You can read part one of the interview here and part two here. To read this part, click “read more.”

Service Untitled: Interesting. Do you have something equivalent to personal service level stats or email employees or live chat since it’s kind of a different way to track it than phones?
Rob: I mean we’re mostly looking at their production of how many emails they’re responding to over a course of an extended period of time. We don’t look at it as like today they only did this many but this day, they did that many because some days you just get a mix of emails that are very different. But they have to have an expectation of doing on average, a certain number of emails an hour. And we have some people that are just very prolific with doing emails and others that are not but there is an expectation and they have to meet it.

Service Untitled: And something similar for chat probably?
Rob: Yeah. Chat is more like the phone. Now it’s easier with the phones because the phones that are on the hardware have specific statuses that you utilize to do all of the measurements. And so it’s slightly different for live chat but it’s basic in terms of the way we monitor it. But it’s roughly the same thing. We’re looking at production and we’re looking at people’s efficient use of time and making sure they’re customer–facing. And I think that’s the key thing for us is that people are customer–facing. It’s not necessarily how much time they’re spending there per interaction. Well some person may take ten calls an hour, another person may take six but they’re both on the phone the same amount of time and that may just be the average of how it works out because some people are just a little chattier than others and that’s fine. And it’s the same thing with live chat. There’s subtle differences in individuals.

Service Untitled: So empowerment is obviously critical to customer service. How do you empower customer loyalty to your members?
Rob: I mean that’s pretty easy. We don’t restrict their decision making. If they have something that they need to get to done for a customer, they don’t have hoops to jump through to make a decision. They make the decision and if there’s something they need help with, we’ll provide them help but we’re not going to stop them from making the decision and we want to make sure that people feel comfortable making the decisions without second–guessing themselves. Do what’s in the best interest of the customer. You know if you do something and you’re unsure about it but you wanted to take care of the customer, maybe talk it over with your team lead afterwards but don’t slow down the process of providing the best service you can to the customer. So I mean we don’t have like a bunch of system restrictions that they can’t do x you know. They can’t upgrade the shipping or they can’t upgrade the customer into a VIP or the can’t refund the customer for something that was a service issue or they – they can do whatever they need to. They can make whatever request they need for UPS to get a package delivered to a different address or have something picked up from a house. I mean every type of situation where we could possibly be interacting with the customer, we take the barriers away from them being able to do their job and provide as much of a trusting environment as possible.

Service Untitled: So by doing that, have you guys kind of avoided the bureaucracy that tends to occur if companies get bigger?
Rob: I mean yeah I would say so. I mean when you put a bunch of people together, there’s always going to be a little bit of people stuff you know with just relationships and stuff but I mean in general, it’s such a flat organization in terms of the way we interact with each other. And we’re not control freaks you know.

I’ve always thought about it this way. If you don’t trust your employees, then you’re not hiring the right people. And so we have to trust them. We have to put that in their hand and we want to you know – I go more on the whole thing of you know trust someone until they proved themselves that they can’t be trusted and then just to put them in an environment where you immediately, it restrict them from being themselves. So we just work in a different way I guess.

Service Untitled: How does Zappos handle escalations to managers? If someone calls up and they’re really angry and they demand to talk to a manager, how do you guys handle that? Is it like every other call handles it or do you do it differently?
Rob: I don’t know how other call centers handle it really. I mean it depends. The first thing that we would want to do is first find out before you transfer it to the managers, well who the person is and what their issue is so that you can – you might be able to resolve it and they don’t know that. I would be really interested in knowing the data on this but sometimes we have people who call and demand a manager or supervisor because they don’t think that the person they’re going to get on the phone can help them. You know their experience I guess in other places is that what they want can’t be done by the first person that answers the phone. It’s different here so sometimes it happens when someone demands a manager or supervisor, they quickly find out, “Wow, that was a lot easier than I thought.” Some are escalated and sometimes it’s our own fault and so if they really want to speak with a manager, we’ll absolutely get them on the phone with the supervisor or manager as quickly as we can and have it resolved. I guess I kind of don’t know what else there would be to say about that one. I mean what do other call centers do that make it – do they make it complicated? I don’t know.

Service Untitled: Some call centers work pretty hard to escalate calls
Rob: Then what does the manager do? I mean that’s one of your functions of your job.

Service Untitled: Exactly.
Rob: The thing is we’re all accessible. Our CEO’s email is readily available. We all have the same mission. We’re here to provide the best possible customer experience and if they need to speak with somebody who they believe is more relevant to their problem, then we owe them that.

Service Untitled: I think that’s fair. So how do you compensate employees for going above and beyond? Obviously people want to be happy at work but they also have bills to pay and extra money helps that. What are some things that agents can do to earn additional money?
Rob: Well I touched on it earlier. The only program we have in place for earning more money in our department is by learning new skills and pursuing different opportunities that we constantly are promoting to be available for them. And we have rotations so that these skill set jobs is never stagnant, it’s never the same group constantly. There may be slower periods of churn within those groups as we have people learn those skills but there’s plenty of opportunity for them to go out and earn more pay and we do our very best to promote those opportunities and coach new employees when they get in so that they can be able to take advantage of those opportunities and learn those skills and then also as a side benefit, you get further training, more skills, and you also get paid more.

So that’s how we do it. And this is kind of around the company like we don’t have like a bonus program. We don’t have you know, at least in the call center, we don’t have like sales goals or you know stuff like that. We don’t have commissions or anything like that. We looked at other things, but I would rather discuss what we have than things that we don’t have.

Service Untitled: That makes sense. So what are some of the training opportunities like? Is one, for example, learn how to do email support? Learn how to do live chat? Or is that smaller than that or bigger than that?
Rob: It’s both. It’s all of the above. It could be smaller than that. Email and live chat are two of them. And each one depending on the length of the rotation and the skills required and the difficulty of the job are paid differently. So some are a little bit more difficult and you get paid more for learning that skill and excelling at it. So it varies from team to team.

We have like mentoring which is when new employees come in and they go to their four–week new hire training process. They come in to the call center and they sit with employees and listen to phone calls, and they have a mentor who helps them out, who takes the calls and then talks about it and gives them a little training. So that’s another one – it’s kind of a very soft skill, people–to–people training thing that they do not very frequently. It’s fairly infrequently so that’s a pretty popular one for people when they’re brand new. They want to pass on learning.

And we have an ambassador program. It’s another one which is pretty popular because it’s interacting with new employees. It’s kind of like a big brother–big sister kind of a thing. New employees get assigned to a veteran employee and they give them tours of the office to introduce them to more people in the call center and they help them with the studying for some of the test and quizzes that they go through when they’re new employees, and help just kind of talking them through questions that maybe they might have been nervous to ask someone else or whatever may be the case. But just to introduce a new friend and a new connection in the call center. So that’s another one.

And then they just run all over in little areas. And you know for the most part, the concentration of these different skills and functions obviously are built around business needs of what we’re trying to do to accomplish with our customers and to provide them the best service. And that changes too over time. So we’ve had new ones. Like right now we have, our live chat one has been a hugely popular skill set to learn recently. We have almost 70 people on the team and two years ago, we didn’t have a full time team. So it’s created a huge amount of opportunity for people to learn something new and that team so far has no signs of stopping growing. So it’s going to be growing at the same time people are rotating through and learning it. So it will end up being able to provide a lot of experiences for people. And who knows what the next one will be.

Service Untitled: So if I was a phone person and I got live chat training, I can do live chat for maybe a month or two and then go back to phones? Or you want to stay in live chat or whatever I want to do?
Rob: You would stay in live chat for longer than that. The minimum rotation for a team like live chat would be roughly four months and it usually would be a little longer – especially when we’re growing a team like that, we can’t rotate people out as quickly because if we rotate people out and say, “This is the day you have to rotate out,” we may not yet have somebody who’s ready to take over. And so it’s a balancing act of all of that movement because we have to have a specific number of people working the job to meet customer demand. We don’t want rotations to mess up the customer demands part.

So it’s kind of an art and science at the same time of that piece. And it’s different for a growing team. Like for other groups, we have a team that handles all of the customers that call through on the mobile phone number so they’re on a mobile app and they call a phone number that gets routed to people that have specialized training and handling confusion on the mobile app or whatever may be the case that the customer is calling about. It could be about a shirt. But that team is very small. And so if we were doing something on that team, we would probably hire a new person in, make sure they have the training and then one person, when the person that was rotating off would rotate off afterwards. So that’s an example of how it would work there. For the live chat team, it would be a little different than that.

Service Untitled: And so if someone does something like mentoring, does that result in an hourly pay boost or is that a one–time bonus after it’s completed? How does that work?
Rob: The whole skill set progression program is all an hourly pay increase so they all have whether it be from 25 cents on up to 75 cents maybe for certain skill sets that they could earn an hour, a per hour pay increase. And now, one of the things that goes with that is they could be asked at any time to actually come back and do the job in a time of need and they will be asked to share knowledge and answer questions and be a further presence of sharing that information wherever they go after that. So they’re an advocate for that skill set wherever they go, and they can use that in many different ways, and we find that very valuable to mix the workforce like that. It shares a lot of knowledge and it helps people provide better service experiences by continuing to circulate that knowledge and information.

Service Untitled: And it also makes itself, if someone is out sick on live chat, you can take someone who knows about it that might be on the phones and help out.
Rob: Absolutely. If we need to do that, we absolutely will do that. And they’d be happy to do it. They know that and they would love to help out. It’s great to be able to have that option available.

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You can read part one of the interview here. To read this part, click “read more.”

Service Untitled: So how do you motivate Customer Loyalty team members? And then how do you keep that motivation up over time? A lot of companies institute programs and then see enthusiasm over time drop off.
Rob: Yeah, I mean that’s a great question. I think the biggest thing that we’ve been able to offer our employees to keep them engaged is opportunities to learn and grow and do different things. And you know we have a wonderful culture that we’ll strive to continue to make as solid as possible for our employees, and each and every one of us has a part in doing that. We invest a lot in the new employee’s right from the get–go so they see that there’s this tremendous investment in them, and there is a lot of enthusiasm for people when they first start in the call center.

One thing that people talk about with trying to keep motivated is how do you recognize performance? And we do a lot of different things to recognize performance that are both formal programs and informal programs that are related to specific job function and things that are expected of our employees. And then in terms of earning raises, we have a program where you know, there are a lot of different jobs within the call center. Examples would be there’s kind of a continuous training team. There’s a team that does work for leadership development. There’s a team for live chat and one for email. So those are very specific skill sets, and that’s what we have, the skill set progression so people can learn different skills. They work on a team for a specific amount of time depending on the role. It could be three to six months or more. And they can earn pay increases based on their performance for learning and growing in which pursue growth, and learning is one of our core values. So we try to keep things in the context of our value system in every case of everything that we do obviously. And we also want to make sure that the way we motivate fits within that, and the way we recognize fits within that. And we are very good listeners to our employees and we talk to them, and we listen, and we understand where we can make improvements to further engage them and further encourage them to stay involved.

And there’s always an ebb and flow you know. There are peaks and valleys in every person’s employment. It doesn’t matter what jog, whether it be a call center or other jobs. You’re going to have peaks and valleys. And we understand that. We don’t want somebody to fall off a cliff and not do anything at all of course. But you know, you reengage them and find a way to motivate them and keep them inspired. And I think a lot of what helps us is just we’ve got this great culture and environment that it really makes the job of helping lead a little bit easier because there’s just I don’t know. It’s hard to describe some of it but part of that magic that I guess I feel like we have here at times is what keeps people engaged you know.

Service Untitled: What are some of the ways that you recognize good service? What are some of those formal and informal programs where you recognize good work?
Rob: I mean it could be as simple as I overhear somebody do something awesome and I make sure I make a point of going over there and thanking and telling them specifically why I thought they did a great job you know. I thought you did a great job connecting with the customer because you talk to them about that wedding or that trip or whatever it may be the case. You know people are very creative that. And you can reward people just that way and recognize that way but we also have the Zollars which is like our – it’s not real currency but it’s Zappos currency where you can use that to buy stuff in a Zollar gift store. And then there’s specific efficiency metrics that we have that are more just people using their time wisely, attendance, performance on the phone with their quality when they’re new. In the incubation, there’s call reviews that they go through. The team leads do a great job of making sure they’re very in–tune and constantly coaching to the goals that they set with their team members. The formal programs are related to the key metrics that we measure so you know, quality of service with our customers, which we get feedback directly from customers on. And the efficiency metrics that we measure in attendance which is an important metric for call centers. So we have formal programs for those and then we try to keep as much free space for people to do stuff in an informal way and encourage that and help our leadership team understand how to do a good job with that because a lot of times, I think it has more value. If you tell somebody, “If you do this, you’ll get this recognition,” sometimes that doesn’t have as much meaning as somebody doing something because it’s what they want to do and somebody notices that they’ve done it.

Service Untitled: So you mentioned that there’s a metric that you track – holistic performance like attendance and things. Can you talk about what that entails? I ask because I know that doesn’t  track call time so what are some of the things that you do track to kind of determine agent quality and performance on a large scale?
Rob: Well we measure with surveys. We get quality of service feedback directly from our customers. Attendance is a very specific metric that we measure and it measures punctuality and attendance. We don’t measure call time but we have a metric called Personal Service Level which is a measurement of how you use your time. The best way to describe it is you have ten hours and you’re at work and the only thing you’re supposed to be doing is taking calls for that ten hour day. Our goal is that 80% of that time is actually spent on the phone talking to the customer. The other 20% falls in the category of your after–call work so writing notes, making sure you do all those backend system work, follow–up to make sure everything is properly taken care of. You could take an extra break if you wanted to for a few minutes. You go down and get a snack, walk around, have a quick conversation with a friend. It could be whatever. It really doesn’t matter. We just ask that 80% of that time is customer–facing. We don’t measure the call time and in fact, actually we measured it as PSL number or we managed to it but the longer your calls are, the easier it would be to hit the expectation so it actually encourages longer call time by the nature of the way it works.

But call times don’t trend very high. I mean I think that you know… It’s not long. There are appropriate amounts of time to be staying with customers so I don’t know why we would ever consider doing that necessarily but those are the three areas that we have like the most specific metrics. We used to have a quality assurance program where we would listen to phone calls and fill out a form and evaluate the call and give a score. But it did not work for our culture and who we are. Actually it was not, it didn’t end up being a very positive thing for our employees or anyone really. And ultimately, if it’s not positive for them, it’s not going to be positive for our customers. So that’s a pretty traditional call center kind of thing that we don’t do.

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Click “Continue Reading” to see the questions and answers.

Service Untitled: So tell me about your role and what you do at Zappos.
Rob: I am the director of the Zappos Customer Loyalty Team. So that’s our contact center here in Henderson, Nevada. And I started in the company as a temp worker in 2004. It was one of my first jobs out of college actually and I started answering phone calls for the call center so that’s where my history with Zappos started. I’ve been in the call center the whole time I’ve been here which and it’s almost eight years now. On a day–to–day bias, it could be all sorts of things but you know just making sure that the call center is prepared for all different seasons for all of our contacts for your customers and making sure we have all the proper training and development for our employees and that we’re hiring properly, and just treating our customers and our employees as best as possible and helping develop and strengthen and promote our culture is definitely a big part of it. And yeah, it could be a million different little things but the main things are making sure our teams are prepared to help drive and improve our culture and then be able to provide the best possible customer experience. Those are the two big things that we focus on and that I help with.

Service Untitled: Great. So you guys are open 24/7 right?
Rob: Yes. All of our contact channels have people working on them 24/7.

Service Untitled: Okay. How do you handle 24/7 when it comes to scheduling and training and communication and things like that?
Rob: Well it’s really not – there’s nothing perfect about communication, training, or anything in any company probably. You can do it really well and you always are trying to get better and I think that’s kind of where we fall. We’re always trying to improve. But the 24–hour thing, the scheduling is handled 24/7 the same way it is at any point in the day. It’s all about contact volume. So in terms of the basic scheduling of folks because you know how many people you need to be able to meet our service level goals whether it be one in the morning or one in the afternoon. So the staffing model is the same.

We have some different shifts that work anywhere, you know start from noon to 9, 1 to 10, and these are the afternoon to evening hours and then 3 to midnight is the last non–graveyard shift. And then traditional graveyard shift is, we have folks that start at 7 and then others that start at 8:30. And so we consider that to be the graveyard of those folks that work past the midnight hour. And it’s still a fairly small group actually. It’s not a huge group of people that worked the traditional graveyard hours. And communication is, we do it in all sorts of different ways which is what we do for the folks during the day. And then we just make sure that the leadership team makes an effort to engage and interact with them. So we come in and hang out with them and do our best to have them, have that connection and that communication there.

The training, some training happens at night. Some happens during the day. We have a program that we call the Day Tripper Program and so folks from the graveyard will actually come in and spend some days during the actual daylight hours and get some extra training and extra experiences in the call center that they wouldn’t necessarily be able to experience on their graveyard shift. And we do vice versa. We also have a program for people from the daytime to spend time with the graveyard shift and kind of better understand what they do there.

Service Untitled: Is there different leadership and supervision also on the graveyard shift? Or is it the graveyard team run by themselves and report back to the people on the day shift?
Rob: It’s kind of a combination of both because we have team leads which is kind of our first line of leadership. They have teams of anywhere between 12 to 14 folks on average around the call center. And our graveyard it’s about 20 folks. And we have two team leads for the graveyard shift and they work that shift. That’s their shift. So they’re working overnight with that team full time, and those team leads have the supervisor who works late in the day, in the evening, and has other teams that are working up until midnight or 10:00 or 9:00. They have plenty of time to hang out. And then the manager that oversees that has other areas in the call center that they’re responsible for but then they have their piece and making sure that they stay connected with the team. So we do special events to have all of us go hang out with them and spend time with the graveyard. We do special team building events for them where we can all get together and hang out. So they’re pretty well–connected I would say for not working during the day.

Service Untitled: That’s very neat. When new employees start, what does the training process look like?
Rob: We developed our training process over years. We didn’t say we’re going to have this and we just started it this way. It certainly was very basic in the beginning. But right now we have four weeks of new hire training. And the new hire training is not specific to the call center employees. The new hire training process happens for everyone that’s hired in our office this year in Henderson. And so whether you’re hired as a buyer or an accountant or a software engineer, whatever it is, you go through this new hire training process. Its four weeks long, mandatory. And this class is mixed. It’s not just call center employees and other – And another group that stays in another classroom that are non–customer loyalty team members. It’s all mixed together so the class could be 20 folks that are coming to the call center and 30 folks that are going to various departments around the company. That would be a large class but just as an example. So that four weeks incorporates the call center training so everyone learns how to answer the phone, everyone talks to customers.

There’s a lot of cultural training so they understand their core values, who we want to be. There’s talk of history. They get introductions from a lot of the different leaders in the company so they meet the people that can be good contacts and points of reference for them around the organization, and then they also get a better understanding of what each department really does on a daily basis. So they go through that four weeks and then everyone that’s not in the customer loyalty team goes back to their job except for during the holidays when everybody contributes time on the phone. So that’s another side benefit for us as when we have peak season is those folks come back on the phones and help out with our customers.

And then after that four weeks, the employees that are going to the call center come in to the Customer Loyalty Team, we have three weeks of uh, we call it incubation but it’s basically kind of a more intensive on–the–job, hands–on call center training where they’re listening to, they’re getting more feedback on their phone calls. They’re taking more phone calls so they’re getting more and more practice and getting more used to doing that full time. They get a lot of feedback and they get extra training in kind of the finer details of call center stuff that we do that isn’t built in to the original four–week new hire process. So they do that and from day one to the end of training is really a seven–week process for our call center employees.

Service Untitled: Before the marketing guys get on the phone in December, do they get a refresher course or additional training? Is there a disconnect obviously between someone who does calls all day long versus someone who haven’t taken a call in six months?
Rob: You hit it right on the head. We actually have refresher courses which is exactly what we call them. So that’s what we do. It’s a few hours long. It just gives people the opportunity to kind of see what’s changed, what’s been going on in the call center. Most of the changes are pretty basic. The biggest thing is there are folks that haven’t been on the phones very often. They get nervous about it and really, that’s the hardest part I think for people is just the nerves. You know the biggest departments besides CLT in Las Vegas here is our merchandising team. They know product very well, so for them, that part of the job is not difficult. There’s some technical things that they may have to do that they’re not as familiar with but they’re prepared for it. They get refreshers. And during the holidays, it’s such a busy time of year, so many of the calls are you know, they’re fun, even more fun just because people are usually in a good mood for the most part and a lot of new orders. So not necessarily as complex of a mix as an employee is going to take at a different time of year. So during this time, we’re in its peak in terms of our volume, but it’s not quite as difficult as it would be post–holidays with returns and exchanges.

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In the online blog  The Middle Seat, Scott McCartney writes about Andrew Tregonning and his wife’s experience covering the joys of an airport. No it’s not a syntax error – the couple traveling from New Zealand to India actually wanted a long layover at the Singapore airport. Imagine amenities such as comfortable sleeping areas, work areas, showers, pedicures, premium bars, a swimming pool, and even a tour of Singapore for nominal fees. The airport has a four-story amusement park for the children, and in Terminal 3, a city in itself, such passenger services as a dry cleaner, medical center, grocery store, pharmacy, jewelry and clothing stores all at one’s fingertips.

As a sharp contrast, JD Powers and Associates’ nationwide survey 2010 North American Airport Satisfaction Study which rated comfort and amenities in the United States most likely would have exploded if given the opportunity to rate Singapore’s airport. The survey covered basic needs which included seating comfort, ease of moving through the airport, getting passengers in and out of the airport efficiently, and reducing passenger stress with the TSA. Small airports scored significantly higher than the largest airports.

For large United States airports, Detroit Metropolitan scored the best with such amenities as an arbored concourse, people movers, sculptures, an on-site Hyatt Hotel and purple lit tunnels to connect terminals. Scores were rated on accessibility, check-in, security, terminals, food and retail service, and the efficiency of baggage claim. The Minneapolis/ St. Paul International Airport scored closely behind the one in Detroit; the connection between the airport and the Mall of America is cited as being very convenient. My son flies through Detroit regularly and agreed that it was one of the nicer airports in the US. He also reminded me of a post he wrote about the Charlotte airport in 2009.

Do you think it’s possible to actually transform travel into a less stressful environment given the security demands of today’s society? While North America may never be able to offer the top-notch creature comforts of the Singapore Airport, why not start with some of the more practical ideas to lessen the stress? Let us begin with some soothing music quietly resonating throughout our airports. How about reducing the number of announcements and the noisy horns of the passenger carts traveling through the concourses?

In Singapore, touch screens are provided in every bathroom to allow passengers to send a text message to attendants when towels or tissues are needed in the restrooms. Currency exchange booths and clothing stores are all in one area to encourage and stimulate competition for both merchandise and prices.

All of the 28,000 employees at the Singapore Airport are required to attend an orientation to help them help passengers. It’s a people pleasing business where successful concession spaces support 50 percent of the airport’s revenue which keeps the costs down and helps to pay for the amenities. Even the JD Power survey concludes that high levels of airport satisfaction create a strong positive impact on retail spending. Passengers who are “delighted” rather than “disappointed” spend up to 45 percent more at an airport. That’s a substantial difference.

While I’m pretty sure, the United States will never boast a butterfly garden as does Singapore, shouldn’t we still be taking lessons from those who do it so much better? Ironically last week I watched the ABC series Pan Am which takes place in the 1960′s and flying sure looked like more fun, and a much more relaxing and exciting way to travel.

photo credit: mikecogh

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General Motors has lagged behind Toyota, Honda, Ford, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volkswagen for years. Statistically California Chevrolet dealerships are only capturing three percent of the market share for passenger cars. Time for a change? It seems so since Disneyland in Anaheim will be the setting for some intense customer service training with the purpose aimed at making a car salesman into Prince Charming.

Salesmen won’t be riding pirate ships and teacups, but will be concentrating on Disney’s attention paid to detail. Not that there is anything especially wrong with tattoos and body piercings, I wasn’t surprised however to hear a woman tell me about her disappointing first impression with a car salesman who had facial and lip piercings. The customer couldn’t concentrate because she was so distracted by what looked so very painful and offensive. Would the Little Mermaid ever sport a lip piercing?

Sales people won’t be smoking in public view while on the job. Disneyland says that would be equivalent to Cinderella smoking a cigarette. Perhaps the biggest lesson to be learned from Disneyland is that customers are always to be appreciated, and it’s the small things that count which customers always remember. Can you ever remember seeing loose garbage on the sidewalk of any Disney kingdom? Can you ever remember any Disney character ever looking disheveled or having the slightest rip in her costume? The car dealerships can find small but effective ways to pay attention to details also. Service departments can show how their customers are appreciated with a free car wash with every service or a bottle of cold water in the beverage holder when a customer comes to pick up their car.

A big part of the total experience of purchasing a car is about the dealership – more than what the salesman has to say. Once GM brings forth a product that appeals to California car buyers – fuel and environmentally efficient, the physical appearance of the dealerships are next. GM promises to pour in $60 to $100 million into over 100 franchises – primarily in Los Angeles to make a uniform entrance, redesign others and even move dealerships to better areas – all with the intention of creating a brand known for quality and excellent customer service.

Time will tell if Disneyland comes to “Chevroletland”, but it definitely can’t hurt.

photo credit: Hertj94

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In the world of fast food, there has to be a special talent to prepare fast food and still be able to pass out a survey asking a customer to rate taste, speed, attentiveness, courteousness, and cleanliness. That sounds more like the upscale restaurant we visit once in a while, but the Atlanta-based franchise is well-known for its passion and service. Instead of a “thank you” at the end of a customer’s purchase, the more genteel “my pleasure” is used. Truett Cathy, founder, chairman and CEO stresses “servant leadership,” meaning managers treat employees how they want employees to treat customers.

It’s not the extra mile of service franchises bring to Chick-fil-A; it’s been described as the second extra mile. It’s where new franchise owners can take up to a year to come aboard. They have worked in the restaurant, gone through countless interviews, involved their families in the business, and identify with corporate values. All Chick-fil-A’s for instance, are closed on Sundays as a day of rest and prayer. While it’s not mandatory to be Christian, all owners must have demonstrated a special passion, humility, and genuineness Cathy finds mandatory. He places families first, and is a firm believer in strong family units.

Innovative ideas to promote the Chick-fil-A culture for outstanding customer service is rewarded. Contests for competitiveness are rewarded as teams show exemplary work ethics and ideas. Technology and training assist employees in attaining goals of efficiency and speed; 90 seconds for service at a drive through and 60 seconds for counter service.

As an incentive to heighten customer loyalty, coupons, restaurant openings, and special community occasions bring forth new opportunities for “ambassadors” to spread the word to someone not familiar with Chick-fil-A.

And to constantly keep a check on the best ingredients for Chick-fil-A, Cathy spends $1 million dollars on quarterly evaluations which questions customers about their experiences. Respondents receive a free sandwich for answering twenty questions about their experiences. Each location is then forwarded a two-page report.

Excellent customer service is adding that special recipe people just don’t expect to receive. With over 1200 restaurants and $1.5 billion in sales, there’s a lot to be said about integrity taking first place as has been shown via Truett Cathy’s philosophy.

photo credit: Carl Black

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The old-fashioned customer service agents spent most of their time on the phones trying to resolve problems, but now such quick social media outlets as Twitter can quickly lead to a firestorm of criticism if not handled immediately. It’s not an efficient business decision to ignore the negative, and people want to know how any responsible company deals with negative complaints. It’s best in the public arena of quick opinions, that complaints be handled in a positive manner to build confidence and trust; in other words customer feedback and service must remain a full-time endeavor.

So how should a business deal with customer service issues when the world is reading and opinions are being shared quickly by typing 140 characters? Client satisfaction hasn’t changed; it’s only the delivery method. As is with the old golden rules of exemplary customer service, everyone in the organization is responsible for customer satisfaction, and the accountability always leans on the upper echelon of a company.

What are the golden rules of knock-down, kick-butt, customer service? Start with the value of  employees who by far are any company’s best asset. Spend money and time in customer service training using both traditional training methods, intern learning opportunities and experiences, and lots of feedback and positive recognition of employees for jobs well-done. Concentrate on providing customers with quick responses to complaints and negative comments, and welcome feedback. Turning a bad situation into a good situation by providing the customer with the help that is needed turns enemies into advocates and provides a stage for potential new customers in the future.

Luis Franco, director of international business operations at Survey Monkey offers advice on how to approach clients for feedback. He says there are three rules that every organization must keep in mind:

“Don’t survey the hell out of people. Keep it simple and short – seven minutes is the maximum survey time – and make sure the question has terminology that is understood by everyone, no acronyms and no sector jargon.”

Don’t be frightened that customers have a lot more power; look at it as a new opportunity to provide better customer service and as a new opportunity to bring in more business.

photo credit: paulswansen

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For anyone considering a career in customer service, one must initially be able to handle stress, handle pressure, maintain friendly interactions with customers, and follow through on tasks. It’s not always easy to maintain one’s focus on serving people, so an employer needs to identify and invest in the right people for the job. Most of us as consumers can probably remember some unfortunate experiences we have had with customer service agents who have lacked the ability to deal with stress and were easily excitable. How many of us can summarily figure out those agents who were just there for their pay checks and lacked the sensitivity needed when we needed a patient ear to listen and someone capable of resolving our frustrating company issue?

Organizations can depend upon recommendations from other employees, online research, or evaluations which may involve personality assessments to evaluate basic employability, honesty, reliability, and competency when the search is on for the best agents. The American Psychological Assessment has been recognized as an ethical and statistical guideline, however there are a variety of  other acceptable evaluation techniques used by employers and their respective evaluators.

No matter what criteria an employer uses to choose the best candidates however, the most successful customer service representatives always seem to display the following traits:

• The best customer service representatives I have ever met live to serve and can spend time with others on the phone or in person as interesting and knowledgeable individuals.
• The best customer service representatives I have ever met are versatile and can read others while adapting to their style and personality so as to find a common ground.
• The best customer service representatives I have ever met are interested in learning about their product, service, or sales and are always interested in improving their abilities.
• The best customer service representatives have set standards and are consistent.
• The best customer service representatives make the most of their time and are willing to help out in other areas if the demand is there.
• The best customer service representatives are team players.
• The best customer service representatives have personal accountability and stellar interpersonal skills.

The best customer service representatives don’t just happen; employers are responsible for providing the best training, career development, and recognition for a job well done.

photo credit: La Citta Vita

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