Why Obvious Solutions Sometimes Aren't So Obvious

The contact center had trouble with associates who were rude and abrupt with customers. The director tried training, team meetings, and even the threat of disciplinary action. 

Nothing worked.

The company hired me to help them fix the problem. It took me just five minutes. It's not because I'm a wizard. (Or, am I?) It's because I was able to see the problem from a fresh perspective.

The problem stemmed from hold times that stretched as long as 30 minutes in the morning. Contact center associates got stressed out when they knew people were waiting. They anticipated that those customers would be angry at them when they finally got on the phone. This caused them to come across as abrupt as they tried to hustle through each call.

The solution was also simple. A minor adjustment to the contact center's schedule put more associates on the phone during busy times and gave them less coverage when they didn't need it.

How could they miss such an obvious solution? Sometimes, what's obvious isn't so obvious. Here are some reasons why that happens:

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Inattentional Blindness

This is a phenomenon that occurs when you focus so much on one thing, that something else becomes hidden, even when it would otherwise be obvious. 

The contact center leader was so fixated on her agents being rude to customers that she couldn't see what was causing it. She just wanted them to stop.

You can see examples of inattentional blindness here and here.

 

Framing

We tend to see things from a singular perspective. The challenge is that perspective might not be the complete picture. 

The contact center leader looked at agent rudeness as a behavioral issue. This made it difficult for her to see it was really the symptom of another problem.

You can experience a classic example of framing here.

 

Urgency

Speed can be a paradox. Moving faster can create additional problems that take extra time to solve. Sometimes, you have to work slow to go fast. 

The contact center associates came across as rude and abrupt because they were trying to work fast. In many cases, this made calls take even longer and created a self-reinforcing cycle. Longer calls led to longer wait times which led to more stress and then even longer calls.

There are plenty of examples of serving faster by slowing down, such as this contact center that became more efficient when they stopped holding agents accountable for talk time.

 

Solutions

Many customer service problems can be solved by making sure frontline employees are aware of the issue. This short video explains how to do that.

You can also try using this Quick Fix Checklist to help identify some common root causes for customer service problems.

Finally, I highly recommend Edward De Bono's book, Lateral Thinking. It's a creativity manual, but the timeless techniques De Bono describes are perfect for solving customer service problems.

ICMI Research: Contact Center Leaders Are Disconnected

There are some big gaps between what contact center leaders believe and their customers actually perceive.

The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) and inContact asked contact center leaders to respond to the same set of survey questions that consumers were asked in an earlier study. The earlier, consumer study was conducted by Harris and inContact. The answers from the two groups were then compared.

The ICMI and inContact report, Smarter Service For The Connected Customer, reveals several areas where contact center leaders misunderstand their customers.

Here are a few highlights. You can also purchase the full report here.

Photo credit: Patient Care Technician

Photo credit: Patient Care Technician

Gap #1: More Selling Than Service

Many contact centers are too eager to sell.

Contact center leaders and customers were asked whether companies put more effort into selling than they do providing excellent customer service.

  • 80% of Customers say Yes
  • 12% of Contact Centers say Yes

Perhaps the most famous example is Comcast. They've been criticized for turning every cancellation request into an annoying encounter with an aggressive salesperson. The worst example might have been a cancellation call from July 2014 that went viral. It turns out that Comcast's internal guide for handling cancellations is really a manual on aggressive sales tactics.

Seriously, contact centers! Stop with the selling. If you want to sell more, you need to serve more. 

 

Gap #2: Poor Service Is Expensive

Contact center leaders can be oblivious to the impact of poor service.

One survey question focused on whether customers were likely to switch companies after a bad customer service experience.

  • 86% of Customers say Yes
  • 19% of Contact Centers say Yes

That's a pretty big gap. Perhaps contact center leaders expect their customers to adopt some form of customer service Stockholm Syndrome.

There's no shortage of research to suggest that poor customer service is costly. A recent infographic from the Temkin Group highlighted several key areas where a poor experience can hurt the bottom line:

  • Customers buy more from companies with good service
  • Customers are more forgiving when companies generally provide good service
  • Customers trust companies more when they provide good service

 

Gap #3: Relationships

Customers despise having to tell their story over and over to different people. They'd much rather have a single point of contact to help them the whole way.

Companies don't seem to realize this. 

One survey question asked customers whether they expect to continue talking to the same agent when they switched from online chat to phone.

  • 64% of Customers say Yes
  • 20% of Contact Centers say Yes

Another survey question asked customers whether they expect to be able to call back the same company representative if multiple contacts are required.

  • 67% of Customers say Yes
  • 24% of Contact Centers say Yes

There's some science behind this. My own research suggests that customer satisfaction increases significantly when customers know an agent by name.

 

Moving Forward

So, why the disconnect?

One of the more telling statistics from the report was this: only 39.2 percent of contact centers actually use the data they collect to identify customer trends. 

Which begs the question, what's the point of having so much data in the contact center if you're not using it? Many contact centers are data rich and insight poor. 

There are clearly opportunities to get to know customers better and improve service. The real issue is whether contact center leaders will do it.

Automation Fail: How @ATTCares Stumbled Into a Tweet Chat

Automating customer service can be like playing with fire.

On Tuesday, the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) hosted it's regular Tweet chat at 10am Pacific (1pm Eastern). Things got a little weird when AT&T stumbled into the conversation.

ICMI's Tweet chat is a great way to connect with contact center leaders and discuss customer service. The beauty of a Tweet chat is anyone can join in just by following the #icmichat hashtag.

We were enjoying a lively conversation about the importance of delighting customers versus making things easy when Becky Levy sent this Tweet:

Other participants chimed in to voice their support and share their perspective:

I couldn't resist poking a little fun:

That's when AT&T's Twitter team wandered into the conversation. Their automated social listening program responded to several of us using the @ATTCares Twitter handle.

A few of us responded to the Tweets. My guess is that was the point when an actual person read our messages because nobody responded.

But, that didn't stop the automated responses.

Karen never responded. I guess we'll never know where she comes out on customer delight vs. ease of service.

So, we all had a good laugh at AT&T's expense. All thanks to automation. Sadly, AT&T has played the role of psycho ex before.

New Training Video: Quick Fixes for Poor Customer Service

Customer service leaders consistently ask me the same question. "How do I get started?"

They sense an opportunity to improve service. It's usually a problem that seems within reach but they don't quite know how to solve.  

One option is to follow this action plan for taking customer service to the next level. It can really work wonders on a customer service team. The only drawback? It takes time and commitment.

Now, there's another option. It's a new training video on lynda.com called Quick Fixes for Poor Customer Service. As the name implies, it's designed to show you how to fix problems fast.

Here are some of the topics covered in the course:

  • Identifying performance gaps
  • Finding performance barriers
  • Understanding quick fix tools

The video highlights proven tools and techniques to that can be used to rapidly elevate the performance of a customer service employee or an entire team.

This sample video highlights the importance of slowing down in order to find quick fixes. 

You’ll need a lynda.com subscription to view the entire course, but you can sign up for a free 10-day trial. 

10-day free trial

You might also want to check out some of my other customer service videos on lynda.com. Courses include Customer Service Fundamentals, Working With Upset Customers, and Managing a Customer Service Team.

How Rating Your Customers Can Change Service Perceptions

Surveying your customers can bring some interesting benefits.

You can gain valuable insight that allows you to improve service. And, as I noted in a recent blog post, just asking for feedback might increase loyalty and spending.

There's another trend that's worth watching. Survey scores appear to rise when customers are also rated.

This post explores how this might be happening.

Who Is Rating Customers?

There's at least a few companies doing it now. They include Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb. Ebay offered this feature until they discontinued it in 2008.

The idea behind rating consumers is to encourage better behavior. The Uber website explains:

"The rating system works to make sure that the most respectful riders and drivers are using Uber."

Uber also posted an explanation on their blog that indicated passengers with low ratings might not be able to continue using their service.

The concept appears to work to a certain extent. A recent New York Times article explored several examples where passengers made a point to be more polite when they were using Uber.

 

How These Ratings Change Perceptions

There may be a downside to rating consumers.

A Boston University study compared ratings for vacation rental properties that are evaluated on both Airbnb and TripAdvisor. Airbnb allows properties to rate their guests while TripAdvisor does not. 

The results? Ratings on Airbnb averaged 14.4 percent higher than the same properties on TripAdvisor. 

Clearly, the knowledge that they too will be rated has affected these guests' ratings. What's not clear is why. There seems to be a few likely explanations:

  • Airbnb reviewers are naturally more lenient than TripAdvisor reviewers.
  • Airbnb reviewers rate higher because they know they'll be rated.
  • TripAdvisors give harsher ratings because they don't face any consequences.

 

Conclusions

This could be a trend to watch. I'm a big proponent of civility. It's important that we try to be kind and respectful to the hardworking people who serve us. 

If rating customers helps this, I'm all for it. On the other hand, I'm wary of any move that artificially manipulates survey scores and prevents problems from being solved.

Where do you come out on this?

Two Situations When You Should Not Negotiate With Customers

Serving customers sometimes feels like a negotiation.

A lot of times it starts with the phrase, "Let's see what we can do." A hotel guest might ask for a room upgrade and we see what we can do. A banking customer might complain about an overdraft fee and we see what we can do. Or, a restaurant patron might request a table with a view and, well, you get it.

There are a few times when we should never negotiate with customers. It can backfire, cause ill-will, or even jeopardize safety.

Here are two examples.

Situation #1: You Are Wrong

Some employees try to negotiate when either they or their company are clearly in the wrong. 

I recently stayed at a hotel for four nights while attending a conference. On my day of departure, I noticed a $25 resort fee tacked on to my bill for each night I had stayed. That made my bill $100 higher than expected!

This fee was a total surprise. It wasn't mentioned when I booked my room. It wasn't disclosed in the email confirmation I received. It wasn't even discussed when I checked in.

I quickly found myself in a negotiation when I approached the front desk to get the fee removed. 

The associate started at $0 by explaining the fee was standard practice. He adjusted his offer to $25 (one night waived) when I reminded him the fee wasn't disclosed. The associate wasn't empowered to go any further, so he needed to get his supervisor involved.

The supervisor adjusted the offer to $50. More back and forth. I finally had to pull out my trump card and threatened to report the fee to my credit card company as an unauthorized charge. The supervisor finally relented and waived the entire $100.

All of this negotiation was senseless. It wasted their time and mine. The associate and the supervisor both realized they were wrong, but stubbornly tried to negotiate. This only annoyed everyone involved.

Don't hide behind a nonsensical policy if you or your company are clearly in the wrong. Just smile, apologize, and fix it.

 

Situation #2: The Customer is Abusive

Some customers cross the line.

They yell, threaten, and curse. They try to intimidate employees into getting what they want. They make up stories and throw out wild accusations.

The owner of a small retail store had to confront this problem. A customer would regularly come in and complain about virtually anything. She spent a lot of money, but she also frequently returned what she bought. Any profit the store made was quickly erased by all of the extra time employees spent trying to placate her.

This customer put employees on edge. She was stressful to serve. Things finally came to a head one day when she started yelling at an employee over yet another perceived slight.

The store owner had to make a tough call. He pulled the customer aside and informed her that she was no longer welcome to shop there. 

The customer alternated between pleading her case and issuing threats, but the owner remained firm. He simply wouldn't tolerate a customer who abused his employees.

The employees were grateful for the store owner's actions. They respected him for not negotiating with the customer once she had crossed the line. Enough was enough.

The owner did the right thing. Negotiating with customers who cross the line can cause two problems. 

First, it usually makes the customers' behavior even worse. They see they are getting away with acting out, so they continue to push the envelope. In some cases, their behavior causes a genuine safety risk for employees.

The second problem is you can lose your employees' respect if you don't stand up for them. Nobody should have to put up with unwarranted abuse.

 

A Simple Fix

Many customer service professionals aren't empowered to work with a customer to solve a problem. They aren't given the resources or authority to negotiate even when they should.

Empowering employees can be tricky, but you can use this handy guide to confidently give your team more responsibility. 

Five Common Assumptions About Employees That Are Totally Wrong

The restaurant manager approached the table. "How's everything?" he asked.

One of the guests told him she was disappointed her salad was soaked in heavy dressing. She didn't want it replaced because the rest of her party were already halfway through their meals.

The manager brought her a free dessert as a goodwill gesture. He assumed the dessert would be a welcome surprise. He overlooked the fact that the guest had ordered a salad in an effort to eat healthy. The dessert was completely wasted.

Assumptions can be dangerous.

In some ways it's natural. Our brains are wired to naturally jump to conclusions. An over-eagerness to please our customers makes this even worse. And, once we land on a verdict, something called confirmation bias makes it hard to change our minds.

This isn't just a problem with customers. Customer service leaders often make dangerous assumptions about their employees that turn out to be totally wrong. 

Here are five examples to avoid.

Assumption #1: They Know What You Want

Employees aren't mind readers. They don't know what you expect them to do unless you explain it clearly and confirm their understanding.

Many leaders assume their expectations are obvious. They don't spend enough time setting expectations or establishing a customer service vision because they assume their employees already know.

In some cases, leaders over-communicate. They create confusion by providing so much information that employees can't tell what's important and what's not. 

You can avoid this assumption by doing two things:

First, verify your employees understand your expectations. Quiz them, test them, or observe them. Just make sure they get it.

Second, make sure they agree. Have them tell you what they plan to do to achieve expectations. 


Assumption #2: They Need Incentives

Incentives create all sorts of problems.

There's a mountain of research to back this up. Outstanding books like Drive and Predictably Irrational chronicle study after study where incentives make performance worse, not better.

Yet, customer service leaders continue to assume that employees need incentives to give their best performance. This comes from a sense that employees require motivation.

My own research suggests the opposite is true. Employees are naturally motivated. The real problem is demotivation. Customer service managers should focus their energy on making sure demotivation doesn't happen.


Assumption #3: They Care

This one is the opposite of #2. Not every employee is fully committed.

Many customer service employees don't consider their job a career. Some people just end up in customer service. Others view their job as a convenient way to pay the bills while they go to school for something better.

These folks aren't highly motivated. They won't move mountains or leap over tall buildings to make customers happy. They'll do the minimum and that's it. 

Customer service leaders need to be careful not to assume every employee is gung-ho about service. If you want to these people to perform, you need to make it easy for them to deliver outstanding customer service.


Assumption #4: They Need Training

We all have our pet peeves. My pet peeve is that training is the solution to every performance problem.

Managers often assume that's all that's needed. They think that training will someone "fix" employees who aren't providing great service.

I really wish that were true. I love training. I've been doing it for more than twenty years. Heck, I even volunteer to train in my spare time. 

Sadly, training can only fix a small percentage of employee performance challenges. My own estimates show that training is only responsible for one percent of customer service.

What should you do instead of training? Check out my next level service action plan to get step-by-step instructions.


Assumption #5: They're Content

No complaints doesn't equal no problems.

Many customer service leaders are surprised when a talented employee suddenly leaves the organization. They had assumed the employee was happy because he or she had never complained.

Some companies do exit interviews to find out what went wrong. These only help prevent the same thing from happening in the future.

A better approach is to conduct stay interviews. Sit down with your best employees and find out what's keeping them. Take time to learn about their goals and ambitions. You might be able to use that information to help them stay.


Are There More Assumptions to Avoid?

These are just five common examples. What others would you add to the list?

Here's What Experts Say Is The #1 Way To Improve Customer Service

Customer service leaders are constantly trying to improve service. A new report from OneReach asked 63 industry experts to weigh in on what companies can do to get started.

It was an honor to be asked to contribute since "Where do I start? is a challenging question for many customer service leaders. I've tackled this topic here before with an action plan for taking customer service to the next level. 

My take is the first step in any journey is to select a destination. For customer service, this means defining outstanding service by creating a customer service vision.

Not all experts agree with me. The OneReach report is valuable because it provides a variety of different perspectives. It's interesting to see that 63 experts had 11 different ideas for where to get started!

On a side note, this report is also a great list of customer service experts to follow on Twitter!

Below is an infographic that summarizes the results. You can read an overview on the OneReach blog or download the full report.

Do you enjoy reading this blog? Sign up below to receive each new post via email. 

How Customer Service Problems Quite Literally Get Moldy

Some service failures are hard to believe.

It's not just the problem itself. It's the fact that employee after employee either fails to notice it or fails to fix it. 

Here's an example. This picture was taken in a small market and deli. Just in case the color throws you off, these are Valencia oranges.

Notice the mold on the two oranges at the top of the picture. Disgusting. It shouldn't happen, but it did. The real question is why?

I explored several potential root causes in my book, Service Failure. They range from apathy to employees being so focused on their individual tasks they fail to see the big picture. 

There's one big reason that stands out at this market: management.

Here are a few more observations about the market with the moldy oranges:

  • There were at least five employees on duty when I spotted this.
  • I told the employee behind the deli counter who shrugged and did nothing.
  • I had to tell a second employee before someone took care of it.

This reveals a few things. 

One is that at least some of the employees on duty didn't believe the fruit bin was their responsibility. Either they chose to ignore the problem or their lack of care caused them to miss it. It's a manager's duty to instill a clear sense of responsibility amongst employees. 

Another issue is inattentiveness. The oranges had clearly gone unchecked for several days. It's a manager's role to make this attention part of the procedure. Somebody should be checking the merchandise.

I've written about this before. In one instance, multiple employees missed an obvious problem because none of them were paying attention to the big picture.

Another one was about an inexplicably dirty hotel room. The comments from hotel professionals were particularly interesting.

It's easy to write-off problems like this. It couldn't happen to you, right? Perhaps not. But, the best customer service leaders are constantly checking just in case.

Customer service managers should ask themselves a few questions. 

  • Do you have any moldy oranges in your organization?
  • Are employees on the lookout for these sorts of problems?
  • Do people know what to do if they see one?

The Strange Effect of Surveys on Consumer Behavior

The survey equation seems simple.

You ask a customer a few questions. Their answers help you spot problems. You then use their feedback to improve. If all goes well, customers become more loyal and sales go up.

It's applying feedback that's been a sticking point. Many companies don't. One study suggests that only 10 percent of companies use survey data to improve service.

It turns out that a survey has influence, even if you don't use the data.

A 2002 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research determined that the mere act of surveying customers increased sales and loyalty. Here's a summary of what the study's authors found.

The Study

The research was conducted by Utpal M. Dholakia and Vicki G. Morwitz. They separated customers at a financial services firm into a test and control group. The test group took a customer satisfaction survey while the control group did not.

Dholakia and Morwitz then used actual customer transactions to identify any differences between the customers who were surveyed and those who were not.

 

The Results

Two conclusions jumped out.

First, the surveyed customers were much more likely to open new accounts with the financial services firm.

Second, the surveyed customers were much less likely to defect. 

The Implications

It would be a mistake to just assume you can launch a survey and watch sales soar. 

There's a bit of nuance here. For example, the study was conducted in 2002 when surveys weren't nearly as constant as they are now. It's entirely possible the study would see different results if it was conducted today.

My guess is the survey itself isn't what's driving consumer behavior. My hypothesis is there are two parts of the survey that are really making the impact.

The first is the act of story telling. 

Customers relive their experiences when they complete a survey. Retelling their story through a survey can make strong feelings (good or bad) even stronger. And, like so many stories, the details change and become exaggerated over time to create a stronger narrative.

The second part is a survey can demonstrate that a company actually cares.

It was probably easier to do that in 2002 when surveys were less common than they are in 2015. The big take away should be that if companies can show customers they care then customers will likely reward them.