What are we really talking about when it comes to service?

P.T. Barnum famously bet on his customers getting confused by fancy words when he wanted to pump up profits at his museum. Barnum posted signs marked “This Way to the Great Egress” that led people towards what they assumed was the museum’s latest attraction. Gullible patrons were surprised to learn that "egress" is really just another word for exit when they followed the signs straight out of the building.

That sort of trick wouldn’t pass muster with today’s customers (imagine the Yelp reviews!) but there’s still plenty of confusing language used in customer service. Clearing up this confusion may be one of the keys to preventing service failures in your organization.

Here are a few examples:

Customer Satisfaction. What is it? Is it good? Or, is aiming for customer satisfaction setting our sights too low when we really should be achieving customer delight? And, if customer delight is the goal, should I scrap my C-Sat survey in favor of a C-Del metric?

Employee Engagement. It seems to be a matter of fact that positive employee engagement is strongly correlated with high levels of customer satisfaction. Or is it correlated with high levels of customer engagement? What exactly is employee engagement anyway? Even the top employee engagement consulting firms don't agree (see my post).

Outstanding service. This is good, right? Just ask five people and they’ll all agree. Then ask them what outstanding service looks like and they’ll all give different answers. None of them will be necessarily wrong, just different. (See my simple explanation.)

These are really rhetorical questions in an effort to highlight the need for a common frame of reference, though I wouldn't mind you sharing your answers in the comments section below.

Practical Application
Here are a few simple examples of how you can establish a common frame of reference when talking about customer service.

Training. Before conducting customer service training, I work with my clients to create a clear definition of outstanding service using a Customer Service Vision tool.

Surveys. Before writing your survey questions, take a moment to think about what you really want to learn about your customers and what you will do to act upon that data. (See "C-Sat: So what?")

Strategy. Frame customer service or employee engagement initiatives around SMART goals rather than writing fuzzy objectives like “improve customer service.” 

A deeper dive into an email service failure

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post detailing a service failure I experienced via email. I had contacted the office that runs the indoor soccer league I play in to get my team’s schedule for the upcoming season. My blog post summarized the exchange and offered an analysis of what went wrong along with some tips for improving responses to customer service email.

What happened next was an unexpected surprise. A colleague emailed to point out what I could have done as a customer to receive better service. Over the next few weeks, I showed it to participants in several of my customer service classes and they had similar observations. (You can read the original post here and see if you can spot what I could have done better.)

A small misunderstanding
Many email service failures start with a small misunderstanding. The customer doesn’t provide enough detail in their email or perhaps explains the problem poorly and then the customer service rep misinterprets what the customer is looking for.

Of course, you can’t put the onus on your customers to improve their communication. What you can do is take the time to read each email and ensure you fully understand what’s being asked before responding.

Unseen pressures that lead to poor emailing
The big question then is why don’t people take more time to read and understand emails before responding? We know that these small misunderstandings can lead to unnecessary back and forth, wasted time, and ultimately customer aggravation. So why don’t companies do more to fix it?

With the help of several participants in my training classes, I was able to put together a list of possible reasons why people don’t take enough time to properly respond to customer service emails.

• Yabba Dabba Do. It’s late in the day and their brain has already clocked out.
• Time crunch. They are rushing to get through a mountain of email.
• Text happy. They learned all their emailing skills from text messaging.
• Distractions. They are too distracted to give the email their full attention.
• Reading skills. Their reading comprehension is less than what it needs to be.

I’m sure this is only a partial list of reasons why customer service reps don’t often take the time to see past small misunderstands and figure out what their customers really want. What other reasons would you add to the list?

5 Ways Squarespace Gets Service Right

I spend a lot of time diagnosing service failures, but occasionally I like to profile an organization that’s doing something right. One of those organizations is Squarespace, a company that provides (in their words) “everything you need to create an exceptional website.” Their amazing customer service is a template that we can all learn from, but I also have an ulterior motive for writing this post. I want to publicly encourage them to keep up the good work.

Here are five things we can all learn from Squarespace:

1. Offer a great product that's simple to use
I’m currently building my fourth website using Squarespace, this one for my upcoming book Service Failure. I'm not very technical and don't want to hire an expensive web designer, so Squarespace is a perfect solution. You can use Squarespace to secure your domain name, design your website, and add content all without ever touching a bit of code. Best of all, it's easy to learn and use and their stuff just works.

I wish I could say the same thing about all the technology I work with, but too often I find it difficult to master, riddled with glitches, or both. Customers can be delighted with a great product, but they can also be delighted with the absence of aggravation.

2. Provide value
Squarespace is constantly enhancing the value they provide to their customers. For example, earlier this year they changed their pricing structure to simplify their plans. In my case, they actually offered me a credit when I switched plans because they were now offering more for less.

Compare that to other well-publicized price changes, such as Netflix's 60% price hike or Bank of America's infamous plan to charge debit card users $5 per month. Pricing is clearly a sensitive topic, but you'll win a lot of hearts and minds if you give customers more for less rather than less for more.

3. Respond quickly to customer inquiries
Squarespace clearly realizes that many of their customers are technically challenged like me, but that doesn't mean we're patient when we encounter a problem. Thankfully, whenever I've sent Squarespace an email to ask for assistance I've quickly heard back from an elite member of their support team who was able to help. Their responses are fast, thorough, and professional.

This stands out from companies who don't respond quickly, respond but don't actually resolve your problem, or don't respond at all. Customers hate to wait and we really don't like going back and forth either (see my survey on email response times). When we need help we want it fast and Squarespace gets that.

4. Be authentic and human
Customers crave authenticity, and nothing kills authenticity faster than overly scripted communication. Squarespace’s website, blog posts, customer emails are all straightforward, easy to understand, and are unencumbered by flowery marketing dreck. Better yet, their support professionals are allowed to use their own unique personalities when communicating with customers.

Authenticity is a breath of fresh air when we're used to dealing with so many customer service reps who are required to stay within a tightly controlled box (I really don't like scripts). 

5. Think like a customer
Squarespace recently announced a new version of their service, Squarespace 6, that promises to be a quantum leap forward from their existing platform. At the same time, they’ve wisely opted to indefinitely support users on the old system. Why is this important? Because it recognizes the extensive time and effort many of us have put into building our websites. Providing continued support means we aren’t forced to make the change. Of course, they’re also offering to let users make the switch for free, even allow people to running both versions at the same time, so users are tempted to try out version 6.

This is an example of seeing things from a customer's point of view. A company lacking in customer focus may have become so enamored with their new technology that they forced everyone to switch. This strategy gives Squarespace a way to attract new customers or delight existing ones without giving their most loyal fans a reason to be upset.

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

---

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.