Why customer service reps aren't friendly

Why is it so hard for customer service reps to be friendly?

This post originally appeared on the Salesforce Blog. You can also read my latest Salesforce blog post, " How detoxing our brains can improve customer service."

Friendliness is a basic expectation for employees serving customers. It doesn’t cost anything and isn’t really a skill that needs to be trained. So why do we still receive unfriendly service over and over again?

I remember walking into a furniture store with my wife, Sally. There was a cluster of employees having a conversation at one end of the store when we arrived. Nobody stopped to greet us. We didn’t see anything exciting so we decided to leave after a few minutes.

One of the employees finally approached us as we left. “Can I help you?” he said tersely. No thanks, we’re just leaving. The employee obviously sensed that a lack of service had hastened our exit. “Hey! We’ve been here for 12 hours! Give us a break!”

Sally and I noticed a sign in the window for the first time as we left the store:

Going out of business sale! Everything must go!

We had a good laugh as we imagined we might have just identified the cause of the store’s demise.

The root cause of unfriendly service

It’s easy to get stuck thinking about what employees like the guy at the furniture store should have done. I think that answer is obvious. A more important question is why wasn’t he friendly?

One explanation is something called emotional labor.

Emotional labor is a term initially coined by Arlie Hochschild in her 1983 book, The Managed Heart. It refers to the effort required to display appropriate workplace emotions, such as friendliness and enthusiasm. The amount of emotional labor required is based on the difference between the emotions an employee is expected to display, and the emotions an employee actually feels.

Simply put, it’s hard to be friendly if you don’t feel friendly.

Let’s go back to the furniture store. The employees were likely to lose their jobs after the store closed. It was difficult to take pride in their store since the merchandise grew less and less appealing as inventory was sold off. The employees felt tired from working long hours for a losing cause. It’s easy to imagine that they didn’t feel particularly friendly that day. This doesn’t excuse the poor service we received, but understanding the employees’ perspective does explain why it might have happened.

There are plenty of reasons why employees might not feel friendly. Upset customers, heavy workloads, demanding bosses, and poor products can all make an employee feel frustrated. This says nothing about what types of stress may be going on in employees’ personal lives. “Leave your problems at home” is simplistic advice that’s much easier said than done.

Contact centers often provide a great example of a work environment that can bring many of these factors together. Agents may feel frustration sinking in when they serve irate customer after irate customer. At the same time, their boss is breathing down their neck demanding greater productivity while monitoring their every move, even bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, agents might feel powerless to solve many of the problems they encounter that are caused by defective products or poorly designed processes.

Some employees just don’t like their jobs and feel miserable every day they go to work. I recently talked to a customer service employee who had great skills but a sour attitude. She confided in me that she absolutely hated her job! She had been hired into another position, which she liked, but her boss recognized her obvious talent by promoting her into a new role she couldn’t stand.

How to help service employees be friendlier

The best customer service leaders make it easy for employees to be friendly.

It starts by setting a positive example. Employees are much more likely to be friendly when they have a boss who is friendly, kind, and treats them with respect. On the other hand, gruffly telling employees to “act happier or you’ll be written up” rarely has the desired effect.

Another important strategy is hiring employees who will be happy to do what you want them to do. A company that sells covers for boats and RVs hired a boating enthusiast to work in their small customer service department. She was an immediate hit with her customers since she loved the job and could relate to the products. Her positive attitude even influenced an unfriendly co-worker who improved her own demeanor after working with the new employee.

Finally, involve employees in finding solutions to your toughest customer service challenges. This works in two ways. First, employees feel more empowered when they are able to give meaningful input on how to serve customers better. Second, working with upset customers requires a great deal of emotional labor so fixing the problems that upset customers naturally makes the job easier.

How to work faster with less knowledge

Employees can have a hard time memorizing data and often forget important information.

My last blog post shared four ways that memorization can hurt employee performance. Now, I’d like to share a few solutions for overcoming this obstacle.

The trick is to allow employees to rapidly access vital information without having to memorize it. There’s an amusing anecdote about Albert Einstein that illustrates this point. I don’t even know if this story is true, but I like it just the same.

According to the story, a colleague once asked Einstein for his phone number. Einstein surprised his colleague by reaching for a telephone directory and looking it up. The colleague asked, “You don’t even know your own phone number?” To which Einstein famously responded, “Why should I memorize something that I can look up in a book?”

We can modernize this quote a little bit, but the principle still stands:

Never memorize something that you can easily look up.

I recently discovered a great example of how to do this while walking my dog on San Diego’s Harbor Island. We came across a strange contraption and I wanted to know more about it.

There was a small sign on the side that briefly described the contraption and then provided a QR code for additional information. With a click of my smart phone I was able to access a wealth of knowledge.

Scanning the QR code takes you to a website that explains all about this experimental wind turbine.

This allowed me to satisfy my curiosity. It also allowed me to retain the information without having to memorize it. All I had to do was scan the QR code again to quickly re-access the information. 

QR codes are a great method of quickly connecting people to information so they don’t have to memorize it. Here are some examples of places where a QR code might be helpful:

• On a piece of equipment to allow a repair technician to access a repair manual. 
• On a product display to allow a customer service rep (or a customer) to access more product information. 
• On a bulletin board to allow employees to access more information about an announcement.

You can get even more ideas for QR codes from Larry Straining’s book, 111 Creative Ways to use QR codes.

QR codes aren’t the only way to help employees avoid memorization. Here are a few other ways you can give employees access to the right information at the right time.

Signs

Sometimes instructions are so simple you just need a sign. I once helped a client solve a security problem by suggesting a small sign above the intercom they used to screen visitors to a secure office. Employees weren’t following the proper procedure because used it infrequently and often forgot. The sign made it easy to do things correctly.

Job Aids

A job aid is a quick-reference guide that simplifies information. Employees in the parking office of a large university hand out campus maps to visitors and use a pen to draw a suggested route. The map is a great job aid that helps both the employee and the customer! Joe Willmore’s Job Aids Basics is an excellent resource.

Performance Support Systems

These tools embed necessary information into the workflow. I bet you know how to use an ATM machine even though you’ve never taken an ATM machine training class. That’s because the instructions are embedded in the machine. Many software programs use this same approach by walking users through step-by-step instructions. There are even services such as WalkMe that will provide customers with step-by-step guidance to navigate through procedures on your website.

Knowledge bases

Wikipedia may be the ultimate knowledge base since it allows you to look up just about anything. Many companies have their own specialized knowledge base where employees can enter search terms to find product information, policies, documents, and other resources on the company intranet or website.

Brain power is a precious resource

There’s a limit to how much our employees’ brains can process. As with any limited resource, we want to conserve it. That means eliminating waste while allowing our employees’ brains to focus on important tasks like serving customers, solving problems, or increasing productivity.

Memorization is just one source of brain waste. Here are a few other resources to explore.

• Boost performance with scenario-based training
• How detoxing our brains can improve customer service
• Why multitasking hurts customer service

4 Ways Memorization Hurts Performance

Employees need to know a lot of stuff. 

They must know their company’s policies, procedures, products, service standards, customer preferences, and leadership prerogatives. They must keep up with training, meetings, phone calls, hallway conversations, emails, texts, chats, postings, and signs. Today’s correct answer is tomorrow’s outdated content as employees are deluged with an endless flow of updates, bulletins, and change of plans.

Keeping it all straight requires a lot of memorization.

Unfortunately, our memories aren’t the ideal location to store the large volumes of complex information needed to do our jobs. Here are four ways that memorization can actually hurt performance.

#1: Memorization takes time

Memorization is a time consuming process. In his book, Creative Training Techniques, training guru Bob Pike suggests that new information typically needs to be reinforced six times for it to be retained. Pike further elaborates that knowledge retention activities must require some form of learner interaction to truly be effective.

The time consuming nature of memorization leaves many managers with a dilemma. On one hand, they can take shortcuts in their communication with employees, but this often results in employees forgetting important information. On the other hand, they can devote the time necessary to help employees memorize and retain key knowledge, but today’s busy managers rarely have this kind of time.

#2: Our memories don't update easily

Information changes constantly. Even if you take the time and effort to memorize important facts, you will have to repeat the process all over again when those facts change. It gets even more complicated when a team of employees must memorize new information since some people may continue working with the old information.

Frequent travelers provide an excellent glimpse into what happens when you have to regularly replace old information with new information. Road warriors often rent similar looking cars. Is it the silver Cruze or the blue Impala this week? The key information (Which rental car am I driving?) changes so frequently that its hard to keep straight. 

It’s not uncommon for business travelers to get into the wrong vehicle when hotel valets deliver several cars at once on a busy morning. 

#3: Memories are unreliable

Our memories are notoriously unreliable. They may fail us completely, or worse, cause us to produce the wrong answer with absolute certainty. In one experiment, researchers found that 40 percent of subjects recalled viewing footage of a terrorist attack in London even though the footage didn’t exist.

Our unreliable memories can prevent employees from being on the same page. I remember once renting a car where I used a pre-paid voucher to cover the cost of the rental. The employee who processed the rental confidently told me that I needed to turn in the voucher when I returned the car. The employee who processed my return confidently told me I should have provided the voucher when I rented the car. One of these two obviously misremembered the correct procedure, but both were absolutely certain they were right.

#4: Memories are use it or lose it

Facts and figures require repetition to remain easily accessible. Information we use often is easily be recalled without effort.  Information we use infrequently or haven’t needed for a long time is difficult to recall. 

An example I like to give is the high school locker combination. Most of us had a PE or book locker in high school. Back then, opening the locker took just a few seconds. We opened the locker one or more times every day so the combination was easy to recall. Today, most of us wouldn’t be able to remember the combination at all. Why? Because it has been so long since we’ve needed that information that it’s no longer readily accessible.

What’s the solution?

Stay tuned for my next blog post where I’ll provide some simple solutions to overcome the memorization dilemma. However, I can give you one hint now.

Overcoming the memorization obstacle requires us to rethink our objective. 

We ask employees to memorize information so they can quickly apply information to their jobs. What if there was an alternative way for employees to rapidly access this information?

Boost performance with scenario based training

Note: This article originally appeared on ICMI.com. It focuses on new hire training for call centers, but the principles can be adapted to many other environments.  

New hire training represents a significant investment for many call centers with typical training times ranging from two to six weeks or even more. It can also require a delicate balance. Train too little and employees will underperform, require too much supervision, or even quit in frustration. Train too much and you waste valuable time and money.

Scenario-based training is an accelerated learning technique that has the potential to deliver the best of both worlds. It allows you to train new hires faster and get better performance once they’re on the job. It works by solving some of the biggest limitations of the traditional approach to call center training. 

The Traditional Approach

Many call centers currently train their new hires using what’s called the building block method. It works by breaking down various job-related tasks into smaller learning blocks that are relatively easy for employees to learn. For example, a new employee might first learn to use the company’s CRM system, next learn about the company’s products, and finally learn how to interact with customers in a positive manner.

It’s relatively easy to design training using the building block approach, but there are also some substantial limitations. 

The first is integration. Individual skills are trained separately, but they are used together on the job. Employees often experience a sort of mental gridlock, known as cognitive overload, when they first put all of these new skills together while taking live or simulated calls. This slows them down and makes them more prone to errors. 

The second limitation is timing. New skills must be repeated frequently in order to become second nature. The building block approach can prevent this from happening because some skills are trained early on in the program and then not revisited until days or even weeks later when the employee prepares to take live calls. This often requires additional training or coaching to remind employees of previous lessons.

Scenario-based Training

Scenario-based training works by structuring training to mirror how the job is actually performed. Each lesson is introduced via a realistic scenario that requires employees to utilize a variety of skills simultaneously. For example, one scenario might be a customer calling to check on an order. A new hire must look-up the customer’s order in the CRM system while applying their product knowledge to answer questions and using appropriate customer service skills to role-play the conversation. The scenarios are all modeled after the call center’s quality assurance guidelines so new hires practice handling calls correctly from Day 1.

The scenarios are arranged in order of increasing complexity so that each one introduces a new skill while building on what has already been learned. After learning to respond to a simple “Where’s my order?” scenario, a new hire might be asked to tackle a situation where a customer received the wrong item. The added advantage is the skills that are used most often, such as answering the phone properly, are drilled to perfection throughout the training.

The initial pace of a scenario-based training program is very slow. The first few scenarios take a long time because the new hire must learn a lot of basic skills such as the proper phone greeting and how to look up customer records in the CRM. The pace improves with each successive scenario as employees become proficient with the basic skills. Eventually, the training becomes very fast-paced as employees master the ability to quickly handle new scenarios.

Success Stories

Scenario-based training can often reduce new hire training time by 25 to 50 percent. I first discovered this concept as a call center training supervisor in the late 90s when I was given a mandate to cut down new hire training time. One of our new hire training programs took 15 days; 10 classroom days plus up to 5 more days taking live calls with a coach present to provide intensive support. The scenario-based training approach allowed us to reduce the training to just 10 days; 6 classroom days plus 4 days taking live calls with a coach. This created a substantial savings for the call center but also enabled it to be more nimble when staffing up to meet rising call volumes.

Performance also improves with scenario-based training because it eliminates the waste inherent the building block approach while still improving the learning process. One call center implementing this method found their first group of new hires exceeded the call center’s QA score average within a week after training. Another call center reduced average handle time by 10% after implementing scenario-based training.

Getting Started

Moving to a scenario-based learning approach requires a little bit of upfront effort, but the savings and improved performance is more than worthwhile in the long run. 

Step 1: Identify performance requirements

Start by identifying the performance required of a fully trained employee. The training program should focus on helping new hires meet these targets. If you don’t already have a clear standard for a fully trained employee, you can look to your quality assurance standards for guidance. 

Step 2: Create Scenarios

Outline a list of progressively difficult scenarios that cover at least 90 percent of the calls agents are likely to receive. You can learn this information by reviewing call-type reports, listening to calls, and enlisting the help of your most experienced agents.

The sequencing is especially important since you want to introduce new skills in each scenario, but also use scenarios to build on skills that were previously learned. Be sure to vary the customer’s demeanor in each scenario too, since not all customers will be happy and easy to assist.

Step 3: Develop Materials

Now it’s time to develop your training materials. Here are a few of the basics:

• Create a trainer’s manual with instructions for each of the scenario
• Add data for each scenario to your CRM’s sandbox. 
• Develop self-paced scenarios to allow learners to practice on their own.

How unfriendly service gets crowd-sourced

The Pyles Peak trail head.

I won’t waste your time extolling the virtues of friendly customer service. You get that. The real question is why do we receive unfriendly service so often?

There are many explanations. Some customers are jerks who are hard to be nice to. A few employees just don’t care. I recently wrote a post for the Salesforce.com blog describing how something called emotional labor is often to blame. 

Some unfriendly service is caused by crowds.

In a strange quirk of human nature, people tend to get less friendly as the size of the crowd grows. You probably know your neighbors if you live in the country. Move to a city with many more people and you hardly know anyone. In many urban environments, eye contact with strangers is downright discouraged.

I recently conducted a little experiment called the Eye Contact Game while hiking near my home in San Diego. Each time I encountered someone on the trail, I looked them in the eye and smiled. If they looked back I said hello. 

There were two parts to the hike. The first was on the Cowles Mountain Golfcrest Trail, which is one of the most popular hiking trails in San Diego. The second part was the much quieter Pyles Peak trail which continues from the top of Cowles Mountain. I wrote a blog post about the Pyles Peak trail way back in 2009 where I compared it to the business road less traveled.

Here are the results of my game:

Ascent

• Cowles: 8 of 62 people made eye contact
• Pyles: 2 of 2 people made eye contact

Descent

• Cowles: 4 of 162 people made eye contact
• Pyles: 3 of 3 people made eye contact

Any statistician will tell me my sample size is too small to be totally certain, but the results are still interesting. 

I went on my hike in the late afternoon and the after work crowd was arriving as I descended. The Cowles Mountain trail itself got less friendly as the number of hikers increased. I even caught a few people deliberately avoiding eye contact!

It’s worth noting that everyone on the Pyles Peak trail not only made eye contact but said “Hello” too. 

There are a few ways this same phenomenon happens in customer service situations. Ask yourself when you’re more likely to get friendly service:

• From a small business or a large business?
• In a quiet store or in a busy store?
• From a single employee or a group of employees talking to each other?

Reflecting on these situations makes it easy to generalize that friendly service happens in more intimate settings.

What can you do about it?

It’s human nature for crowds to make us a little unfriendly. That doesn’t mean customer service employees can’t overcome this challenge. Here are a few great ways to ensure service remains friendly no matter how many people are around.

Training: A former co-worker of mine was famous for reminding his employees “You can only serve one customer at a time.” Giving employees a few skills to stay focused on the customer they are working with can go a long way.

Staffing: Ensure you have adequate staff to provide customers with friendly service and personal attention. This looks like a big expense up front, but the payoff comes in the form of higher customer retention and increased sales.

Leadership: Are you the kind of leader who keeps cool under fire or do you become a stress monster at the first sign of pressure? Employees look to their boss to set an example, so a boss who encourages employees to be friendly even as the crowds grow will make it easier for employees to be friendly too.

Here’s a quick example from the Container Store:

My wife and I recently went to our local Container Store to get help organizing our bedroom closet. It was a busy afternoon and the store was full of customers. We worried whether one of their designers could spend enough time to help us design our closet.

Fortunately, they had it covered. A friendly manager greeted us and told us they’d be happy to help design a closet (leadership). She paged a closet designer who was available to assist us (staffing). Our designer was frequently interrupted by other customers while she assisted us, but each time she graciously offered to find a co-worker who could assist them (staffing) and then immediately returned her attention back to us (training). 

We appreciated the fact that we received friendly, attentive service in a crowded store. We are also really enjoying our newly organized closet! 

Crowds naturally cause people to be a little less friendly. Smart companies recognize this and take steps to avoid service failures by mitigating this challenge.

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Don't let icebergs sink your service ship

Note: I originally wrote this article in 2009. It didn’t make it over to my recently upgraded website, so I’ve updated and republished it.

Getting the first shipment of your new book is an exciting time for any author. It was definitely a thrill for me to open my box of Service Failure books and see the result of a lot of hard work.

I was excited to hold my first book, blissfully unaware of the iceberg.

I brought a copy to my parents when I visited them that weekend. It was my Dad that made the discovery during my visit. Pages were falling out of the book.

We encounter problems like this every day in the business world. The challenge we face is determining whether it is an isolated incident or just the tip of the iceberg. 

Isolated incidents can and will happen. They’re unfortunate, but you can generally recover quickly. 

Icebergs will sink your service ship. That’s because the real problem is unknown. Just like a real iceberg, the hidden part of the customer service iceberg is larger and more dangerous.

Was my parents’ defective book an isolated incident or the tip of an iceberg? Here’s the three step approach I used to address the issue:

Step 1: Don’t assume it’s an isolated incident

It’s too easy to dismiss a problem as an isolated incident. Fix the problem, make the customer happy, and move on.

Rude employee? So sorry, we’ll talk to him. Food not cooked to your liking? Dessert is on us. It took too long to answer your call? We’re experiencing a temporary spike in call volume. 

But what if it’s not an isolated incident? 

Believe me, I wanted the book I gave my parents to be the one and only copy with its pages falling out. It would certainly make things easy. In fact, it would be a relief knowing that the sole defective book went to someone I knew so I could easily replace it.

There’s a simple question I ask whenever I encounter a problem like this:

“Can the same problem exist in other places?”

The first thing I did when I got back home from visiting my parents was check all of my books. Sure enough, every single one of them had the same defect that caused pages to fall out. I had found an iceberg!

Step 2: Find the root cause

As counter-intuitive as it seems, you should not immediately try to fix the customer’s problem when you spot an iceberg. 

Why?

Let’s imagine I sent my parents a new book to replace the defective one. How do I know the pages in the new book won't also fall out? I can’t be assured they won’t get another defective copy until I understand the problem. 

Now imagine you are working with a customer who isn’t quite so understanding as your dear old Mom and Dad. Sending out a second defective product will only compound their frustration and hurt your reputation. You can’t fix things for the customer until you solve the problem.

You should always ask this question when you encounter an iceberg:

What caused the problem?

I immediately called my editor at AMACOM once I realized all my books had the same defect. He had one in his office and found the same problem with his copy. He promised to look into it and get back to me right away.

My editor got back to me just a few hours later. They had located the source of the problem. Not all books were affected, but they couldn’t tell how many. As a precaution, they were going to reprint all of the books. 

It was an expensive move, but the right one.

Step 3: Provide proactive customer service

I was grateful to learn about the problem from my Dad. He was able to serve as a customer service canary, an early warning system that alerted me to the problem before it became too widespread.

Learning about icebergs and fixing them quickly allows you to proactively serve your customers. You can reach out to the people affected and offer solutions that minimize hassle. You can also prevent future customers from experiencing the same issue. In the long run, it’s a lot easier and cheaper to fix a small problem now than a large problem later.

It’s always good to ask this question when you find the root cause of a customer service iceberg:

Who else is affected?

Understanding the potential scope of the problem allows you to create a proactive customer service strategy. One big concern with Service Failure was that Amazon had also received an early shipment and had used it to fulfill all of their pre-orders. The good news was that I knew many of the people who had pre-ordered the book and could contact them personally. The bad news was that I didn’t know them all.

I worked with my publisher, AMACOM, to devise a proactive customer service strategy once we understood the scope of the problem. Retailers like Amazon have their own generous return policies that allowed customers to return or exchange defective books, but I wanted to get out ahead of the problem as much as possible. 

Here’s what we did:

• Several people, including myself, double-checked the new batch of books to ensure there were no problems. There weren’t.

• AMACOM authorized their customer service department to send out a replacement book to anyone who had received a defective one. The customer didn’t have to return the defective copy. This was a critical step since it would save customers time and effort if they went this route.

• I personally contacted everyone I knew who had pre-ordered a book from Amazon. I told them how to quickly check for the defect since it wasn’t immediately obvious. I also gave them instructions for getting a replacement copy from AMACOM if they needed one.

• I wrote a post on my blog, “What to do if your copy of Service Failure is a Service Failure” so people I didn’t know personally might easily find instructions for getting a replacement copy.

• I followed up with anyone I knew who received a defective copy to ensure their replacement copy arrived in good condition.

This was a lot of extra effort. It was also much better than potentially disappointing many more readers. 

What will you do the next time you encounter a customer service problem? It may just be an isolated incident, but beware of icebergs!

Update

I learned a lot of lessons from working with a publisher on my first book. Several years later, I republished the book myself under a new title, Getting Service Right.

It was a chance for me to take control of the publishing process to avoid these types of printing issues. And, if something did go wrong, I had control over service recovery.

You can read more about the story in the introduction to Getting Service Right.

Do you have a customer service canary?

Coal miners used to depend on canaries as an early warning system for poisonous gases such as carbon dioxide. Miners knew they’d better get out quickly if the canary became sick or died. 

Companies that provide outstanding service have their own version of the coal mine canary. They use early-warning systems to detect and solve small problems before they become big ones.

Credit card companies provide a familiar example. They employ complicated algorithms to detect fraudulent charges. I recently got a call from my credit card company asking me to confirm a suspicious transaction. It wasn’t one that I recognized, so they immediately cancelled the card and sent a new one overnight. 

This was a tiny hassle, but nothing compared to the expense and annoyance that would have resulted if a credit card thief had run amok.

In his book, High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service, Micah Solomon calls this “anticipatory customer service.” Here are some of the major benefits of anticipating problems and solving them before customers notice:

• Improve customer loyalty by saving them time
• Avoid the negative word of mouth that comes with repeated service failures
• Save money proactively fixing small problems instead of reacting to large ones

Customer service canary examples

Call Monitoring. Call centers can use call data to spot trends. For example, a software company shares recorded calls with its development team so they know what types of questions customers are asking about new product releases. This allows the software team to quickly identify and fix bugs.

Seed Lists. Many direct marketers maintain a list of recipients who can provide feedback on the timeliness and condition of deliveries. This list, called a seed list, can help spot problems in mailings. Netflix takes this a step further by periodically sending customers a quick email survey to ask when a particular video was received or sent.

Google Alerts. Automated services like Google Alerts can help you monitor online mentions of your brand, a particular product, or even trends that may affect your organization. I recently learned about a nice review of my book, Service Failure, from Portland Book Review thanks to Google Alerts. 

Here’s a customer service canary for personal use. I keep a list of anything that I’m waiting for, whether it’s a return call from a client, a package from a vendor, or an email from a colleague to confirm a meeting. I review this list once a day for anything that is overdue so I can follow-up quickly before the delay becomes too much of a problem.

Unlike coal miners, don’t run away

It’s hard to imagine coal miners ignoring the ominous sign of a dead canary and continuing their work. Unfortunately, this is exactly what many companies do when it comes to customer service. The warning signs are there, but they get ignored.

When the alarm sounds, you have to do something.

My friend Jason Marcus works at Main Street Hub, a company that helps local businesses manage social media. He recommends actively engaging customers who send out early warning signals by complaining online.

“Through monitoring you can gain a better understanding of your brand perception, and also get great feedback about what you're doing well and what you could be doing better. However, managing online reputation doesn't stop at monitoring. The best companies engage with reviewers.”

Marcus told me about one of his clients, a hotel that received a three-star review on Yelp. The guest felt the hotel was great overall but her room was too noisy. The hotel manager replied to the review by thanking the guest for her feedback and explained that they’d be happy to put her in a quieter room on her next visit. 

Here was her reply:

“I wish every hotel manager was as professional and courteous as you were to me just now. It's what will bring us back :-)"

The guest also upgraded her review to four stars!

Engaging the guest on Yelp helped the hotel beyond earning a higher rating. The guest’s feedback represents valuable information that can be used to prevent more unhappy guests and avoid low Yelp reviews in the future.

Here are just a few ways the hotel might prevent future noise complaints:

• Market the hotel as having a lively atmosphere (a.k.a. noisy)
• Ask guests about their room preferences at time of reservation or check-in
• Provide ear plugs in some of the noisier rooms along with a card that says:

“Our local nightlife can be quite vibrant, so we’ve provided these ear plugs for your comfort. Please inform the front desk if there’s anything else we can do to make your stay more enjoyable.”

Finding your own customer service canaries

Here are my suggestions for finding your own customer service canaries:

1. Identify your most critical customer interactions.
2. Ask yourself, “What could go wrong?”
3. Put a canary in place to signal any problems.

For example, I recently upgraded my website. The transition was generally smooth but I did experience a few problems connecting my new website with Feedburner. (Feedburner is the service I use to broadcast my blog via RSS, Twitter, and email.) 

Broadcasting my blog is critical so obviously it would be a problem if my blog didn’t get sent to subscribers. That’s why I set myself up as a subscriber too so I would know if the blog came through (my canary). When Murphy’s Law kicked in and my first blog post on the new website didn’t get broadcast, I quickly realized it and was able to correct the problem.

I’m still working out a few bugs with the new website, but at least I have my canaries to let me know where they are!

Note: No canaries were harmed while writing this blog post.

The top 5 viral service failure videos

In customer service, going viral usually means something went wrong and people are mocking you.

An extra dimension is added when that viral service failure is captured on video. In some cases, we actually see the events unfolding. In other cases, the video re-caps the service failure in a way that enlightens and entertains.

Here are my top five viral service failure videos. Agree? Disagree?  

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#5 Domino's Pizza Prank (2009) 

Story: Two employees at a Domino’s Pizza franchise thought it would be great fun to film one of them defiling customer orders while the other narrates. Though the two insisted the video was a joke, they soon found themselves fired and sitting in jail.

Viral Factor: The original video was removed, presumably by the two pranksters. That hasn’t stopped the video being posted by others, with at least one posting attracting over a million views.

Lesson Learned: If you absolutely, positively must do something this stupid, don't film it.

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#4  Dude, don’t touch my junk! (2010)

The Story: The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) implemented new airport security procedures in late 2010 that triggered a wave of passenger complaints. Many travelers felt harassed, humiliated, and physically violated. John Tyner surreptitiously videoed his TSA experience and posted what’s now known as the “Dude, don’t touch my junk!” video.

Viral Factor: The incident attracted national media attention and the video has been seen over one million times on YouTube. 

Lesson Learned: Excessive focus on compliance without compassion won’t win you many fans.

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#3 Sleeping Comcast Technician (2006)

The Story: A Comcast technician falls asleep while waiting on hold with his own company! The homeowner records the video and posts it online. Mockery ensues.

Viral Factor: The original YouTube video has attracted 1.7 million views.

Lesson Learned: If the system is broken, your employees won’t succeed.

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#2 FedEx Package Tosser (2011)

The Story: A FedEx driver was caught on surveillance video tossing a package over a fence. The owner posted the video on YouTube. The worst part, according to the owner, was he was at home when the package was delivered.

Viral Factor: The original video has been viewed nearly 9 million times on YouTube.

Lesson Learned: Always serve customers like the world is watching.

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#1 United Breaks Guitars (2009)

Story: United Airlines refused to take responsibility after baggage handlers broke Dave Carroll’s guitar. Carroll sought revenge by posting a humorous music video to YouTube.

Viral Factor: More than 13 million people have watched the video. The experience led Carroll to write a book by the same name and start a company called Gripevine.

Lesson Learned: When you're wrong, fix it and fix it fast.

Do your service channels have multiple personalities?

How many personalities do your service channels have?

The proliferation of multiple service channels is making customer service harder for companies to manage. The task is even more daunting when each channel has its own distinctive personality.

Not all of these personalities are good.

I recently wrote about a service experience at American Airlines where my suitcase was delayed. Every person I encountered was friendly, but they were all very different. It wasn’t just a product of the employees’ individual personalities. Each service channel seemed to have its own vibe:

Baggage Counter. These folks have seen it all. Nice, but curt.

800 Number. The call center agents were friendly but perfunctory.

Twitter. The American Airlines twitter personality is light, engaging, and helpful.

Customers will take your channels’ personalities into account when deciding how to contact your company. For many organizations, this may be one more way you are training your customers to complain via Twitter.

What causes these multiple personalities?

One culprit is channel ownership. A 2012 study by Ragan found that only 19 percent of companies had their customer service department manage or co-manage their social media channels.

Who does manage social media? The list of top five departments is very revealing:

1. Marketing – 70%
2. PR – 69%
3. Corporate Communications – 49%
4. Advertising – 26%
5. Customer Service – 19%

See a trend? The data suggests that most companies still operate under a philosophy that social media drives sales but customer service is a cost center.

Many companies also look at traditional one-to-one customer service channels as being very different from one-to-many. This isn’t totally unreasonable. That call where your employee was a total jerk to your customer was only recorded for quality and training purposes and not for broadcasting over the internet.

Of course, this short sighted approach misses a very important detail. People still have the ability to share their version of the story via with their own online networks. Want proof? Check out the Twitter hash tag #comcastsucks.

The fix to this problem is changing the corporate philosophy to firmly realize that customer service drives sales. Those one-to-one interactions are all preserving sales and creating future ones.

Another reason service channels can have multiple personalities is nobody has taken the time to define what outstanding customer service looks like for our organization. A recent survey I conducted revealed that only 62 percent of companies had created their own definition of outstanding service.

It's no wonder each channel does it's own thing without a single owner or a unifying definition to guide them.

Small business gets this right more often

Unifying service channel personalities is one area where small businesses have a huge leg up over larger organizations. The smaller scale makes it easier for one person, often the owner, to infuse his or her personality into each channel. In many cases, the owner is also primarily responsible for each channel.

Antica Trattoria is my favorite Italian restaurant in San Diego. Their food is outstanding and their service is warm and personal. They also have consistent personalities across all of their channels.

Chef and owner Francesco Basile personally manages their social channels. He runs their Facebook page and responds to reviewers on Yelp. If you dine there, you are likely to meet him while he's mingling with guests. Basile’s hands-on approach translates to a consistent feeling no matter how you interact with the restaurant.

How can larger companies emulate this? By doing the same things they do to scale up other parts of their business from small to large.

1. Codify it so your organization’s implicit understandings become explicit.
2. Measure it we can gain a clear picture of how well we’re doing.
3. Manage it so we can ensure we’re heading in the right direction.

Not coincidentally, these three steps match the first three steps an organization must take to create a customer-focused culture.

Book Review: Delight Your Customers

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What's the difference between good and outstanding customer service?

Steve Curtin provides an answer in his new customer service book, Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary.

A little disclosure before I get started. Delight Your Customers is published by AMACOM which also published my book, Service Failure. We even had the same editor. Steve and I discovered this connection after we already knew each other, but it's still important to mention. I'm also happy to report I really enjoyed his book. Otherwise, this would have been awkward.

Now, back to the book.

Delight Your Customers focus on the difference between an employee’s job function and their job essence. Job function consists of the various tasks an employee must complete or the procedures they follow. Job essence is the little extra that delights customers.

Curtin argues that most employees have a good understanding of their job function but are inconsistent at mastering their job essence.

I started looking for examples of this after reading the book and found one almost immediately in the shoe department at my local Macy’s. My wife, Sally, wanted to buy some new shoes and I was assigned to be the designated bag holder. The shoe section in a department store is typically chaotic. This scene was no different.

I had to wait awhile to take this picture without anyone in the frame. The store was very busy, I don't like sharing images of unsuspecting people.

I observed many sales associates executing their job functions. They checked inventory for shoes that customers requested, retrieved shoes from the stockroom, and rang up purchases.

Michael was the sales associate who helped Sally. He stood out because he clearly embraced his job essence. He addressed all of his customers by name and asked a few questions to build rapport. Michael used his sense of humor to break the ice. He even drew me into the conversation when he noticed me waiting off to the side.

The amazing thing was Michael was able to do this while interacting with a constant stream of customers. I know from experience that this is tiring work and exhaustion was evident on the faces of all his co-workers. Michael, on the other hand, seemed to draw energy from the constant customer interactions.

In Delight Your Customers, Curtin describes three characteristics that nearly all extraordinary customer service experiences have in common. It was interesting to see how these characteristics fit the service that Michael provided.

Characteristic #1: The service reflects the job essence. Michael was clearly focused on helping his customers have a good experience finding shoes they would love. This went well beyond the job function of checking inventory, retrieving stock, and ringing up sales.

Characteristic #2: It’s voluntary. Michael added his own flair to the basic job functions. For example, sales associates asked for customers’ names when they went to check on inventory so they could call out the customers’ names when they had retrieved their shoes. Michael took this a step further by finding Sally in the shoe department rather than just calling out her name from the counter. He repeatedly addressed her by name as he helped her find some shoes.

Characteristic #3: It’s free. Sally didn’t have to pay any extra for Michael’s outstanding service. In fact, it was his job essence that prevented her from giving up after the first few pairs of shoes weren't quite right. Macy's gained a sale due to Michael's enthusiastic service.

It was fun to see how mastering job essence can make such a huge impact on service. Delight Your Customers does a great job of providing practical examples and tips to help customer service professionals master the essence of their own jobs.

Delight Your Customers is available as a paperback or e-book from Amazon  and Barnes & Noble.