Extended Q&A for Hidden Causes of Poor Service Webinar

I recently got a chance to be a Zenmaster for a day when the folks at Zendesk asked me to facilitate a webinar called Three Hidden Reasons Why Good People Provide Bad Service.

It was a lively session with lots of great questions. In fact, we ran out of time before I could answer them all, so I'm responding here to ten additional questions from participants.

The interactive webinar is embedded in this post (click here if you don't see it) and the additional questions are answered below it. 

Question: I have heard that speed is the # 1 factor in great service. Are you recommending we slow down?

Yes. It doesn’t matter how fast you respond if you don’t resolve the problem. Customers won’t mind a slight delay if you take the time to get it right.

The counter-intuitive paradox is you will actually go faster by working slower. For example, look at the service failure I shared on the webinar where it took three emails to answer one question. Let’s say that each email took 30 seconds to write. That means they actually spent 90 seconds solving my problem. What if they took an extra 15 seconds to fully respond to my first email? That would mean they spent 45 seconds on the problem, or half the time. 

Question: I am in a unique position, I am the sole person answering emails and calls for my company. All customer service issues are on me. How would someone like me not multitask if I am the only person doing this?

This can be tough when you are a one-person show, but there are a few ways you can reduce multitasking.

  • Try to focus on non-phone tasks like email when phone volumes are lower.
  • Only open email when you’ve set aside time to focus on it. This will prevent the email notifications from constantly distracting you.
  • When the phone does ring while writing an email, resist the temptation to quickly finish the email. Set it aside and give it your full attention again once you’re off the phone.

Question: Where may we gather information to test Customer Effort Score?

Check out this Customer Effort Score primer to get started. One word of caution – no single metric will answer all your questions. It’s good to start by asking, “How can we improve?” and then finding the most appropriate set of indicators for your business.

Question: Great presentation, thank you. My question is about incentivizing our customer service agents. It's very easy to track calls answered or emails answered but much more difficult to get numbers for satisfaction. In my experience, customers don't always want to leave positive feedback, they are more likely to leave negative feedback.

Incentivizing survey scores can be a risky proposition that may actually lead to negative performance. You’ll get much better results if you set a team goal (without incentives) and use the survey as a continuous improvement tool. In this way, negative feedback can help you spot problems and improve. 

Question: What tools do you use to measure net promoter score?

It comes from a single survey question that asks how likely the customer is to recommend your company, product, or service (on a scale of 1 – 10). You can learn more from this overview.

Question: We have that issue (some people spending too much time on phones). What are some tips for keeping phone conversations under control?

In general, I’ve had success training my team to focus on clarifying the customer’s needs by asking good questions and actively listening. At the same time, I’ve encouraged everyone to try to fully serve the customer’s needs on the first call since a little extra talk time is much less expensive than a second call and a more irritated customer.

Question: Our company has some focus on metrics for customer service. Can a company be too focused on these metrics?

Yes! Getting too focused on metrics can take the focus away from the ultimate goal of providing outstanding customer service. The metrics should tell you if you’re on the right track, not whether or not you’ve arrived.

I recently wrote two blog posts on the danger of focusing too much on metrics:

Question: Do you have recommendations for metrics on resolving customer questions as a measurement? I can choose to send out a "survey" feedback request for every email, but that gets irritating for customers to fill out every time they contact us about every little thing. Currently, we do a LOT of individual email reviewing which is great, but do you have any other suggestions to get at this metric in particular?

Getting feedback directly from the customer is a good way to determine whether an issue is resolved, but you are right to want to avoid irritating customers with feedback requests.

Some of my clients have had good success putting the survey request in the email itself. That way, customers can choose to click on a link to the survey if they want to provide feedback. Your response rate will probably go down, but the survey will also be less annoying. If your response rate goes down too far, you can try sending a survey request to a sample of customers, but not to everyone.

Question: How important do you think it is to keep consistency in call center hours - is it harmful for someone to take initiative and take a call after hours?

Is your specific concern that you might train customers to call after hours if you take the occasional call? I don’t think it’s too big a deal if you have the resources available.

However, you may want to review your call volume by time of day. This way, you can adjust your call center hours as needed to best match your volume.

Question: Our sla is 1 business day, but we sometimes get customers that expect a 2-4 hours reply and it is impossible with the resources we have. Any advice to deal with this situation?

There are a couple of tactics you can use to manage customer expectations. First, post your standard response time wherever you display your email on your website. Second, create an auto response email that acknowledges each email received and tells the customer you will respond within one business day. Most customers are okay if you clarify up front how long it will take to respond, but can get anxious if you don’t do this.

Question: If a client is in the wrong and we notice, do you have advice on how to resolve the problem gently without pointing fingers?

The customer may not always be technically correct, but I like to try to make it easier for the customer to be right. Here are a few suggestions:

  • Focus on finding a solution rather than placing blame.
  • Make an exception to a policy when possible.
  • Learn from the situation. Is there a way to help other customers avoid similar misunderstandings?

Why customers don’t read signs

Anyone who has served customers face-to-face can attest to the fact that customers don’t read signs.

Take a look at this example from a deli. The sign above the bin clearly reads Recycle (in two languages!), yet many customers have ignored the sign and used it to throw away their trash.

So, why don’t customers read and follow simple signs like this one?

The root cause of this problem stems from employees and customers viewing the experience through different frames. As I noted in a recent post, customers often see things differently.

Going back to the deli, let’s start by looking at the employees’ perspective. The location of the recycling bin seems like a matter of common sense because their actions reinforce their knowledge of the bin's location:

  • They put out the recycling bin so they know where it is.
  • They put up the sign.
  • They put out the trash bin too (15 feet away, not pictured).
  • They empty the recycling bin and have to sort out the trash.
  • They direct customers to the recycling bin when asked.

Now, let’s look at the customers’ perspective. It only took a few minutes of observing customers to see what led people to put trash in the recycling bin.

I observed customers stand up, scoop up their trash, and quickly scan the area for a trash bin. The recycling bin was closest to the deli’s tables, so it was the first bin most customers saw.

The bin looked like a trash bin at first glance. It was gray and stood by itself, so customers naturally approached the bin thinking this was where trash goes. This thought was reinforced when they peered inside the bin and saw a mixture of trash and recycling.

Deli customers are in a slight hurry to leave once they finish their lunch. Being in a hurry can narrow our focus and lead to a phenomenon called inattentional blindness that causes normally obvious things to disappear from view. Hurried customers fixated on a solo gray bin filled with trash could easily overlook the recycling sign.

Customers can and will make mistakes like putting trash in the recycling bin. I even devoted the second chapter of Service Failure to the notion that the customer is not always technically correct. However, it’s our job as customer service professionals to make it easier for customers to be right.

Here’s what the deli could do to help their customers recycle:

  • Put the recycling bin and trash bin side-by-side so customers see both.
  • Use a blue bin for recycling to differentiate it from the trash bin.
  • Add the "chasing arrows" universal recycling symbol to the sign.

Customer service employees often find themselves getting annoyed, frustrated, or exasperated with customers who don’t read or follow signs. However, taking a step back to observe customer behavior can often reveal simple solutions that will yield better results.

Do surveys devalue real feedback?

What’s wrong with this picture?

Okay, besides being a little blurry? The problem is the sign that’s placed in front of the register. It’s asking customers to fill out an online customer service survey. The survey, which arrived via email a few days later, contained a whopping 36 questions. I’ve previously written about this ridiculous survey.

Why can’t I just give my feedback to the person standing behind the counter?

Survey inducements like this at the point of transaction are everywhere. They’re printed on the bottom of our receipts. We’re asked to hold the line for an automated survey after calling a toll-free number. I recently saw a sign in front of a register with a QR code that you could scan with your smart phone to complete the survey right then and there.

And then there was this sign was at the checkout stand in a grocery store. It led to a Seinfeld moment where I wondered whether or not I had insulted the checkout clerk by not ringing the bell.

All of these feedback requests seem to discourage us from providing our feedback directly to the person serving us. Missing out on this opportunity can be a costly mistake.

Here’s why:

Surveys can annoy customers

Customers are being inundated with surveys. What’s worse is the surveys are often too long, ask poorly-worded questions, and don’t result in meaningful changes. In some cases, the drive to get more responses leads to some bizarre behavior.

I was recently accosted by a store employee named Jacob asking me to fill out a survey about the service he provided. He even wrote his name on the piece of paper he handed me with the survey instructions. The problem with this scenario was my only interaction with Jacob was when he asked me to complete the survey. I had actually been served by someone else.

In a recent post on the CX Journey blog, guest poster Sarah Simon advised companies to “put the customer’s need for peace and quiet above your need to drive higher response rates.” The post outlined some excellent steps for ensuring a voice of the customer initiative was actually a good experience for the customer.

Surveys can delay problem resolution

Smart companies incorporate closed loop feedback into their survey process so they can reach out to unsatisfied customers and solve problems.

A colleague of mine recently used a survey to share her displeasure with being charged $20 to repair an $80 necklace she had purchased from a department store just five months earlier. The store manager followed-up via email to apologize and let my colleague know that the $20 repair charge had been refunded.

The survey helped the store recover from a service failure, but there were opportunities to fix the problem sooner. The store could have had a policy that made these types of repairs free. My colleague expressed her displeasure with the repair charge to the sales associate who rang up the repair, but that person didn’t take any action.

A survey should be a safety net, but not the primary means for identifying and resolving problems.

Surveys can increase the cost of resolution

Waiting to capture customer feedback via a survey can also increase the cost of resolving a problem.

Years ago, I experienced a service failure at the Sir Francis Drake hotel in San Francisco. A simple apology would have sufficed at the point of contact, but that didn’t happen. The ultimate cost of recovery after a few bungled attempts to make it right was a three night stay in the hotel.

Recovery costs rise because customers feel increasingly wronged the more time and effort they expend trying to get a problem resolved. Upset customers also provide negative word of mouth by sharing their story with others. Yes, a survey is a nice way to collect feedback, but it’s much better to have employees focused on spotting and solving problems immediately.

I’m a big fan of surveys and acknowledge their importance as a tool for continuosly improving customer service. And, as an excellent post on the Help Scout blog recently described, there are ways to do surveys right. I just happen to be an even bigger fan of the person serving me taking care of business right then and there.

Response to: In Defense of Customer Service Scripts

I regularly enjoy reading Adam Toporek’s Customers That Stick blog because it offers engaging customer service insight. One of his recent posts was slightly controversial because it promoted the value of using customer service scripts in certain situations where employees don't have enough skills. As an example, he described Julie, a new employee who has been given very little training and has limited customer service experience.

It's a well-reasoned argument. It is also one of the few cases where Toporek and I disagree. In my opinion, giving a new, poorly trained, and inexperienced employee like Julie a script will all but guarantee she’ll frequently provide poor service.

Why? 

Our brains can only focus on one conscious thought at a time. Interacting with customers requires a lot of concentration for new and inexperienced employees like Julie who are still learning how to do their jobs. When you give them a script, they can easily sound like a robot because they end up focusing on the script instead of the customer.

This in turn makes it harder for employees like Julie to understand each individual customer’s needs and to tailor their service to the situation.

How can we help employees like Julie?

The first step is to stop taking short-cuts when it comes to hiring and training. Toporek correctly asserts that frontline employees like Julie often receive very little training. This short-sighted approach misses the fact that a lack of proper training is usually more costly in terms of lost sales, customer recovery, and the cost of high turnover (Julie won't stay long if she doesn't enjoy reading scripts).

The second step is to give Julie guidelines that should be easy to follow if you’ve hired the right person. For example, instead of a precisely worded script you can provide a guideline that Julie greet each customer in a warm and friendly manner. How she does it is up to her.

Does the thought of giving a new employee enough autonomy to choose how she will greet customers scare you? If so, you’ll never have employees empowered enough to make the really critical decisions when it comes to serving customers.

However, you can ensure that Julie greets customers in a way that’s consistent with the rest of the team, even if it’s with her own personal twist.

The starting point is training. Don’t confuse training with handing out a script. (“Here’s your script. Now you are trained!”)

Training involves working with Julie until she can demonstrate the ability to greet customers in a warm, friendly, and appropriate manner. You've probably made a poor hiring decision if Julie can’t figure out how to greet customers after being given a few simple guidelines and a little bit of training.

The next step is reinforcement. If you don’t reinforce good habits from the start you’ll never be quite sure if they'll stick. Julie might nail customer greetings in the new hire training phase of her employment, but abandon them all together when she learns that her co-workers do something different when the boss isn’t watching.

This brings us to the last and most critical point. Everybody has to be on board with doing things the right way.

Peer pressure is one of the most powerful forces driving employee performance, especially for a young and inexperienced employee like Julie. She could see her peers passionately committed to making customers feel welcome and she’ll quickly learn to do the same. Julie might even get a little gentle encouragement or nudging from her co-workers who are eager to help her fit in.

The opposite is true too. Julie might soon learn from her co-workers that nobody cares about greeting customers and the script, the guidelines, or whatever tools you’ve given her will go right out the window.

Yes, the sweet siren song of implementing a script is alluring. It's also likely to result in service failure.

Note: No matter who you agree with, I encourage you to check out Toporek’s outstanding Customers That Stick blog. 

Do you really care how your customer is today?

For many customer service professionals, “How are you today?” is really just another way of saying, “Hello.” It’s a rote question where the expected response is “I’m fine” and the person asking is totally unprepared for anything different.

You can miss out on some pretty big opportunities when you ask a question like this without caring whether or not you get an answer.

Last week, I saw firsthand how powerful it can be when someone actually listens to how their customer responds. I was checking in to the Westin Portland where Liza greeted me at the reception desk. She recognized me from many past visits and said, “Welcome back!” in her usual cheerful way.

She then asked the question as she started the check-in process. “How are you today?”

The truth is I wasn’t fine. The tragic bombings at the Boston Marathon earlier that day had left me feeling sad for the city and enraged at whoever did it. I spent several years living in Boston, including two years just a few blocks from where the bombings occurred, so the scene felt particularly vivid. I was also worried because I hadn’t yet heard from all my family members and friends who live in the area or were there for the marathon.

I deviated from the script and told Liza the truth. “I’m sad.”

Liza asked me why and I told her I was thinking about Boston. We proceeded to have a very nice conversation where Liza’s empathy and attentive listening were comforting. It’s amazing how simple human interaction can lift our spirits. 

I went up to my room and dropped my bags before heading right back out for dinner. When I got back from dinner later that night I was surprised to find this waiting in my room:

The card contained a handwritten note from Liza letting me know that she hoped all of my family and friends in Boston were okay. It was an amazingly thoughtful and kind gesture and yet another reason why the Westin Portland is my favorite hotel.

Liza’s warmth and caring provide a great reminder that we should care about the answer if we’re going to ask a question like, "How are you today?" 

How quickly should you respond to an email?

Update: This study was repeated in March 2020. You can read the latest results here.

Nearly 75 percent of us expect co-workers to respond to emails within four hours or less, according to a recent email response time survey. This is a slight increase from 2012’s results, where 68 percent of respondents expected a response within the same time frame.

emailresponseco2013.png

One surprise in this year’s survey was respondents belonging to Generation Y (born 1977 or later) didn’t skew the results with their high expectations for quick responses. In 2012, 43 percent of Generation Y respondents expected co-workers to respond to email within 1 hour, but that number was down to 29 percent in 2013.

emailresponseonehour2013.png

People have a little more patience when it comes to receiving a response to emails sent to a business, but 90 percent of us still expect a response within one day.

emailresponsebiz2013.png

The survey also asked how quickly we expect our friends to respond to email. Here, we are a bit more lenient with an average expected response time of 1.25 days.

emailresponse2013.png

What does all this mean?

Businesses should respond to customer emails within at least one day. A future target should be four hours since nearly 90 percent of customers expect a response within that time frame. The caveat is a quick response does nothing for a customer if it’s not a good response. Several months ago, I documented an email service failure where the company was responding in less than 20 minutes.

Co-workers must also be careful with their high expectations for response times. Constantly checking email can be unproductive and lead to more errors. In many cases, the rush to respond quickly generates more email than necessary to answer a question or provide the requested information.

You can find some additional resources from a few of my previous posts on managing customer service email and my top 10 ways to avoid email overload.

What I learned on my social media vacation

My wife, Sally, and I recently went on a road trip throughout California to pursue several of our passions: wine, Scotch, and California’s natural beauty. I wanted to make sure I really relaxed, so I decided to take a social media vacation too.

My self-imposed social media hiatus caused me to more fully engage with the people and the world around me rather than habitually pull out my smart phone to Tweet, Like, or Share. This ultimately led to better service, a better experience, and much high levels of satisfaction. 

The bar at the Albion River Inn

Social media allows you to connect with people who share similar interests, but real connections are often more rich and interesting.

We met Megan, a bartender at the Albion River Inn near Mendocino, who shares our passion for Scotch and knows much more about it than we do. The Inn has approximately 150 varieties in their restaurant and Megan helped us expand our knowledge. She even let us taste a few old and rare Scotches we’d never before seen.

A few days later we shared a communal table with some locals at the Bounty Hunter in Napa. One of our companions was Justin, who turned out to be the Bounty Hunter’s spirits manager. Not surprisingly, Justin is a huge fan of Scotch too, which made for a fun dinner conversation. Justin even told us he might be able to help us find some of those rare Scotches that Megan had introduced us to.

A secluded beach in Northern California, near MendocinoSocial media can help you make new discoveries, but the real-world is full of discoveries if you keep your eyes open.

We found a hidden trail that led to a secluded beach without reading any reviews on Trip Advisor or downloading a trail finder app. The only clues we had were a car parked on the side of the road and a small sign reminding people to keep their dogs on a leash. 

Sally spotted the trailhead while we were taking a leisurely drive along the coast near Mendocino in Northern California. I doubt she would have seen it if she was engrossed in Facebook updates.

We felt a sense of adventure as we pulled over near the other car and got out. The trail wound through a sparse grove of trees before meandering through a rolling pasture. After less than a mile we came to a small, secluded beach that offered gorgeous views of the California coast.

The view from my new favorite chair

Social media is an escape for many people, but really escaping can be so much more rewarding.

I spent nearly a full day sitting in an adirondack chair overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I read, solved sudoku puzzles, and took in the view. It also turned out to be the perfect place to enjoy a glass of wine while watching the late afternoon sun slowly start its descent.

I’ll admit there were times throughout the trip when I had to fight the urge to check online. For example, one day Sally posted a funny picture on Facebook that I wanted to see. Then I remembered that I had taken the picture and had seen the real thing.

I really hope I can remember these lessons now that I'm back to work.

Using the Employee Engagement Cycle

This post originally appeared on the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) website as part of their Expert's Angle series.

Call centers with customer-focused cultures achieve their success by getting a high level of agent buy-in. One way to do this is to ensure that your culture is aligned with the five steps in the Employee Engagement Cycle. This is a framework that identifies critical points where a call center can influence employee engagement.

Read on to learn about each step in the cycle. At the end you’ll find a questionnaire you can use to evaluate your own call center’s alignment.

Recruiting

Recruiting new employees represents an opportunity to find people who are passionate about our products or services. Even more important than previous job experience or call center skills, we want people who will love to do what we want them to do. These employees will serve our customers better, work harder, and are less likely to leave the company than someone who is just here for a paycheck.

Call centers can hire for passion by identifying a set of specific traits that the ideal employee should possess. For example, a company that connects people with music teachers hires people who love music. A software manufacturer hires people who work with computers in their spare time. A company that sells accessories for boats and RVs hires people who love boating or camping.

On-boarding

The on-boarding process is more than just new employee orientation or that pile of new hire paperwork. On-boarding really refers to the period that begins when the employee accepts the job offer and ends when the employee is fully trained. This is a critical time when the employee decides whether they made a good decision to join your company. This is also when they learn about your call center culture and the behaviors that are expected to go along with it.

One medical device manufacturer used the on-boarding period to help their new employees unlearn habits they picked up in other call centers. For example, in their previous job a new employee may have referred to an out of stock product as being “on backorder” and simply quoted an expected time when the item would be back in stock. Here, an unavailable product wasn’t acceptable since a patient might need it for an upcoming surgical procedure. Finding the right product was the top priority, and employees were expected to go to great lengths to find a solution, even if it meant contacting another client to see if they had one that could be borrowed. Most new employees were never expected to do all that in their previous call center jobs, so the on-boarding period was an important step towards creating new habits.

Development

Companies that spend time hiring right and instilling cultural values in new employees can still lose their way if those values aren’t consistently reinforced. In many cases, the cultural norms taught during the on-boarding period don’t match the reality of the new employee’s day-to-day working environment. One way to avoid this problem is to ensure that all employee development includes a culture component as a way of consistently reminding employees about culture.

A software company successfully reinforced its culture throughout their call centers by insisting that all employee development programs be connected in some way to their company values. For example, when they instituted a customer service training program, a module was included that showed call center agents how to serve their customers in a way that was consistent with the organizational values. After the training, call center supervisors reinforced the values when providing an agent with feedback about their performance or coaching them on how to handle a particular call.

Evaluations

Annual performance evaluations don’t have a lot of fans these days. They are often treated as little more than a stack of annoying paperwork designed to give employees seemingly arbitrary ratings on a set of generic qualities such as “teamwork” or “dependability.” Annual performance reviews can become much more impactful when they are used to reinforce company culture

In one example, a company’s values were incorporated into performance evaluations and employees were evaluated in part on how aligned they were with the culture. The evaluation form contained a set of behavioral descriptions for each value to help differentiate between positive (or “aligned”) performance and negative (or “misaligned”) performance. This turned the evaluation into an opportunity to discuss culture, set goals for future performance, and align employee performance with desired norms.

Exits

We’ve all seen the impact of employees who actively work against the company’s best interests. These employees’ behavior becomes so toxic that it impacts other employees’ performance, and they may even attempt to recruit others to join them in their state of discontent. If left unchecked, toxic employees can lower morale, reduce call center performance, and cause increased turnover.

The best solution to dealing with toxic employees is to make it clear their behavior won’t be tolerated. Give them the choice of aligning their behavior with cultural expectations or leaving the team. Employees who refuse to be a positive part of your culture should be removed from the team as quickly as legally possible. It’s never an easy step to take, but I’ve observed countless managers who immediately saw improvements in morale and productivity after letting a toxic employee go.

Conclusion

Here’s a quick quiz if you’d like to evaluate your call center’s cultural alignment. It can be used to foster internal dialogue around better aligning the steps in the Employee Engagement Cycle.

Never reward employees for outstanding survey scores

The Westin Portland is one of my favorite hotels. Their warm and attentive associates always make me feel welcome and you can’t beat their location in the heart of downtown Portland, Oregon. I’ve stayed their many times over the years and have come to feel like the hotel is my home away from home.

When I started writing my customer service book in 2011, I interviewed then General Manager Chris Lorino to learn some of the hotel’s service secrets. One of Lorino’s strongest beliefs was that you should never reward employees for achieving outstanding survey scores. He felt it was important to build a team of people who naturally wanted to serve guests at the highest level. In Lorino's opinion, a reward system would inevitably get in the way.

Both leading research on employee motivation and Lorino’s own success as a General Manager suggest that he is absolutely correct.

Rewards vs. Recognition

It’s important to differentiate between rewards and recognition. The purpose of this post is to demonstrate that employees shouldn’t be rewarded for outstanding service, but go ahead and recognize them all you want.

Rewards are if-then propositions. The prize and the criteria for earning the prize are spelled out ahead of time. For example, if you average a certain score on your customer service survey, then you will get a gift card.

Recognition is unexpected reinforcement of results that have already been achieved. An example would be giving an employee a gift card out of the blue to thank them for achieving a high average score on their customer service survey.

Eyes On the Prize

The biggest problem with rewarding employees for good customer service is it takes their attention away from providing outstanding service and re-focuses them on winning the prize.

We’ve probably all seen examples of the behavior changes this can cause:

  • Directly asking customers to provide the top score on a survey
  • Selectively encouraging only highly satisfied customers to complete a survey
  • Submitting phony surveys to bolster scores (yes, this happens)

The Goal is not the Goal

What’s the purpose of conducting a customer service survey?

When employees are rewarded for achieving a certain score they may act as though achieving that score is the ultimate goal. However, most customer service professionals will tell you that the survey is really a tool that can be used for continuous improvement.

Here are a few ways that focusing solely on a survey goal might prevent continuous improvement:

  • Employees may care less about service failures if the average looks good.
  • It lessens the need for analysis to identify customer pain points.
  • Employees may stop trying if they feel there’s nothing left to prove.

Let’s imagine a survey of 100 customers where 90 are satisfied and 10 are unhappy. If my employees are focused on achieving a specific target, they may feel great about a 90% customer satisfaction level. However, they’ll be much more eager to find out how to win over the other 10% if their true focus is continuous improvement.

So, how do I motivate the team?

If you want to learn more about the science behind rewards and employee motivation, check out Daniel Pink’s fascinating book, Drive. Pink's biggest point is that the true motivating factors are purpose, autonomy, and mastery. Let's look at each one in a customer service context:

Purpose
The very best organizations have a clear and compelling customer service vision that describes the type of service they're hoping to provide. It's amazing what happens when the whole team is unified around a common objective. 

Autonomy
Nobody wants to be micromanaged. Give people the resources, training, and authority to get the job done right and then get out of their way and you'll see people taking responsibility for the results they achieve.

Mastery
We all want to be good at what we do. Help bring out the best in employees through coaching, training, and continuous feedback and you'll find that people will step up to the challenge of becoming the very best they can be.