How to Get Promoted into Customer Service Leadership

Getting your first shot at a leadership position can be tough.

I regularly get questions from Customer Service Tip of the Week subscribers about getting promoted. Some are angling for an internal promotion. Others are looking for a role in a new company.

My job once involved helping people advance in their careers, so saw first-hand what works and what doesn’t. I also reached out to other customer service leaders for some additional perspective.

Here are the top three things that can help you earn that promotion.

A boss shaking hands with a newly promoted employee.

Step 1: Be a role model

You have to demonstrate the ability to deliver exceptional customer service if you want to become a customer service leader.

Not just good, really good. On-brand, front page of the company website good. 

Being a role model involves demonstrating the right way to do things while earning the respect of your peers. Customer service leaders tell me this is a big factor when considering someone for promotion.

Stephanie, a hotel general manager, asks aspiring leaders, "Are you well respected among your peers since you will become their leader?" This is an important consideration because getting a promotion frequently means your coworkers are now your subordinates.

Murphy, a support department supervisor, looks for "Someone who peers gravitate to naturally as a resource." This suggests that coworkers already view you as a leader.

Nate, a customer experience director, echoed this sentiment. Nate told me that he recently promoted a frontline employee. "The one quality that stood above all others was his ability to motivate and inspire his peers."

An easy way to build your skills is to subscribe to the Customer Service Tip of the Week. It’s one tip, via email, once per week. It’s rated one of the best customer service training programs in the world, even though it’s totally free.

You can subscribe here.

If you have access to LinkedIn Learning, I recommend taking the Innovative Customer Service Techniques course. Here’s a quick preview:


Step 2: Do a skills gap analysis

Look at the skills required for the job you want and compare them to the skills you already have. The difference between the two is your skill gap.

This analysis will help you identify skills you'll need to develop to be a strong candidate for the new position. Be honest in your assessment. The standard should be, "Can I prove I have this skill to an interviewer?"

Michael Pace, a customer service consultant, shared this advice on his blog:

"Find out what are the technical skills your manager does today. Offer to help them next time they need to accomplish a like task. Create a personal development action plan. If you are promoted, you may need to use this skill on day 1."

Many customer service professionals have used training videos on LinkedIn Learning to help develop their skills. For example, there's an entire series of courses devoted to becoming a customer service manager.

LinkedIn also has a great career explorer tool that allows you to search for new jobs with the skills you already have. It can also help you identify additional skills to build.

One word of caution here.

Any training you do should be used immediately. That's because training is a use it or lose it proposition. If you take a class, but don't put the content to work, you'll quickly forget what you've learned.

Step 3: Add value

Many employees make the mistake of asking for a promotion because they think they’ve put in their time.

People get promoted because the hiring manager thinks you can add value. A leadership position is not a prize to be won through years of service. It's something that's earned.

Here’s the easiest way I know how to do this:

  1. Identify your company’s (and boss’s) top priorities.

  2. Actively work to help your company and your boss succeed.

Sallie, a customer operations director, looks for people who are "Humble, hungry, and smart." These are people who demonstrate a passion for leadership, and can find ways to make things better.

Murphy described the ideal candidate as someone who "raises solutions to problems" as opposed to just identifying problems. 

It’s a lot easier to get promoted if you make your boss look good.

Conclusion

These three steps will make it easier to get promoted, but there’s one more thing you should do: ask.

  • Tell your boss, HR rep, or a mentor about your ambitions.

  • Ask for their advice on how to get promoted.

People might assume you’re happy staying where you are if you never ask.

I'm rooting for you to land that big promotion, but I also want to know what works for you. Please drop me a line if you follow any of this advice.

And if you do get promoted, here's my advice for new customer service leaders.

How to Save Money By Observing Employees and Customers

In 2014, activist investor Starboard Value identified a cost savings opportunity of $216 million at Darden Restaurants. The restaurant operator owns such iconic brands as The Capital Grille, Yard House, and Olive Garden. Starboard's management felt Darden was underperforming. 

One of the more interesting conclusions in Starboard's analysis was that Olive Garden wasted $5 million annually on breadsticks.

Olive Garden is famous for giving customers free, unlimited breadsticks. It had a procedure to keep the breadsticks fresh, since they taste best within the first seven minutes of being served. Servers were supposed to bring one breadstick per customer, plus one additional breadstick per table. Customers could always request more.

What Starboard discovered was servers did not follow the procedure 57 percent of the time. They would instead give guests a large basket of breadsticks.

This resulted in a few problems. Breadsticks were wasted. Guests became full on breadsticks, so they bought less food. And servers had less guest contact since they needed to refill breadsticks less often.

All of this came from simple observation. Here's how you can save money and improve service by observing your employees and customers.

Image courtesy of Olive Garden

Image courtesy of Olive Garden

Observing Employees

One of the best ways to fix a problem is to first verify existing procedures are followed. 

Starboard's solution to the $5 million breadstick problem at Olive Garden was to get employees to follow the current procedure more consistently.

A contact center leader I know reduced calls directed to a more expensive outsourcer by 50 percent. He did this by spending time with his employees and observing that many were not using the phone system properly. Agents would inadvertently mark themselves as unavailable to take calls, which caused calls the agent otherwise could have handled to get routed to the outsourcer.

Sometimes, employees are following the existing procedure, but that procedure is not sufficient to solve the problem. Observing your employees can still reveal solutions.

I once worked with a contact center that responded to customer questions about the company's products and tried to convert those inquiries into sales orders. A short time spent observing employees revealed that many would rush through calls when there was a large queue of customers waiting on hold.

The problem was the contact center's schedule didn't match call volume. When the schedule was re-aligned to better match demand (without adding staff), the team improved its sales closing rate by 36 percent.

If you want to save money and improve service, invest some time in observing your employees.

Observing Customers

You can often improve customer service and reduce waste by observing your customers.

I first learned this lesson when I worked in a retail clothing store in high school. My manager explained that paying attention to every customer yielded two benefits. The first was customers were likely to buy more if I was there to help them. The second benefit was being observant reduced theft.

One day, a coworker wandered away from her department and left it unstaffed. Within just a few minutes, a team of shoplifters stole approximately $5,000 worth of clothing.

Restaurants like Olive Garden can save money by observing what customers eat, and don't eat.

My wife, Sally, and I recently saw an example while dining out. Sally ordered a taco plate that came with two heaping scoops of guacamole. She ate about 25 percent of the guacamole, meaning the rest of it went to waste. A quick look around the restaurant revealed Sally wasn't the only one who left a mountain of guacamole behind on their plate.

An observant restaurant manager would notice the large number of plates coming back to the kitchen with a mound of guacamole still left. Guacamole is expensive, so the restaurant could easily save money by serving less and bringing more to the occasional customer who requests it.

Here's another simple example.

The next time you visit Starbucks or another coffee shop or fast food location at a busy time, observe how customers react when they enter and see the line. People entering the store will turn around and walk out when the line gets to a certain length, costing the company revenue.

Take Action

There are aspects of the customer and employee experience you probably won't capture in a survey. That's why it's important to observe and listen.

Here's a summary of what to look for:

  • Verify employees are following procedures. 

  • If employees are not following procedures, find out why.

  • Look for obvious obstacles that get in the way of service.

  • Watch customers to see how they naturally behave.

  • Investigate when you see signs of waste.

Which should come first, leadership or technical skills?

Note: This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.

This question came up during a recent conversation with senior training leaders. If you are developing a leader, should you first focus on growing their leadership or their technical skills? 

It's also a challenge that I often hear from Customer Service Tip of the Week subscribers, many of whom are customer service leaders, both experienced and aspiring.

The answer is crystal clear, and it's not even close.

Group of professionals attending a leadership development workshop.

But first, let me share a little about my background and how I've come to see firsthand what works and what doesn't. 

I was the Director of Training and Development for a mid-sized company with 4,200 employees prior to starting my own business. The biggest part of my role was preparing supervisors and managers for promotion, and helping to guide them once they got there. 

Working with hundreds of leaders helped me see what enabled people to be successful in leadership positions.

Today, I'm obsessed with service cultures. The leaders I interviewed and researched for my book, The Service Culture Handbook, came from many industries and backgrounds, but they also had a lot in common in terms of their skillsets.

So back to the question. Should you focus on leadership or technical skills first?

The hands-down answer is technical skills. The answer may surprise you, but I've learned there's good reason why technical skills must come first when developing a leader.

Think of technical skills such as how to run payroll, write a schedule, or evaluate performance as the machine that runs the business. Leadership skills such as building trust, inspiring employees, and giving feedback are the oil that lubricates the machine and helps it run smoothly. There's no question that the machine will run much better with oil (i.e. good leadership), but without a machine you have no business.

Here are some practical examples.

If I had to choose between teaching a manager to run payroll or build trust, I'd first focus on payroll. Employees come to work to get paid (at least in part), and nothing erodes trust faster than a paycheck that's missing or short. 

Things do occasionally go wrong or questions arise when it comes to payroll, which is when building trust is critical for leaders. Knowing technical procedures to resolve those issues provides important context for leaders to develop their trust-building skills.

Vision is another example. There's the technical component, which is actually writing a customer service vision. There's also a leadership component, which is communicating the vision and inspiring employees to follow it. 

There's nothing to inspire people if you don't have the technical know-how to write a good vision in the first place.

The vision writing process I use with my clients includes seeking input and buy-in from employees, which naturally combines both technical and leadership elements. It's the vision creation process itself that provides critical context for leaders to develop and exercise their leadership skills.

Learning of any kind happens best when there's context. When you give leaders technical skills, they establish a very important context to develop their abilities as leaders.

Without those skills, there's no context for leaders to apply any leadership skills they try to learn.

Why Enthusiasm is Worthless and Commitment is Everything

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Okay, excuse the clickbait title.

I imagine some readers are indignant. Enthusiastically indignant, if you will. "What do you mean enthusiasm is worthless?!"

By itself, without commitment, enthusiasm often is.

Here's a story. A training professional, let's call her Susan, attended a conference where Keith Ferazzi was the keynote speaker. His message was that our success in life comes from the people we know, so we should work to build our networks.

Susan was so motivated by Ferazzi's message that she bought his book, Never Eat Alone. She eagerly started reading it while eating in the airport restaurant on her way home from the conference. Alone.

A woman sits in a restaurant, eating alone while reading a book called “Never Eat Alone.”

The Distinction Between Enthusiasm and Commitment

Susan was clearly enthusiastic about the message, but she wasn't committed.

What you can't see in the picture is there were several other people in the restaurant who had clearly just come from the same conference. They each had the same conference tote bag at their feet that Susan had.

You can probably imagine what commitment looks like in this situation. Susan would boldly find at least one other dining companion and strike up a conversation about the conference, Ferazzi's message, or the book itself. 

Enthusiasm is the feeling you project. Commitment is what you actually do. We applaud enthusiasm with more enthusiasm, but commitment is harder.

Why Culture Needs Commitment

I wrote The Service Culture Handbook to help customer service leaders get their employees obsessed with service. An entire chapter is devoted to commitment.

One of the unique features in the book is I included my phone number and email address. I invite readers to call, text, or email with their questions and I've had many terrific conversations.

Commitment is by far the biggest challenge I hear.

One service leader, we'll call him Eric, called me to ask for help. There had been some complaints about his company’s service quality and now Eric's boss, the company's CEO, demanded swift action. Eric wanted to know how soon I could fly out and train his team.

We talked a bit, and I asked him if his company had a customer service vision. This is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page. I explained that Eric should have one in place before doing any training.

Eric had been responding to complaints by telling employees what not to do, but in my opinion they needed a vision to follow so they all understood what they should be doing instead. That way, any training would be based on the vision rather than a generic set of tips and tricks that wouldn’t fully address the root causes of poor service.

I even offered to help Eric create the vision for his company and then develop training around it.

Eric told me he'd think about everything, re-read my book a bit, and share our conversation with his CEO. A week later, he called again. “Can you come out and train my employees?”

I asked Eric about the vision, but he was impatient. He wanted to put the vision on the back burner and have me do some initial training. What Eric was really doing was trying to pass responsibility on to me for “fixing his people.” I gently reminded him about the importance of giving employees clear direction, and basing the training on that vision.

He seemed to understand and told me he would think about it some more.

Two months passed and I hadn't heard anything, so I sent Eric a follow-up email. He replied and wrote that nothing had been done anything yet, but he would soon start working on a customer service vision for the company.

Think about Eric as a leader. Two months ago, poor service quality was an emergency, but that was enthusiasm talking. When it came time to do the real heavy lifting, a lack of commitment stalled any progress.

What a Commitment to Service Culture Looks Like

Contrast Eric's story with this one from Tim Chan.

He emailed to tell me he worked for a grocery delivery company in Malaysia, called HappyFresh. Tim told me he was following the steps in The Service Culture Handbook and had just worked with his team to create a customer service vision.

Now Tim wanted some advice on helping employees stay focused so they could continuously improve service. In other words, Tim was eager to remain committed. (You can read more about Tim's story here.)

The process Tim followed can be broken down into three major steps.

  1. Create a customer service vision. Here's my step-by-step guide.

  2. Engage all employees with the vision, using this simple plan.

  3. Align everything around the vision, including training.

The steps are actually very simple concepts. The real challenge is remaining committed to the culture journey over the long haul. Creating a service culture isn't a short-term project. It's a way of doing business.

Lessons from The Overlook: Why You Should Be a Good Guest

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.

The couch has three decorative pillows. They often get moved around to different parts of the house. On a recent inspection, one was in the living room, one was on the patio couch, and one was over the side railing.

The couch has three decorative pillows. They often get moved around to different parts of the house. On a recent inspection, one was in the living room, one was on the patio couch, and one was over the side railing.

One of the chores Sally and I do on our regular maintenance visits to The Overlook is count the dishes and glasses. We make two discoveries nearly every time:

  1. At least one glass is missing.

  2. Some dishes and glasses are dirty.

It's a minor inconvenience for us. We immediately replace any missing or broken dishes or glassware, and we clean any that need cleaning.

I understand that guests won't always clean dishes, report minor damage, or even put things back where they found them. My true worry is how this impacts the next guest.

What some people don't understand when they rent a vacation home is it is genuinely a home, not a hotel. 

Our property manager, Idyllwild Vacation Cabins, does a terrific job maintaining the cabin and keeping it clean and tidy. Yet it's simply not feasible for the cleaning crew to inspect every dish like we do, or to memorize the location of every piece of furniture, blanket, kitchen tool, and knick-knack in the house.

So a dirty dish that's hidden on the bottom of the stack in the cupboard will gross out the next guest who finds it. A broken glass that's unreported will mean the next guest will have to make do with one fewer. The puzzle pieces dumped in a drawer will create extra work for the next guest who wants to work a puzzle.

And the blankets moved to different rooms might stay there, meaning someone else's grandma is going to be cold on a winter night. You don't want grandma to freeze, do you?

If you rent a vacation home, my advice is to treat it like you were staying in a friend's home. Chances are, you'd earnestly want to be a good houseguest.

Here are a few tips that can help you avoid inconveniencing the next guests:

  • Report damage, no matter how small, so it can be fixed for the next guest. 

  • Put everything back where you found it, or as near as you can remember.

  • Clean and dry dishes before you put them away.

  • Take out trash and avoid littering.

  • Follow the check-out instructions precisely. 

We try not to ask too much of our guests. If you break a glass, you won't be charged for the replacement. When you check out, you can even leave the sheets on the bed and the towels in the bathroom. (Many vacation rentals ask you to start a load of laundry.)

The goal is to ensure you have a great time, and our next guests have a great time, too. Here's a positive example from one of our last guests. 

The guests reported that the upstairs toilet would occasionally continue running after it was flushed. This not only wastes water, it creates a hassle for guests who have to jiggle the handle or even take the lid off the tank to get it to stop.

They reported the issue to our property manager, and the toilet was fixed by the time the next guests checked in.

The New Definition of Employee Empowerment

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

The classic definition of employee empowerment never seemed right.

Most customer service leaders I talk to think of it as giving employees a certain degree of autonomy. Here's a quick story that illustrates the challenge with this definition:

A technical support rep, let's call him Scott, was empowered to take as long as necessary to help a customer solve an issue. One particular challenge routinely took Scott about 30 minutes to fix, which was much longer than the five minute average for a typical call.

Scott was empowered in the classical sense—he had the authority to spend an unusually long time on the phone to help his customer.

Where the definition falls short is one of Scott's colleagues, let's call her Janet, figured out how to solve the same issue in just five minutes. This was great news for Janet’s customers, but not so great for Scott’s. It meant Scott wasn’t truly empowered to fix the issue quickly because he didn’t know how.

Here’s a better definition of empowerment and how it can help you improve service quality and employee engagement.

An empowered employee flexing his muscles.

What is employee empowerment?

When researching customer-focused companies for The Service Culture Handbook, I discovered that authority is just one aspect of empowerment. A fully empowered employee is able to do their job well. Here's the full definition in a customer service context:

Employee Empowerment is a process of enabling employees to deliver outstanding service to their customers.

Customer-centric companies combine three elements to empower, or enable their employees:

  1. Resources

  2. Procedures

  3. Authority

Resources refer to the materials, tools, and equipment necessary to serve customers. For Scott, the technical support rep, this meant creating a knowledge base where he could quickly access solutions to common challenges.

Procedures refer to the best-known way to get things done. It's incredibly inefficient for Scott to take 30 minutes to solve a problem that Janet knows how to solve in 5; Scott would be more empowered if he knew about Janet's solution.

Authority is still that classic definition of autonomy. There are times when the standard procedure just doesn't make sense, and employees need a bit of leeway to do what's right. So Scott could still spend 30 minutes on the phone with a customer, if that was necessary for a new or tricky issue.

Why is employee empowerment important?

Empowering employees benefits customers, employees, and managers. Customers are happy because they get faster, higher quality service. Employees are happy because they feel they can truly make a difference with the people they serve. Managers are also happy because they spend less time doing tasks that empowered employees can do themselves.

Here's a simple example from a movie theater:

A mom with a young child placed an order at the snack bar. The mom handed a hot dog to her child, who promptly dropped the hot dog on the floor. It was a frustrating moment for the mom, but the movie theater employee quickly remedied the situation by giving the mom a new hot dog. He did it instantly without asking his manager for permission.

Think about the impact this small gesture made:

  • The mom was relieved to avoid a potentially frustrating and embarrassing situation.

  • The employee was able to quickly fix the problem.

  • The manager didn’t need to stop whatever she was doing to intervene.

There was also another benefit. Other customers who witnessed the incident saw how helpful the employee was. This primed customers to think of their own experience more positively.

What are the risks to empowering employees?

Empowering employees must be done carefully, because there are definitely some risks involved. The most common examples cited by customer service leaders include:

  • Service will be inconsistent if each employee does things their own way.

  • Employees might cost the company money by giving away too much.

  • Customers might take advantage of overly generous empowerment policies.

The real cost of these risks is typically overblown.

Several years ago, a cable company called Bright House Networks instituted a new empowerment policy. (The company has since been acquired by Charter Communications.)

Employees were allowed to issue account credits up to $1,000 without getting a manager’s approval. There were specific guidelines put in place to help employees make good decisions, but the decision was their’s to make. Bright House Network did put in one safeguard: any credit issued for more than $250 was audited to ensure employees were making smart choices.

In the first six months after the policy was implemented, management found zero inappropriate credits. In other words, employees were using good judgment!

How do you empower employees?

The starting point to empower your own employees is to look for areas where they are not able to make customers happy, even if they are doing their jobs correctly:

  1. Start by identifying your top customer complaints.

  2. Identify any complaint an employee is unable to resolve.

  3. Investigate what resources, procedures, or authority is required.

You can find more detailed instructions for empowering your employees in this post.

New Report: What Customers Value Most in Their Experience

Customer service employees may be more important than ever.

A 2018 report from the consulting firm PwC surveyed 15,000 customers from 12 countries, including 4,000 from the U.S, to identify the qualities that customers value most in their experience. The results clearly indicate that having friendly, helpful employees available is critical—even as service interactions are increasingly automated.

There are major implications here as 43 percent of customers said they would pay a premium for a better experience. 

You can find proof of this in many places. Coffee is cheap, yet coffee shops are packed with customers willing to pay a premium each weekday morning. Airlines now bring in an estimated $47.2 billion in fees annually for upgrades such as extra legroom or earlier boarding. And movie theaters everywhere are upping prices in exchange for reclining seats that can be reserved in advance.

Here are some insights than can help you leverage your customer service team to get an edge on the competition. You can also read the full report here.

A smiling retail associate helps a customer in a clothing store.

Top Experience Drivers

There's a clear cluster of customer experience drivers that customers feel are worth paying a premium for:

Image source: PwC

Image source: PwC

The top five are:

  1. Efficiency

  2. Convenience

  3. Friendly Service

  4. Knowledgeable Service

  5. Easy Payment

Notice these all seem pretty basic. There's nothing about the latest technology, hyper-personalization, or even socially-consciousness branding in the top five. Customers are telling us they value companies that are easy and enjoyable to do business with.

Better Access to Humans Is Needed

Despite the rise of automation and self-service, customers still crave a human connection:

  • 71 percent said employees have a significant impact on their experience.

  • 59 percent feel companies have lost touch with the human element.

  • 71 percent of Americans would rather interact with a human than a chatbot.

One challenge is it's often difficult to connect with a live person, as anyone who has found themselves repeatedly yelling "Human! Human!" into a phone can attest to. Self-service is often welcome, but it's a best practice to make a live person easily accessible.

Service Quality Trumps Advertising

In the U.S., 65 percent of survey respondents said their experience was more important than advertising when it comes to influencing their purchasing decision.

Three of the top four experience elements that send customers to the competition are directly related to interactions with employees:

  1. Bad employee attitudes

  2. Unfriendly service

  3. Untrusted company

  4. Unknowledgeable employees

Keep in mind your customers are increasingly likely to go online and rate your company's service—good or bad. Customer-centric businesses are able to leverage positive reputations on rating platforms such as Google My Business to drive even more customers to their doors.

Bonus Insight: Physical Locations Are Rising in Popularity

A separate PwC survey found a 22 percent increase from 2014 to 2018 in the percentage of customers who shop in physical stores at least weekly for items other than groceries. 

Online retailers such as Amazon, Bonobos, and Warby Parker have successfully opened brick and mortar locations in recent years to capitalize on this trend. CapitalOne is adding coffee shops to its bank branches. And this may be anecdotal, but that line at Costco doesn't seem to be getting any shorter!

Once again, experience is key.

I recently did a comparison of three drugstore chains near my home. The stores were all on different corners of the same intersection, carried many of the same products, and had similar prices.

Yet the experience at CVS was significantly better. Friendly employees were more readily available and visible signage along with an intuitive store layout made items easier to find. 

Take Action

Small details can make all the difference in a crowded market. 

This makes it critical to capture and analyze customer feedback. Customer-focused companies relentlessly identify and resolve pain points that aggravate customers. You can use this resource page to find help with your feedback program.

We also need our employees to create positive connections with customers. I know many customers service leaders who are struggling with consistency in this area, however, there are several solutions within easy reach:

How to Make Vision Writing Your Next Team Building Exercise

Team building seems to be a hot topic right now.

I've heard from quite a few Customer Service Tip of the Week subscribers lately who are trying to create team cohesion and motivate a group of employees. They contact me to ask if I know of any good exercises or resources.

There's another group of subscribers who have also contacted me. They've heard me talking non-stop about the importance of having a customer service vision, and they're finally ready to create one. The big question is, where should they start?

My answer to both groups is the same. The ultimate customer service team building exercise is writing a customer service vision.

Facilitator leading a team building meeting.

Why Separate Initiatives Are Doomed to Fail

Many years ago, I was asked to facilitate a half-day customer service workshop to help build team cohesion. There were several leaders who were supposed to participate, but they all found various reasons not to be there. 

It still seemed like the class had gone well, until two employees approached me afterwards. Both were visibly upset and one was in tears. 

They told me they appreciated the class, but didn't believe it would change anything. It was their managers that were the problem. The organization's leaders didn't provide clear direction and often made decisions that were in direct conflict with each other. 

It was a tough conversation because I tried to be supportive, but I couldn't offer any real solutions. The people who could, the organization's leaders, had chosen not to be there.

The experience reminded me that a cohesive team is a group of people working together towards the same goal. A half-day workshop, a ropes course, or a motivational speaker might instill a temporary shot of camaraderie, but it won't fix a fundamental lack of shared vision.

And a vision can't just be something that's proclaimed by the executive team. 

I've talked to many customer service leaders recently who want to create a vision, but for some reason do not want to involve their employees. The problem with this approach is it's not a shared vision. Employees aren't really given a chance to buy-in.

This may be the top mistake service leaders make.


How Vision Writing Builds Teamwork

Think about high performing teams that you admire. 

Perhaps its a team you have been on, or one you work with. It might be a well-known company with a strong service culture. It could even be your favorite sports team.

The common thread through all of those teams is they have a shared goal that everyone is working towards. A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that gets everyone on the same page, so it's a team-builder by design. 

I've outlined the process I use to help companies and teams create their own unique customer service vision in this step-by-step guide. Here are some highlights that illustrate how it makes for a perfect team building activity.

Step 1: Gather Input. The first step is to gather everyone's input on what the vision should be. This allows everyone on the team to have a voice. In my experience, there are always some clear themes that emerge, which shows the team has more in common than people realize.

Step 2: Write the Vision. I've learned through trial and error that 7-10 people is the optimum group size for writing a customer service vision. Your team may be much larger than this, which is okay. What's important is those 7-10 people are a representative sample of the various roles and levels within the group. The group assembles and writes the vision statement based on the input gathered in step one, so everyone is represented even if they aren’t physically in the room.

Step 3: Socialize the Vision. Once a draft vision statement is written, you want to share it with key influencers who weren't there. The idea is to get their buy-in, or if necessary, make a few minor tweaks. (I've never had to change more than a word or two.) From there, you share the vision with the entire team and begin using it as a basis for ongoing employee engagement.

The end result, if you follow the process, is you have a shared vision that becomes the starting point for all future teamwork. Make sure everything you do is pointed towards that vision, and you'll be continuously reinforcing the team concept.

Are You Stuck?

Here are a few resources to help if you're still stuck after reading this post:

3 Questions That Get to the Heart of Employee Engagement

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Nicky placed the couple's drink order in front of them. He was tending bar in a hotel where most of his guests are travelers, so he asked the classic icebreaker question: "What brings you into town?"

The couple was attending an event the next evening and had flown in the day before.

Nicky started chatting with them and soon learned they had no other plans. He asked a few more questions to learn about their interests and then made some suggestions for things the couple could do during the day. He even pulled out his phone and showed the couple some pictures of his favorite sights.

We’d all like to have an employee like Nicky, who goes beyond the basics and is enthusiastically bought-in to serving customers. An employee who takes pride in their job, and brings a bit of their personality to work.

So how do you do it?

Skip the 12 question surveys, year-long projects, and blue ribbon committees. Here are three questions that will quickly get to the heart of employee engagement.

A smiling hotel bartender pouring drinks.

Employee Engagement Defined

Let's start with a clear definition:

An engaged employee is deliberately contributing to organizational success.

Unpack that a bit and you'll see there are three things that need to happen if you want to engage your employees.

  1. Organizational success needs to be clearly defined.

  2. The employee needs to understand that definition.

  3. The employee needs to know how they can contribute.

Here's an example:

Donna worked in the customer service department for a medical device company. One day, she received a call from a hospital that was trying to locate a specific product for a patient that was scheduled for surgery in two days. Unfortunately, Donna didn't have that product in stock to ship out to the hospital.

Think about the difference between an engaged and disengaged employee in this situation.

A disengaged employee would be entirely transactional. They might be be polite when they say, "Sorry, we're out of stock," but that wouldn't be helpful. 

Donna was engaged. She understood her company defined success by positive patient outcomes, and not getting the right product to the hospital in time wasn't a good outcome. So she went out of her way to look for a solution and eventually found the right product at a competing hospital across town.

Three Questions to Assess Engagement

If you want engaged employees like Nicky or Donna, you'll need everyone to give consistent answers to three questions. These questions can be asked in discussions with individual employees or via open-text questions in a survey:

  1. What is our customer service vision?

  2. What does it mean?

  3. How do you personally contribute?

The results will give you immediate clarity on what you need to do to improve employee engagement.

Question 1: What is our customer service vision? A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding customer service. There's no way you can engage employees if your company (or department or team) hasn't clearly defined success. If you do have a vision, but employees don't consistently know it, your engagement initiative should start with an awareness campaign.

Question 2: What does it mean? Understanding the vision requires more than just memorizing a statement. Employees should be able to describe its meaning in their own words, and those descriptions should be consistent from employee to employee. If not, you'll need to create a plan to help employees better understand the vision.

Question 3: How do you personally contribute? Employees can't make a commitment if they don't know how, so this last question is essential. Every employee should clearly understand how they are contributing to the big picture. Think of it as the "Why?" behind what you ask employees to do. If employees struggle with this question, you'll need to help them connect the dots between their daily work and the vision.

Bonus Tip + Resources

Most employee engagement initiatives are focused on frontline employees. I'd recommend starting by asking your executive team to answer these three questions.

Why?

It's not uncommon for companies to have disagreement at the executive level over what the customer service vision means or how employees' roles are aligned with that vision. You'll need your executives to have a clear picture of engagement if you have any hope of engaging your employees.

Here are a few additional resources:

I recently facilitated this webinar with HDI, sharing five ways to quickly boost engagement. There's some overlap with this post, plus some additional insight.

This post is drawn from The Service Culture Handbook, which is a step-by-step guide to getting your employees obsessed with customer service.