Five customer service tips for people with ADHD

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Customer service is hard.

It requires a lot of focus, calm nerves, and the ability to work through multiple distractions. All of that gets a lot harder when you have ADHD.

ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. There are three general types:

• Inattentive

• Hyperactive

• Combined

Many common ADHD symptoms spell danger for someone who works in customer service:

• Lack of focus

• Hyperfocus (this makes it hard to notice your surroundings)

• Poor time management

• Weak impulse control

• Poor emotional regulation

You can read more about ADHD and common symptoms here.

I have combined-type ADHD, which means I naturally struggle with both attention and hyperactivity. This was a huge challenge for me when I was growing up. In grade school, I frequently got in trouble for disrupting the class and was a master procrastinator when it came to homework.

While ADHD is still very present in my life today, I've learned some techniques that have helped me thrive. Here are five tips that work well for me.

Getting outside is one of the best ways to recharge my brain and restore my ability to focus. This is me standing atop Los Pinos Peak on a sunny day.

Tip #1: Create a vision

Nothing helps me focus on the right things better than a vision.

A vision acts as a compass to always point me in the right direction and get me back on course when I start to lose focus. Think of it as your overall intent when serving a customer.

For example, my vision is "Your Service Culture Guide." My clients come to me because they want to develop a customer-focused culture, so I always keep in mind that I'm there to guide them on their journey.

As an individual, you can create your own vision by completing the Thank You Letter Challenge. It's a fun exercise where you imagine a customer was so delighted with your service that they wrote you a thank you letter. The goal is to receive that same feedback from a real customer.

Visions can be even more powerful for teams or entire organizations. Incredible things happen when everyone is focused on the same goal. You can use this step-by-step guide to create a vision for your organization.

Tip #2: Manage Distractions

Consciously reducing and avoiding distractions can be a game-changer.

The world of customer service is full of distractions. Multiple customers vie for your attention. Coworkers constantly interrupt. Our computers flash pop-ups and our phones beep and buzz all day.

This is a huge challenge for anyone, let alone people with ADHD.

Fortunately, many of these distractions can easily be reduced or eliminated. Here are just a few examples of how I do this:

• Reduce Notifications: Turn off unnecessary phone and computer notifications.

• Clear Clutter: Keep a clean workspace to make it easy to find things.

• Get Quiet: Find a quiet space to work on tasks that require concentration.

• Rotate Tasks: Move to different tasks throughout the day to avoid zoning out.

• Take Breaks: Recharge by taking regular breaks.

I asked people on LinkedIn to share their best tips for managing distractions and received some great advice.

Tip #3: Create a System

Customer service professionals need to keep track of a million little details. ADHD brains aren't good at doing that, but you can build a system to do it for you.

David Allen's classic book, Getting Things Done, provides the perfect blueprint for getting organized. Rather than sharing a rigid process, the book contains a set of principles for building a time management system you can trust.

For example, putting all of your reminders in one place, such as your customer relationship management (CRM) software or on your calendar, can reduce the amount of follow-up items that get lost on scribbled notepads, stickie notes on your computer monitor, and countless other places.

I read Getting Things Done over 20 years ago and the impact has been huge. Close friends and family members think I'm naturally organized and don't even know I have ADHD.

Tip #4: Buy Time

My boss often had to remind me to smile when I first started working as a cashier in a clothing store. I'd get so focused on ringing up transactions that the look of concentration on my face inadvertently looked like a scowl.

I was always worried about missing a simple detail, which happens a lot to me if I'm not careful. Eventually, I realized I could avoid mistakes and create better connections with customer by buying just a little time.

As a cashier, this meant trying to build rapport with each customer before starting their transaction. I'd chat a little while I scanned the customer's items and removed the security tag from each one. Then I would slow down and focus while I processed their payment because that was the moment when I needed to get things right.

I was free to engage with the customer once again after the payment was complete.

Try to find those moments in your own work. Identify situations where you need to slow things down and buy some time. Give yourself permission to express your natural creativity at other times.

Today, I support more than 10,000 Customer Service Tip of the Week subscribers on my own. I'm able to do this because it's almost exclusively via email. I can read each message carefully and respond thoughtfully to avoid misunderstandings or repeat messages.

Tip #5: Use Pomodoro

The Pomodoro Technique helps me when I really need to concentrate on an important task. Here's how it works:

1. Pick a task you want to focus on.

2. Set a timer for 25 minutes.

3. Give yourself permission to focus on that task until the timer goes off.

4. Take a short break.

5. Pick a new task.

It's amazing how quickly you can get absorbed in doing work this way!

Resources

People with ADHD can face a lot of challenges at work. Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) has a great overview.

ADHD can be considered a workplace disability. In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires most employers to make reasonable accommodations to help people with disabilities do their jobs.

Consider asking for an accommodation if you've been diagnosed with ADHD and struggle at work. You can learn more from this article.

Finally, I've found ADHD 2.0 to be an invaluable book for learning about ADHD and discovering strategies for to maximize my effectiveness.

Could Distraction Be Costing Your Company Dearly?

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The bank's customer service rep was distracted.

He was responding to emails in between phone calls. The problem was he'd get halfway into an email and then the next call would come in. It took a second for him to shift his focus to the caller. 

At the end of the call, he'd hurry back to the email. He'd skim the email as best as he could and then hurriedly type his response in hopes of finishing it before the next call came in.

One particular email was from a customer inquiring about his loan balance. The rep looked it up and saw the balance was $15,000. In his haste, he left off a zero. 

His email informed the customer that the loan balance was just $1,500. 

Distracted By Design

Customer service reps everywhere are chronically distracted.

They’re balancing multiple priorities. They often work in noisy office environments. The typical contact center rep must juggle five to seven different software programs on two or more computer monitors just to serve a customer. And they’re barraged by messages on email, chat, and even their personal devices in between.

To top it off, many contact center reps work like the bank employee in the story above. They are asked to respond to email or another written channel in between handling phone calls in an effort to eke out every last drop of productivity.

It's thought to be efficient, but it isn't. Customer service reps working in this setup are often less productive and are prone to costly mistakes. For example, the bank ultimately had to honor the erroneous loan balance and write off the $13,500 error.

Here's a demonstration that can help you experience what's happening to distracted employees. The image below contains a number of circles and squares. Try to count the number of each shape as quickly as possible.

Let's try this again with a twist. 

Count the total number of circles and squares by alternating between counting each shape. In other words, count one circle and then count one square. Then count the next circle, count the next square, and so on.

Ready? Count.

How did it go?

Most people take longer to count the shapes and are more prone to making errors. Which is exactly what happens when you ask employees to switch back and forth between tasks all day.

The High Cost of Distraction

Distraction can cost a company far more than the few dollars saved by cramming in some extra work in between calls.

Another customer service leader told me about the cost of distraction at his company the same time I heard about the $13,500 bank error. This one was even worse.

A telecom customer had emailed to ask if he had won a promotional contest. He had not won, so the customer service rep started typing an email to politely tell the customer he didn't win.

But the customer service rep was answering emails in between calls. And the rep was distracted. So the rep's actual email read, "You did win."

There was a kerfuffle. The company tried to claim it was an honest mistake. The customer sued, and the company eventually agreed to a six figure settlement.

You might be tempted to maximize productivity by having your agents juggle multiple assignments all day. Before you do, think about the potential costs:

• Expensive errors caused by distraction.

• Decreased productivity caused by constantly shifting attention.

• Decreased service quality caused by a lack of customer focus.

Take Action With This Experiment

In my book, Getting Service Right, I constantly search for counterintuitive solutions to vexing employee performance challenges. In Chapter Seven, the book explores reasons why employees often fail to pay attention.

Here's one example:

I once worked with a medical device manufacturer that had its customer service reps answer emails in between phone calls. The stakes were pretty high—the company's products were used in life-saving medical procedures.

We ran a simple experiment. Instead of having reps handle phones and email, we divided the reps into two teams. One team handled phones, the other handled email.

The number of reps on each team could easily be changed throughout the day. If phone volume was high, more reps could join the phone queue. When phone volume decreased, a few reps could be re-assigned to email.

This extra focus quickly had a big impact. Both phone and email quality increased because reps were able to give the customer in front of them their full attention.

But counterintuitively, productivity increased in both channels!

You can test this yourself by running the same experiment for a week. Involve your agents—let them know what you're testing. You can even run a test group and keep another group working the old way so you can compare the results.