experience

Customer service is just one part of the overall customer experience. That distinction is important, for reasons I'll explain in just a moment.

For now, let's start with some definitions. This excellent definition of customer experience comes from Annette Franz:

The sum of all the interactions that a customer has with an organization over the life of the “relationship” with that company… and, especially, the feelings, emotions, and perceptions the customer has about those interactions.

Customer experience includes customer service and also product design, marketing, delivery, and any other part of the company that the customer interacts with in some way.

This helpful definition of customer service comes from the Oxford English Dictionary:

The assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services.

You can read this detailed explanation of the difference between the two if you want to take a deeper dive.

How confusing service and experience causes problems

Several problems are created when customer service is mistaken for customer experience. Here are three:

#1 Hidden Problems

The true scope of customer experience problems get hidden when the customer service team is expected to take responsibility for everything.

At my company, most of our customer service calls were about problems caused by other departments.

  1. Defective products sourced by merchandising.

  2. Backorders caused by supply chain struggling to keep items in stock.

  3. Incorrect items shipped by the fulfillment center.

The president refused to acknowledge the scope of these problems or take steps to address them, so the phones kept ringing.

#2 Lacking Ownership

Other departments avoid ownership when the customer service team is rebranded as the "customer experience team." They distance themselves from anything that has a negative impact on customers.

The president expected my team to fix the customer experience issues, even though most of the problems were a direct result of his decisions. He micromanaged the merchandising side of the business, often to disastrous effect:

  • Selecting poor quality products that led to high return rates.

  • Writing advertising copy that exaggerated a product's attributes and dissatisfied customers.

  • Vetting suppliers who were slow to deliver promised shipments, causing extreme backorders.

Ironically, it was the president's policy that customer service calls had to ring throughout the office whenever a customer was on hold for a minute. He wouldn't let me change it, yet he blamed me when the phone rang.

#3 Defended Silos

A lack of ownership creates silos, where each department pursues and defends its own agenda without regard to the impact on the overall customer experience.

Inventory was one of the biggest problems that plagued my company. It wasn't uncommon to find a box of 30 items where our inventory showed zero in stock, or an empty shelf where our inventory showed 10 items would be there.

Yet the warehouse manager refused to conduct an inventory.

It got so bad that customer service reps started going to the warehouse to search for backordered items. On many occasions, they found items previously thought backordered that could be shipped to waiting customers.

Rather than delight in our success, the warehouse manager got even more territorial and barred reps from going into the warehouse to look for products.

Conclusion

Customer service does play a vital role in customer experience. In addition to helping customers, customer service can be a listening post to share customer feedback with the rest of the organization.

In retrospect, I made a lot of mistakes in this area.

I'd often share vague feedback such as, "We're getting a lot of calls about backordered items." Nobody wanted to listened to that. Some, including the president, accused me of being a complainer.

One day, I accidentally discovered a better approach. It involved sharing a story, data, and a specific request.

First, I told the president a story to make the situation tangible. We had missed out on selling an expensive item because it was found damaged in the warehouse and couldn't be shipped.

Second, I explained at least 50 percent of similar items we had in stock were damaged, too. This data helped explain the scope of the problem.

Finally, I asked for help getting the inventory cleaned up so we didn't lose out on more sales.

The president agreed, and ordered the warehouse manager to inspect and repair each item, and remove any items from inventory that could not be repaired.

It was a great lesson, and one that I carried on to my next job. The president’s angry email convinced me I was in the wrong place. Good thing I left, since the company went out of business about a year later.