Are your supervisors creating service problems?

"Praise in public, reprimand in private" is a business maxim that almost everyone has heard of. I witnessed a prime example of why this is true while enjoying a light breakfast in a bakery last week.

My morning serenity was shattered by a loud, piercing voice coming from behind the bakery counter. It caught my attention and I looked up to see a woman who appeared to be a supervisor addressing three other employees.

“This is the second ticket mess-up! Ladies, this ticket has been sitting here for five minutes! Please be careful!”

Her words, tone, and demeanor were all unpleasant and all the customers in the bakery were staring as her employees shirked away from her verbal tirade.

My breakfast was suddenly much less enjoyable. 

The obvious point to this story is it is never a good idea to reprimand an employee in public unless someone is in immediate physical danger. However, I’m willing to bet that even the screeching supervisor would know this if you removed her from the heat of the moment.

So, why did she do it anyway?

It's hard to know her specific motivations, but if I owned the bakery I certainly wouldn't want to see this type of behavior from one of my supervisors. 

Business leaders and owners need to do three things to make sure their supervisors are effectively representing the business and not becoming the source of poor customer service.

Assess job fit. People often get promoted because they are really good at their job, but leading others is a completely different skill set. Business leaders need to make sure their supervisors have what it takes to effectively lead other people. If the bakery owner hired a supervisor who doesn't have the make-up to do that job then I blame the bakery owner, not the supervisor.

Reduce pressure. Supervisors are expected to handle pressure, but everybody has their breaking point. When business owners cut costs, they can sometimes leave their supervisors feeling like they are trying to put out a blazing house fire with a squirt bottle. Business leaders need to make sure they provide the resources necessary to get the job done. 

Supervise the supervisor. Supervisors are entrusted with a lot of responsibility, but they are employees too. They need coaching, guidance, and support like everyone else. If the bakery owner is never around to see and correct poor behavior, it’s likely that the supervisor will make a habit of yelling at employees in front of customers.

Co-workers have high expectations for email response times

Update: This study was repeated in April, 2018. The new study includes response time expectations for Twitter and Facebook messages. You can read the latest results here.

Nearly 75% of us expect co-workers to respond to emails within four hours or less, according to a recent survey conducted by Toister Performance Solutions, Inc. Almost 25% of respondents are particularly impatient, saying the expected co-workers to respond to emails within one hour. 

We give businesses a little more time to respond than our co-workers. The majority of survey respondents (63%) indicated they expected business to respond to their emails within one day.

The survey also tried to see if different generations of workers had different expectations for email response times. Expectations across all generations were similar for businesses, but Gen Ys (born 1978 or later) tended to expect faster response times from their co-workers. Nearly 35% of Gen Y respondents said they expected co-workers to respond to their emails within one hour:

The survey also asked how quickly people expected their friends to respond to emails. Here, there was a bit more leeway with more than 90% of the respondents saying 1 day or later.

What are your impressions?

Our expectations for response times clearly have some implications on customer service, both external (emailing businesses) or internal (emailing co-workers). Your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

Why winning awards is good for business

The range of awards businesses can win is pretty expansive, from company awards like “Best Place to Work” to “Customer Service Champion”. As a Chairman of one of these awards committees and a past award winner, I can tell that winning awards can be very good for business.

External Marketing
Awards are great marketing tools. They can add credibility to your sales pitch or just give you something new to share with your customers.

My company has been recognized as a Champion of Learning by the American Society for Training and Development. This award was fairly easy to win since it wasn’t a competition, but rather recognition for supporting Employee Learning Week. Nonetheless, I can accurately tell my clients that Toister Performance Solutions, Inc. is a Champion of Learning. If it comes down to a choice between a Champion and an also-ran, you can bet that clients are going to hire the Champ.

Internal Recognition
Departments and teams within companies often have to work hard to get the resources and executive level support they need to be successful. Awards are a great way to shine the spotlight on what your team is doing and rally the whole company around your initiatives.

I currently chair a committee called PEAK that recognizes companies in the San Diego community for best practices in employee training and development. Many of the past winners have their trophy proudly displayed in their offices so visitors will see that they’ve been recognized for outstanding achievement.

Some of my readers may be interested in applying for the 2011 PEAK Award. You can access more information and an application here.

Benchmarking
Awards are often built around best practices or industry standards. Applying for an award can help an organization discover success stories, identify opportunities for improvement, and motivate the company or team to reach for new levels of performance.

Many awards also provide applicants with feedback, so you gain valuable insight even if your organization doesn’t win. For example, applicants for the 2011 PEAK Award will get pointers from the panel of judges on how to make their employee training initiatives even more effective.

Ready to Apply?
Applying for an award is usually fairly easy. Here are three steps to get you started.

1. Pick a topic or focus area that is important to your business or department. For example, if you want to be a customer service leader then find awards that focus on customer service.
2. Search for relevant awards. A simple internet search will get you started. You may also want to ask colleagues, trade groups, customers, and suppliers for suggestions.
3. Apply!

Survey: how quickly should people respond to email?

Chances are pretty good that you send a lot of emails. Please take a moment to complete a short survey to let us know how quickly you expect to receive a response.

Update on Monday, May 30. The survey is now closed, but you can view the results on my blog.

The final tally will be profiled in my email newsletter, the Monthly TPS Report, which is due out next week. The second question is designed to see if there are different expectations among age groups.

If you don't already receive the Monthly TPS Report, you can sign up to receive the newsletter by clicking here.

Do your employees know how to WOW?

Your employees may be good at customer service, but do they know how to consistently deliver outstanding service? Giving your customers the "WOW" factor takes a lot of practice and skill!

What is the WOW? The short answer is service that makes your customers say, "WOW!" It's memorable, it's positive, and it leads to repeat business and referrals.

There are only three ways I know to deliver WOW-worthy customer service:

• Build relationships to make customers feel special.
• Exceed expectations with extra service.
• Solve problems like a super hero.

Do your employees have the knowledge, skills, and ability to deliver WOW-worthy service all three ways? Here's a short assessment to help you start the conversation:

Building relationships: How do your employees typically interact with customers?

• Outstanding. Employees treat customers like old friends and know them by name.
• Good. Employees are polite and friendly.
• Poor. My employees need to take a smiling class.

Exceed expectations: You have to know what a customer wants if you plan to exceed their expectations on  regular basis. What do your employees do to learn their customers' expectations?

• Outstanding. Employees listen intently with both their hearts and minds.
• Good. Employees generally do a good job of understanding what the customer wants.
• Poor. My employees have too many of their own problems to care about what a customer wants.

Solve problems: Super hero problem-solvers identify the issue, spring into action, and save the day. What do your employees do when they observe a customer with a problem?

1. Outstanding. Employees find a way to leave the customer even happier than before.
2. Good. Employees generally solve the customer's problem.
3. Poor. My employees do whatever they can to avoid blame and responsibility.

OK, so now what? Chances are, there's a little room for improvement. In my next post, I'll share some suggestions on how you can quickly help your employees develop new skills at little or no cost. You can also drop me a line or give me a call at 619-955-7946 if you'd like to brainstorm at no cost and with no strings attached.

Resorting to extorting isn't good service

You can call it what you want, but extortion is extortion. Telling your customer, "that's how our system works" doesn't mean you can charge for additional services in return for fixing what your customer has already paid for.

Last weekend, I experienced an extortion attempt when I called a 1-800 number for customer service. I don't want to name the company in case their goons try to track me down, so let's just say it was a major satellite radio provider.

Here's a short video re-enactment of my customer service experience. (View it here if it doesn't appear on your screen.)

This may sound cliche, but I really don't blame the six employees I spoke to. I blame the system. Specifically, there are four major problems I identified during my ordeal. Hopefully, your company doesn't have any of them but it would be wise to double-check.

Problem #1: Interactive Voice Response
Interactive voice response, or IVR, is that annoying feature that allows you to speak commands or questions rather than pushing buttons on your phone for various options. It's annoying because it rarely works. Nothing tells a customer you hate them like making them deal with an incompetent robot before they get to speak with a real person.

Problem #2: Service silos
If you are a regular reader, you already know how I feel about service silos. No customer wants to interact with an employee who has a bad case of that's-not-my-jobitis. It usually means you get passed along to someone else who may or may not be able to help you. In my case, I had to speak with six different employees before I could get a solution.

Problem #3: Blind transfers
A blind transfer is when a call center agent transfers your call to another department's phone queue rather than directly to another person. This means the person who answers the phone doesn't know what you are calling about and you have to re-explain the problem. Speaking to six different agents means I had to repeat the problem six times. The more you talk about it the more frustrating it becomes.

Problem #4: Extortion
They really did try to extort money from me. I was told by two separate employees that they could fix the problem and restore my traffic updates if I paid for a year of service. I had already paid for a year of satellite radio service in March, so paying for another year two months later seemed ridiculous. The traffic update service is an extra add-on, but I had just paid for that on May 1. That didn't stop this company from trying to tell me the only way to fix my service was to charge me for another year.

Don't worry, my service has been restored. And, I didn't have to spend much time this week dreaming up blog topics. In that sense, I guess I win.

How to quickly find lost time and increase productivity

My wife, Sally, is an efficiency expert. From my perspective, this gives us plenty of exciting things to talk about at the dinner table. One recent conversation focused on why it takes me five times longer than she to pack for a business trip. You might be able to relate if you consistently find yourself running short of time at work or at home.

Explanation #1: We have different natural abilities
Sally has the ability to visualize what she wants to pack before she starts packing. When it comes time to pack her suitcase she simply goes to her closet, grabs the clothes she visualized, and puts them in.

I can't do that. I process information in a highly kinesthetic manner. When packing for a trip, this means I have to pull all sorts of clothes out of my closet and then imagine how and when I might wear them on my trip. I also have to write down the days I'll be gone and what I'll be doing each day so I can pair an outfit with each activity. (Not doing this almost always results in me over packing but still not having enough clothes to wear.)

Sally's ability to visualize gives her a natural ability to pack faster than I can. Natural ability definitely plays a role in our packing productivity.

Explanation #2: Self-imposed distractions
I usually put the TV on in our bedroom to watch while I pack. This seems like a good way to kill the monotony, but Sally correctly points out that it also slows me down. Each time I pause to pay attention to the television I slow down the process just a bit. This can really add up if something interesting like a Laker game is on.

Sally does all her packing without any distractions. Consequently, she focuses all of her attention on the task at hand and finishes much faster.

Conclusions
If you want to do something more efficiently, you should understand which obstacles are natural and which are self-imposed. The self-imposed obstacles are a lot easier to reduce or eliminate. If I want to pack faster the easiest solution is to simply turn off the TV. I still won't be as fast as Sally, but I'll be a lot faster than I am now.

Where did all the time go?
Sometimes these inefficiencies aren't obvious. A good way to spot pockets of inefficiency is to track your time for a week and then look at the results.

I've created a simple time tracking worksheet that you can use. You can download it here or watch the nifty how-to video.

A tornado in St. Louis highlights the human side of service

Last weekend, a tornado in St. Louis reminded me that the people who provide us with customer service every day deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, and caring. Remembering to do that not only makes you a better person, it results in better service.

On Friday, a tornado ripped through Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. The airport suffered millions of dollars in damaged and was closed indefinitely on Friday night as officials assessed the situation. My first thought was, “How are we going to get home?”

My wife, Sally, and I had flown into that airport just a few hours earlier for a weekend visit to St. Louis. Our plan was to catch a St. Louis Cardinals game on Saturday and then fly home Sunday afternoon.  Getting home anytime soon now seemed unlikely to happen. We spent Saturday morning watching the news and weighing our options for getting home to San Diego.

We finally left the hotel to get lunch and head to the game. Sally and I took a moment to remind ourselves that the people serving us that day may be facing far greater problems than our transportation worries. Many people in surrounding communities had their homes destroyed by tornadoes on Friday and as many as 30,000 people were still without power.

See the full story here (please excuse the short advertisement):

Throughout the day, we made a point to ask the service employees we encountered if their homes and families were OK. Everyone we met was personally unaffected, but almost everyone had a family member, friend, or co-worker whose home was damaged by the tornado.

A curious thing happened when we asked people how they were doing. They genuinely appreciated our caring and many took a moment to share a brief story about their experience. Their service also demonstrated caring in return through their attentiveness, friendliness, and willingness to go the extra mile. We had made a human to human connection.

The amazing end to the story is the airport re-opened and we caught our Sunday afternoon flight home as planned. Herculean efforts by employees at Lambert Field to resume operations made it all happen and we are grateful to everyone who made our St. Louis trip a great one.

If you’d like to donate to the tornado relief efforts in St. Louis, please visit www.redcrossstl.org.

What the FAA can teach us about icebergs

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been in the news quite a lot lately. The story reminds us to look out for icebergs in our own organizations.

What are icebergs in business? Icebergs are huge problems where only the tip is visible. Hidden from view is a big, nasty problem that can sink your company.

Background
On March 23, an air traffic controller at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport fell asleep on the job. Two planes subsequently landed without any contact with the control tower. No accidents occurred, but the incident caused a national uproar.

Additional reports of employees sleeping on the job quickly surfaced and the uproar intensified. It became clear that there was a widespread problem with chronic fatigue among controllers working overnight shifts. Since late March, eight employees have been suspended and the head of the Air Traffic Organization has resigned.

This ain't new
FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has been making tough statements in response to this problem.

"None of us in this business can ... tolerate any of this," Babbitt said. "It absolutely has to stop."

Unfortunately, Babbitt is either experiencing extreme denial or has been sleeping on duty himself. The FAA has been tolerating or ignoring the chronic fatigue issue for years. Here are just a few examples:

July, 2001. Two planes nearly collided on a runway in Denver due to an air traffic controller error. The controller had worked three shifts in the past two days.

September, 2001. A plane was cleared to land in Denver on a runway closed for construction. The controller had only slept two hours between shifts.

August, 2006. Another near-collision, this time on a runway in Chicago. The controller had gotten only four hours of sleep during a nine hour break between shifts.

April, 2007. The National Transportation Safety Board sent a letter to the FAA that expressed concern over air traffic controller fatigue and made reference to 80 fatigue-related incidents since 1989.

Icebergs become even more dangerous when managers are unwilling or unable to acknowledge their existence. The longer a problem is allowed to continue the more likely it is to end in disaster.

Searching for icebergs
High performance managers are constantly searching for icebergs in their organizations. Here are three things every manager should do at the first sign of a big, nasty problem.

Step 1: Don’t assume it is isolated. Smart managers should go looking for evidence of similar problems. The FAA treated the sleeping controller at Ronald Reagan Washington National as an isolated incident, but there was already a pattern in place. Over the past few weeks, intense national scrutiny has revealed many more troubling examples of chronic controller fatigue.

Step 2: Check to see if the system is broken. Icebergs are usually the result of systematic failures. Controllers sleeping on the job isn't solely due to a few lazy, unprofessional employees. The evidence clearly indicates the FAA has a widespread problem with air traffic controller scheduling and staffing levels.

Step 3: See the bigger picture. Smart managers understand the strategic implications of fixing the problem and others like it. Changing controller schedules and adding staff may help reduce chronic fatigue, but sleeping on the job isn't the only performance problem dogging air traffic controllers. A recent article in the Washington Post reported a 51% increase in recorded errors by air traffic controllers in 2010. The FAA should take a broader view of the situation and identify ways to improve controllers' overall performance.

Searching for examples of outrageous customers

Would you like to be in a book?

I'm searching for examples of outrageous customer behavior for my forthcoming book, The Unnatural Act of Customer Service. (Check out the whitepaper to get a preview.)

Are you a current or former customer service employee? If you worked as a frontline customer service employee, I want to hear from you.

Please post a comment to this blog to submit your story for consideration. Here's what I'd like to know:

1) First name

2) Your job (server, sales associate, etc.)

3) Type of company (restaurant, hotel, call center, etc.)

4) Short story about an outrageous customer's behavior

A few expectations:
If I publish your story it will be first name only to keep it anonymous. I won't be able to include everyone's stories in my book and some may need to be edited for length and clarity. I'll be sure to email you a draft with any edits before putting it in the book.

If your story does make it into the book I'll also send you a free copy.