Service Untitled

I got an email about an interesting new book called Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the Worlds Most Admired Service Organizations. The book obviously focuses on the world famous Mayo Clinc, a non-profit medical center based in Rochester, Minnesota. There is a lot one can learn from the Mayo Clinc (I’m planning on interviewing the book’s authors soon), but one of the interesting things I saw in the summary of the book is the Clinc’s decision to pay its doctors on a salary instead of by procedure.

I know very little about how hospitals work and how the medical profession in general works and that’s not what I’m going to focus on here. What I’m interested in is how the Mayo Clinc went against what might seem like a logical system and instead decided to use something that focused on overall customer satisfaction instead of profits.

This isn’t unheard of. CarMax puts their sales representatives on salaries to ensure the advice and guidance they give is more motivated by eventual customer satisfaction than it is by short-term commission gains.

Your compensation system should be based on the goals of the customer, not the goals of the employee. When the two can align, great, but when they don’t, it’s a problem. For example:

• Most car dealers are paid on percentage commissions. This encourages the car dealer to sell the customer a more expensive car (bad).
• Real estate agents are paid on percentage commissions. This encourages the agent to show the client more expensive houses (bad).
• Plaintiff attorneys get a percentage of the settlement or award. This encourages the attorney to get the most money for him/herself and the client (good).
• Some sales people are paid based on a flat commission. This encourages them to make a sale, but not a specific sale (better than bad).

And so on. The Mayo Clinic deciding to pay its doctor on a flat salary that wasn’t dependent on the number (or expense) of procedures and focused on patient well being is something they do to ensure long-term patient and satisfaction and well being. If you don’t rip your customers off and instead focus on getting them solutions that actually make sense for them, you’ll make more in the long-term.

Photo credit to Nephron via Wikimedia.

I was talking to someone about customer service over the weekend and he said a great quote that can really summarize the variability among customer service representatives — if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

His point was that, in customer service, you can’t afford to get monkeys and have them interact with your customers. Customer service is very much dependent on the people providing the service, so a really good or a really bad customer service representative can also polarize a customer service experience.

Some companies have seen a lot of success from paying their customer service representatives better than average. I’ve worked with companies that pay their customer service people very well and in turn, get a lot better than average employees. They get people with more experience, initiative, talent, etc. and things tend to get done better and faster. I’ve also seen companies that do the opposite and pay barely anything and get employees who are essentially incompetent. 

It takes more than money to get good customer service people, though. Companies that do well at customer service tend to have strong cultures and tend to hire people who genuinely like their jobs and what they do on a day-to-day basis. Those who are just in their job for the (augmented) paycheck aren’t going to contribute that much to the customer service culture at any company. 

How well does your company pay and what have you noticed as a result?

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?

Layoffs are obviously things that every company would like to avoid, but many simply cannot. However, just like day-to-day operations, some companies handle what is essentially the same process of laying of an employee much different than others. A recent report released by a company called Telonu found that a majority of corporate layoffs were handled poorly. The company found out some interesting things:

• 88% of laid-off employees rate ‘how their layoff was handled’ as poor or very poor. 
• 94% rate outplacement support as poor/very poor.
• 81% of those still employed perceive job security as poor or very poor.
• 74% of those still employed rate morale as poor/very poor.

These are both important and discouraging metrics. When companies layoff employees, they should be on their best and providing the best service possible. Layoffs can obviously seriously impact employees’ lives and brushing them off is a horrible thing to do from a customer service and “good business” perspective.

Actually laying people off is tricky. If you announce that that a person will be laid off in advance, they are going to become demotivated and hurt morale in the office. If you catch people by surprise, it will likely be more difficult and stressful for the employee to find another job. Employees who are about to be laid off should be treated with as much dignity as possible in all circumstances.

Once someone is actually laid off, providing better service is less tricky. The company should provide as much help as possible to the laid off employees. Provide them with some job training, access to some hiring experts who can help them with their resumes and job searches, and so on. The more help that can be provided, the better. Many of these things are standard practices in companies that really want to help their laid off employees. Some companies, however, don’t care and just send the employees out the door.

When a round of layoffs is complete, it is important to talk to the other employees and let them know what will happen. Common sense will tell you that layoffs are not good for morale and this report confirms just that. As a company, you need to do whatever you can to boost morale and let the still employed employees know they are valued and what will be happening in the future.

I’ve never been involved with a layoff, so my experience with them is admittedly quite limited. If you have, however, please leave a comment and let us know what worked well and what didn’t work well before, during, and after a layoff.

Misinformation in customer service is pretty common. It’s probably something you’ve experienced firsthand as well. You call a company and you’re told one thing by one representative. Then you call back a few days later and you’re told that what the first representative told you isn’t true. The service doesn’t work that way. It really costs more than that. The fee does apply to you.

When this happens, customers get frustrated. Being told something is one way by one person and then being told it is another way by another person is one of the most annoying things that a customer may have to deal with. So, as a company, how do you avoid situations like that where inaccurate, and often conflicting information, is given to a customer?

The first and most obvious suggestion is to not misrepresent the information in the first place. Consistently accurate information comes as a result of experience, training, and easy to access resources to verify information. Many customer service representatives like to assume an answer and tell a customer without really knowing or bothering to check.

Companies have to work very hard to strongly and actively discourage the giving of inaccurate information. Make complete accuracy a major quality standard, ensure that quality assurance people are noting the accuracy of the information, review phone calls and emails to ensure the information being given is correct. Let employees know when they give wrong information and take it seriously.

One way to ensure information is as accurate as possible is to ensure that employees have extremely easy access to accurate information. This means having an extensive internal knowledge base or wiki (that is reviewed reguaraly by supervisors / management) and a representative having plenty of people to ask in case he or she isn’t sure of something. An internal IM system, easy physical access to a supervisor, an internal chat room, etc. are all great ways to encourage that type of quick communication.

The supervisors or senior employees being asked should encourage employees to ask questions. If the answer is available in the knowledge base or wiki or on the company web site, that supervisor should let the customer service reprsentative know that and keep the interaction positive. Employees who are afraid to ask for help will usually resort to just making the answers up.

Last, but certainly not least, companies need to train well and train often. Accuracy usually comes from knowing the ropes. Employees starting at companies with good training programs typically start their “real work” knowing more than employees starting a companies with bad training programs. And training does not stop after the first month, either. Ongoing training will ensure that employees are kept up-to-date about the latest changes and updates and are able to provide the most accurate information. I talk about training a lot because it’s so important. Don’t underestimate it at all.

What have you done at your company to help ensure employees give the most accurate information? My next post will cover how to actually handle a situation where there was conflicting information given.

If you really want to be a great service organization, an important question to ask is: does your IT department provide great service? And with that in mind, you can go on to ask any number of similar questions:

• Does your website development team provide great service?
• Does your HR department provide great service?
• Does your accounting department provide great service?

If you didn’t pick it up already, the core issue is the quality of internal customer service. 

If your customer service department is providing excellent service on a consistent basis to all of your customers, that’s great. It means that the people in that department understand the importance of customer service and are both motivated and empowered to deliver superior customer service.

However, if those people go to inquire about their health insurance or how to get their computer fixed and they have to work with an angry employee who is obviously not committed to the same level of service excellence, it can be discouraging. It can really wreak havoc on a corporate culture when some people are highly motivated and others don’t care.

It is important to try and motivate encourage people outside of the customer service department to provide great service. If these people aren’t providing great service to their colleagues, it will negatively affect the working environment. Do what you can to ensure that all of your departments are providing great service and that the culture of internal customer service is as strong as the culture of external customer service.

An average company will probably provide its employees with a plethora of resources (tools, guides, tutorials, etc.) they can use to do their jobs better. But do you really know which tools your employees are using and which ones they aren’t? Probably not.

Track with objective statistics. If you have technical resources that you are making available to your employees, chances are you can use some sort of analytics to track the true usage. Internal web sites can be tracked, computer programs can be tracked, etc. Using technology to obtain the data about the usage of your resources is a great way to understand how they are utilized and if they are being utilized effectively.

Ask (with a survey). Survey your employees and ask how they using the various resources available to them. Ask about what they find helpful, what they don’t use, what they still need, and so on. Ask about the effectiveness of the current resources, their ease of use, and so on. Design your survey to give you actionable data (i. e. if you’re curious about navigation, ask questions that will help you understand how your employees navigate the resources available to them).

Use your data to draw conclusions. If your analytics show that people are clicking to several different pages before they stay on a page for a while (indicating it takes them a while to get somewhere) and they complain about navigation in the survey, something is obviously wrong with the layout of that particular tool or resource. Figure it out, ask employees if that is actually the case, and then take action.

Ask (with an interview). Once you have some initial points collected and to work off of, interview some employees about what resources they utilize and how they utilize them. The interviews should be open ended and pry around for additional information and additional areas to work on. The more you know, the more you can do and the better spent your time and other resources will be.

I’ve talked about internal blogs before, but I haven’t talked about the importance of internal mailing lists. Mailing lists have been around since before the Internet as we know it was the Internet and that isn’t an accident – they’re useful and easy to use. Internal mailing lists can be used for a wide variety of purposes:

Collaboration with employees. Mailing lists can be used to collaborate with other employees. Work on projects, make other employees aware of particularly tough issues, point out bug fixes, etc. A mailing list can be used not only to keep other employees in the loop, but also allow them to contribute themselves.

Sending service updates. Service updates should be sent to both employees and customers, but that isn’t always possible. Internal mailing lists can be used to keep employees informed about service updates (including those that are upcoming) as well as any information about outages, upgrades, etc.

Reminders and tips. Some companies send out a useful “hint of the day” about a new system or how to help customers. These are great to send over mailing lists and can help employees do their job better. Tips of the day via email aren’t typically sent over mailing lists, but assuming the tips are actually helpful, employees will actually appreciate them.

A lot of these uses seem obvious, but when each team or group gets its on mailing list, it can really help make communication easier and more unified than just CC’ing people randomly. Be sure to give each team (or any group that asks for it) their own mailing list. Make sure archives of the mailing lists are kept so people can easily refer back to them and ensure that the archives are searchable. That will allow you to get the most out of them and let people who weren’t on the list originally get caught up.