Plumbers, heating and air conditioning technicians, and electricians usually don't enjoy a reputation for particularly good customer service.  They’re best known for being unreliable, making a big mess, and charging outrageous prices.  Ideal Plumbing, Heating, Air & Electrical is out to change their industry’s reputation one customer at a time.

Ideal recently hired Toister Performance Solutions to help them create a service culture based on the company’s values and outstanding reputation in the San Diego community.  Don Teemsma, Ideal’s President, wanted to make their approach to customer service more consistent and deliberate.  They were already doing a great job, but he also knew that every service call could lead to repeat business and referrals to friends and neighbors if the customer was delighted.

Our Approach
Don wanted to provide his employees with some fundamental customer service skills, so we used our Delivering Next Level Service class as the foundation for this initiative.  We started with their technicians and met with them for one hour a week for six weeks.  The classes were scheduled before they went on their service calls for the day, so they could immediately try out their new skills.  The classes also gave the technicians an opportunity to share successes they had achieved from the previous week.

Once we finished training the technicians, we turned our attention to the office staff.  The office staff included the customer service, dispatch, inventory, and accounting departments, all of whom had direct customer contact and also supported the technicians in the field.  We took the same approach as before and divided the class into six one-hour sessions that allowed participants to try out new skills between each weekly meeting.

Sustaining Momentum
A successful training program is often just the beginning of an ongoing process.   Don and his leadership team employed three strategies to sustain the momentum achieved in our initial training series. 

1. Weekly Team Meetings
Customer service is now a topic at weekly team meetings.  Aided by a set of facilitation exercises, the meetings feature active discussions among the participants.  According to Don, “We often hear stories about how a tech turned around a negative to a positive or how they were more effective in their communication with a customer.” 

2. After Action Reviews
Ideal employees regularly review customer service interactions to learn what went well and what can be improved upon.  A recent after action review led to the team finding ways to correct a misunderstanding with a customer who initially appeared to be very upset.  The end result was a very happy customer who purchased a new heating and air system and continues to call Ideal for all his plumbing and electrical needs. 

3. Refresher Training
Toister Performance Solutions recently facilitated a refresher training session to help Ideal’s technicians continue to develop their customer service skills.  The one hour workshop included activities to help reinforce the importance of customer service in their work culture. 

The Results
Ideal’s customer service initiative has had some great results so far.  Don Teemsma described the highlights in four primary areas:

Happier Customers
Through our customer check-up program, our customers tell us they genuinely appreciate the extra care coming their way.  The feedback is better than ever.

Happier Employees
Employees like to be trained and shown skills to make their jobs easier.  Being able to delight customers with a sharpened set of techniques has provided greater customer satisfaction and in turn has given everyone more satisfaction in their job.  This has been a win-win situation.

Increased Sales
Our technicians are building better rapport and through this rapport they feel more comfortable about offering solutions to our customers who need goods and services.

Culture
In our mission statement we say our goal is to delight the customer.  By providing training we have helped build a stronger culture of service and show action beyond lip service and a mission statement hung on the wall.

About Ideal
Founded in 1960, Ideal Plumbing, Heating, Air & Electrical prides itself on exceeding customer expectations. From the most complex installation to routine service and maintenance, Ideal has the tools, people, and products to provide a quality job that fits your lifestyle and budget.  They are a top-rated San Diego contractor and possess the expertise and technically advanced equipment to handle all commercial and residential projects.  Please visit their website to learn more.

Even the best of us need a little help staying focused on outstanding customer service.  Difficult customers, demanding bosses, flaky co-workers, and the sheer volume of work we need to accomplish can all make it hard to keep outstanding service top of mind.  A strong customer service vision is essential, but it’s important to take steps to stay focused.  Here are five techniques that have worked for me. 

#1: The Thank You Letter
This powerful exercise helps you make your vision a reality.  Start by writing a ‘thank you’ letter to yourself as if it was written by an actual customer.  Describe the service you provided and how it made an impact.  Next, read the letter at the start of every work day for three weeks and then try to receive a real version of the letter.  It’s amazing how well this works!

#2: Make it Visual
Customer service visions are truly meant to be visual, so you can really make yours memorable if you translate the words into pictures.  Some people draw their vision while others use pictures from the internet or magazines to make a collage that represents their vision.  I decided to make mine into a short video:

#3: Ask a Customer
A customer service vision describes how you hope to serve your customers, but you’ll need a real customer to tell you how you are actually doing.  I often ask my customers for testimonials and their words allow me to synch my vision with what they’re experiencing.  Here’s what one customer wrote not long after I did exercises #1 and #2:

"If I had to choose only one outside company to help with some training initiatives this year, that would be Toister Performance Solutions; Jeff is reliable, dependable, and flexible to incorporate the organizational culture in whatever he presents."
- Gabriela Alvarez, Training & Development Manager

#4: Tell Stories
Great customer service stories provide memorable examples of your vision in action.  They also provide a connection between the lofty ideals of a vision statement and your day to day activities.  Share your customer service stories with co-workers, colleagues, and even your boss.  (Hey – those great stories will help you come review time!)

#5: Reflect and Reconnect
It’s easy for the big picture to get lost in our daily work.  From time to time, I find it helpful to step back and reflect on my customer service vision.  It helps me reconnect my core values with my work and make sure I’m still heading in the right direction.  This exercise only takes a few minutes but I find it to be very powerful.

The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) has recognized Toister Performance Solutions as a 2009 'Champion of Learning'. This designation is recognition for our efforts to promote Employee Learning Week, an employee learning awareness campaign that is held every December. Our 2009 efforts focused on offering free learning opportunities including assessments and a webinar to help participants plan their 2010 training program.

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There’s an old adage in the parking industry: no complaints equals a compliment. That’s because people generally don't like to pay for parking; it's easy to get a complaint when you are charging people for something they don't want to pay for, but compliments are tough to come by. The Transportation and Parking department at Oregon Health & Science University recently asked Toister Performance Solutions to help them do the seemingly impossible: create a service experience that consistently led to real compliments, not just a reduction in complaints.

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In the business world, an iceberg is a situation that appears smaller or more benign than it actually is. We’re moving at such a rapid pace that it is tempting to dismiss customer complaints, quality issues, and employee problems as isolated incidents. This risk is missing out on a tremendous opportunity or allowing a critical problem to go unsolved. That’s why we use a simple model to examine these “isolated incidents”.

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