A Lost Employee, Found Three Weeks Later

Lostfound.jpg

I wrote a post a few weeks ago about Jesse, a new bagel shop employee who was lost on the learning curve. 

She was set adrift on a busy morning without proper training. As a result, she didn’t yet know how to be useful. It was clearly an awkward situation for her.

I wondered if she would last very long.

I visited the same bagel shop last weekend and saw a completely different Jesse this time. She was confident and smiling as she served her customers. She had a job to do and she knew how to do it.

Her job this day was filling orders for customers who wanted to get a dozen bagels. She helped one indecisive customer by making a few suggestions to round out his selections. Jesse even joked with customers waiting in line by suggesting that all they had to do to skip the line was buy a dozen bagels from her. 

Her personality was muffled and restrained by inhibition the first time I saw Jesse. Three weeks later, her personality sparkled.

 

What was the difference?

Jesse had two things that she lacked when I first saw her three weeks ago: competence and confidence.

Three weeks ago, Jesse was at Level 2 on the learning curve. She lacked the competence to do her job. It wasn’t her fault - she hadn’t yet been trained — but that lack of ability in turn hurt her confidence. Nobody likes to look and feel inept. Especially when there’s an audience (a.k.a. customers) to see it.

fourstagesconfidence.png

All new employees have to go through this stage to some degree, but a lack of training exacerbated the situation by unnecessarily prolonging this stage.

This day, Jesse had attained “Level 4” on the learning curve for fulfilling requests for a dozen bagels. This is where an employee’s skill level and confidence are both high. They’ve mastered a particular task to the point where they can do the job without thinking through the steps. This ability to just flow allows them to infuse their own personality into the situation.

Getting from Level 2 to Level 4 requires time. A lack of training makes it take even longer.

Employees like Jesse are at risk during this period because they aren’t yet able to do their jobs effectively. They may even decided to quit if the process is too uncomfortable.

Good for Jesse for sticking with it.

 

How to Prevent Employees from Getting Lost

Here are some tips from my previous post that can help keep new employees from feeling lost. 

  • Let them know it’s okay to make mistakes during training.
  • Commend then on the progress they’re making.
  • Be available to guide them and provide assistance.
  • Encourage them to stay on track.

You can revisit the entire post here if you'd like a more in-depth explanation of the learning curve.

Developing Effective Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Is your survey effective?

Is your survey effective?

This post is a short re-cap of the Designing Effective Customer Satisfaction Surveys webinar.

It was designed to be an overview of the basics. There are also links to additional resources at the bottom of this post so you can take a deeper dive into the subject.

You can view the webinar here.

The webinar focused on three key points:

  • Impactful survey design
  • Fast survey creation
  • Response rate strategies

This was a very interactive webinar and a lot of participants contributed some terrific ideas. One of my favorites was our brief discussion on why we don’t complete surveys ourselves. You can learn a lot about why your customers won’t do something if you examine why you yourself won’t do it.

The webinar runtime is approximately 48 minutes and is definitely worth viewing. 

 

Don’t Miss Part 2!

Surveying your customers is just the first step. Next, you must use that data to take action! I’m hosting a follow-up webinar on Wednesday, March 5 at 10am PST. It's called How to Analyze and Act on Customer Satisfaction Data.

You can use the form below to register.

Customer Satisfaction vs Delight: Why You Need Both

Customer Satisfaction and Delight: Which will it be?

Customer Satisfaction and Delight: Which will it be?

Note: This post originally appeared on the Salesforce blog. Check out my latest post on the Salesforce blog, "5 Signs Your Customer Service Survey is Missing the Point."

 

In the world of customer service, a lot of attention is given to the concept of customer delight. There are books written about it and training classes offered on how to do it. Influential customer service experts tell us we’ve failed if we don’t delight every customer every time.

Legendary tales are breathlessly retold around the customer service campfire. Did you hear this one? A store once gave a customer a refund on a set of tires despite the fact that the store didn’t even SELL tires.

There are also valid arguments against trying to delight everyone. Giving one customer a refund on set of tires you don’t sell is the stuff of legend, but you’ll go bankrupt if you do it for everyone. Something that delights one customer may annoy another. What delights a customer today may simply satisfy that same customer tomorrow as they become accustomed to a new level of service.

So, is customer delight truly a business imperative? Or, is focusing on customer satisfaction enough?

The answer is somewhere in the middle. Delight and satisfaction actually co-exist quite nicely. In fact, they need each other. 

 

Satisfaction and delight defined

Customers’ perceptions of service are based on how the experience matches their expectations:

  • Satisfactory service occurs when expectations are met
  • Delight occurs when service exceeds expectations
  • A service failure occurs when service falls short of expectations

The rub is that we only really notice experiences that are different than what we expected.  

Imagine you walk into a room and flip the light switch. You expect the lights to turn on. That’s exactly what happens 99% of the time, so you hardly pay any notice when they do. Satisfactory service is a lot like that.

What if something different happens?

You’d be sure to notice if the lights came on to reveal a room full of people shouting, “Surprise!” A surprise party would be an unexpected delight.

Delight is great, failure is bad, but most of the time the lights just come on as expected and you go about your business.

Customer service is the same way. We get satisfactory service most of the time but we don’t really notice it because that’s what we expected. The delight and failure outliers are what we notice and remember. 

 

Why we need satisfaction AND delight

Our tendency to only notice the unusual plays an important role in customers’ perceptions of service. If a customer has four satisfactory service experiences with your company and one delightful one, their overall perception will be heavily influenced by the delightful encounter.

Imagine a frequent flyer who settles into a comfortable routine with her preferred airline. The flights are generally on time, the flight attendants are friendly, and her elite status provides a few extra perks that make travel easier. One day, a severe storm cancels all departing flights and the traveler must wait until the next day to fly home. While other passengers scramble for accommodations, an airline employee seizes the opportunity to be a hero and books the frequent traveler in a nice hotel room at no charge.

These hero moments don’t happen every day, but they’re the experiences that are remembered.

It’s impractical to create hero moments like this all the time. It’s also not necessary. Providing satisfactory service most of the time and delightful service in the right moment is often enough to make your service stand out.

Companies that seize these hero moments benefit from another quirk of human perception called "confirmation bias." When people have a strongly held belief, they’ll selectively filter information based on whether or not it supports that belief. 

If the frequent traveler pledges her unwavering allegiance to her favorite airline after they put her up in a hotel, she’ll unconsciously find herself biased by this experience. Good travel experiences become further proof in her mind that the airline is great. An occasional poor experience is dismissed as an anomaly and quickly forgiven.

 

The opportunity and danger of service failures

Strangely, service failures also represent an opportunity to delight customers. Service failures can and will happen in every company, but what happens next separates the great organizations from the rest.

By definition, a service failure is an experience that falls short of a customer’s expectations. This puts the customer at a crossroads. The service failure is amplified if the company fails to fix the problem. It might even negate the impact of previous satisfactory experiences and cause the customer to dwell on the one service failure. The customer can develop confirmation bias where they expect the company to provide poor service and selectively filter information based on whether it supports their opinion.

But, what happens if someone seizes the hero moment and quickly fixes the problem with style and grace? Now, the feeling of delight is amplified because the customer started out feeling so poorly.

Note: This wasn't mentioned in my original post, but it's worth mentioning that Jenny Dempsey provided an outstanding example of the impact a negative experience can have in a recent post she wrote for the Communicate Better Blog. Up until a recent service failure, her opinion of a certain airline was very positive. Now, she's a bit concerned about future experiences.

 

Start with consistency

If you want to delight your customers, start by being consistently good. Fix chronic problems. Get the basics right every time.

Do this well and your hero moments will stand out and delight your customers. 

You Can't Fake Authentic Customer Service

Beware of customer service phonies.

Beware of customer service phonies.

Nobody likes a phony.

Many customer service professionals are incredibly authentic. Their service is genuine because it comes from the heart.

Other customer service professionals are as fake as a $1,000,000 bill.

Some of these phonies are in leadership positions. They demand service greatness from their employees while treating these employees with contempt.

Other phonies are frontline employees. To them, customer service is just a job and not a calling. Quitting time can never come soon enough.

Still other phonies are talking heads. They blog, tweet, and train, filling their audience’s brains with disingenuous platitudes. These people talk a good game but rarely follow their own advice. 

Authenticity matters in customer service. 

Customers can hear it in your voice. The see it in your actions. They feel it in the way you treat them. 

Genuine service professionals treat everyone as though they were an important customer. They listen. They’re warm and friendly. They follow through and do what they say they’re going to do.

Phonies operate as though there’s some sort of customer service switch. They flip it to service mode when a customer is near and plaster on their Cheshire Cat smile. But the truth comes out in their actions. They don’t listen. They’re not genuinely friendly. They definitely do not follow through and do what they say they’re going to do.

The odd part is the phonies can’t wait to tell you how great they are. Thanks to an odd phenomenon called the Dunning Kruger effect, they really believe it. Phonies like to perpetrate the myth that customer service is easy.

The authentic customer service pros would rather show you. And, secretly, they worry about being a phony. It’s one of those things that keeps them hungry to always do better.

Five Ways to Capture VOC Data Without a Survey

Ugh. Not another survey.

Customers are tired of surveys. You might be tired of your own survey too. There’s even a term called survey fatigue.

Maybe your customers are getting tired of the survey you’re doing now. Perhaps you stopped doing a survey because response rates were too low. It might be that you’ve put off implementing a survey because you’re worried that customers can’t be bothered.

Voice of the Customer (VOC) data is important. You just don’t want to annoy your customers in the process. There’s got to be a better way.

Here are five ways you can capture VOC data without resorting to a survey.

1. External Review Sites

Are your customers already reviewing your business on an external review site such as Yelp or Trip Advisor? These sites can be a treasure trove of VOC data.

They can even offer a few advantages over traditional customer service surveys.

  • Customers tend to leave more detailed feedback when writing an online review. 
  • You can respond directly to reviewers and give yourself a chance to fix a problem.
  • High ratings equal free advertising that will bring in new customers.

 

2. Social Media Monitoring

If your customers are talking about you on social media, why not join the conversation? Monitoring social media for mentions of your company, product, or service is a great way to capture VOC data.

There are plenty of tools to help you do this. Brandwatch put together a great list of 10 free social media monitoring tools. 

 

3. Google Alerts

Google alerts offers an easy way to monitor the internet for mentions of your company, brand, products, or services. You can sign up to be notified automatically when key words that you specify show up in search results.

Combining methods 1 - 3 can provide your company with a comprehensive amount of VOC data. For example, let’s say someone reviews your company on Yelp, blogs about a recent experience, and then Tweets a mention of your brand. 

This is a great opportunity to interact with a customer who is talking about your brand online. You can reinforce the connection if they’re happy. Or, you can try to resolve the problem if they’re taking to the web to rant. 

 

4. Contact Type Reports

Many companies keep a record of the reasons customers contact customer service. This can captured through your CRM system, your IVR software, or even an old-fashioned tick sheet. Understanding why customers are requesting service can help you pinpoint and diagnose problems.

In many cases, this approach can work much faster than waiting for customers to fill out a survey. For example, if you notice a spike in calls related to a specific product, you can quickly investigate the problem and diagnose a root cause.

 

5. Ask Customers Directly

You don’t need a survey to get between you and an individual customer. Don’t be afraid to ask customers to share their feedback directly.

This is a great source of data since you can often ask for more detailed information than you might be able to capture in a survey. And, it also gives you a chance to make things right if the customer’s feedback involves any sort of service failure.

 

Surveys CAN Be Useful

This post provides some alternatives to customer service surveys, but that doesn’t mean surveys can’t be extremely useful ways to gather Voice of the Customer Data.

This training video on lynda.com can provide you with step-by-step guidance. You'll need a lynda.com subscription to view the entire course, but you can get a 10-day trial.

 

Want Even More VOC Ideas?

Here are a few more posts you might be interested in:

Book Review: What's Your Purple Goldfish

I always enjoy a book that’s practical. 

One book that fits this description is What’s Your Purple Goldfish?: How to Win Customers and Influence Word of Mouth, by Stan Phelps. 

Phelps defines a purple goldfish as an “unexpected surprise that’s thrown in for good measure to achieve product differentiation, drive retention, and promote word of mouth.” He argues that companies pursuing a purple goldfish strategy stand out from a sea of sameness by creating memorable experiences that customers will talk about.

The book is full of real stories and examples that illustrate each specific concept. In the spirit of practical application, I thought I’d contribute one of my own.

My wife, Sally, and I recently traveled with friends to Paso Robles, California to do some wine tasting. We made a point to visit one of our favorite wineries, Herman Story. 

Herman Story initially won us over with their outstanding wine. A purple goldfish has made us loyal fans. 

Winemaker Russell P. From likes to chat with visitors in the tasting room. Whenever we’ve been there, From has offered us a chance to taste some additional wine that wasn’t on the tasting menu. On our last trip, From poured us several wines that hadn’t even been bottled yet. He had poured them straight from the barrel just to give his guests some extra enjoyment.

It’s fun to learn about wine directly from the winemaker. It’s even more fun to taste something that hasn’t even been released yet!

Tasting a barrel sample at Herman Story.

Tasting a barrel sample at Herman Story.

What’s Your Purple Goldfish? is a fast and enjoyable read. I highly recommended it if you’re looking for ideas and inspiration for standing out in your customers’ minds.

You can purchase the book on Amazon or view this preview slide show to learn more about it.

Don't Let New Employees Get Lost on the Learning Curve

Updated May 15, 2024

Jesse stood awkwardly next to her trainer.

The trainer was ringing up customer orders. It was a busy weekday morning at the bagel shop. Jesse had just started working, there, but the trainer didn’t have much time for training.

Jesse anxiously looked over the trainer’s shoulder, trying to learn something. She felt self-conscious as customers looked at her and wondered why she wasn’t taking orders, too. 

She wanted to be useful but didn’t know how.

Jesse hadn’t yet learned much. She could wipe down tables, but all the tables were clean. She could pass out orders, but there weren’t any orders to pass out at the moment.

The chance to serve finally arrived.

A customer approached and asked her a question. The awkwardness quickly returned when Jesse realized she didn’t know the answer. She had to interrupt the store manager who was also busy cashiering.

An employee stands a bagel shop counter, waiting for customers.

Why it’s hard to be a new employee

A 2020 report found that 31 percent of retail employees receive no training. Those who do receive training often aren’t fully trained when they begin serving customers.

Minimally trained new employees don't know how to fully do their jobs. They must constantly stop and ask questions. They lack the skills, experience, and confidence to serve customers the right way.

It’s not their fault. 

Managers should be there to help. Many don’t. They feel like they’re too busy to make time for training. Helping employees like Jesse can be an afterthought.

New employees are left to fumble along.

Some eventually learn to do their jobs well. Others pick up bad habits and never realize their potential. Still others dread the feeling of awkward helplessness and quit.

It’s this place between minimal training and customer service mastery that so many employees like Jesse are needlessly lost on the learning curve.

You can prevent this by being there to help.

 

Four Critical Stages Along the Learning Curve

Noel Burch first identified four distinct stages along the learning curve. Each stage is marked by the learner’s skill level compared to how conscious they are of their skill level.

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence. Learners don’t know what they don’t know. For a new employee, this might be just prior to the start of a new job. Many are excited (and a little nervous) about working somewhere new.

Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence. Learners become aware of their limited skill level when they reach stage 2. This is usually marked by a corresponding drop in confidence. Jesse was in stage 2.

Stage 3: Conscious Competence. Learners can demonstrate the skill at a minimal level but haven’t achieved mastery. The newness and unfamiliarity of the skill makes them very self-conscious. Confidence is low to moderate. 

Stage 4: Unconscious Competence. Employees reach stage 4 when they can do their jobs without really thinking about the basic procedures. Confidence is generally high.

When do new hires need the most support?

Stages 2 and 3 are dangerous times for new employees. The lack of ability and confidence convinces many new hires to quit if they don’t feel supported.

Let’s look at the four stages again with typical confidence levels for each stage:

It’s critical for trainers to offer encouragement to employees during stages 2 and 3. 

Low confidence can quickly lead to disengagement if new employees don’t feel supported. Here are some critical messages that must be communicated to new employees to prevent this from happening:

  • Set clear expectations about how new hires can contribute.

  • Let them know it’s okay to make mistakes during training.

  • Commend them on the progress they’re making.

  • Proactively guide them and provide assistance.

  • Encourage them to stay on track.

The store manager and the trainer at Jesse’s bagel shop weren’t doing any of these things. They were both too busy serving customers to notice Jesse trying hard not to get lost.

Additional Resources

These resources will help you train your employees more effectively.

  1. Watch the replay of this LinkedIn Live for an in-depth discussion of the learning curve.

  2. Train your team with my Customer Service Foundations course on LinkedIn Learning. I’ve created a facilitator’s guide to help you.

  3. Keep your team sharp with my free Customer Service Tip of the Week email.

Frequently asked questions about the learning curve

Here are some additional questions you might have.

Q: What happened to Jesse?
Jesse stuck with it and eventually became a great employee.

Q: How can I tailor my training program to accommodate different learning styles and preferences among new employees?
Contrary to popular belief, learning styles don't exist. Extensive research has busted this myth. However, customer service training is generally more effective when you adopt a multi-modal approach.

Q: Are there any specific technologies or tools recommended for streamlining the onboarding process and reducing the learning curve?
You don't need any special technology. Shorten the learning curve by first creating measurable learning objectives. Discover how to quickly create effective training programs with How to Design and Deliver Training Programs.

Q: What strategies can I employ to ensure ongoing support and guidance for new employees beyond the initial onboarding period?
Employees need less guidance once they reach the unconscious competence stage. Regular feedback and coaching can help them keep their skills sharp. Give them a good example to follow by being a role model.

Why Priming is Essential to Outstanding Customer Service

Are you primed to provide outstanding service?

Are you primed to provide outstanding service?

There’s a concept in psychology called priming. According to a helpful overview from Psychology Today, priming refers to “activating particular representations or associations in memory just before carrying out an action or task.”

The theory is that the primer influences the way the action or task is carried out.

One famous priming experiment had participants create sentences from a list of scrambled words. A group of participants was given a set of words such as “old,” “bingo,” and “lonely” that primed them to think of the elderly. Another group was given a set of neutral words. The experiment found the participants who were primed to think of the elderly took more time to walk to the elevator after leaving the study than the participants who weren’t primed. 

Priming is also the core subject of Napoleon Hill’s famous self-help book, Think and Grow Rich. Originally written in 1937, Hill argued the secret to financial success was to imagine it. In other words, prime yourself to be successful and it will happen.

Can customer service employees be primed to provide either good or poor customer service? I think so.

 

Names as Primers

Word association is a powerful priming tool. This can hold true for the names employees call their customers.

Shep Hyken, author of Amaze Every Customer Every Time, recently wrote a blog post that suggested we find more positive words to refer to our customers. For instance, a gym calls its customers “members” while a hotel calls its customers “guests.” Hyken’s research shows this subtle change in language can positively influence a company’s culture. He shared the example of an Ace Hardware store that started referring to customers as “neighbors.” Employees there began viewing their customers, or neighbors, in a whole new light.

Micah Solomon, author of High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service, took it a step farther in a recent article he wrote for Forbes. Solomon argued that we shouldn’t think of customers by any name at all other than their own. Each customer is an individual and should be treated individually.

Changing what you call your customers isn’t a foolproof plan to improve service, but it does have some merits. 

Think about your own experiences where you knew a customer by name. Greeting that customer like an old friend may have primed you to provide even better service than you’d provide to someone you’ve never met before.

 

Positive and Negative Preconceptions

A 1968 study by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson found that students’ academic performance improved at a higher rate than their peers when their teachers were primed to think of them as high-achievers. This idea that positive expectations can become a self-fulfilling prophecy is known as the Pygmalion Effect. 

There’s also an opposite to the Pygmalion Effect. The Golem Effect stipulates that negative expectations can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

The Pygmalion and Golem effects can be observed in a customer service setting. If we think someone will be a good customer or a big tipper they often turn out to be just that. If we think someone will be a difficult customer or skimp on a tip that often happens too.

 

Positive Visualizations

I’ve consulted with a few medical device manufacturers. One thing that struck me is the walls of their offices were decked out with pictures of patients who’ve used their devices. The emphasis was on the person, not the device itself.

My clients told me they wanted employees to think of people when they went to work each day. Their products were more than just things. For one client, their products helped people with injuries become more mobile. For another client, their products were literally used to save lives. 

The pictures of people were there to prime employees to go above and beyond.

You too can use visuals to prime yourself or your employees to deliver outstanding service. Start by creating a visual that depicts successful customer service and then spend a moment looking at that image at the start of each day. 

You can see a couple of examples in in a blog post I wrote called Learn From the Pros by Visualizing Outstanding Service. 

 

Why is Priming Primary?

In my observation, employees who intend to provide great service generally find a way to get it done. They find creative solutions to challenging problems. Angry customers don’t phase them. These employees appear to be perpetually cheerful and optimistic.

The specific intention to make their customer happy becomes a primer for great service.

Without the intention to be great, employees tend to retreat towards harmony and comfort. If a customer is easy to please then great service is a result. If the situation is difficult then a good result becomes less likely.

Scientific-types will hate this explanation because it can’t be replicated in a tightly controlled experiment. To that I say, “What’s the harm in trying?” 

Set the intention to be make your customer ecstatic and then see what happens. You can do it!

Three Roadblocks to Effective Customer Satisfaction Surveys

How would you rate your customer service survey?

How would you rate your customer service survey?

Customer service surveys are everywhere. 

A 2010 study by Vovici revealed that Americans are inundated with over 7 billion survey requests per year. That’s nearly 23 survey requests for every American. 

The intent of these surveys is to capture Voice of the Customer (VOC) information that can be used to improve service. Unfortunately, that intent is rarely realized. Some surveys are poorly designed. Others have low response rates.The worst problem is not doing anything with the data collected. 

This is a common theme among the small and medium sized business I work with. Most have some sort of survey program in place but there’s a nagging feeling that it's not very useful.

Perhaps your company is considering a customer service survey. Or, you have one already but now you’d like to make the most of it. Here are three common roadblocks you’ll need to avoid:

 

#1 Inertia

Many customer service professionals believe that a robust VOC program is important but they just don’t know how to get started. Inertia sets in. Do any of these excuses sound familiar? 

  • I don’t have time right now.
  • It’s too expensive.
  • Our customers are tired of surveys.
  • It’s just a number that senior management wants to see.
  • Surveys don’t really apply to us.

Nothing changes without action. Companies who delay implementing a VOC program could be missing out on a gold mine of information. Even worse, they might continue to run an ineffective program that wastes everyone’s time, including their customers'.

 

#2 Poor design

Customer service surveys are often little more than a pile of questions that reveal little or no insight. The surveys become longer and longer as each stakeholder thinks of things they’d like to ask. A simple transaction survey soon becomes 100 questions long. 

The net result is the survey annoys the customer while the company is left with piles of data they don’t know how to use.

 

#3 Low response rates

Poorly designed and executed survey programs often yield low response rates. It can be disheartening to go through the trouble of creating a survey and then have hardly anyone respond. Continuing the program can be difficult to justify if customers aren’t responding.

 

Solutions

I’m offering a complimentary webinar to help you avoid these roadblocks.

Designing Effective Customer Satisfaction Surveys

  • Date: Thursday, February 13
  • Time: 10 am - 11 am (PST)

You’ll learn: 

  • Simple ways to quickly create surveys on a tight budget
  • Proven techniques for writing impactful survey questions
  • Three secrets to improving your response rates

This is the first of a two-part webinar series that covers the basics of customer service surveys. The second webinar, called How to Analyze and Act on Customer Satisfaction Data, will be held on March 5.