How your customer service pep talks can stay fresh

"My employees are tuning me out."

The customer service leader explained his company had a customer service vision that he talked about in every meeting. A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page.

Unfortunately, employees were starting to get bored. They'd heard the manager talk about the vision so many times that it had gotten repetitive.

The manager knew repetition was vital to making something important. Employees were more likely to remember the vision and used in it their daily work because it was discussed so frequently.

He asked me how to reinforce the message while keeping it fresh. The manager was surprised to learn the secret was hidden in the other conversations he was already having with the team.

What helps people learn important concepts?

Two things help people learn and remember something: repetition and novelty. Hearing or experiencing something often helps it move from our conscious to our subconscious brain. Novelty helps maintain our attention.

The manager was already getting repetition right by talking about the customer service vision on a regular basis. This signaled that it was important.

Unfortunately, our brains tend to tune out messages we've already heard. That's where novelty comes in. Our brains are fascinated by novelty.

We're wired to noticed something new, unusual, or unexpected. That's why we could pass a hundred people walking by us on the sidewalk without giving them a second glance, but a person dressed in a gorilla costume whizzing by on an electric scooter would make us stop and stare.

The challenge is novelty isn't always easy to find unless you're looking for it.

Novelty Exercise: Here's an exercise you can try that will help. You can do this while walking in your neighborhood, on your morning commute, or any other time when you're traveling along a familiar route.

  1. Try to notice something you've never seen before.

  2. On the next day, repeat the exercise and try to notice something new again.

I've lived in the same neighborhood for 20 years, yet I can still do this exercise anytime when I walk around the block. There's always something I hadn't seen before if I look carefully enough.

How can you add novelty to team meetings?

You don't need to go far to search for novelty. Remember when I told the manager that the secret was hidden in the conversations he was already having with his team?

Every day, there's a new challenge to solve. It could be an unusual problem, an exciting new discovery, or just a new member on the team who is still learning how to be successful.

These situations provide all the novelty you need.

The manager talked about these customer service challenges in formal team meetings, one-on-ones, and team huddles. Employees loved working together to solve these problems and always paid attention.

I suggested the manager try to solve those challenges using the customer service vision as a guide. This naturally creates novelty because the situation is new while adding repetition because you use the vision to solve the issue.

Want a great example?

Check out Jesse Cole, owner of the Savannah Bananas baseball club. He frequently shares examples on LinkedIn of doing just that: solving problems by using the club’s customer service vision (and other principles) as a guide.

One recent story involved rallying the team to entertain fans even when the game itself was rained out.


Conclusion

The best leaders talk about customer service a lot. The truly great ones find new and novel ways to share the same message while keeping it fresh.

You can learn more about building a customer-focused culture from The Service Culture Handbook, a step-by-step guide to getting employees obsessed with customer service.

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can also access the video-based version.

Three ways to test your company values

The data was shocking. Even hurtful.

An employee who worked for another department was sometimes loaned to my team. A monthly payroll report showed a lot more hours were charged to my team than she had actually worked.

This was a great employee. Someone who did good work and was well-liked. She was recently recognized as the employee of the month.

I wanted to believe this was a simple error, so I shared the report with the employee's boss. She was surprised, too. The numbers didn't add up. We did a little digging and found that the employee was falsifying her timecard. In one month, she added 40 hours of time that she didn't actually work.

We brought our concerns to our bosses, and then to human resources. The decision was out of our hands, but our human resources rep explained the company's policies made it clear this employee would be fired.

Except, she wasn't.

Our director intervened and the employee kept her job. The director's explanation has always stuck with me. "How would it look if we fired the employee of the month?"

That moment told me what was really valued.

Despite strong talk about integrity and excellent service quality, the real value for our director was image. Firing this employee would make the director look bad, so the employee wasn't fired.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. When leaders face difficult challenges, actions matter more than words.

What are company values?

An organization’s values describe how its employees do business. They serve as guidelines for the types of behaviors that should be promoted and encouraged.

Values can be very important in a customer-focused organization. They help define the service culture and guide employees when they’re faced with a tough decision.

There's one really big caveat: proclaiming a certain value does not make it true.

For example, Enron was an energy company that made headlines in 2001 for massive accounting fraud. That same year, it published an annual report highlighting Integrity as one of the company's core values.

Values are illuminated by how people actually behave along with the behaviors that are actually promoted and encouraged. You can get an overview of mission, vision, and values from this guide.

Looking at three situations will help you assess your organization’s true values. Each one reveals which behaviors are really welcome, and which ones are not.

Values Test #1: Daily Behavior

The first situation is observing how employees interact on a daily basis. Notice what behaviors are supported and which ones are not. Here are a few examples of specific situations:

  • How do employees approach their work?

  • How do employees on the same team interact?

  • How do different departments work together?

Here are examples of two companies that both stated "accountability" was a value.

Employees in the first company went out of their way to be nice even when coworkers did poor quality work, habitually showed up late to meetings, or failed to meet deadlines. They excused poor performance, rather than address it directly. Honest and direct conversations were avoided for fear of upsetting someone. In this case, being nice was a stronger value than accountability.

Employees in the second company expected a lot from themselves and their colleagues. They worked hard to maintain commitments. Employees challenged each other to do better and were quick to offer support when someone struggled. While still being quite nice, employees were also very candid with each other when discussing workplace issues. In this case, accountability was a true value because that's how people actually behaved.

Values Test #2: Leadership

A second values test is observing how leaders make decisions. Do the corporate values clearly guide their thinking, or do they make decisions that seem contrary to the corporate values?

Here are examples of two companies that both stated "excellence" was a value.

The owner of one company demanded excellence from his employees, yet his own decisions often demonstrated a willingness to cut corners. He purchased poor quality inventory, used the cheapest vendors, and paid low wages. The owner refused to spend money to upgrade outdated systems, even though those upgrades would immediately improve efficiency and quality and save the company money in the long run. His leadership revealed that thriftiness was the real value, not excellence.

The owner of another company also demanded excellence from his employees, and his own decisions backed that up. His company thrived in a price-sensitive industry by running more efficiently than than competition. The company paid better wages and offered more generous benefits than competitors because the owner knew that retaining talented employees was essential to running an excellent operation. Processes and procedures were rigorously documented and reviewed to ensure quality remained high. In this case, excellence was always at the forefront of the owner's decision-making.

Values Test #3:

The third values test is to observe what leaders do when when a situation gives a leader a strong incentive to act against the company values.

Here are examples of two companies that both held quality as a value.

The CEO of one company claimed quality was a core value, but he pushed his team to find ways expand market share, cut costs, and operate faster. New products and promotions were frequently introduced, often without adequate testing. Quality issues often plagued the company, even as it continued to grow, and it soon became known for having the worst quality in the industry.

The CEO of another company also claimed quality as a core value, yet he truly embraced it. He expanded slowly, making sure to maintain the same high standards as the company grew. Operations were run efficiently, yet deliberately to ensure a consistent product. The product line was kept simple so the company could stick to its core competencies and new promotions were rarely implemented. The company became known for having the best quality in its industry.

Conclusion

A list of corporate values on a website or a poster can serve as a good reminder, but those are not always a company's true values. The real test is watching what people actually do.

Three pieces of customer service advice we need to update

We've all had a mentor give us customer service advice.

Some advice has withstood the test of time. My first boss stressed the importance of greeting every customer. A warm, friendly greeting sets the tone for a positive interaction.

That advice still rings true today.

Other advice hasn't aged so well. Like the old idea that companies should respond to customer emails within one business day. Today, the standard is one hour.

Concepts go out of style, customer preferences change, or we discover a better answer. Yet some leaders still cling to the same worn out, pithy platitudes.

Here are three pieces of advice that we need to update.

The customer is always right

Employees bristle at this advice. We all know the customer is not always right. Even worse, it implies a sort of subservient relationship to the customer.

It's right up there with "the customer is king." Ugh.

I once explored the origins of this quote. (You can read about it here.) While there's no clear consensus on where it originally came from, there were several possible sources. Each version was slightly different than today's version.

One thing they all had in common was the sentiment that even when a customer is wrong, you don't argue with them. What you should try to do instead is help the customer get what they want.

"Don't argue with customers, just help them be right" is better version of that worn-out saying.


Don’t take it personally

Plenty of well-meaning managers say this to employees after they encounter an upset customer. "Don't take it personally" is meant to encourage employees to just brush it off, plaster on a big smile, and be ready to take more abuse from the next person.

That doesn't really work for human beings.

Taking it personally is our instinctive reaction to an angry person. We go into fight or flight mode, where our primitive brain tries to decide whether to fight the danger or run from it.

Telling someone to "not take it personally" is like telling someone not to sneeze when their nose itches or not to laugh when they hear something funny. Good luck.

A more modern twist is "be aware of when you take it personally."

The instinct will happen. What we do next is the real trick. It takes some practice, but skillful customer service employees recognize the instinct as it happens and use the tiniest of pauses to gather themselves and make a better decision.

You can see an example in this short video.

Treat others the way you want to be treated

Known as the "Golden Rule," it's a reminder to treat people with the respect and kindness that you would want people to share with you.

Unfortunately, there's one big flaw: we all want different treatment.

Let's say two customers walk into a store. One customer wants to browse on their own, and generally be left alone unless they have questions or need assistance. Another customer prefers to have a chatty salesperson guide them through the store.

Following the golden rule, a salesperson would treat each customer exactly the same way, based on how the salesperson would wish to be treated if they were a customer themselves.

A more modern version is known as the Platinum Rule: treat customers the way they want to be treated.

Using this rule, the salesperson would greet both customers and then serve each one according to their preferences.

Conclusion

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are likely many more tips and platitudes that need an update.

Customer service is an ever-evolving profession. While some things will always ring true, new discoveries are being made all the time that deepen our understanding of how to best service customers.

The ultimate guide to service recovery

My first customer service interaction didn't end well.

I was sixteen and had been on the job for 15 minutes. An irritated customer approached and I said the wrong thing. He stormed out of the store.

It was a terrible feeling to see a customer literally walk out the door. In that moment, I vowed to learn everything I could to prevent that from happening again.

I've been obsessed with service recovery ever since.

This guide summarizes what I've learned about getting customers to give you a second chance after a service failure.

  1. What is service recovery?

  2. Why is service recovery important?

  3. When do you need service recovery?

  4. How can you recover from service failures?

  5. Do you have to give freebies or discounts?

  6. Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

What is service recovery?

Service recovery is the action taken to regain the trust of a dissatisfied customer after they experience a service failure.

A service failure is anything the customer believes went wrong. It could be a defective product,  unfulfilled service, a restrictive policy, a rude employee, or anything else that falls short of the customer's expectations.

Service recovery requires more than just soothing an upset customer's anger. (Check out my comprehensive guide for doing that.)

The key to service recovery is restoring trust.

Why is service recovery important?

Service failures create problems. Customers might stop doing business with you, tell others about their experiences, and cause your customer service costs to soar.

The 2020 National Rage Study from CCMC found that 58% of customer complaints go unresolved. The study found a dramatic difference in a customer's willingness to recommend a business after making a complaint.

Service recovery can help you prevent lost business, a negative reputation, and inefficiency.

Lost business

Service recovery can prevent lost business. A 2011 study by Venessa Funches revealed that 42 percent of customers stopped doing business with a company after a service failure.An additional 35 percent did less business than before the service failure.


Negative reputation

Service recovery prevents negative word-of-mouth that can harm your reputation. Funches's study found that 70 percent of customers spread negative news about a company after experiencing a service failure. This included:

  • Online reviews

  • Social media posts

  • Sharing stories with friends


Inefficiency

Service recovery can help you serve customers more efficiently. Upset customers contact you more, return products more often, and ask for more discounts, freebies, and upgrades. Their issues also take up more time, which creates the need for additional staffing. Understaffed departments can irritate otherwise happy customers who have to wait for service.

When do you need service recovery?

Service recovery is needed whenever a customer experiences a service failure.

Some customers contact your company to ask for help. They tell reps in person, call, chat, or send emails.

Other customers do not complain.

Unreported issues make service recovery more difficult. You can't work to regain a customers' trust unless you find out it's been broken.

Here are just a few ways to identify unreported service failures:

  • Ask customers directly. For example, "How is everything?"

  • Survey customers.

  • Read (and analyze) online reviews.

  • Proactively monitor your operations for service failures (ex: late deliveries).

  • Follow-up with customers who cancel or don't renew.

As the membership director for a professional organization, I helped increase membership by 67 percent by contacting former members and listening to the reasons they didn't renew.

Their eye-opening feedback helped our association learn about some big issues that never showed up in our member surveys. Many members ultimately renewed once we demonstrated that we were willing to listen and fix the problems they had experienced.

How can you recover from service failures?

There are three general steps involved in regaining a customer's trust after you identify a service failure:

  1. Solve the problem

  2. Make it easy

  3. Restore faith

Let's take a closer look at each one.

Step 1: Solve the problem

Customers purchase your products and services for a reason. A service failure causes a problem because it prevents them from achieving their goal.

Solving that problem is critical to regaining a customer's trust.

Briggs & Riley makes well-designed, durable luggage for frequent travelers. It also has an outstanding recovery process to repair damaged bags.

A damaged suitcase can leave a traveler without luggage while their bag gets repaired. That's why Briggs & Riley gives customers multiple options to minimize the time a bag is out of service. One option is to use a local repair center.

My local repair center is Index Urban, in San Diego. Any repairs I've needed are handled in just a few days—plenty of time for my next trip. Loaner bags are also available in the event a repair takes longer.

Step 2: Make it easy

Service recovery should be easy for your customer.

Researched published in The Effortless Customer Experience revealed that customers are 3.41 times more likely to take their business to a competitor when service recovery is too difficult.

Examples include:

  • Contact a company multiple times

  • Repeating information already shared

  • Additional effort required (paperwork, follow-up steps, etc.)

Airlines often damage passengers' luggage. Getting the airline to pay for the damage can be a cumbersome process that often takes weeks.

Briggs & Riley removes that friction by repairing airline damage at no charge. Customers don't have to wrestle with the airline. They can go straight to Briggs & Riley (or, a local repair center like Index Urban) and get their bag quickly repaired.

Step 3: Restore faith

Customers are more likely to give you and your business another chance if you demonstrate accountability for the issue and prove you are working to prevent the problem from happening again.

The fix is sometimes simple.

Most baristas will gladly remake your latte if you don't think it tastes right. That instantly regains your trust so long as it doesn't take too long to remake your drink.

Other situations might require more expense and effort.

A mechanic once scratched my car door while it was in for service. While I wasn’t happy about the scratch, the service advisor immediately took responsibility. He offered to fix the scratch plus another scratch on the same door that the dealer didn’t cause. It would take a couple of days to make the repair, so he offered me a loaner car to use in the meantime.

This was a costly repair for the mechanic, but the accountability and extra effort demonstrated by the service advisor restored my faith in the company and earned my repeat business.

Do you have to give freebies or discounts?

Some people mistakenly believe that service recovery always includes giving customers a freebie or a discount. A few even worry about unscrupulous customers inventing problems just to get something for free.

Freebies and discounts should be used cautiously. They aren't always needed for service recovery, and sometimes they can make issues worse.

A better approach is to focus on regaining your customer’s trust.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: What specific metrics should I use to measure the effectiveness of my service recovery efforts, and how do I track them?

The most effective metrics tie service recovery to increased revenue or decreased costs. Customer experience expert, Jeanne Bliss, suggests calculating net customer growth. Here's a link to my interview with Bliss where she explains this metric.


Q: How can I train my employees to handle service recovery situations effectively, especially when dealing with particularly challenging or irate customers?

The LAURA technique is an effective way to help upset customers feel better. It consists of five steps:

  • L = Listen to the customer

  • A = Acknowledge their feelings

  • U = Understand what the customer really needs

  • R = Relate to what the customer is experiencing

  • A = Act to solve their problem

You can train your employees on service recovery with this complete guide.

Q: Are there any case studies or examples of companies that have successfully implemented service recovery strategies, and what lessons can be learned from their experiences?

Use service failures as an opportunity to improve your business. One manager saved $50,000 per year after a customer complaint led to the discovery of an error in the company's billing software. Another executive recovered $75,000 in lost business by calling former clients to learn why they left.

Conclusion

Service recovery is the third part of an experience guarantee. An experience guarantee helps you win and retain customers by earning their trust. The three parts are:

  1. Promises: Promise to solve a problem for the customer.

  2. Action: Take action to keep your promises.

  3. Recovery: Restore trust if something goes wrong.

Learn how experience guarantees can help your business grow by reading The Guaranteed Customer Experience.

How to get your customer service employees to be more proactive

"I want them to be more proactive."

The vice president was talking about his company's customer service team. His primary concern was customer retention. He worried that employees were too transactional and didn't work hard enough to retain customers.

He shared a number of examples.

Customer service reps didn't always see the big picture. They often failed to ask probing questions or use adequate listening skills. At times, reps sounded like robots mechanically going through the motions of service.

The executive was feeling pressure from his boss, the CEO, to improve customer retention. It was the key to the company's growth.

The customer service team needed to change if that was going to happen.

I asked a few questions to learn more about the situation. The solution slowly dawned on the vice president as he answered. To his credit, he realized the change needed to start with him.

Here are the questions I asked. They might prove useful to you, too.

How do you manage your team?

Customer service reps often become transactional because that's precisely how they're managed. Bosses reduce their work to a series of carefully defined transactions with a dashboard full of metrics to track each one.

I asked the executive how he managed his team. It was a broad question, but he immediately thought of metrics.

The most important metric to the vice president was the number of tickets processed. That's what the company called a customer service issue. A ticket was "opened" when a customer contacted the company for help. It was "closed" when the rep figured they'd solved the customer's issue.

This was very transactional stuff. A closed ticket signified the end of the transaction, but it didn't really tell you whether or not you retained the customer.

I asked the executive to share more about how the team was managed. He went back to metrics, and mentioned three key performance indicators (KPIs):

  • Wait time: how long customers had to wait for someone to answer the phone.

  • Hold time: how long customers had to wait if they had to be placed on hold.

  • CSAT: the results of an after-call customer satisfaction survey.

These KPIs all created problems.

They focused reps on speed, not customer retention. Reps rushed through calls to reduce wait time and were reluctant to put customers on hold, even if they didn't know the answer to a question. CSAT metrics are notoriously easy to manipulate.

As he answered, the executive realized that he wasn’t talking to his team about customer retention.

How do you train your team?

Transactional behavior is often rooted in how employees are trained. They learn to do their job as a series of transactions without ever understanding the big picture.

All of the training for this company's support team was transactional. It was a software company, so most of the training was technical. The rest focused on systems, policies, and processes.

Ironically, the customer service team wasn't trained on customer service. They were taught to quickly close tickets, not retain customers.

What is your customer service vision?

A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page. Having one gives your team a bigger picture to focus on while they serve customers.

The vice president's customer service team naturally defaulted to transactional behavior because the metrics used to manage the team were clearly defined, but the vision was not.

Everything revolved around closing tickets. It was assumed the team was doing well if the KPIs looked good, too. That's exactly what was drilled into them in training. It's what was discussed in team meetings and one-on-ones.

Yet there were big questions the vice president needed to answer if he wanted his customer service team to be more proactive.

  • Do reps know what proactive customer service looked like?

  • Do they understand the big picture focus on customer retention?

  • Do they know what they need to do to retain more customers?

A customer service vision could help answer all of those questions.

Conclusion

It's natural for employees to be transactional when that's how they're led. The journey to a customer-focused culture starts with leadership.

  1. Do you have a clear vision? (If not, write one with this guide.)

  2. Have employees been trained to be proactive?

  3. Does your leadership encourage proactive behavior?

You can get a step-by-step plan for getting your team obsessed with service from The Service Culture Handbook. LinkedIn Learning subscribers can also access the video version of the book.

How to ask for a raise

Several customer service professionals have recently requested advice on asking their boss for a raise.

The timing is good. Unemployment is low, wages are rising, and companies are struggling to fill key customer service roles. Meanwhile, many customer service professionals still feel underpaid.

I've successfully asked for a raise several times. The same techniques worked well in prosperous times and during a recession. More recently, I asked for a raise and got one while I was a contract trainer.

Here's what's worked for me.

Step 1: Research

Start by researching two things:

  1. What your colleagues are getting paid

  2. What other companies are paying people in similar jobs

Your company is likely using this data to set wages, so you can improve your negotiating position if you're aware of the same information.

You might have to ask your coworkers to find out what they're getting paid. While that might feel indelicate, there's a lot at stake.

I once got a 25 percent raise after learning that other contract trainers were getting paid significantly more than I was. It felt a bit awkward to ask my colleagues what they were making, but it felt great to get the raise.

Finding out what other companies are paying is a bit more straightforward. LinkedIn Premium subscribers can access market salary data via LinkedIn's salary search page. Here's a list of seven other salary sites if you don't have access to LinkedIn Premium.

Step 2: Get Leverage

You need to find an advantage you can leverage in any negotiation. Asking for a raise is no different.

Think of it this way: What is your employer's incentive to pay you more? Most won't be giving you a raise out of the goodness of their hearts, so you have to give them a compelling reason.

There are a few things you can consider:

  1. What's the cost of replacing you?

  2. How valuable are you?

  3. How easy is it for your boss to give you a raise?

  4. What are you willing to do if you don't get a raise?

Let's take a closer look at each one.

What is the cost of replacing you? Here's where your salary research comes into play. If you're currently underpaid, the company would likely have to pay a new employee more anyway. Plus they'd need to train the new person and hope they work out. Giving you a bit more money to stay might seem like a better bet.

How valuable are you? You'll need to be really clear about the extra value you add, especially if you're already getting above-average pay. Can you demonstrate a track record of stellar results? Have you made yourself indispensable to your boss in some way? Do you have a special skill set that's hard to find? The more your company fears losing you, the more likely you are to get a raise.

How easy is it for your boss to give you a raise? The best time to ask for a raise is when budgets are being created and companies are anticipating cost increases. I successfully asked for a raise several times just by getting my boss to include it in the budget. The worst time to ask for a raise is when your company is actively cutting costs and your boss has been told to freeze spending. You won't get that raise if your boss can't give it.

What are you willing to do? You should always be aware of your options. Would you consider leaving for another company if you don't get a raise? It's far easier to negotiate if the answer is yes.

Step 3: Be Reasonable

The best way to get a raise is to combine your research with some leverage to make a reasonable request at the right time.

The 25 percent raise I mentioned earlier? It was fairly reasonable since I asked to be paid the same amount as the other contractors. I knew I was the top-rated contractor and the additional amount was already in the budget, facts I tactfully pointed out as I made my request.

Here's an example of how I got a 16 percent raise as an internal employee. First, I did my research to discover my leverage:

  1. Cost: It would cost the company at least 25 percent more to replace me.

  2. Value: My boss already valued me, but I created a detailed plan for taking on more responsibilities.

  3. Ease: I requested the raise during the budgeting process.

  4. Options: I was willing to leave the company if I didn’t get the raise. My research revealed I could get paid a lot more at another job.

Of course, I really liked the company I was working for and wanted to stay. My boss wanted me to stay, too. So I showed my boss how giving me a raise and more responsibilities would benefit him and the department. It would ultimately save money because replacing me would cost a lot more.

This made my request seem reasonable, despite the large increase. Thanks to my research, my boss eagerly supported the raise.

Conclusion

Asking for a raise can be a nerve-wracking experience. Yet it can also lead to more money in your pocket and help you feel better about how your employer values your contributions.

While there's no guarantee of success, these three steps can increase your chances:

  1. Do your research

  2. Find your leverage

  3. Make a reasonable request

You can get more advice like this by following me on LinkedIn, where I post regularly about all things service culture.

Why all customer service surveys really measure just one thing

There's a good chance you and your colleagues have had a tortured conversation about customer service surveys.

  • What type of survey is best?

  • How many questions should it include?

  • Are the scores all fair?

That last one is a doozy. Executives worry whether a customer upset about a defective product will “unfairly” give the customer service team a low score on its post-transaction survey. As if the survey is somehow about assigning credit rather than getting unvarnished, actionable feedback from customers.

Often lost in these discussions is the one and only true purpose of surveying customers. Customer service surveys are good at measuring just one thing: sentiment.

Here's an overview of what your survey should not try to measure, and why sentiment is all you really need anyway.

What customer service surveys should not measure

Would you use a hammer to change a lightbulb? Probably not—the result would be disastrous. A hammer is a good tool, but it's the wrong tool for the light bulb changing job.

Surveys are often misused in the same way. Here are a few common survey errors.

Error #1: Fact-finding. Surveys shouldn't ask customers for facts, such as how long a customer had to wait to be served. The simple explanation is customers aren't good at remembering facts, so this can quickly skew your results.

Error #2: Isolation. Some surveys try to isolate customer service issues from other problems, such as defective products, late shipments, or service failures. It's a very company-centric approach that attempts to assign credit (or blame) to various departments without recognizing that all of these functions play a role in the customer experience.

Error #3: Granularity. Many surveys are loaded with 30 or more questions in an attempt to dig deep into the customer's journey. The problem here is two-fold. One, the survey itself becomes a bad experience for the customer. Two, those 30 exhausting questions don't necessarily get at what the customer truly cares about. That’s what the open comments field is for.

Try as you might, surveys just don’t measure these things really well. There are lots of other tools and techniques to gather essential customer experience insights that surveys don’t capture. For example, what customers tell your employees directly is a potential goldmine.

What surveys do measure is how a customer feels. Just like a hammer is great at pounding nails, surveys are a good tool for gauging sentiment.

Why sentiment is an essential insight

Sentiment is a measure of how customers feel about your product, service, or company. Those emotions influence how customers interact with brands in a number of ways, from purchase decisions to word-of-mouth advertising.

A good customer service survey identifies customer sentiment and then helps uncover what's driving those feelings.

  • Why do customers love us?

  • Why do customers loathe us?

In most cases, you don't need more than two simple questions to uncover how your customer feels.

  1. A rating question.

  2. An open-comment question so customers can explain their ratings.

That's the simple design of most online review platforms. You give a star rating and then write about why you gave that rating. It's up to you as the customer to explain why you feel the way you feel in your own words.

This design also works no matter what type of survey you use. (Here’s a video guide to survey types.)

Compare the two-question design to the typical, bloated survey that constrains customers with 30 nonsense questions about wait times, employee greetings, and would you hire the person who served you that day. The two question survey is easier for customers to complete and easier for you to analyze.

What you can do with customer sentiment

Capturing customer sentiment allows you to do two big things. The first is it helps you find the pebble in your customers' shoes, so you can remove it. The second is you can discover what makes your customer truly fall in love with your brand, product, or service, so you can do that more consistently.

One client used their two-question survey to identify a process that truly annoyed their customers. It was the one thing that was consistently mentioned in negative surveys. So the client investigated the issue and improved the process.

Complaints quickly decreased. Even better, the new process was far more efficient, saving my client valuable time.

The same survey revealed that the happiest customers knew an employee by name. They had made a personal connection with someone, and felt that employee was their advocate. My client leveraged that strength and encouraged all employees to spend just a little extra time connecting with customers on a personal level.

Customer satisfaction rose again. That extra time connecting with customers also dramatically reduced time-consuming complaints and escalations.

Analyzing your surveys doesn’t require advance math, sophisticated software, or hours of time. Here’s a guide to quickly analyzing your survey results.

Conclusion

Customer service surveys get much shorter and far more useful when we remove all the nonsense. Focus on learning how your customers feel and why they feel that way, and you'll have incredibly useful information.

I've put together a resource page to help you learn more.

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can also access my course, Using Surveys to Improve Customer Service. A 30-day trial is available if you're not yet a subscriber.

How campers can make your culture stronger

Carol was a camper.

That's a term for someone who is content in their current job and doesn't want to get promoted, add new responsibilities, or move to a new company.

Carol showed up every day, did her job, and went home. She didn't want to "get ahead." Carol just wanted to do her job. She liked it, and she was good at it.

She had been in the same job for many years when I took over the department. Her plan was to be in the same job for many more.

It took me a moment to understand Carol's value. When I finally did, I realized employees like Carol play an important role on high-performing teams.

Here's why campers like Carol are so essential and what managers can do to appreciate them.

The mistake managers make with campers

Bosses can easily disregard or disparage campers. They assume campers aren't motivated, don't want to do good work, or don't want to learn new things.

As a young supervisor, I was conditioned to dangle promotions and opportunities in front of employees to get them excited about hard work. Heck, getting ahead was exactly why I worked so hard myself.

I didn't understand why Carol wasn't interested. At first it frustrated me that she did exactly what was required and no more. Her coworkers took more initiative, so her steady performance seemed lacking by comparison.

What I didn't notice or appreciate at first was the steadiness that Carol brought to the team. She consistently got her work done, and did it well. Her colleagues could count on her, and that gave them the freedom to take more initiative.

Another mistake occurs during the hiring process, where recruiters often screen out campers. "Where do you see yourself in five years?" is a classic question.

One camper, Sandy, responded by saying, "I would like to be in my position for that long and to have become very good at it." The response didn't go over well with the interviewer.

The classic movie, Office Space, perfectly captured the tension between managers and campers in this scene. Joanna, a restaurant server, is confronted by her manager for not wearing more than minimum 15 pieces of flair, “fun” buttons servers are supposed to wear on their uniforms.

Why campers are essential members of the team

Campers steady the team. They understand the ins and outs of how things are done and often help train new employees. They save their supervisors time. Many are keepers of the team's culture.

Eventually, I realized that Carol was really a supervisor’s dream.

  • There was no drama with Carol.

  • She didn't need much training.

  • I didn't need to give her feedback very often.

Drama, training, and feedback all take a lot of time.

Carol didn't want a promotion, which was good because there weren't a lot of promotions to go around. Ambitious employees eventually leave if they don't get promoted. That means hiring someone new.

Hiring and training new employees also takes up a lot of a supervisor's time.

Over time, I understood that Carol saved me a ton of headaches. I stopped being frustrated and started being grateful when I realized I could count on Carol’s steady work each and every day.

Some campers become the face of a team, an office, or a company.

Milton was stationed for many years at the front desk of his company’s headquarters. He took his title of "Director of First Impressions" very seriously and consistently made visitors and employees alike feel welcome. He quickly learned names and always had a kind word or a funny anecdote to share that would brighten people's day.

Bill spent years at the front counter of a parts shop for a local plumber. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of plumbing parts and could often track down hard-to-find items. His friendly, helpful service was responsible for bringing in many new clients who figured if Bill's service was so great, the company's plumbers must be pretty great, too.

What managers can do to appreciate campers

The best thing for a manager to do is to avoid assumptions and learn about each employees' individual motivations. Understanding what each person wants can help you leverage their strengths while maintaining a work environment where they can thrive.

Carole (not Carol, notice the spelling) shared that a good manager made all the difference. "When opportunities for advancement became available several years ago, I had this conversation with my manager and she was very supportive. I have been in my current role for more than 18 years now (with additional responsibilities added over the years), but still love my job and I am all in!"

Some campers will stay for years and do great work if the job fits their personal lives.

Diane liked the hours of her job. She could come in early, do her work, and get home in time to pick her kids up from school. Having a stress-free job she enjoyed meant she could be fully present with her kinds once the work day ended.

Others hold down shifts that are otherwise hard to fill.

Laura was a single mother with a young daughter. She worked a steady night shift job so she could be with her daughter during the day and have a family member care for her at night while Laura worked. The night shift required someone who could work independently, so Laura was a perfect fit.

Of course, some campers only camp for awhile. Once Laura's daughter reached school age, Laura was able to move to the day shift so she could earn a much-deserved promotion. This also allowed her to be with her daughter when she got home from school.

Managers can often find amazing employees if they’re willing to hire someone who wants to step back from a demanding managerial role and refocus their energy on a job they enjoy.

Terri moved into an individual contributor role after getting promoted several times and spending a good part of her career in leadership positions. "I may not want to ever manage people again, but what I do want to do?" asked Terri. "Be better than last year—every year."

Many campers just want to know their work matters.

Donna took pride in being a steadying influence through multiple mergers and spin-offs. "Over the years I have trained probably around 300 people. I actually trained my Supervisor when he started 13 years ago on the phones. This has happened several times, and that’s okay–I am proud to say it started with me.”

Conclusion

Every team needs a Camper Carol. You can find yours by doing a few things that managers should do with everyone on their team:

  1. Avoid making assumptions.

  2. Get to know each person's individual goals and motivations.

  3. Create an environment where each person can thrive.

When you do find your Carol, recognize and appreciate the value they bring to the team. After all, they're probably making you look like a good boss who has a team with low turnover and high productivity.

Increase productivity with this one counterintuitive trick

It started as a typical, busy Wednesday. Then a miracle happened.

A half-day event got cancelled. Another meeting was rescheduled for a different day. My calendar was suddenly wide-open.

It was tempting to fill that found time with more work. I took my dog to the beach instead.

We had a lot of fun. I was present, and didn't look at my phone, except to take a picture of my dog, Dublin, enjoying herself.

I came back refreshed. Smiling. Happy. Helpful insights jumped into my brain while I wasn't even thinking about them.

It took just a couple of hours. When I returned, Dublin was worn out and spent the afternoon napping. I was recharged and was amazingly productive for the rest of the day.

Taking time off in the middle of the day really works. Even shorter breaks can work wonders. It's something I've known about for years, and should do more often. It's a struggle.

Here's why we need breaks, how breaks work, and why it's so difficult to take them.

How fatigue affects customer service

Fatigue makes customer service difficult. Tired employees find it hard to build rapport with a customer. Listening skills become degraded. Exhausted employees struggle to focus.

All that makes it hard to solve customer problems and retain their business, which is the primary job of most customer service teams.

One customer support team measured the impact of fatigue through its customer effort scores. This is a type of survey that measures of how easy it is for customers to get their help they need. Survey scores were eight percent lower in the afternoons, when employees were tired.

Customer service employees frequently experience three types of fatigue.

1. Empathy fatigue, or compassion fatigue, occurs when employees reach a state of physical and mental exhaustion from caring for others. They slowly stop caring as a result.

2. Emotional labor is a close relative to empathy fatigue. It represents the difference between the emotions you outwardly display and how you really feel. Like other types of labor, you get tired the more you exert and find it difficult to display positive emotions like friendliness and warmth.

3. Directed attention fatigue comes from constantly focusing your attention and blocking out distractions, which is common in customer service environments. This type of fatigue makes it really difficult to focus and can lead to irritability.

When combined, employees find it difficult to care, pretend to care, or focus. That's a bad combination for service.

How breaks improve productivity

Breaks can help employees recover from the various types of fatigue that slow them down. It restores their ability to concentrate, display positive emotions, and make good decisions.

Data released in 2018 by DeskTime, a company that makes productivity tracking software, revealed a counterintuitive strategy used by the most productive employees. People who got the most done worked for an average of 52 fully-focused minutes, followed by a 17-minute break.

Two big things stand out.

First, fully-focused means just that. Productive employees were able to block out distractions and concentrate on their work without being constantly interrupted.

Second, breaks were real breaks, not checking email, Slack, social media, etc. Productive employees took a walk, got a cup of coffee, or socialized with coworkers.

These breaks allowed employees' brains to rest so they could quickly go back to fully-focused work.

While this 52 minutes on, 17 minutes off format might not be realistic for many customer service teams, there are still some lessons we can apply.

  • Alternate fully-focused time with less intensive tasks.

  • Block out distractions as much as possible during focused time.

  • Give employees a place to fully decompress on breaks, such as a quiet room.

Why it’s so hard to take good breaks

Employees struggle to take good breaks for a lot of reasons. Some bosses don't provide adequate time, but a lot of employees' break challenges are surprisingly self-imposed.

I once worked two blocks from San Diego's Balboa Park. If you've never been, it's a large, beautiful park that's home to many museums and the San Diego Zoo. There are acres of grass and miles of trails.

At first, I had dreams of taking my lunch to the park. Perhaps I'd have a picnic or stroll to the Zoo, where I had a membership. I had control over my work and schedule, so this should have been easy.

In reality, I went to the park only a handful of times in four years.

The reasons were all self-imposed. I often felt the urge to power through an important project. My work was interesting, so I often got distracted. I failed to block off adequate time on my schedule. There was also unspoken social pressure from coworkers who rarely took breaks themselves.

Many employees experience the same struggles.

  • Telling themselves they can't take a break. (Even if they can.)

  • Immediately checking their phones on break instead of relaxing.

  • Taking breaks at their desk instead of going outside.

It's not easy.

I started my own business in 2005. My work schedule is up to me, yet I still struggle to make sure I'm taking good breaks.

Conclusion

Breaks are an essential, but overlooked part of keeping employees ready to serve. Customer service leaders should set a positive example by taking breaks themselves and encouraging employees to do the same.

The pay-off is a team of well-rested employees who are more productive, create stronger connections with customers, and can ultimately retain more business.

What are the advantages of having a service culture?

Imagine you wanted to meet a friend for coffee.

Your friend suggests a place they think you'll like that's located in a nearby neighborhood. You've never been there before and don't know the address. How would you get there?

There are several ways you could find it:

  • Plug the name of the coffee shop into your maps app.

  • Look up the coffee shop's address and plug that into the maps app.

  • Hire a Lyft and plug the name of the coffee shop into the Lyft app.

There's probably several other ways to find your way there, but the point is you'd figure it out.

Employees working in a service culture operate the same way. They’re given a clear direction, and they find a way to get the job done. That is the essence of a why a service culture is so important.

More on that in a moment. But first, let's define a service culture so we're all on the same page.

What is service culture?

A service culture is a type of organizational culture where employees are obsessed with customer service. 

They are constantly looking for ways to act in service to their customers, whether they work with customers directly or support other employees who do. Employees in a service culture have several characteristics in common. They consistently:

  • Think about how to help customers.

  • Act to make customers' lives better.

  • Understand why service is important.

You can find more information about what it means to have a service culture here.

Why is service culture important?

Service culture is short-hand for a customer-focused organizational culture. Employees in a service culture always seem to do the right thing. They encourage each other, proactively solve problems, and constantly look for ways to go the extra mile.

Think of the companies you most admire. Chances are, you'll see many examples of a strong service culture:

  • Employees are consistently friendly and welcoming.

  • Products and services work exceptionally well.

  • Any issues you do experience are minor, and are quickly resolved.

Contrast that with what you typically see at a company that doesn't have a service culture:

  • Employees are not always friendly or welcoming.

  • Products and services are glitchy, and often fail.

  • You often experience issues, and getting them resolved is a hassle.

Which type of company do you want to work for? It seems like an easy choice.

What are the tangible benefits of service culture?

Companies with a strong service culture enjoy a number of advantages over their competition, including increased efficiency, customer retention, and reputation.

Let's go back to the coffee shop example to understand efficiency.

Your friend doesn't need to give you detailed instructions on how to get to the coffee shop. They also don't need to constantly monitor your progress as you navigate your way there. All you need is the location and you'll figure out the rest.

It's the same way in a service culture.

Managers don't need to spend all their time telling employees what to do or how to do it. They also don't need to constantly monitor their employees' actions to ensure people are doing the right thing. Employees know their jobs and do them well.

Customer retention is another benefit.

One executive wanted to better understand customer needs, so he skipped the usual survey and spent a few weeks calling existing customers directly. The idea was to better understand their needs and get feedback on how his company could serve them better.

This simple exercise yielded more than $75,000 in gross profit in just a few weeks. Even better, it provided a blueprint for retaining more customers that he could share with his account managers. It all focused on being customer-obsessed.

Reputation is a third benefit of a service culture.

The founder of a small start-up generated over $100,000 in referral business during year one by getting his small team focused on delivering a consistent brand of service. Despite being a new entrant in a crowded field, the company quickly built momentum by taking business from larger, more established competitors who couldn’t provide the same level of service.

There's one more benefit, and it’s personal.

Imagine attending a networking event where people from various companies are present. One person works for a company that's famous for its service culture. People excitedly ask questions about the company. They make comments like, "It must be so much fun to work there!"

Another person works for a company that's infamous for a poor culture. People approach that person and gripe about their own experiences. They ask for advice on getting complaints resolved. Many make comments like, "It must be a miserable place to work!"

Which company would you rather work for?

Conclusion

Creating a strong service culture isn't easy, otherwise more companies would do it. The reality is it takes a big commitment.

If you're one of the few who's willing to make that commitment, there's a step-by-step guidebook available. It's called The Service Culture Handbook.