Service Untitled

It’s hard to tell if you’re losing business because of the economy or doing something wrong. Competition is so keen now, what once may have just been mildly annoying is now the reason your competition has claimed some of your customers. Perhaps it is time to take a closer look at the management support, training and motivation of your workforce. I’ve compiled a short list of the most annoying habits of customer service personnel which is  almost guaranteed to have your customers running to your competition. Any of these sound familiar?

• Chewing gum. Can you think of anything more annoying than listening to someone chewing gum over the phone when they are talking to you? In person, I can’t seem to concentrate on what the representative is telling me because the movement of her jaw and the snapping sounds distract me too much.
• Phone texting. Does a customer service representative think that I don’t notice how he is texting someone while dealing with my problem? As I am signing my name and filling out a store form for my refund, the person behind the desk is sending his girlfriend flowers from his Iphone.
• Multiple phone transfers. I had a problem with a generator and called the toll-free number. Not only was I met by too many numbers to push for more extensions than I could count, but each time I had to repeat the story of my generator and why I wanted a refund due to a manufacturing error. Last I counted, I told the same story six times.
• Lying customer service representatives. Do they lie because they just don’t care or don’t know the answer? The last representative told me the refund would be in the mail the same day. Six weeks later I still did not receive the refund or an explanation.
• Key personnel missing. I look up the manager or key person who can help me with my customer problem, and leave numerous messages asking for a return call. He is always in meetings, traveling or having a family emergency.

• New person on the job. New customer service representatives should have a trainer if the new person is a rank amateur, and that would save me tapping my foot on the floor waiting for the representative to go back and forth trying to solve my problem. Now if there was a trainer next to the newbie, I could have been on my way, happier and the problem likely would have been rectified before I tapped a hole into the floor.

Basically, even if the customer doesn’t realize customer service means more than refunds, exchanges, or a polite greeting, doesn’t it come down to the little things that make the biggest differences?

photo credit: Dan Zen

Customer service departments, like most entities of most corporations, seem to have a thing for meetings.

I personally don’t like meetings and I think the usefulness of getting everyone in a conference room to discuss something that is most likely pretty trivial is limited at best. Bureaucracy in general is something that I try to avoid (and suggest that others do as well) and I feel as if most meetings just contribute to bureaucracy. Too many companies (and units within them) fall into this trap where they equate talking about getting stuff done with actually getting stuff done. Meetings do not necessarily equate to productivity.

With that in mind, some meetings are necessary. Even as someone who grew up in the email generation, I still believe some meetings are useful written about such meetings in the past. Here are some of my tips on how to conduct an effective meeting:

1. Have a formal agenda and distribute it beforehand. I always like to email out the agenda of the meetings I’m leading to whoever will be in attendance beforehand. It gives them an idea of what the meeting will be like (length, format, etc.), what will be covered, and if they might need to do anything to prepare. Sending an agenda out in advance also gives people time to suggest topics to add to the agenda.
2. Stick to the agenda. An agenda is useless if it isn’t being followed. As the person leading the meeting, make sure you stick to it. I like to include estimated time frames for different parts of the meeting, mention who will be talking during each part, and so on. A detailed agenda lets people know how the meeting should progress.
3. Let people know what they need to do in advance. There are different groups of meetings attendees at pretty much every meeting. Some people have something to present, some people are just there to listen, others are there to approve or reject ideas. Make sure everyone knows what they’re responsible for doing well in advance of the meeting and that they have time to prepare accordingly.
4. Focus on action items. On every agenda I hand out, the back side has a section for notes and action items. Every person needs to leave the meeting with an idea about what the next steps are and what they need to do. This is where most meetings fail.
5. Take notes. Assign someone at or bring someone to the meeting in order to take notes. This person should pay special attention to action items and noting steps, obstacles, etc. involved with actually get work done.
6. Turn off the BlackBerries, etc. I have a BlackBerry and I like it a lot. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t checked my BlackBerry during a meeting and I’d also be in denial if I said no one has ever checked their BlackBerry when I’ve been presenting at a meeting. Cell phones, PDAs, smartphones, etc. are a distraction during meetings and should be turned off during the meeting. The policy should also be enforced.

There comes a time when email or IM just doesn’t cut it and you need to sit down and meet face to face. When you do have that meeting, try to keep some of these ideas in mind. These are things I’ve used to help ensure the meetings I have end up being productive meetings and to date, they’ve worked well. Feel free to share your own tips in the comments.

photo credit: faungg

Over the last week or so, I have been working with a company on improving the service experience within a small department of theirs. The department has about 5 employees and a relatively simple, but also important job within the company’s broader customer service department. The department was in need of attention, so I took a simple and straight forward approach to improving it. Here is what I did:

1. Met with the employees. My personal style is to talk to employees about what the problems and opportunities are before I talk to managers about the same thing. Some people do it in the opposite order, but I prefer to talk to the employees first. One of the first things I like to do when I’m given a broad assignment (e. g. “Make this department better.”) is sit down with the employees in the particular  department and ask them what they think they do well, what they think needs to be improved upon, and what their ideas are in a very casual, pressure-free way. Before I go into meetings, I do my own research into the questions and come prepared with my thoughts and opinions as well (going in completely blind is a waste of time).
2. Took their ideas back to the drawing board. After I met with the employees, I took their ideas and feedback back the drawing board. I did more research on my own and used their feedback and thoughts to come up with a flow chart of how I envisioned the revised process working. I then went through the department’s operating procedures and revised those in accordance with the flow chart I had just come up with. Even though many people hate them, I like flow charts. They’re great at visually showing how something (should) work and what needs to happen when something else happens.
3. Went to the manager(s). At this point, I went to manager in chart of the department and showed him what I had come up with. In this particular situation, the manager was on board. In other situations, some back and forth between you and the manager/boss/co-worker might be necessary.
4. Went back to the employees (with the manager). After the manager and I had come to an agreement about how everything should work and solidified some more details, we went back to the employees and pitched/introduced our ideas and what would be happening. This meeting was a lot more formal than the last one. There was an agenda, handouts, etc. There were a few minor suggestions / comments from the employees, which we took into consideration and used to update the procedures accordingly.

This process was highly effective and relatively painless. The time from first meeting to implementation was about a week and we’ve continued to follow up since then to tweak things further, but overall, this schedule and general procedure for making changes tends to be effective within support organizations. When you involve the people who do the work on a day-to-day bas in the decision making process, getting changes made and implemented will be a lot easier.

I briefly touched on what can be done to avoid employee / manager conflicts just under three years ago (wow!), but I was thinking more about the idea of accessibility of managers and supervisors today and thought it was worth a follow up post.

I’ve always tried to be very accessible as a manager. I respond to emails quickly and consistently, keep my door open, and try to be as available as possible to talk to employees and customers whenever they have comments, concerns, or questions. I’m by no means a perfect manager, but I do feel that being acessible and available is an important thing for a manager, especially one who works in the customer service field.

Here are three simple things you can do to be more accessible:

1. Have an open door policy. Physically keeping your door open can set a great example for your employees and your co-workers. I can’t stand “closed” office spaces with big doors and no interior windows and have always made it a point to keep my office door open as often as humanly possible. It is sends a less than subtle signal that you’re willing to talk and that you’re accessible (just like having a closed door all the time sends a very different signal).
2. Have “office hours.” The concept of office hours is common at colleges and universities, but kind of unheard of in business. Ideally, you don’t need office hours, but a lot of managers have crazy schedules filled with a plethora of meetings and other engagements that subsequently make it hard to get in touch with them. To deal with this, try to set an hour or two per day aside where you’re available to talk to employees who just want to walk in and express any questions or concerns they might have.
3. Schedule “town halls.” I stole this idea and this terminology from politicians, but that’s only because it is a good idea. Every month or so, schedule an informal “town hall” with a group of employees who are  (for example) half randomly chosen and half specifically selected where you either come in with a topic or idea that you want to discuss or simply open the floor to general comments, suggestions, questions, etc. This is a great way to get to know your employees better and to make them feel as if they’re more involved with the company.

There are literally hundreds of books on the subject of manager accessibility and leadership styles, but I’ve always found that these three things have worked well for me. What has been effective where you work now or have worked in the past?

I was listening to Steve Odland (the Chairman and CEO of Office Depot) present at an event today and one of the things he talked about was how sharing information across the organization could lead to decision making empowerment and aptitude. 

Odland said that if everyone at Office Depot knew as much as he did (in terms of cause and effects, how actions fit in with the rest of the company, etc.), the company would be much more cohesive and efficient. People could confidently make decisions based on the full picture and not worry about something they’re not aware of existing and influencing whatever they’re deciding.

This idea can apply to customer service as well. The more each of your customer service representatives knows about what is going on at your company and with your products, the better decisions they can make. If you trust they can make these types of good decisions, then you can empower them to actually make the decisions and take action. 

Think about some of the ways you can share more company information with your employees. Send a weekly or quarterly summary about what’s been happening at your company. Consider having meetings with a couple of employees at a time where you answer questions and address concerns. Share your short and long term strategies with your employees and let them know what the management team is working on.

Things like this not only keep employees informed, but also helps make them feel more important and engaged with what’s going on at your company and most importantly, where it’s going.

This post idea came from reader and fellow-blogger Alan Hart. His question is “how do you get engineering groups to think abotu service while they are designing products?”

Communication between engineers and customer service people is essential and is something I have written about in the past (see here and here), but there is always more to talk about regarding this topic.

• The best way to make engineering groups aware of the challenges involved with customer service is to ask them to do customer service. Even if it isn’t that frequent (have each engineer answer support email one day a month). 
• Some companies require that all employees (engineers included) talk to customers or respond to customer feedback on a daily basis. 
• Another simple solution is to submit copies of customer feedback to engineers at the company. Let them review what customers are saying and call those customers if they have questions. 
• A less common, but still very feasible solution is to “embed” a member of the customer service team in the engineering team. Have the customer service representative participate in the product design meetings and provide feedback from a different perspective. 

All of these methods will provide an often needed “reality check” to people who might not talk to customers very often. The methods help engineers a feel for what customers are thinking and what the challenges are. Getting engineers involved means letting them know what’s going on.

Chances are, your customer service department receives positive remarks and feedback from customers on at least a semi-regular basis (I hope you do, at least). But what do you do with these messages? You have a few options:

1) Delete them. This is the worst thing you can do. You should read through positive feedback and take the time to process it. Understanding what you do well is as important as understanding where you need to improve.

2) Reply to the customer. If a customer takes the time to send in positive feedback, reply to their message, letter, etc. and thank them for the kind words and for their business. If you do something special with the feedback, let them know what it is.

3) Tell the employees involved. If a customer mentions an employee specifically, let that employee know. Praise them, add the positive feedback to their file for the next review period, etc. Employees like to hear about customers writing in to say what a good job they do.

4) Tell the company. At a lot of restaurants, the beginning of staff meetings is often used to read good and bad letters the restaurant has received and to praise employees who do a particularly good job. Forwarding positive feedback around the company is great for morale. It recognizes specific employees who are doing well and lets other employees know that customers do care and are appreciative.

The ways the emails/letters can be distributed varies. I’ve seen everything from just forwarding them to the company mailing list to posting them all on a wall somewhere in the call center. I personally think printing them out and posting them somewhere is more personal and interesting. Look around your office and examine your company and see what you can do with the positive feedback you receive. Make it unique and of course, make it visually appealing. This is a great example from the Headsets.com office.

5) Do 2, 3, and 4. The best companies seem to do 2, 3, and 4. Positive feedback from customers is a big deal and should be treated as such. The companies that just dismiss it or smile and move on are missing out.

When you read the title of this post (and my last post of 2008), I’m sure you instantly said to yourself, “of course.” But what if I qualify the question and instead ask, “do you talk to your customers with no intention of selling them anything and without them asking for you to call them?” Chances are, you’ll need to think about that question in more detail.

Interacting with customers in an informal way is an essential part of customer service. Great companies talk to their customers frequently. They ask how they’re doing, what they think of the company, and if they have any feedback to share. More often than not, interesting and useful feedback comes about from calls like this. If useful feedback doesn’t come about, that’s okay, too (you’re still making a positive impression on the customer).

You generally get the most out of these calls when you get on them with a few things at hand:

An informal agenda. These calls or meetings should not be ultra-formal “get things done” meetings with a notetaker and a stop watch (complete overkill). However, you should have an idea of what you want to talk about and what you think the customer will want to talk about. The idea is to let the customer talk and for you to respond when necessary. Be sure to have an agenda that reflects that.

Some information about the customer. Don’t go into the call with just a name and a phone number. Check how long the customer has been with your company, what type of services they use, their support history, and so on. See if they have referred any of their friends or colleagues to your company. Check out what they’ve purchased, how many account managers they’ve had, etc. The more you know about the customer, the better. If you know something about them, you can tweak the content and direction of the call accordingly.

Do a couple of these calls a week and make sure different people do them. The CEO can do one, the VP of Engineering can do another, and so on. If these people don’t regularly work with customers (and even if they do), they’ll get a lot out of these calls. Make it a New Year’s resolution to have ten senior managers / executives call at least two customers a week. That’s over 1,000 customers a year and it will make a difference.

Happy New Year!