Five Customer Service Trends Worth Watching

Yesterday, I facilitated a webinar called Customer Service Trends to Watch in 2015. Here’s a re-cap along with links to additional information.

You can watch a replay of the webinar here.

Trend #1: Fixing Broken Systems

Most service failures are caused by broken systems.

It might be a rotten culture, an unfriendly policy, or an underperforming department. These issues go beyond a simple employee error. They can’t be fixed with training. They’re systemic.

The now infamous Comcast cancellation call is a terrific example.

In 2015, I predict we’ll see more companies getting serious about fixing broken systems and making it easy for their employees to provide outstanding service.

 

Trend #2: Preventing Service Failures

Matt Dixon was a keynote speaker at ICMI’s CC Expo conference last May. One of his slides really caught everyone’s attention:

Delighting customers is fine, but service failures are what really impacts loyalty.

This isn’t a new idea. Dixon co-authored a 2010 Harvard Business Review article called “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers.” And, he released a book on the subject called The Effortless Experience in 2013.

So, why is this a trend now?

Because companies are starting to realize how badly service failures are costing them. Not just in terms of lost customers and lost business, but in terms of wasted time, increased costs, and lots of unnecessary damage control. 

I expect to see a few more companies get serious about service failure prevention in 2015.

 

Trend #3: Proactive Social Care

My 2014 study on what angry customers Tweet about yielded a surprising result. Waiting is the number one reason angry customers Tweet. The number three reason was no response to a message sent to the company.

In other words, customers send angry tweets because another service channel failed to resolve their problem.

Some smart companies are flipping the script. They’re actively searching for problems they can solve. 

Here’s a great example from cable provider Bright House Networks. The rep happened upon a casual Twitter conversation about cable packages.

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Trend #4: Fewer Surveys

In my 2014 article on the Salesforce blog, I detailed five signs that a customer service survey is missing the point.

People are getting tired of taking surveys. Even worse, most companies don’t do anything with them!

In 2015, I expect to see more companies fix their broken surveys. Or, better yet, abandon their customer service surveys altogether for one of these alternatives.

 

Trend #5: Employee Motivation

Managers just can’t seem to figure out employee motivation. 

Some try incentives. Others try threats. All too many don’t try.

A few are discovering Daniel Pink’s outstanding book, Drive, where he lays out three keys to motivating knowledge workers (e.g. customer service employees):

  • Purpose
  • Mastery
  • Autonomy

Here’s a synopsis of how these principles work for customer service employees.

 

So, will any of these trends hold true? Only time will tell.

How to Assess Your Team's Customer Service

Do your 2015 plans include working on customer service?

Many companies have service on their radar. The challenge is knowing where to get started. 

Do send your customer service reps through training? Perhaps you should invest in new technology? Will a new incentive program energize the team?

A great way to begin is by assessing where your team is now.

A good assessment compares your team’s current performance to where you want to be and provides detailed recommendations for closing the gap. It allows you to save time, focus resources, and get better results from your customer service initiatives. 

For example, a call center wanted to reduce the number of calls they sent to an outsourced call center. The third party call center gave them flexibility to handle spikes in contact volume. The trade-off was they could offer better service at a lower cost when they kept calls in-house.

A customer service assessment revealed some low-hanging fruit. Within just one week, the call center was keeping 50 percent more calls in house. 

There are three steps required to conduct a really good customer service assessment:

  1. Define what “good” looks like
  2. Select an approach
  3. Take action

 

Define Good

It’s hard to find something if you don’t know what you’re looking for. That’s why the first step in any assessment is defining what good service should look like. 

On a strategic level, this involves defining outstanding service for your team by creating a customer service vision.  

On a tactical level, this means defining what is supposed to happen for a certain process or interaction. Examples include establishing service standards, procedures, or contact guidelines.

 

Select an Approach

The next step is to select the assessment that best fits your needs. 

Large-scale assessments take several weeks to complete but offer an in-depth review. For example, ICMI offers an operational assessment for contact centers that takes a holistic look at the entire operation including management, employees, and technology. 

The time and expense of a large-scale assessment might be a bit much for many smaller organizations, but there are less-expensive alternatives available that are still very effective.

The Toister Performance Solutions onsite customer service assessment focuses solely on employee performance. It takes less than a day to complete, and you’ll have a detailed written plan the next business day. 

If you prefer to try the do it yourself approach, try using the Customer Service Alignment assessment for a strategic view of your operation. You can also use the Quick Fix Checklist to hone in on the solution to a particular problem. 

 

Take Action

An assessment isn’t worth your time if you don’t take action. 

There are many reasons why companies don’t take action after an assessment. Comfort level with the findings, the strain of other initiatives, and a lack of focus can all play a role.

It’s important to approach customer service assessments with an open mind. After all, why conduct an assessment just to tell you something you already know? The whole point is to look at things from a different angle.

It’s also imperative to conduct the assessment at a time when it will have your full attention. 

Assessments can be a powerful tool for improving customer service. That’s why they’re number three on my list of ways to take service to the next level.

Incidentally, training is all the way down at number seven.

How Companies Systematically Fail to Weigh Emotional Anchors

Last October 22 was a rough day.

My car broke down in a hotel parking lot while I was heading out to see a client. I had to cab it there, barely making it on time.

I got a call from my Mom while riding in a cab on the way back to the hotel. She told me my Dad had been taken by ambulance to the hospital with chest pain.

My car needed to be towed. I had to trust the internet to find a nearby mechanic with good online reviews. I coordinated this while getting updates about my Dad from my Mom.

The mechanic seemed trustworthy, but it took them a few hours to diagnose the problem. Fortunately, my Dad was stable and feeling okay. 

My car’s diagnosis came in. The clutch slave and master cylinder both needed to be replaced. This is a major repair that requires the mechanic to remove the entire transmission. It’s also an astonishing problem for a car like mine with only 37,000 miles on it.

The mechanic told me the car would be ready the following afternoon. The nice-ish hotel where I was staying was sold out, so I ended up in a dingy motel down the street. 

I spent the night feeling stuck and worried about my Dad.

My car was repaired by mid-afternoon the next day. My Dad was feeling okay, but he was still in the hospital. I made the three hour drive to visit him, worrying throughout the entire drive that my car would break down again.

Companies frequently fail to consider their customers' emotional needs.

Companies frequently fail to consider their customers' emotional needs.

 

The Cold No

I really liked my car before this incident. I had owned it for four years and couldn’t imagine owning another one.

Now, it's hard to drive it without thinking about the huge hassle it caused me. I went from loving the car to feeling like I’d never buy another one from this brand again.

My local dealer wasn't any help. I had bought the car there and take it in for regular service. I contacted them for help. The service advisor flatly told me there was nothing they could do. She delivered the message without the slightest bit of empathy.

I called the manufacturer’s consumer affairs hotline to see if they'd be willing to do something. Anything would do, even a goodwill gesture of some kind. After a bit of back and forth a case manager told me there was nothing they would do.

Just like the dealer, the message was delivered with zero empathy.

 

Emphasizing The Wrong Needs

Customers have two needs: rational and emotional. 

It’s the emotional needs that are often overlooked. Everything is geared towards addressing the rational issue.

Rationally, the dealer was right.

They’re compensated for repairs by the customer or, in the case of warranty issues, by the manufacturer. My repair didn’t fit either circumstance, so there wasn’t any money in it for them.

Rationally, the manufacturer was right.

My car was sold with a warranty that guarantees against these types of problems for a certain period of time. Once that time is passed, those problems are no longer the manufacturer’s responsibility. My car’s warranty had expired.

So, I’m being careful not to call out the brand by name. By the same token, the complete lack of empathy feels cold.

I wasn't expecting to be completely reimbursed for the repair. But nothing? Not even a goodwill gesture? Ouch.

I understand that how I feel about the situation is a mix of both rational and emotional needs. Trust me, emotional needs are far more important than rational ones.

 

It’s the System

What companies should understand is their systems create these emotional disconnects.

  • Companies teach employees to fix problems, not assuage feelings.
  • Companies think in terms of dollars, not goodwill.
  • Companies focus on transactional value, not lifetime value.

Perhaps I should have been more clear. I could have told the dealer and the manufacturer, "I had a terrible experience, and I'd like you to help me feel better about my car."

The problem is customers don't think like that.

They speak in rational terms too. Sometimes, it's hard to understand what you're really feeling in the moment. It seems weird to tell a customer service rep that what you really want is to be emotionally validated. 

Very few employees are trained to decode what customers are really saying. 

I tried to make it clear to the dealer and the manufacturer that I wouldn't buy their brand of car again. They'd both lost my business. I doubt this is tracked.

Most businesses don't have a good system for this. Most employees aren't taught to carefully listen for this information. Very few pass along complaints.

 

Epilogue

Today, my Dad’s feeling great and is in good health. That's what's most important.

My car is driving fine. I think. Something doesn't feel quite right, but I'm not sure whether it's real or imagined. Emotions have a funny way of playing tricks on you like that.

My Favorite Business Books of 2014

Here are some of the best business books I read in 2014. These books are perfect for a last-minute Christmas gift or a good business book to read yourself over the winter holiday.

 

The Effortless Experience

I discovered this book when author Matt Dixon gave a riveting keynote address at ICMI’s CC Expo conference in May. 

The core message is avoiding service failures is a much stronger loyalty driver than delight. Dixon makes a compelling case for finding ways to make service consistently effortless for customers. He offers practical solutions and common-sense tactics than can easily be implemented.

 

What Great Brands Do

Author Denise Lee Yohn makes the compelling argument that branding is more than just a marketing exercise. It’s how to run a business. All departments impact a company’s brand whether it’s operations, R&D, or even customer service.

The book is full of practical examples and hands-on exercises that make it easy to translate the ideas into action.

 

Your Brain at Work

This book offers a fascinating look at how we can improve our success by having a better understanding of how our brains work.

It follows a typical workday for Emily and Paul, who are both overwhelmed with constant emails, meetings, and distractions. The author, David Rock, rewinds the scenes that unfold throughout their day to show us how small changes can lead to big improvements.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention my own book, Service Failure. It uncovers hidden reasons that employees struggle with customer service.

Happy Holidays!

How Cheap Retailers Lose Out on Holiday Sales

For customers, holiday shopping means one thing: crowds.

This is good news for retailers. Cash registers are ringing Jingle Bells. Many retailers count on the holiday shopping season to make up the bulk of their profit for the year.

Yet, many retailers still pinch pennies like old Ebenezer Scrooge. That penny pinching many be costing companies even more sales.

A new report from CTS Service Solutions reveals that crowds are driving customers away. The full infographic is below, but here are some findings that really stand out: 

  • 50% have left a store because of parking
  • 62% abandoned a sale due to slow service
  • 70% decided against a purchase rather than wait in a long line

Retailers can follow a few simple steps to capture even more sales this time of year.

Staff Up. Yes, many retailers add employees for the holiday season, but they’re often still chronically short-staffed. Saving just a few sales per hour would more than pay for the extra cost.

Manage Lines. Waiting in line has just as much to do with perception as actual wait time. Check out these tips for lowering customers’ wait time perception. My favorite? Keep customers engaged and keep things moving.

Mobilize Checkout. Okay, this is probably on next year’s wish list, but take a look at this terrific overview in Fortune magazine. One reason customers love the Apple Store so much is you don’t have to wait in line to make a purchase. The associate who assists you takes your payment right then and there. 

Courtesy of: Customers That Stick

Courtesy of: Customers That Stick

Huge crowds can weigh heavily on your employees too. Here are 15 Holiday Tips for Anyone Who Works Retail from Bob Phibbs, The Retail Doctor.

Trend to Watch: Contact Center Quiet Rooms

Contact center agents’ brains are fried.

The cause is a production line mentality. Agents hum along like factory workers in an endless queue of customer contacts. Everything is tracked, measured, and evaluated. Efficiency rules.

Multitasking is seen as the key to efficiency. The more you activity you can squeeze into an agent's day, the more efficient you are; or so the thinking goes.

It's rampant among contact center agents. The average agent now uses seven screens to serve customers (source: ICMI). 

All this repetitive multitasking leads to a disorder called Directed Attention Fatigue (DAF). Symptoms include distractibility, impatience, and difficulty starting and finishing tasks. Psychologists have described the symptoms as being identical to ADD.

The only known cure for DAF is rest.

That rest can be hard to come by. The noisy break room? Nah. What about one of those new collaboration spaces? Collaboration isn’t rest. How about a conference room? Sorry, there's a meeting in progress.

Some savvy contact centers are giving agents a place of their own called a quiet room to decompress.

 

What are Quiet Rooms?

These are special rooms specifically set aside for quiet reflection. They give agents a place to stop the rampant multitasking and recharge. Perhaps read a book or listen to some music.

VITAS Healthcare calls their quiet room the Serenity Room. They provide hospice care services, and the Serenity Room was originally designed as a place for Chaplains to provide grief counseling to patient families. When they built their call center, they decided to include a serenity room for their agents.

According to Patient Care Administrator Joann Gawczynski, the serenity room has become a popular place for agents to regroup after a difficult call or to just take a break.

“Our serenity room allows our staff a quiet room to go and relax.  They can put on the radio or listen to a CD. It’s set up as a sitting room you may have in your own home.”

Image courtesy of Joann Gawczynski

Image courtesy of Joann Gawczynski

A recent ICMI poll found that approximately 50 percent of contact centers have quiet rooms. Couches are popular, but you might find a yoga room or even bunks where agents can catch a few winks.

 

Rest is Key

Many agents take a break from work but put themselves right back on the multitasking hamster wheel. They pull out their phones and text, chat, like, and play games. 

Agents don't just need a break from work. They need a break from multitasking.

That's what makes quiet rooms so useful. Unfortunately, office space is a precious commodity. Not every contact center can designate a whole room for peace and quiet. 

Some contact centers take advantage of their outdoor surroundings. Getting out into nature is an effective way to recover from DAF. 

The agents at telecommunications company Phone.com hike what is simply known as The Hill. It gets the blood flowing and offers a sweeping view of the surrounding community at the top.

Image courtesy of Jeremy Watkin

Image courtesy of Jeremy Watkin

The Hill really gets the team's creative juices flowing. It's even spurred this musical homage from Jeremy Watkin, Phone.com’s Director of Customer Service.

 

Creating Your Quiet Room

There are four characteristics of a quiet room that can help agents recover from DAF (source: Kaplan, 1995).

Being Away. The environment should feel like an escape from the normal workplace.

Fascination. It should allow for activities that are effortlessly absorbing. Examples including reading a book, working a puzzle, or listening to music. Nature has been shown to be highly effective too.

Extent. The environment should be able to rich enough and large enough to promote sustained rest. In this sense, a Quiet Corner won’t work nearly as well as a Quiet Room.

Compatibility. The space should be compatible with agent decompression. In other words, your agents might love having an Xbox, but saving the world from space aliens won’t make their brains feel any less fried.

I'll admit that the concept of a quiet room seems a bit new-agey. Perhaps too new-agey for senior executives to take seriously. 

It might be helpful to consider the payoffs when designing your quiet room. 

DAF is a huge cause of agent burnout. If you can prevent DAF, that will lead to better calls, better service, and better agent retention.

When Giving Customers A Little Extra is a Big Mistake

A bottle of wine and a lavish cheese plate greeted me as I entered the hotel room. You’d think an oenophile like me would be excited to see these gifts after a long day of travel.

You’d be wrong. 

The bottle of wine came with a lot of bad options. Should I drink it? I was only there for one night. That’s too much wine. 

Perhaps I could have a glass, but it seemed like such a waste to open a bottle of wine for just one glass.

I could bring it home. That would mean I’d have to check my suitcase instead of carrying it on the plane. A checked bag would translate to an extra 30 minutes waiting at the airport and a $25 baggage fee. That seemed pretty steep for a $20 bottle of wine.

I could leave it. Would somebody’s feelings be hurt if I left their gift behind? I hope not. I really hate hurting people’s feelings.

The cheese plate was another dilemma. It was too late for cheese tonight and cheese isn’t exactly the breakfast of champions. Besides, it looked like it had been sitting in the room for a little while. This one was a lost cause. A total waste.

These gifts were provided with the best of intentions. It’s too bad the result wasn’t delight but rather consternation over wasting them.

Sometimes, giving customers a little extra turns out to be a big mistake.

Unanticipated Consequences

We’re taught to think of customer service as going above and beyond. Do something extraordinary for someone and they’ll remember us for a lifetime.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out the way we hope. Here are a few examples:

A free dessert at a restaurant can backfire if the guests are already stuffed or watching their diet. Do they eat something they don’t want or reject such a nice gift?

An upgrade to the deluxe package at the car wash can backfire if the customer is in a hurry and finds the smell of air freshener to be sickening.

Upgrading an airline passenger's seat to an exit row can backfire if it separates her from the rest of her family.

Small gifts like these are given with the purest intentions. However, these unanticipated consequences can causes these gifts to become annoyances to the customer.

 

Thoughtful Gift Giving

I’ll be the first to admit I struggle in this department. There isn’t a perfect answer. And yes, the thought really does count.

So, let’s start there. One way to avoid any trouble is to ask.

At the restaurant, a server can ask her guests if she can bring them a dessert on the house.

At the car wash, the ticket writer can ask if he can upgrade the wash to a deluxe package at no extra charge.

At the airline, the gate agent could ask the passenger if she'd like to be upgraded to an exit row seat.

Asking accomplishes two things.

First, it verifies that the little extra is something the customer actually wants. Second, it avoids wasting the gift on someone who doesn’t want it. 

Of course, there are sometimes when you don’t have the luxury of asking. Or, asking might ruin the surprise. So, what should you do then?

Look at it from the customer’s perspective and think how you can brighten their experience. One of the best hotel amenities I ever received was a bouquet of flowers at the Napa River Inn. 

The flowers were cut from the hotel's garden and my wife and I could see the same rose bushes in bloom outside our window. It brightened up our room throughout our stay and created an even stronger connection to one of our favorite hotels.

Zendesk Q3 Benchmark Yields Some NPS Gems

Zendesk recently released its 2014 Q3 Customer Service Benchmark report. The customer service software provider tapped into its massive database of Net Promoter Score (NPS) results to uncover some interesting gems. 

The report looked at 103,000 responses from 230 companies. Here are some of their more interesting findings.


NPS Yields More Comments

Zendesk found that NPS surveys yielded a 13 percent response rate compared to 21 percent for Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys.

Despite the lower volume, NPS surveys yielded more comments. 

Zendesk recommends a survey sample size of 1,700. (See their math here.) Using their response rate and comment rate averages, this translates to more aggregate comments too.

Zendesk also found that NPS yields far more comments from positive surveys than CSAT. 

Why do comments in positive surveys matter? 

It helps to know what you’re doing well. And, customers who generally like your brand, product, or service may often give a high survey rating and then provide some constructive feedback in the comment section. 

In a recent client project, I found that 5 percent of positive surveys contained negative comments.

 

Upset Customers Write More

NPS surveys generally classify respondents into three categories:

  • Promoters: People who give a 9 or 10 rating
  • Passives: People who give a 7 or 8 rating
  • Detractors: People who give a 1 - 6 rating

Zendesk found that comments left by Detractors average 106 words while comments from Promoters average 63 words. Clearly, upset customers have more to say.

Their 2014 Q2 Customer Service Benchmark uncovered a similar trend for support tickets submitted through the web. The more a customer writes, the angrier they are likely to be.

Broken Promises = Unhappy Customers

The report analyzed the comments in NPS surveys to rank the top six reasons customers were detractors. Four of the top six came down to companies unable to keep their basic promises. 

  1. Poor customer service
  2. Waste time
  3. Doesn’t work
  4. Time consuming
  5. Don’t know you
  6. Difficult to use

 

NPS Resources

There’s a danger in focusing on just one magic metric. But, NPS can be a powerful tool if used correctly. 

Here are some resources to help you learn more: