Service Untitled

I saw a commercial today for an exterminating company that advertised the ongoing training their employees receives. I’m not looking for an exterminator but it made me think about the importance of using what your organization does right and leveraging it as part of your marketing plan.

We moved a few years ago and I researched moving companies to help us. The only way I knew to assess these kinds of companies (this was before Angie’s List) was to ask about their internal practices. I asked if they provided training for their employees and if they solicited customer satisfaction data. I was truly surprised at how different the response was from company-to-company. I ultimately picked a business that did both ongoing training and solicited customer feedback. This was important to me because it told me that employees were put through a structured training program (I didn’t want them dropping my TV) and if they asked for customer feedback, they were probably more likely to respond to customer issues.

So what kinds of things is your organization doing right that you can leverage?

• Training: Depending on the industry, most people place value on training. Whether it is customer service training or mechanic training, most customers feel a level of comfort in knowing the people who are taking care of their needs have had the appropriate training to do so.
• Background Checks: Whether you have service technicians who enter customer homes or are a daycare center who takes care of small children, communicating that background checks are part of your screening process can help ease the concern of potential customers. I worked with an organization that hosts a large summer day-camp every year and they do background checks on the army of volunteers they use to manage the children. Parents find comfort with that.
• Accreditation: Accreditation and certifications demonstrate a person or organizations credibility in providing products or services. Whether your organization is accredited through the Better Business Bureau or have certifications in information technology, the paying customer is interested. These kinds of credentials are what separate the professionals from the not so professionals.
• Financial Transparency: Nonprofit organizations that solicit and rely on outside funding and donors benefit greatly when they provide financial information to donors. Donors want to know that the money they are donating is being used wisely and for the purpose it was intended.
• Customer Satisfaction: When a customer purchases a product or service, they want to be reassured that they will receive what was promised to them. Collecting, monitoring and advertising customer satisfaction data can be a powerful tool in marketing to new customers. Customers want to know that their voices will be heard.
• Quality Data: Organizations that track quality data can use it to advertise products or services. Whether an organization has won the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award or can claim a 0.001% product defect rate, quality data can be a great way to sell your product or service.
• Best Places to Work: Customers like to do business with organizations that have happy employees. Being nominated or winning awards for best places to work is another way to demonstrate creditability with the community and improve employee engagement.

Organizations that advertise the things they are doing right have the advantage of attracting the educated consumer. The ever-changing consumer driven culture demands more and more transparency in how an organization is run so you might as well boast of your good practices!

What are other things you leverage in your marketing plan?

Writer Bio: Kathy Clark is an MBA who is passionate about helping small business owners see their vision come to life by creating corporate infrastructures that support business development and growth through strategic customer focus. She writes for, and is the founder of http://thethrivingsmallbusiness.com.

photo credit: PNASH

Improving what we do and how we do it is an important part of business strategy. As organizations develop and grow, there is any number of improvement opportunities along the way. Opportunities can be related to business processes like the accounting function, a manufacturing process or a service process aimed to improve the customer experience. No matter what the process is, there can be a systematic approach to making improvements.

A quality method for improving work processes is a model called FOCUS PDCA. This methodology takes a process through identification of the improvement opportunity, planning for an improvement, implementation and evaluation of the change.

The first step in any improvement is understanding the current process by establishing a baseline. A baseline is measurable data that is collected at the beginning of an improvement project. For example, if you want to improve the wait time for customers, it is important to measure what the current wait time is. Once you know what the current wait time is, you can develop a process to improve those times. Measurement of any improvement effort is done at the beginning, during and after any improvement effort.

So how does FOCUS PDCA Work?

• Find: An opportunity for improvement.
• Organize: A team that is familiar with the process.
• Clarify: Understanding of the process.
• Understand: Variation in the process.
• Select: What needs to be improved.

• Plan: Develop an improvement plan.
• Do: Execute the plan.
• Check: Review the results and determine if the plan worked.
• Act: If the plan worked, standardize the change and write policy. If the plan did not work, go back and try something else.

Let’s look at an example of how this might work. Say you are a small business that does product order fulfillment. There are increasing numbers of customer complaints about the order-to-ship time. The business has been growing but you have a fear that the complaints will have an impact on future orders. Let’s go through the FOCUS PDCA Cycle:

• Find: The opportunity to improve is the product order-to-ship time.
• Organize: Recruit a team of employees who work in the order fulfillment role.
• Clarify: Map out the order fulfillment process in a flowchart. Start with when the order is placed and map the process through shipment.
• Understand: Collect data so you understand any variations in the process.
• Select: Identify what in the process can be improved.
• Plan: Develop an improvement plan.
• Do: Implement the plan.
• Check: Collect data to see how the plan worked.
• Act: If the plan worked, write a policy and train employees on the new process. If the plan did not work, go back to the beginning and try another improvement idea.

This is a very simplified example of using FOCUS PDCA, but what you will find is that if you try this method on a few small improvement opportunities, you will become more comfortable and will be able to use the same methodology on larger system problems.

Writer Bio: Kathy Clark is an MBA who is passionate about helping small business owners see their vision come to life by creating corporate infrastructures that support business development and growth through strategic customer focus. She writes for, and is the founder of http://thethrivingsmallbusiness.com.

Check sheets (or tally sheets) are one of the seven management tools that organizations use to gather information to help monitor and improve quality. The beauty of using a check sheet is that it provides data (facts) about how a process is working and offers information about improvement opportunities. The check sheet collects data for the number of times an event occurs. By tracking the frequency of an occurrence, an organization can learn about a process.

Check sheets should be designed to collect information that is needed to assess a process or system. The data collected gives a quick glance at problems with the number of occurrences in a designated period of time.

Check sheets work best when a person can observe and document the number of times an incident occurs.

When deciding whether or not to use a check sheet:

• Determine what process needs to be observed.
• Determine the kind of information that needs to be collected.
• Determine the period of time the data will be collected (days/weeks).
• Designate a person or persons who have responsibility for collecting the data.
• Make sure there is a good understanding of what information needs to be collected and the process for collecting it.
• It is always wise to do a daily check on the collections to make sure employees are being diligent with collecting the information.

The following example shows what a check sheet looks like. In this example, the human resource generalist is tracking the kinds of phone calls she receives regarding benefits and payroll. You can see by the information gathered on this check sheet that this person got the most number of phone calls on Tuesday and most of the questions were about the paid time off benefit. This information is important in that it shows the busiest day of the week for answering questions but it also shows that there are a lot of questions about PTO.

The next drill down on this would be to have the generalist collect data on what kinds of questions are being asked.  This information can then be used to develop a FAQ list, updating the employee manual and/or additional benefit training.

This is a simplified example of a tool that can be used to identify all kinds of improvement opportunities.

Writer Bio: Kathy Clark is an MBA who is passionate about helping small business owners see their vision come to life by creating corporate infrastructures that support business development and growth through strategic customer focus. She writes for, and is the founder of http://thethrivingsmallbusiness.com.

As a member of the Board of Directors for the North East Contact Center Forum, I have the opportunity to speak with a number of Customer Service Managers, Directors and VP’s across multiple industries and geographies. The most common theme among these leaders is the intricate balancing act of providing extraordinary experiences while reducing expenses (and sometimes juggling regulatory risk and/or time constraints).

I have battled with the same dilemmas myself. Over time, I have learned to ask myself and my colleagues a few questions:

• What do you coach your service representatives on?
• What are the common conversations in your team and all-hands meetings?
• What is it that your CEO/COO/VP of Customer Service is evangelizing?

More often than not, the answers sound like: call quality, customer experience, superior service, etc. Some time later, I follow up with another set of questions:

• What are the key metrics that you look at daily?
• How do you incent your service representatives?
• What are the metrics that your boss (whether he or she be the CEO or someone else) are hammering you about?

These answers usually sound like: service level, AHT (average handle time), 50-75% of incentives involve productivity numbers, expenses, cost per account/loan/customer, etc.

Things that make you hmmm.

The terms [triple/quad constraints - click each to a see a picture] and charts are typically used in project management, but apply to our quandary.  One constraint cannot be changed without altering another. Triple or Quad constraints are funny; everything cannot be the most important or the highest priority. Trying to make everything the highest priority will only drive you and your service representatives crazy. It leads to mediocre quality, often subpar cost metrics, low morale, and CEO’s/COO’s/VP’s of Customer Service breathing down your neck.

With all of that in mind, how do you move (walk) forward?

1. The first step for any recovery program is to admit you have a problem.
   1. Be objective.
   2. Ask your floor representatives what they think you say and what you really focus on.
   3. Listen to calls, review chats, and emails (are your associates rushing, taking too long?).
2. Force rank your current priorities (create the order that you believe you are presently working under)
   1. Everything cannot be equal
      1. Quality (call quality, defect management, complaints, customer incident surveys)
      2. Cost (AHT, service levels, cost per X, expenses, utilization, occupancy)
      3. Time (are new product releases critical? Service availability?)
      4. Risk (regulatory/legal, credit, reputational)
   2. Make sure you have accurate differentials – use an entire 1-5 scale
3. Have an honest, direct conversation with senior management about what is the most important priority, what is the second most important priority, and so on.

Now that you have your direction, you need to determine what you are going to change. (Hint: don’t limit yourself to the base of the box, work the edges. Read Seth Godin’s Linchpin for more on that subject.)

• People – Do you have the right people in the right places to succeed? Do you need to reorganize? How would you incent people to deliver your priority? What do you need to communicate to your associates?
• Process – What processes would you change? What metrics would you highlight? What dashboard items need to change?
• Systems – How can you leverage your technical solutions to maximize your priorities? Are you able to walk your talk? Or do you need to change your talk?

Guest Writer Bio: Michael Pace is the Director of Customer Support for Constant Contact’s award winning Customer Support Department and on the Board of Directors for the North East Contact Center Forum. You can connect with him via LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.

Image Credit: Joe

Sometimes it takes an award-winning performance to provide excellent customer care, especially when problems are weighing on your mind. Maybe you’re dealing with the turmoil of having your credit card stolen. Perhaps your daughter failed a class or your partner forgot your birthday. You can do your absolute best to put the concerns of your personal life aside at work, but it’s so challenging to stay in a positive mindset when you come face-to-face with a crabby, complaining customer.

How do you hold it together when you feel like falling apart?

Just ask the employees at Preston Wynne Spa, a successful company featured in chapter 7 of “Who’s Your Gladys?” This high end spa’s CEO Peggy Wynne Borgman and her staff have adapted the advice of my dear friend Holly Stiel, who recommends viewing the start of a workday like the start of a performance.

Customer service expert Holly Stiel recommends viewing the start of a workday like the start of a performance.

“Your uniform is your service costume, and your workplace is the stage. To give great service, it’s helpful to consider yourself an actor playing a role with as much sincerity as possible,” Holly advises. She encourages everyone to make a conscious choice about how to “act” within the service provider role.

This got me thinking about my expectations as a customer. When I go to the movies, I expect the actors to give a captivating performance. I enjoy watching the leading man woo his love interest. It could very well be that in “real life,” the actor is going through a bitter divorce. It simply wouldn’t work to bring his personal problems into his leading man role.

Mo’Nique won an Oscar last night playing the part of Mary Jones from the movie Precious. She embodied the challenging role of a criminally abusive mother and was fully present in her performance. As a performing artist, she brought a highly challenging role to life.

Imagine yourself bringing the role of a caring customer service provider to life.

Have you ever noticed that when you say you believe something to be true, you’re sometimes tested? I believe that customer service is more than a skill, it’s an art. I was tested a few weeks ago. I was booked to fly to Wisconsin. Even though my husband and son suffered with a stomach virus for four days the week before, I stayed healthy, until 4 a.m. the morning of my flight.

I honestly didn’t know how I was going to get on that plane, let alone lead a workshop for managers AND a customer service keynote the following day. At 6 a.m., I called my coauthor Lori Jo Vest and told her, “I’m sick!” Thank God for Lori! She helped me to step into the role of service provider and do what was best for our client, who was bringing together 150 employees to see me for their annual event. The company had bought a book for everyone too, so finding a replacement speaker was out of the question. I made a call to my doctor, convinced him to prescribe something that would help, and was on the plane by 10 a.m.

As strange as it might sound, I believe it wasn’t as much the medicine that got me through as it was the mindset. I chose to BE an enthusiastic, attentive presenter and somehow, despite a stomach virus, I was.

Guest Writer Bio: Marilyn Suttle is the co-author of the best-selling customer service book, “Who’s Your Gladys? How to Turn Even the Most Difficult Customer into Your Biggest Fan.” She is president of Suttle Enterprises, a training firm through which she has taught thousands across the country how to have happier, more productive relationships with customers, coworkers, and even their children. For more information, visit: www.whosyourgladys.com.

photo credit: Eva Cristescu

If your company is like most companies, you most likely track customer satisfaction by sending out a survey to a random group of customers. This is definitely better than nothing and certainly worth doing, but it’s still a bit lacking.

The next step is customer satisfaction tracking is to track customer satisfaction among different segments. Segments worth considering include:

• Geographic regions (North America, EMEA, Asia, etc.)
• Demographic data (gender, age, etc.)
• Length of time with company (for services)
• Loyalty / rewards program membership
• Different products / services they utilize
• Customer value (customers who you actually make money off of)

And any number of other characteristics or information that you might be interested in segmenting. The point is to track where and for whom your customer service might be doing exceptionally well and where and for whom it might be failing.

Examples: If new customers are responding with very poor opinions of your company, chances are the getting started process is a bit rough around the edges. If members of loyalty / rewards programs are responding poorly, they probably don’t feel as valued as they are expecting and need some extra attention.

Segmenting makes what could otherwise be a boring blur of customer satisfaction data a lot more interesting and a lot more useful. It is a perfect thing for companies who identity their service as “pretty good” to invest some time into. When your service is doing well overall, segmenting will reveal what needs to be improved in much more specific terms.

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.

Here is something you can do to make your company more competitive in about 10 minutes. Call your competitors and test their service.

An entrepreneur I met with recently  told me that his company regularly calls and emails its competitors to see how good they are. They measure objective things like how long it takes to get a human on the phone, how long it takes to get a product, how long it takes to get an email response, etc. These are all metrics the company tracks internally and can easily compare to how they’re doing.

They will also order products from the competitor to see what the experience is like — packaging, updates during the shipping process, product quality, etc. The company does this so they can see how they’re doing relative to the rest of their industry. If someone else is doing something better or cooler, the company can adapt accordingly and make changes. 

A lot of companies are in fiercely competitive industries. Some will buy a competitor’s product or service to try it out and see how it relates, but very few actually do that on a somewhat regular basis. They’ll do it once and forget about it. This results in a short term benefit, but no real long term benefit.

If your company isn’t doing this already, you should start. In the long run, it’ll save a lot of time and aggravation. Guessing how your competitors are doing is not nearly as valuable as having the actual data.