Book Review: Be Amazing or Go Home

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Shep Hyken's new book gets to the heart of what make someone exceptional at customer service.

The genesis of Be Amazing or Go Home was a conversation Hyken had with one of his own employees. This person had been an outstanding contributor for about a year until something changed. Suddenly, her commitment wavered and she began delivering sub-par results.

Hyken's company, Shepard Presentations, operates under the customer service vision, "Always Be Amazing!" He worked with his employee to help her fulfill the vision until it became apparent she had lost her desire. He finally gave her two choices, "You can be Amazing... or go home."

The story has a good ending. His employee decided to go home, and eventually found a new job that was a better fit. She and Hyken are still on good terms. And Hyken's employee was the one who suggested their conversation would make for a good book!

It did.

 

Amazement Defined

This is a concept that Hyken regularly discusses in his books. Here's his definition:

Amazement is a predictable and consistent above-average experience.

I appreciate that Hyken doesn't try to paint a picture of some over-the-top, unsustainable service experience. He correctly argues that doing things a little better than the competition over time will cement a reputation for amazing service.

So it's not a one-time grand gesture. Amazement is what you create when you work at delivering above-average service every single day.

 

The Seven Habits That Create Amazement

Hyken describes seven habits that create amazement.

The book is aimed squarely at individuals, though these are definitely habits customer service leaders can share with their teams. Even a freelance consultant (like me) can pick up some wonderful ideas.

I won't spoil them all (buy the book!). Instead, I'll point out one of my favorites: Amazing People Are Authentic.

This habit really resonated with me. Some of the characteristics of authenticity include being yourself, personalizing your interactions with others, and being as good as your word.

Hyken himself exemplifies all of the seven habits described in his book. These aren't ideas he made up just to write his latest bestseller! He truly lives them each day.

If that isn't authentic, I don't know what is!

My Favorite Books, Podcasts, and Blogs for Customer Service Leaders

Crowdsourcing can be an interesting way to get ideas.

For example, ICMI hosted it's Contact Center Demo and Conference in Las Vegas this week. Vee Rose used the conference hashtag to tweet a request for customer service leadership book and podcast recommendations.

It's been awhile since I compiled a list of my favorites, so I decided to write this post in response.

Books for Customer Service Leaders

Full disclosure: I've added affiliate links to each book's Amazon page, which means TPS gets a referral fee for each purchase. These are all books I've read and thoroughly enjoy.

Uncommon Service Frances Frei and Anne Morriss make a compelling case that a company can't be great at everything, so customer service leaders must make difficult decisions about where to focus and build on strength.

Amaze Every Customer Every Time Any book by Shep Hyken is bound to be interesting and useful. This one in particular focuses on ways that Ace Hardware developed a strong service culture. Hyken explains how service leaders can implement each of these tools in their own organizations.

Winning at Social Customer Care Dan Gingiss wrote this excellent playbook on how to run a social customer care operation. He draws from experience at organizations like Discover and Humana and is currently the Senior Director of Global Social Media at McDonald's.

Strategic Customer Service John Goodman (the customer service guru, not the actor) is responsible for the famous statistic about angry customers telling 10 friends. He brings a refreshing, data-driven approach to help service leaders understand what really moves the needle.

Kaleidoscope The latest book from Chip Bell is fun. It's packed with wonderful stories and ideas for innovative service. Look closely and you'll see that Bell reveals a clever strategy. Going the extra mile is unsustainable while being unique can set your business apart.

The Service Culture Handbook This is my own book. I wrote it to provide leaders with a step-by-step guide they could use to get their employees obsessed with customer service. There are many contact center examples plus profiles of other leading companies.

 

Podcasts for Customer Service Leaders

CallTalk A podcast about contact centers! Bruce Belfiore and his guests cover a wealth of topics related to contact center customer service and experience. Belfiore is the CEO and Senior Research Analyst at BenchmarkPortal, and he makes his living studying contact centers.

The Net Promoter System Podcast Rob Markey conducts in-depth and insightful interviews with customer service leaders who use the Net Promoter System (NPS) to better understand their customers and drive continuous improvement. 

Crack the Customer Code Adam Toporek and Jeannie Walters host a wide variety of customer service and customer experience experts on their podcast. Both are accomplished experts and consultants who frequently supply their own numerous insights.

Amazing Business Radio Shep Hyken brings his signature enthusiasm for customer service to this series featuring interesting and fun conversations with customer service leaders. Hyken is one of the tops in our field and always worth listening to!

Frank Reactions Tema Frank hosts this podcast where she and her guests discuss the intersection of the digital era and technology in customer service. Her message really resonates with me as someone who is constantly striving to help employees do their best.

 

Blogs for Customer Service Leaders

Though this wasn't part of the request, here are a few blogs I regularly read:

What I Learned Taking The No But Challenge

For the past two months I've tried to strike the word "but" from my vocabulary.

It's not easy. I'm not even sure it's a good idea to go 100 percent but-free. Maybe but-light would be better.

My quest stemmed from an interview with Evan Watson where he described how he used improv training to help customer service agents better serve customers. Watson explained one of the main tenants of improvisation is agreement.

The idea is you try to find agreement with the other person to keep the improv scene or the customer conversation going.

The word "but" feels like it stops agreement. It's used when you say one thing and then say something completely different. As in, "I'd like to help you, but I can't help you."

So I wondered what it would be like if I stopped using that word with clients and colleagues. The results have been revealing.

but.png

Background on the Challenge

There are times when the answer to a question really is "No." 

The natural appendage to "No" is "but" when we're trying to be helpful. As in, "Can you meet on Tuesday?" and you're booked on Tuesday so you might reply, "No, but I can meet on Wednesday. Does that work for you?"

While it seems helpful, there's also something negative about it. This gets amplified in service situations. As in, "Your app isn't working, can you help me fix it?" A reply of "No, but you can check our website" doesn't feel great.

It's somewhat similar to my own concept called trigger words. These words, when used at the wrong time, can trigger a customer's anger. Jeremy Watkin refers to them as "stop words," which I think is the same thing.

Shep Hyken recently wrote a blog post describing how subtle changes to the way we phrase things can influence how customers perceive them. 

All this made it seem like an interesting challenge.

Please don't get me wrong. I don't think the word "but" is really horrible. It's not like saying "ain't" which is universally known to cause your mother to faint. My goal here was simply to elevate my game.

 

It's Hard to Get Rid of But

I quickly learned the word is instinctive, and instincts are hard to change.

People would ask me something and I'd instantly infuse my response with "but." Someone asking, "Can you help me with this project" would generate an instinctive "No, but I have some resources I can share."

It's agreeable, yet disagreeable at the same time.

It's hard to get a take-back in a verbal conversation, though I realized you can take advantage of written correspondence. 

For example, I got an email from a prospective client who wanted to have me speak at her company's all-staff meeting in December. My schedule is completely full in December so my first instinct was to write, "No, but please think of me for next year's meeting!"

Stop. Delete. Re-write. I realized she doesn't care about next year's meeting because she's trying to plan this year's meeting.

What I ended up writing was, "I'm sorry to say my calendar is completely booked through December, including the dates of your all-staff meeting. Is there another way I might help you?"

I think I'm on to something because she sent me a very nice note in response.

 

Say Yes 'Til It Hurts

The word "but" is often triggered by a "no," so one way to avoid but is to say "yes" until it hurts.

I got a call last week from the leader of an alumni group I belong to. She asked me to deliver a keynote presentation at a student conference that was just three weeks away.

My first instinct was to politely decline. I'm very busy with multiple deadlines and extensive travel, so squeezing this in would be difficult.

Yet I realized this was an opportunity to give back to an organization I care about and meet some of its newest members. I ultimately avoided saying "No, but" to this request by saying "Yes."

Obviously, this challenge isn't good for my time management. 

The bigger picture is it causes me to pause and re-think whether there really is a realistic way I can say "Yes." Sometimes, the answer still is "No," though not as often as I might initially think.

 

Apply Mental Flexibility

Avoiding but can require a lot of mental flexibility.

A colleague recently emailed to invite me to a special event he knew I'd be interested in attending. I'm going to be out of town that day, so I was tempted to write, "I can't make it, but I can share this with a few others I know will enjoy it."

There's nothing really wrong with that response. I'm just trying to do better, so I wrote, "I’ll be out of town that day, which is too bad because it sounds like a fun event. I’ll share this with the few colleagues I know in the area in case they’d be interested."

This whole thing is a work in progress. It takes extra effort to eliminate these buts. I think it's worth it.

The idea is to be more agreeable. For example, my wife and I had dinner with friends last night. One of my friends asked, "Are you still traveling a lot?"

I replied, "Yes, but I will be slowing down soon, so we can get together more often!"

Don't Let Poor Reading Skills Crush Your Support Queues

It seemed like a simple question.

My wife, Sally, and I want to install a smart thermostat at our vacation rental property to make it easier to control heating costs when we don't have guests. I went to the website for a popular brand and searched for documentation on vacation rentals.

Finding nothing, I started a live chat session. "Can you share documentation on using your product in a vacation rental property?" I asked.

The response was a link to an article about going on vacation. Not quite right. After a few back-and-forth messages the agent agreed to search for something and email me.

The email was a link to articles about setting the thermostat when you go on vacation.

Situations where agents don't apply basic reading comprehension skills are frustrating. It unnecessarily wastes customers' time. In my case, it drove me to a competitor.

Here's a closer look at the problem and a few solutions.

writing.jpg

The Comprehension Problem

The NBC app wasn't working on my iPad, so I submitted an online support ticket.

(While I normally hide company names when I share my own negative service experiences, I've provided this feedback to the company multiple times.)

ticket.png

The text from my support ticket is at the bottom with the response at the top. This response had two big misses that show the responder didn't fully read or understand my question. 

First, the response asked me to search for my provider, even though I clearly state my provider in my message. 

Second, the emailer asks for the type of device and OS I'm using, even though that information is clearly identified in the personal data attached to the email. (I removed that portion for privacy.)

**Bonus question to my technical friends** Do you think this response came from a human, a bot, or a human pretending to be a bot?

 

What Causes These Reading Issues?

Let's set aside an obvious possibility, that the agents hired for these jobs are not screened for appropriate reading skills.

That may be true, yet there are still other possibilities.

One is a focus on productivity, not quality. Look back at the email and you'll see some signs:

  • The ticket is marked at the top of the email as solved. (Makes ticket closing numbers look good.)

  • This is clearly a pre-written template.

  • The sender ignored information I provided.

Another possible root cause is a lack of quality monitoring. Here's a sneak preview from a study that will be released by ICMI in October. The chart shows the percentage of contact centers that monitor various channels for quality.

Source: ICMI

Source: ICMI

This graph shows that most contact centers are monitoring calls while more than half aren't monitoring email or chat. The stat for social media is just sad.

So if an agent exhibits poor reading skills, chances are the boss isn't paying attention. And if the boss isn't paying attention, you can be sure the agent isn't getting any feedback on how to do better. 

 

Solutions

An immediate action is to review a sample of written communication from your agents.

I did this exercise as a contact center manager and was shocked at how many emails contained a mistake or weren't as helpful as they could be. 

You may also consider changing your support procedures:

  • Create a customer service vision that focuses on customers, not transactions.

  • Implement quality monitoring for written channels.

  • Incorporate a reading comprehension assessment in your hiring process.

Of course, all agents could use help with some skill development from time to time. Check out online courses from customer service writing expert, Leslie O'Flahavan:

Lessons From The Overlook: Pricing Strategy

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a monthly update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

Pricing strategy can be tricky.

One thought is customers naturally want to pay as little as possible. So you can bring in more customers if you cut your prices. That's what Amazon is betting on by dramatically cutting prices at newly acquired Whole Foods. The challenge is lower prices equal lower profit margins, so you'll need to sell a lot more to make more money.

Another approach is to charge a premium. This way you can sell to fewer customers and still make money. Of course, you want to avoid raising prices so high that nobody will pay them.

My wife, Sally, and I decided on a third pricing strategy. We wanted The Overlook to be an excellent value for the customer we wanted while appearing too pricey for customers we didn't want.

Here's what we did and how you can do it, too.

We like to think The Overlook is a little nicer than our competitors. Image courtesy of JoniePhoto.

We like to think The Overlook is a little nicer than our competitors. Image courtesy of JoniePhoto.

Define Your Target Customer

One thing you'll notice about The Overlook is each room has just one bed.

There are no side-by-side twin beds. No bunk beds. The sofa isn't a pullout sleeper. We have four bedrooms and four beds (two king, two queen). Our advertised guest limit is eight.

This is very intentional.

We want a certain customer who will enjoy the peacefulness of our cabin. It's often extended families (mom and dad, the kids, plus grandparents), a couples weekend, or two families meeting in the mountains. Our guests enjoy the cabin's amenities plus a little elbowroom.

There's also a customer we don't want—the bargain hunter who is looking to cram as many people as possible into a cabin to maximize the cost per person. 

Those guests create extra wear and tear without any extra revenue. More things go missing and more damage occurs. We've had a couple of renters sneak in more than eight guests and the cleaning alone was always a challenge after these guests had gone.

Other cabins in Idyllwild pack 'em in. Guests sleep on bunk beds, in lofts, or air mattresses in the living room. These cabins typically offer fewer amenities. We think the bargain hunters are willing to make that trade-off and will stay in those places instead of ours.

A good pricing strategy starts with your target customer. What are the characteristics of the customer you want and can you serve them profitably?

 

Competitive Analysis

Serving customers profitably brings us to the next step: conducting a competitive analysis of your pricing.

This means comparing your prices to what your competitors are charging. We started with the other cabins managed by our property manager that slept six or more guests with three or more bedrooms.

overlookcomp1.png

The Overlook was the least expensive of the four-bedroom cabins. While our cabin also sleeps fewer people than the other four-bedroom options, it also has more amenities.

For example, our cabin is the only one with a view. And only one other four bedroom cabin has a spa. Our research shows that our guests want a spa, good views, a nice fireplace, and it should be pet-friendly. The Overlook checks all four boxes.

Here's how our pricing looks compared to just those cabins with the same amenities:

overlookcomp2.png

Not as many options! And the lower-priced cabin is much smaller and is really only comfortable for two couples. 

We also compared The Overlook to cabins in the area that weren't managed by our property manager. There were plenty of lower-priced options, but The Overlook was on the low-end of the scale when you just compared cabins with similar amenities.

And our price includes the cleaning fee, which can be $100 or more at other vacation rentals.

 

Our Pricing Decision

We ultimately decided to raise our nightly rate to $325 for the first two nights, $275 for each additional night.

Here was our new positioning when compared to our property manager's other cabins:

overlookcomp3.png

We wanted to price on the higher end of the market to deter bargain-hunters who were not our ideal customer, while remaining an exceptional value for the customers we were trying to attract.

The results have been good so far. Our guests have been very pleased with the cabin and the amenities. They've consistently commented on enjoying a peaceful and relaxing stay.

Best of all, revenue is up 5 percent over last year and none of our guests have trashed the place.

The Best Way to Ask Employees About Training Needs

You may be tempted to survey employees to ask about their training needs. Don't.

Asking employees what training they need is like asking young kids what they want for dinner. An enthusiastic answer doesn't mean that's what they need.

I once worked with a payroll department that was struggling to serve its internal customers. They frequently couldn't process payroll on time and made many errors. The team was denied a request for additional staff so they asked me for time management training.

It turned out they really needed a better process. 

We worked together to map the existing process, identify bottlenecks, and implement a new workflow. Productivity immediately improved by 25 percent and errors went down to nearly 0.

No training required.

This won't always be the case. Employees often need training to help them do their jobs. Unfortunately, asking them what training they need will often yield what they think they need, not what they actually need.

Here's a better way to ask employees about training needs.

A group of business colleagues sitting around a conference table.

How to assess employee training needs

The biggest mistake managers make when assessing training needs is to assume employees need training. There are many cases, like that payroll department, where another solution is needed. In other situations, employees need less training or training on different skills than you originally thought.

There are a few steps you should take before asking employees about training.

Step 1: Identify business goals

The purpose of training is to help employees develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities they need to do their jobs or a task more effectively. Start the training discussion by thinking about a problem you're trying to solve, such as improving customer service, reducing complaints, or using a new piece of equipment. Resources are limited, so we want to focus our training investments on areas of business need.

Step 2: Identify success drivers

The next step is to identify the key drivers that contribute to that goal. For example, Palo Alto Software decided to focus on customer retention.

In an interview with Celeste Peterson, a Customer Advocacy Supervisor, Peterson described three key drivers of customer retention:

  • Customers logged in to the software more than once in the first week they signed up.

  • Customers were able to easily access help when they're confused or frustrated.

  • Customers understood the value of paying for a full year of service upfront.

Customers who cancelled their subscription were more likely to have experienced a problem in one or more of those areas.

Step 3: Determine key behaviors

Once you identify what drives success, determine what employee behaviors lead to good results with your key drivers. This step usually involves observing your employees work or having discussions about what’s working and what’s not. (Notice you’re not discussing training just yet.)

When in doubt, I always look for a Betty. A Betty is that successful employee who figured out a great way to do things. I call this employee Betty because that was the name of the employee who taught me the concept.

Palo Alto Software determined that its customer advocates (customer service reps) needed to do two things in particular:

  • Provide helpful support to guide new customers through the account setup process.

  • Use positive phrasing when customers are confused about annual billing.

Once you know what your employees need to do, it’s finally time to assess employee training needs.

 

Training Needs Analysis Questions to Ask Employees

Once you've identified what employees should be doing the next step is to find out what employees are actually doing.

The best way to do this is to observe employees in action. Here is when you can ask a few questions:

  • What do you do now?

  • Why do you do it that way? (If it's different than expected.)

  • What's preventing you from achieving your goals?

For instance, Peterson observed her team at Palo Alto Software to see how they handled situations where a customer complained about billing issues. Many customers signed up for annual billing to get a discount, but didn't realize they would be charged for a year's worth of service upfront.

In the past, customer advocates would offer to refund the charge and convert the customer's account into a monthly one.

This seemed like a customer-friendly, low-friction approach but it was actually costing customers money in the long run since monthly accounts billed at a higher rate than annual subscriptions. Monthly customers were also more likely to cancel.

This observation revealed a simple training need—customer advocates needed to learn a better approach to handle complaints about annual billing.

Here's how Peterson described the new approach she trained her team to use:

"Now, rather than immediately addressing their confusion and apologizing, giving a negative impression, we empathize, and focus on the positive, that the annual subscription provides the benefit of a 40% discount by collecting for 12 months in advance. We also let the customer know that we're happy to convert it to the monthly option or cancel and refund if they prefer, since we have a 60 day money back guarantee."

Notice Peterson used data analysis, employee observations, and dialogue with her team to identify this very specific training need. No surveys were involved.

There is a case for surveys when there's a larger audience.

For example, I worked with a client where 700 people will need training on the organization's customer service vision. In this case, the survey is a convenient way to ask people for their current understanding of the vision so the training can be tailored to their specific knowledge gap.

 

Conclusion

Asking the right questions up front made a huge difference at Palo Alto Software. These questions were focused on what employees needed to do their jobs, not what training they wanted.

Peterson's employees may have asked for customer service training if she simply asked what training they wanted. That might have resulted in a half-day training class on serving angry customers or having each person take my one-hour Working With Upset Customers course on LinkedIn Learning.

Doing an upfront needs analysis allowed Peterson to make a bigger impact by offering very limited training on a specific technique for a particular situation.

You can learn more about assessing employee training needs by taking my Needs Analysis course on LinkedIn Learning.

Report: Companies Have the Tech to Ease Phone Pain

Calling customer service is a pain. 

Most of us don't want to call customer service. Three things in particular make the call miserable:

The first is Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems that try to deflect calls by repeatedly offering self-service. It's the reason why we repeatedly press "0" or yell "Live Person!" into the phone.

The second is being put on hold. This feels like a waste of time because it is. Anxiety and frustration increase the longer we wait.

The third is repetition. It's annoying to repeat information the company should already know, such as our name and contact information..

There is some good news. A new report from cloud-based contact center platform NewVoiceMedia reveals that most companies already have the technology to avoid this mess.

Source: NewVoiceMedia

Source: NewVoiceMedia

About the Report

NewVoiceMedia partnered with the market research firm, Opinion Matters, to survey 1,018 people who work in contact centers.

The report is called Contact Center Technology Survey: Why businesses are failing their customers. As the title suggests, there are opportunities for contact centers to improve their technological infrastructure. 

I also see a glimmer of hope.

Many companies already have technology to deliver better service.You can download the full report or read a summary of key findings below.

 

IVR Self-Service is Unnecessary

Companies primarily offer IVR self-service to deflect callers away from live agents. 

This was a customer benefit prior to the age of online self-service. IVR self-service suddenly made it easier to handle a simple request such as checking your account balance with a few touchtone commands. 

The NewVoiceMedia report shows 85 percent of respondents now offer online self-service. My research indicates customers today tend to call customer service only if online self-service doesn't work or they believe their issue is so complicated a live agent is needed. 

This means customers may perceive IVR self-service as an annoying obstacle to live help rather than a customer benefit. The simple solution is to shut it off.

 

Customers Don't Need to Be on Hold

Nobody likes to wait on hold.

The NewVoiceMedia report shows that 42 percent of contact centers regularly make customers wait longer than five minutes. This understandably irritates customers.

The good news is there are many ways to reduce hold times without hiring more agents. Here are just a few:

  • Adjust schedules to better meet demand

  • Improve online self-service (which deflects calls)

  • Respond to email faster & better

  • Focus agents on first contact resolution (prevents future calls)

  • Offer a callback option such as Fonolo

In my interview with Fonolo's CEO and co-founder, Shai Berger, he explained that a callback feature can actually smooth out spikes in call volume. 

"Demand spikes tend to have a cascading effect. Hold times stretch longer, so you have to juggle around your agent lunch and break schedules, which means there might be fewer agents available later in the day when you need them. It sometimes feels like you can never catch up."

Many contact centers use multiple approaches to reduce demand spikes and prevent this chain-reaction from occurring.

 

Eliminate Repetitive Repetition

Imagine you're upset about an unresolved billing issue that you emailed about last week. You call, enter your account number into the IVR, deflect a series of useless self-service offers, and then hold for ten minutes. 

You finally get a live agent and face a barrage of annoying questions:

  • May I have your account number, please?

  • Will you please confirm your first and last name?

  • Will you please confirm your phone number?

You eventually get to the help phase of the call only to have to repeat everything you wrote in your email. By now, you're fuming.

The NewVoiceMedia report suggests this is often unnecessary:

  • 89 percent of agents can identify a caller before answering the call

  • 82 percent of agents can access information about previous interactions

  • 79 percent of agents can follow customers across multiple channels

Contact centers would serve their customers much better by humanizing the service approach. This means leveraging existing technology to allow agents to skip the repetitive questions and quickly getting to the heart of the issue.

Five Ways to Humanize Customer Service

Humanity in customer service is getting rare.

We shop online without ever interacting with a person. Go on a trip and you can check in for your flight, summon a ride to the airport, and check into your hotel room all from your smart phone.

Got a problem? There's a self-service portal for that. Try to call and an interactive voice response system will do its best to dissuade you from talking to someone.

Even when you do interact with a live person, it doesn't always feel that way. There's a whole class of transactional employees whose jobs are at risk of being automated because they don't add any uniquely human value.

Self-service is great and makes a lot of things easy. Yet there's still times when a friendly word and a genuine smile is needed to create an exceptional experience.

Here are five ways you can make sure that happens on your watch.

Start with Vision

Unite your team with a shared definition of outstanding customer service, called a customer service vision.

The vision should focus the team on people, not transactions.

Shake Shack was one of the customer-focused companies profiled in The Service Culture Handbook. The company's customer service vision is Stand for Something Good.

You can see this vision in action when you visit a Shake Shack. Employees are smiling, engaging, and helpful. Their humanity is contagious. Even at a crowded New York City location, you somehow find yourself enjoying other people.

 

Create Connections

Interesting things happen when service providers and customers see each other on a human level.

In restaurants, one study revealed that satisfaction increased 17.3 percent when customers and cooks were able to see each other. 

One of my favorite restaurants is Glen Ellen Star in the Sonoma Valley wine region. Here, you can sit at the chef's counter and have a conversation with the chef while you eat. Its website has a great video of this in action.

Find ways to help people who don't normally interact with customers make real connections. 

One exercise Clio used to develop its award-winning culture was a "Know Your Customer" campaign, where each person in the company interviewed at least one customer. The idea was help employees do their jobs with more empathy.

 

Give People Time

Time pressure often prevents human-to-human connections.

Employees feel the need to rush through interactions to get to the next person in line. People instinctively struggle to maintain a warm and friendly demeanor when they are focused on speed.

Increased staffing is one solution. Another way is to focus employees on first contact resolution. While counterintuitive when we're pressed for time, slowing things down can actually prevent additional contacts which frees up more time in the future.

 

Use Connecting Techniques

Help your employees develop specific skills to create human connections.

One of my favorites is the 10 and 5 Rule. This is used in retail, hospitality, and other settings where you have face-to-face customer interactions.

Employees use this technique by giving a non-verbal greeting to anyone within 10 feet. This can be a nod, a wave, or a smile. Give people a verbal greeting when they're within 5 feet.

Another option is the Five Question Technique. Employees think of five questions they can potentially ask customers that break the ice and uncover an additional need to serve. At least one of those questions will likely be useful in nearly any situation.

 

Create Human Procedures

Whenever I call for customer service, I like to introduce myself and greet the other person by name.

This often breaks the ice and creates a warmer interaction.

Some customer service reps must follow procedures that discourage them from doing this. They must follow a script that requires them to ask for an account number or some other information.

These procedures are typically created for efficiency. This can backfire if the customer bristles at the lack of warmth. Studies show that people are less open to ideas when they're angry, which means the interaction can take longer than it would if the employee was able to develop rapport with the customer.

 

Want to Practice?

These certainly aren't the only five ways to make customer service more human.

You can practice your human-to-human skills by making this a two-way conversation and leaving a comment or dropping me a line. Let me know how you humanize your service!

New Report Reveals Big Challenges From IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is changing our lives.

IoT refers to everyday devices connected to the internet. Our appliances, door locks, thermostats, vehicles, and many other items are suddenly "smart." For example, my wife and I enjoy watching out of town games streaming through the internet thanks to an app on our television. 

Only now we ran into trouble.

We couldn't get the game to play on our smart TV. There was no in-application support. An internet search proved fruitless. This prompted a call to support, but the agent had very little information.

The support rep ultimately wasn't able to fix the issue.

This isn't an isolated case according to the Next Generation Service report from the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) and Oracle. A survey of 354 contact center leaders revealed companies are struggling to keep up with IoT support. 

Here are three of the biggest challenges.

Good Data is Hard to Find

A recent IBM Watson commercial depicted an elevator technician arriving to fix an elevator. The elevator wasn't broken, but Watson's sensors indicated the elevator would malfunction in two days. The technician was automatically dispatched as a pre-emptive measure.

Self-diagnosing problems like this relies on the device sharing relevant data. This is a struggle:

47 percent of contact centers are unable to use data from connected devices.

One reason the agent struggled to help my wife and I fix our smart TV app was she couldn't access any diagnostic data. She had to guess at the problem using her limited experience and training.

Arming agents with more data is an obvious step towards better support. It's much easier to solve an issue if you can see what's causing it.

 

Agent Training is Changing

Supporting IoT requires new knowledge, skills, and abilities.

67 percent of contact centers have to train differently to support IoT.

Joseph Kolchinsky knows these challenges first-hand. He's the Founder and CEO of OneVision Resources, a company IoT device manufacturers and installers rely upon to provide support to their customers.

"There are two incredibly difficult components to supporting IoT, especially in the home environment. The first is that when technology fails it usually affects some time-sensitive life moment—family movie night is ruined when Netflix doesn't work, or the kids can't do homework when the internet is down—which means that the first 15 minutes of any tech support issue is really about providing human support with a listening ear and empathetic approach. The second is the broad and interconnected nature of IoT—when a symptom appears on your Apple TV, the issue could be any number of unrelated problems with your ISP, credit card, the streaming provider, or even the HDMI connection with your TV—this requires broad training across many technologies."

Let's go back to the support agent who tried to help my wife and I watch the game. She wasn't empathetic, so our frustration about not watching the game remained. The agent also lacked training and information to sort out whether the problem was with the app or our TV.

Customer-focused contact centers are training agents to listen with empathy and solve issues holistically. These centers are also agile enough to quickly update training as technology rapidly changes.

 

Complexity is Increasing

IoT devices are making support more difficult.

37 percent of contact centers have seen live agent contacts become more complex.

This follows a general trend in support. As noted in this post, customers increasingly solve simple issues on their own. When they contact a live agent, it's usually because issue is too complex for routine self-service.

Let's go back to the agent who tried to help my wife and I watch the game. She clearly lacked the skills to solve our issue, which created a frustrating encounter for everyone involved.

Smart contact center leaders are changing the profile of their support agents. Kolchinsky emphasizes hiring the right people and then putting them in a position to succeed.

"Our solution to this is to hire creative, take-control individuals who genuinely enjoy helping people, removing the burden of having to follow scripts, and giving them the freedom to create a positive support experience in their own way."

You can download the report from the ICMI website to learn more about the future of IoT support.

Avoid Angry Customers with The No Fault Technique

A subscriber recently sent me the transcript from a chat session she had with a customer.

Her customer had gotten angry and ended the session abruptly. He then complained in a survey about the service he had received. 

The subscriber asked me, "What did I do wrong?"

The gist of the chat session is the customer wrote his payment wasn't going through. The customer service representative responded by saying that, based on the error message the customer received, the most likely causes were an incorrect debit card number, insufficient funds, or a bank error.

I have no reason to doubt these responses were technically correct. It was the delivery that likely angered the customer.

In my reply to this subscriber, I commended her for reaching out to me. Not enough people make an effort to continuously improve.

Then I suggested she try the No Fault Technique.

It's helpful to start by understanding why the customer got angry and then explore how the No Fault Technique can help in the future.

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Why The Customer Got Angry

Let's take a moment to understand why my subscriber's original, fact-based response likely didn't go over so well.

It might help to imagine yourself as her customer. Picture a website with an online payment screen. You enter your payment information, but receive an error message. 

How would that feel?

Most of us would feel a little anxious and frustrated. This experience engages part of our brain responsible for emotions, called the Limbic System. It's one of the three parts of the Triune Brain, with the other two being the primitive brain, which controls basic functions such as breathing, and the neocortex, which handles rational thinking.

The danger is the Limbic System can limit our rational thinking when it gets riled up.

Now, imagine contacting customer support via chat and the support rep tells you the problem is on your end. You either typed in the wrong debit card, you don't have enough money, or your bank made a mistake.

Now, how would you feel? 

It's very likely our fired up limbic system gets defensive and really shuts down logical thinking. It doesn't matter that the support rep's response was entirely rational and accurate. From the customer's perspective, it feels like blame. 

 

The No Fault Technique

Blame can really send a customer over the edge. It's a good idea to side-step a fiery limbic system by avoiding blame as much as possible.

The No Fault Technique is a way to do this by steering the conversation away from blame to focus on solutions instead. 

Lisa Dezoete, an Accounting Administrator at Truckstop.com, often has to contact customers to collect payments for unpaid accounts. Here's how she uses the No Fault Technique.

"I start all calls off with a cheery voice, emphasizing it was 'probably an error' so they don’t feel embarrassed their payment did not go through."

Dezoete then tries to work with her customers to find a solution, such as giving an extension when needed or canceling an unwanted account. Her goal is to disarm the customer's emotional defenses by avoiding blame. 

One way to practice this technique is to use it in small situations where the stakes are low. For example, if someone sends an email but forgets the attachment, you could write, "The attachment didn't come through. Will you please resend?"

Let's apply the No Fault Technique to the payment processing error the subscriber wrote to me about. Here's how that conversation might look:

CSR: Let's try a few things to see if we can solve this!

  1. Try re-entering your debit card number, expiration date, and security code. Make sure the billing address is also correct. 

  2. Double-check the account linked to your debit card to make sure there are sufficient funds.

Customer: My card information is correct and I have enough money in my account.

CSR: Ok, here's another possibility. Some banks set up special fraud protection rules that prevent certain online purchases. If this happens, a quick phone call to your bank will allow the charge to go through.

If that still doesn't work, it may be easiest to try another debit card. We also accept credit cards and PayPal. 

Notice the root causes are still the same. The customer entered information incorrectly, lacked sufficient funds in his account, or his bank prevented the charge for some other reason.

The difference here is they've been reframed as suggested action steps, which shifts the focus away from blame.

The No Fault Technique won't work in every situation and customers may still get upset. But it will give you a better chance at finding a resolution!