Is there such thing as the "United Airlines Effect"?

Just over a year ago, United Airlines and Continental Airlines announced they were merging. At the time, I predicted that the combined company would get bigger, ruder, and less efficient. 

The American Customer Satisfaction Index has just released their latest airline passenger satisfaction index and it appears my ruder prediction is coming true. The index is still tracking United and Continental as individual airlines, so you can see an interesting trend. I call it the "United Airlines Effect" where you take something bad (United Airlines customer service) and merge it with something mediocre (Continental Airlines customer service) and end up with something bad.

I've thrown in industry service leader Southwest Airlines for the sake of comparison.

Source: The American Customer Satisfaction Index

You can see that United Airlines hit rock bottom in 2009. Service at both United and Continental went up in the 2010 index, which was released just after the merger was announced. Since the merger, service at United Airlines has risen slightly while the service rating for Continental Airlines has tanked. The "United Airlines Effect" appears to be real.

Some of my friends and colleagues regularly fly both United and Continental. Some have even reported a few instances of unusually good service when flying United. Is there a newly discovered service spirit within United? Are they motivated by a desire to prove themselves during the merger? Or, is service at both airlines simply heading towards a mid-point that reflects their newly combined operations?

Whatever it is, I'll stick with Southwest Airlines whenever I can.

Frequent software updates = poor customer experience

It's getting harder and harder to imagine a world without all the cool apps and software programs that help run our daily lives. At the same time, I wonder if software companies are paying attention to the frustrating consumer experience of the app update?

Here's an example.

I sat down for a quick lunch the other day and fired up my iPad to read the Wall Street Journal. The current edition didn't open. Apparently, I needed to update the Wall Street Journal app on my iPad before I could read the paper. Didn't I just do that a few weeks ago?

Apple's App Store required me to login and then acknowledge an updated user agreement before continuing. I like to read what I sign so I know what I'm getting into, but I noticed the agreement on the screen said "Page 1 of 41".

Sheesh - 41 pages? Really? Call off the lawyers, Apple. It's not like I'm buying a house or setting up ponzi scheme. I just want to download an update for an app.

I just clicked "Agree". Hopefully, there wasn't a murder confession or a promise to pay Apple $1 million buried in that voluminous user agreement. 

Finally, the Wall Street Journal app started to update. Slowly. It finished up just as I ate the last bite of my lunch.

Here's what I wish software companies like Apple would consider.

• It's aggravating when you can't use your software immediately because of a required update.
• The amount of legalese in these user agreements is ridiculous. Seriously, do your lawyers get paid by the word? Trim it down and make them simple.
• The annoyance factor has exponentially multiplied as more and more companies launch frequent updates with horrendously long user agreements. 

Ignoring little red flags is a big red flag

Someone who is passionate about customer service should always be on the lookout for red flags in their organization. Here’s a red flag from a hotel that I recently stayed in:

This room service basket sat in the hall for two days.

Specifically, this is a room service basket that sat in the hallway for two days. It was a little surprising that it sat there for that long, but it didn’t do a lot to diminish the quality of my stay. 

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was one of many small signs of poor service. A front desk agent breached etiquette by verbally announcing my room number when she checked me in. The bellman passed me in the hall several times without making eye contact or saying hello. The housekeeper made up my bed with a duvet that had a stain on it.

In the big picture, all of these red flags combined told me the hotel's staff wasn't passionate about service. And to think, I probably wouldn't have thought about all of this if I didn't have to pass by that basket everytime I left my hotel room.

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.