Move the start and finish line for customer service training

I've spoken to countless managers who have described a similar experience after sending their employees to customer service training. They observe a temporary bump in motivation and performance followed by a gradual settling down back to pre-training service levels. When this happens, the training might make everyone feel good in the short-term, but over the long-run it proves to be a waste of time and money if it doesn't help the team measurably improve their performance.

If you've experienced this challenge, a simple fix might be moving the training program's start and finish line to their proper place.

The Start Line
It's hard to find something if you don't know what you are looking for, or even why you are looking for it. However, this is what happens when employees attend a customer service training class without having done any pre-work or preparation. In the worst scenarios, employees may even regard the training as unnecessary or even a punishment if they don't have an understanding of what new skills they are supposed to learn or how it will help them provide better service.

The solution is to move the start line back a bit to include adequate time for preparation. Employees should be able to answer three basic questions by the time they arrive for the class:

1. What is the training about?
2. How will this class help me do my job?
3. How can I apply what I learn back on the job?

You can read more about the three questions here.

The Finish Line
Learning new skills shouldn't be the end-game for customer service training. The real goal should be learning new skills that can be applied on the job to achieve better results. Unfortunately, too many customer service training initiatives end at the same time the class does. No support, no follow-up, and perhaps no further mention. When this happens, it's no wonder that employee performance quickly returns to pre-training levels.

The real finish line should be when the training program's goals have been achieved. This means building in post-training support and follow-up to help participants master the skills they learned in class and make adjustments as they continue their development. (It also means setting goals - learn more here.)

Workshop Planner
I often use a simple workshop planning tool to make sure the start and finish lines are in their proper place. I meet with project stakeholders and complete the worksheet before starting any training program and use it to help them prepare their employees for a successful class and create an action plan to reinforce learning once the workshop is complete.

 Download the workshop planner

 Download a sample workshop plan

You can also watch this short how-to video:

Why companies need to cure their fee addiction

I recently dined at a restaurant with a few colleagues. Two of us ordered a glass of Red Breast Irish Whiskey after our meal. My friend asked for hers neat while I ordered mine on the rocks. Imagine my shock when I saw the bill:

That’s right, my drink was $1 more after the "rocks upcharge" was added. Charging $1 for ice has to be the dumbest fee I’ve ever seen. (If you’ve seen dumber, PLEASE let me know!)

Customers Hate Fees
The sheer outrageousness of that little fee completely ruined what was an otherwise acceptable dining experience. Just to make sure I’m not being overly sensitive, I did a little homework and discovered other customers hate fees too. Here are a few examples:

• A 2006 study by Bain & Company found that fees were one of the leading causes of customer dissatisfaction (read more in their whitepaper).
• A 2011 study by J.D. Power & Associates found that checked baggage fees decreased customer satisfaction by an average of 8.5 percentage points (here's the story).
• High-profile attempts to raise fees by companies like Bank of America have led to widespread public backlash and customer defections.

Bottom line: Fees can negatively influence customers’ perception of service, especially when the fees are for products or services that used to be free.

Companies Are Addicted
For many companies, the fee addiction is easy to explain. The company faces pressure to increase profitability from investors, the board of directors, or competitors. Charging fees seems like a good way to boost revenue, pass costs along to the customer, or both. The financial motivation associated with a new fee is generally easy to measure. Here are a few examples:

• Checked baggage fees added an estimated $3.36 billion in revenue to U.S. airlines’ bottom line in 2011 (source: MSNBC's Overhead Bin).
• Bank of America hatched their plan to charge customers using debit cards a $5 monthly fee after legislation cost them an estimated $2 billion in revenue (source: LA Times).
• Companies in a wide range of industries, from hotels to ticket brokers, use fees to make the cost of their product or service appear lower than it actually is.

Curing the Addiction
Companies will only reduce or eliminate unfriendly fees when they are convinced doing so will increase profitability. Making that case takes both data and guts.

Gathering the data isn’t always easy. It requires companies to look beyond individual transactions and examine their customers relationships. For example, when an airline charges a passenger $25 to check a bag on a flight, the airline knows it made an extra $25. What it might not know is whether the fee encouraged that passenger to book her next flight on another airline. Companies need to get closer to their customers through surveys, mining their CRM programs, and even face-to-face interactions to analyze whether fees are really a net gain or loss.

One way to add guts to the mix and make executives a bit braver is through a compelling success story. Here are a few examples from companies that resisted the urge to raise fees:

• In the mid-2000s, Charles Schwab reduced or eliminated many fees as part of its well-publicized turnaround that led the brokerage firm to increase profits from $109 million in 2002 to $1.2 billion in 2006 (read more).
• An estimated 650,000 people moved their accounts from Bank of America to a credit union in the fall of 2011 in response to an announced fee increase (source: Credit Union National Association).
• Netflix built a successful company with a business model that eliminated late fees for movie rentals. Of course, they also made two enormous blunders in 2011, but that’s a different story. 

Improve customer service training with learning objectives

A colleague and I were once asked to design a new hire training program for a call center’s customer service representatives. We asked a simple question to start the project that ended up sparking quite a bit of discussion:

“How will we know if a new CSR has been fully trained?”

If you’ve designed or delivered training before, you know this simple question doesn’t always have a simple answer. Typically, the initial responses are vague and subjective, such as “They won’t ask many questions,” or “They’ll have confidence on the phone.” In other cases, impatient stakeholders would rather skip the question altogether.

We finally did come up with a solid answer and the resulting program improved the quality of the client’s new hire performance while cutting training time by 50%. Those were great results, but they wouldn’t have been possible without clear training goals. (Read the short case study here.)

Easy as A - B - C - D

One of my favorite ways to write learning objectives is using the ABCD technique. 

A = Audience

This specifies the people or groups of people you expect to participate in the training.

B = Behavior

What do you want participants to do as a result of the training? Define the behavior in the broadest possible terms, such as aligning it with existing service standards. Example: “provide a correct and timely response to a customer inquiry.”

C = Condition

This describes the situation or circumstances where the behavior is completed. For example, “during in-class simulations” specifies how the behavior will be demonstrated.

D = Degree

This is how well the behavior must be performed to fulfill the objective, such as “five times without error.”

Sample A-B-C-D Learning Objective:

“Customer service representatives will provide a correct and timely response to a customer inquiry during in-class simulations five times without error.”

With an A-B-C-D learning objective, you have a clear objective that provides a clear target for your training. You can then tailor your content and exercises to help participants meet the objective. You also have a clear way of objectively verifying whether participants are fully trained.

Additional Resources

Learning Objectives Worksheet

A-B-C-D Objectives = Faster Training

Clear objectives can help reduce training time by up to 50%! 

Of course, A-B-C-D objectives are just one part of the secret formula. Would you like to know the rest? Please contact me for a free consultation to see if I can help you reduct your training time.

This works great for:

• Training new hires
• Rolling out new initiatives
• Implementing new systems

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Five reasons why ratings are down at Southwest Airlines

The American Customer Service Index released it's annual airline service ratings this week and the results for Southwest Airlines underscore what many travelers know already: the legendary customer service at Southwest is on the decline. The airline relinquished their long-held position at the top to Jet Blue after suffering a 4.9% drop in their satisfaction ratings, although their 77% rating still puts them well ahead of traditional legacy carriers US Airways, Delta, American, and United. (See the results here.)

What's behind the decrease in service quality? Here are my top five reasons:

1. The Merger
The airline's merger with Air-Tran is clearly pulling executives' attention away from other issues like service. While this is normal during an airline merger (see my post on the United-Contintental merger), it's unsettling to see it happening at Southwest. There's a great break down on the challenges Southwest is facing as a result of the Air-Tran merger on the InvestorPlace.com website (see their explanation).

2. Seating
It's getting harder to get a good seat on a Southwest flight. Their open seating system, unaffectionately referred to as the "cattle call," has long been a disadvantage for Southwest Airlines. However, the process is starting to get worse as their are more options for people to pay a fee to get a better spot in line. A-list frequent flyers, Business Select passengers, and people purchasing the EarlyBird check-in option all get on before everyone else who either doesn't fly Southwest often enough or isn't willing to pay an extra fee. A recent J.D. Power survey found that fees for checked baggage leads to significantly lower customer satisfaction (see their study here) and Southwest has so far managed to steer clear of this practice, but charging fees to get on the plane sooner is likely to have a similar effect.

3. Cleanliness
Southwest's planes seem to be getting dirtier. They pride themselves in turning around a plane between flights faster than their competitors which ultimately means they have to invest in fewer planes. However, this efficiency is starting to come at a price. The lavatories are often disgusting, food wrappers are left in the pockets behind the seats, and crumbs are all over the cabin floor. 

4. Rapid Rewards
The changes Southwest made to their Rapid Rewards frequently flyer program are, uh, unrewarding. In his book, The Amazement Revolution, Shep Hyken talks about the power of making customers feel like members. The old Rapid Rewards program accomplished this nicely. You received a free round trip ticket after flying eight round trips (or sixteen one-way flights) and they even tossed in some drink coupons. It was simple to understand and chart your way towards your next free trip. The new program is based on points that somehow correspond with the fares you pay and can be redeemed for... Well, I'm not really sure how it works. I stopped caring once I had to get out my calculator to figure out if I was getting close to a free flight. I'm sure the new program makes perfect sense to Southwest's accountants, but it fails to create the same emotional connections with customers that their old program did.

5. Customer Service
A little redundant, I know, but hear me out. I sent all of this feedback in an email to Southwest Airlines in keeping with my personal policy of sharing this sort of thing with companies before I write about it on my blog. Even the process of providing feedback was a service failure. I had to fill out thirteen required fields on their form just to submit my message and then I was directed to a screen that informed me it would take approximately five days for them to respond. Yikes! As you may know from my recent email response time survey (read that here), people generally expect a response within one business day. Five days is simply too long and after waiting three days without a response I've decided to go ahead with this post.

I'm a huge fan of Southwest Airlines and I hope they can turn things around. However, until they take steps to address some of these issues I know I'll be choosing them less frequently.

Update on 2012-06-21 22:02 by Jeff Toister

I received a response from a customer service rep at Southwest Airlines shortly after I wrote this post and three days after I emailed their customer service team. It was a thorough, albeit lengthy email that was mostly a canned message with a few personal notes. And, as a nice gesture, I was offered a $100 voucher to use on my next flight. That was very kind and definitely unexpected.

Here's a summary of the response I received:

• Open seating is part has made them successful and customers are overwhelmingly in favor of it. (No mention of my concern about charging fees to board faster.)
• The new Rapid Rewards program better reflects their evolution from a regional, shorthaul carrier to an airline that flies longer routes. The response also stressed the additional benefits of the new program, such as the ability to redeem points for any seat on any flight or using points to book hotels and rental cars.
• The lack of cleanliness on their planes is an unfortunate by-product of their quick turnarounds.

Anatomy of an Email Service Failure

Many of us rely on email for simple customer service transactions. All too often, we experience email exchanges like the one below that leave us even more frustrated than we were before.

The Situation
I play on an indoor soccer team and wanted to know our schedule for the upcoming season. Schedules for each season are typically announced the Sunday before a new season starts, so I emailed the company that runs the league to get the latest schedule. 

Me (Sunday @ 4:33 pm)
Hello,

Is it possible to get a copy of the schedule for Buena Onda via email? We play in the men’s over 30 league on Thursdays.

Thank you,
Jeff

Them (Sunday @ 4:50 pm):
(No message. The response simply contained last season’s schedule pasted into the body of the email.)

Me (4:51 pm):
Thanks for the quick response, though I meant the upcoming season.

Thank you,
Jeff

Them (4:53 pm):
The upcoming season hasn’t started yet…

Me (4:55 pm):
Are you saying that the schedule for the upcoming season hasn’t yet been created? All that’s posted on your website is that our team has a bye this coming week, but I’m trying to learn when our other games will take place.

Them (5:03 pm):
The last games for the current season are being played this coming Thursday.  After they are played we can align the league & schedule the next group of games.

Analysis
Well, on the bright side, the do get points for responsiveness. In a recent survey on email response times, I discovered that most people expect businesses to respond to emails within one day (see the survey results here). Now, a few negatives:

No personalization. Emails should include a salutation and the name of the person sending the message. It’s even worse when multiple people use the same general email address since you don’t know who is helping you. The person responded to my email could have added their name.

Failure to understand. The person reading the email didn’t take a moment to pause and think about which schedule I was referring to. If they had, they may have realized that I was likely wondering about future games rather than games I had already played.

Not answering the next question. CSRs responding to email should try to anticipate the next question and answer that one too. The anonymous person responding to the email could have combined emails two and three and saved us one round of back and forth. (Read more about this tip.)

Bottom Line:
While this email exchange hasn’t cost the company any business (yet), there are a few costs that all businesses should be wary of:

• Frustrating. Having to send three emails to get one question answered is frustrating.
• Wasteful. These excessive email exchanges can add up to a lot of wasted time.
• Referrals. Service failures like this make it much less likely for customers to refer a business.

3 things to know before scheduling customer service training

When I'm asked by a prospective client to provide a quote for their employees to attend my Delivering Next Level Service workshop, it may surprise you to learn I almost always ask a few questions first. Although I'm in the business of selling customer service training classes, there are three things my clients should know before they give customer service training the green light.

#1: What's the gap?

The purpose of training is to help employees bridge the gap between current and desired performance, so you should have a clear picture of the service you want your employees to provide and the service they are actually providing now. In many cases, this starts with clearly defining what oustanding service should look like (learn more about creating your own definition) so you can understand what it will take to get there.

#2: Is the performance gap caused due to insufficient K.S.As?

Training can help develop employees' knowledge, skills, and abilities. For instance, if employees don't know how to diffuse an angry customer, training can certainly help them learn how. However, there are often other obstacles the keep people from reach their full customer service potential. For example, I recently worked with a call center client who didn't staff enough people during their times of peak demand. This caused their reps to rush through calls and become abrupt with customers. The client resolved the problem by simply adjusting their staffing levels to better match their anticipated call volume. (You can read a short case study here.)

#3: Are you missing any of the three C's?

The knowledge, skills, and abilities that employees learn in a training class can fade over time if they aren't getting enough of the three C's.

• Recency. When was the knowledge, skill, or ability last used?
• Frequency. How often is the knowledge, skill, or ability used?
• Consistency. How consistently is the knowledge, skill, or ability used?

Are you heading to a meeting to discuss customer service training? Blog posts don't always print out on a neatly formatted page, so I've created this handy checklist you can print and take with you.

Closing the loop on customer feedback

If you collect customer feedback, or are thinking about implementing a feedback collection system such as a survey, consider adding in one essential component: a way to close the loop.

What is closed loop feedback?

Unlike anonymous feedback, closing the loop allows you to circle back with individual customers. Knowing how a specific customer feels about your product, service, or their latest interaction with your business can allow you to fix a problem, ask additional questions to dig deeper into a particular issue, or simply thank them for their business.

Why use closed loop feedback?

Let me give you three quick examples that illustrate the value of closed loop feedback.

A delivery driver for an express shipping company left a case of wine on my doorstep one day. Aside from failing to get the required adult signature, the driver subjected the wine to potentially harmful heat by leaving it outside. The shipping company never solicited my feedback, so I never bothered to tell them about this incident. However, the next time I ordered wine, I told the winery about my poor experience and insisted that they use another shipper. 

A termite inspector was overly pushy on two occasions, so when it came time again for another inspection I called another company. The termite company never bothered to follow-up with me to ask for feedback on the inspection or to remind me it was time to schedule another one, so they lost my business rather than giving themselves a chance to earn it back.

My wife and I had a poor check-in experience at a hotel that made it unlikely that we’d return. A few days after our visit, I received a follow-up email from the Front Office Manager in response to a survey I completed. He was closing the loop! In his email, he apologized for the poor experience, thanked us for our candid feedback, and offered to comp our room on our next visit. We ended up taking him up on his offer and even traveled with a friend who also booked a room at the hotel. The free room more than paid for itself after we visited the hotel bar, dined at their restaurant, and our friend paid for her room. Even more important, the Front Office Manager prevented us from taking our business to a competitor by closing the loop.

How to implement a closed-loop feedback system

There are many ways to do it, but here are a few you can easily implement:

Add an optional question at the end of your survey that allows customers to provide their contact information and give you permission to follow-up. Hotels often do a great job of using this technique.

Call or email customers in your database to ask them for direct feedback on your product or service. Netflix provides a great example, where they periodically email customers a one question survey such as, “When did this video arrive?” along with an invitation to contact them if more assistance is needed.

Ask customers in person. Why not ask for feedback directly when you have face to face contact with your customers? The technicians who work for Ideal Plumbing, Heating, Air, and Electrical always ask if everything is okay and if there is anything else they can do. 

Is incivility a root cause of service failure?

I'd like to share a not so radical idea.

Is it possible that the rude, self-absorbed behavior that many people display in public is one of the primary causes of poor customer service?

I recently ran a few errands around town and witnessed the following examples on my short trip:

• A couple enjoying coffee and pastries at Starbucks left a huge mess behind when they got up to leave.
• An aggressive driver cut off several cars in an attempt to beat them to a traffic light.
• Another driver sped up in a parking lot rather than stop for pedestrians.
• A customer at a car wash left his empty coffee cup on a bench when his car was ready.
• A banking customer cut to the front of the line ahead of other people patiently waiting their turn.
• A work truck ran a red light a narrowly missed running into several cars entering the intersection.

Some of these people assuredly work in jobs where they serve other people. If they behave selfishly, even dangerously, in a public setting can we really believe that they will be so different when helping customers? Maybe a little, but not much.

Most of my blog posts are action oriented and I try to provide a few tips you can use right away. This one is a little different, simply because I don't know the answer. Any ideas?

3 Ways Hotels Can Generate Loyalty on the First Visit

I recently had my tenth stay at two of my favorite hotels, the Napa River Inn and the Westin Portland. Both hotels recognized this milestone with a very nice welcome amenity in addition to the wonderful, personalized service they always provide. This special treatment made me look forward to my next ten visits, but it also got me thinking about how many other hotels I've stayed at where I don't care whether or not I return.

Welcome amenities at the Napa River Inn for our 10th visit

What can hotels do turn first-time visitors into loyal guests?

I spoke with a few hospitality professionals to get their ideas and reflected on my own experience to come up with three simple suggestions. I'm sure there are more ideas -- so please add your own as a comment to this post.

Sign 'em up!
Many hotels have loyalty programs, especially the larger chains. Why not encourage first-time guests to join? This should be standard procedure at check-in, but in practice it doesn't consistently happen.

A few years ago, I checked in to the Hilton Garden Inn in Henderson, Nevada. The friendly front desk associate invited me to join the Hilton Honors loyalty program and even offered to use the information they had on file to complete the application for me. It cost me nothing in terms of time and effort, but over the next year I found myself staying in several hotels within the Hilton family and soon reached their first level of status. All else being equal, points and status will influence guests' decisions, and I recently booked a stay at a Hilton over another brand I wasn't loyal to.

Smaller hotels without a loyalty program can simply collect email addresses and send out periodic newsletters. For example, the Napa River Inn sends out a special discount code just for returning guests. 

I stay in a lot of hotels, but I don't bother to join their loyalty program if I don't think I'll be coming back. It often takes a simply nudge from a helpful associate to get guests like me to join, but when they do, they might start feeling a little more at home.

Engage at Every Opportunity
Quick question - which associates have the most guest contact? In a smaller hotel, it's likely someone at the front desk, but in a larger hotel it might be the valet staff, housekeepers, or even the engineers. All associates, regardless of their position, should be trained to engage guests at every opportunity.

They can start with a simple question, "How is your stay?" In my experience, most of the hotel associates I encounter in the hallway or elevator rarely go beyond saying "Hello." An associate once asked me how my stay was going, but when I said, "Eh," she wasn't sure where to go from there and missed an opportunity to turn a mediocre experience into an outstanding one.

The associates who do get it right can make all the difference. For example, an associate named Darryl took time out from a painting project to engage my wife and I when we stayed at a resort hotel. He asked about our plans and then gave us inside tips on how to best enjoy ourselves. Darryl even encouraged us to come find him if we needed anything and he'd personally take care of it. (Read more about Darryl.) 

Follow-up
I've recently had a four night stay at three different hotels. One was the Napa River Inn and the other two were clearly not. At the Napa River Inn, I frequently encountered associates who were friendly, helpful, and outgoing. At the other two hotels I hardly had any contact with associates after checking in. I found myself feeling very disconnected from these properties, despite the long stay. 

Why take chances? Someone from one of the "other" hotels could have called my room halfway through my stay to make sure everything was going well. They could have sent up a free bottle of water. Perhaps one of the hotels could simply have responded to my repeated maintenance requests instead of ignoring them. Anything to check in and say, "Hey -- we know you're still here." Instead, nothing. No contact, which means no connection. I've already forgotten about them.

How quickly should you respond to an email?

Note: The latest study was conducted in March 2020. You can read the latest results here.

More than two thirds of us expect co-workers to respond to emails within four hours or less, according to a recent email response time survey. Perhaps its no wonder that so many workers can't go five minutes without typing away on their smart phone or losing focus on an important task to answer another message in an endless series of email exchanges.

Of course, the results are a bit skewed by Generation Y (born 1977 or later). Members of this generation aparently do their best Veruca Salt impersonation when it comes to receiving email, since 43% of them expect a response within one hour.

People have a little more patience when it comes to receiving a response to emails sent to a business. Companies should always try to respond to customer emails as quickly as possible, but 75% of us are willing to wait at least a day:

The survey also asked how quickly we expect our friends to respond to email. Here, we're a bit more lenient, with 88% of survey participants saying they thought they should receive a reply within 1 or more days.

I conducted the same survey last year (see the 2011 results), so have there been any changes? The short answer is no, not really. The only thing noticeable was members of Generation Y have grown slightly more impatient, since 35% of them expected co-workers to reply to email within one hour in 2011, but that number has risen to 43% in 2012. 

What does all this mean?

Service, whether it's external to your customers or internal to your co-workers, is all about expectations. Should our co-workers be more patient? Certainly, but the reality is right now they're not. Do people misuse email? Yes, but screaming at your computer won't change that.

While we can't change others, we can lead by example. For businesses, I wrote a short post on managing customer service email three years ago that still feels relevant today. The top tip? Track email response times and set a goal of 1 business day for everything. (You can read it here.) For individuals, I wrote a post on 10 ways to avoid email overload. (Read that one here.) Perhaps the most important lesson there is to have the discipline to use email correctly rather getting sucked in to becoming part of the problem.