Get Ready to Respond to Customer Email Within One Hour

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

There’s a new standard for email response time.

You can toss out the old school one business day standard. That's so 1999. Even 2014’s four hour response time standard is old news.

The Toister Performance Solutions 2015 email response time survey revealed that customers now expect businesses to respond to their emails in just one hour.

Over 1,000 adults in the U.S. ages 18+ participated in the survey.

Here’s the breakdown of the survey results along with an invitation to tune in to an exclusive interview with customer service writing expert Leslie O'Flahavan.

 

A Big Challenge for Business

This isn't good news for most companies.

A separate 2014 Toister Performance Solutions survey revealed that 66 percent of companies currently take 1 day or more to respond. (Take the survey yourself and see how you stack up.)

One business day is still favored by many customers, with 43.4 percent of survey respondents selecting this option. The problem with this standard is 43.9 percent of customers expect a faster response.

That means the one business day standard could be alienating nearly half of your customers.

The new one hour standard reflects the longest response time that will meet at least 80 percent of customers’ expectations.

emailresponse2015biz.png

The survey looked at response time expectations by age, but found no significant difference between generations. It seems we all want it now.

More bad news?

In 2014, just 4 percent of survey respondents said they expected businesses to respond within 15 minutes. That jumped up to 14.5 percent this year.

You can see where this is going.

 

High Expectations for Co-Workers

The survey also revealed that people expect their co-workers to respond quickly too.

The most popular selection on the survey was four hours, but nearly as many people responded “one hour” as did “one day.”

Using the 80 percent rule, the new expectation for co-worker response time is just one hour too.

This is really bad news for workplaces already beleaguered by email overload. 

 

Learn How to Respond Faster

Check out my Google Hangout On Air interview with customer service writing expert Leslie O’Flahavan. 

Leslie and I discussed ways that companies and customers service agents can respond faster without compromising quality.

Image courtesy of Leslie O'Flahavan

Image courtesy of Leslie O'Flahavan

Leslie O’Flahavan is principle of E-WRITE, a company that helps customer care organizations write well in any channel: email, chat, social media, and SMS.

You can connect with Leslie on Twitter, the E-WRITE website, and of course via email.

You can also watch a video of the interview here.

 

Extra: Some Good News

The survey did reveal some good news.

We still give our friends a bit of leeway when it comes to response times. The standard is unchanged from 2014. It’s still one business day.

Are Your Customer Service Reps Suffering from TMI?

The chain restaurant branded itself as a fun place to eat. In reality, it often wasn’t.

Servers struggled to provide fun service because they had too much to think about. The company had a litany of service steps, procedures, and brand promises to follow.

It was enough to make your head spin:

  • Four service focus areas
  • Four separate cornerstones of guest experience
  • Sixteen steps for serving every guest
  • An internal customer service slogan
  • A customer-focused mission statement

It was a challenge to keep all of it straight. Even the chain’s executive team didn’t agree on what was most important. Servers often found themselves just trying to be efficient.

These servers were inundated with Too Much Information, or TMI. It’s an epidemic that affects many customer service employees in a wide variety of industries.

TMI’s Impact

TMI causes employees to divert critical brain power away from focusing on their customers. It’s harder for them to build rapport and critical opportunities to serve are missed.

TMI comes in many forms. We know that excessive feedback can impact performance. So too can having to memorize too many product facts, procedures, or processes. 

In many organizations, customer service TMI comes in the form of too many service steps, standards, and principles. One contact center asked its agents to follow 35 steps on every call. A credit union asked its tellers to follow 21 steps with every member interaction. 

TMI can even have a negative impact on customers. The venerable McDonald’s brand has suffered in part due to a dizzying array of menu options. Their menu has bloated to 121 distinct items (not counting different sizes), up from just 26 in 1980.

 

Reducing Noise

TMI creates noise that makes it hard for customer service employees to prioritize service. The solution is to cut out the noise.

Home Depot is a success story that I profiled in my book, Service Failure. 

Between 2007 and 2010, they embarked on an ambitious simplification program in an effort to improve customer service. Marvin Ellison, Vice President of U.S. stores, said in an interview:

First, we simplified things for the stores, giving them three primary things to focus on: remaining in stock, store appearance, and customer service.

One example was 200 weekly reports and emails that were sent to each store. These were merged into a one-page scorecard. Information and tasks had previously overwhelmed both managers and employees. Now, their top three priorities were clear.

The results were impressive. Home Depot increased their American Customer Satisfaction Index score from 67% to 75%. Their net promoter score increased from 48% to 68% during this same time.

The restaurant chain improved service quality by taking a similar approach.

First, their executive team and store managers all agreed that the company’s mission was the most important description of outstanding customer service. This gave everyone a clear customer service vision to follow. 

They also paired the sixteen service steps down to eight guidelines. These guidelines emphasized fun service over efficiency, which was the hallmark of the restaurant’s brand.

 

Reducing TMI

Cutting through the information clutter requires organizations to identify what’s truly important. Here are three steps you can take.

Step 1: Articulate a customer service vision. This is a clear definition of outstanding customer service that is shared by all employees. It should serve as a compass to help point employees in the right direction. You can download the customer service vision worksheet to create one for your organization.

Step 2: Measure what’s most important. Companies measure a lot of stuff, but often ignore what should be their top priorities. If service is your top priority, then make those metrics front and center. Better yet, set a goal around service. You can use the SMART goal worksheet to do this.

Step 3: Focus on the priority. Employees understand something’s importance by how often you talk about it. Simplify your messages to focus on the top priority. Written communication, team meetings, and one-on-one conversations should all be focused and concise. 

Customer service TMI comes from the top. Elite customer service leaders know this and obsessively protect their employees from TMI to help them stay focused.

New Discoveries: Crack the Customer Code Podcast

I have a confession to make.

My friend Adam Toporek recently asked me to be a guest on the Crack the Customer Code podcast that he co-hosts with Jeannie Walters. I was honored to be a guest so of course I said yes. 

Here’s my confession: I had never even listened to a podcast!

Podcasts didn’t seem like they were up my alley. I couldn’t imagine sitting at my desk and just listening to something.

I didn’t want to be a podcast neophyte when I recorded my session with Toporek and Walters, so I downloaded a few of their previous episodes. I queued them up on my phone and listened to them one day while I had some driving to do.

Three things immediately struck me:

  1. Their podcast is awesome! It's crisp, informative, and entertaining.
  2. I really do have plenty of podcast time (more on that in a moment).
  3. Podcasts actually work for me!
Image courtesy of Crack the Customer Code.

Image courtesy of Crack the Customer Code.

Crack the Customer Code’s brisk, informative format makes for easy listening. Each episode features topical discussions between Toporek and Walters, a guest interview, and a segment on customer heroes and zeroes.

Listening to the podcast in the car made it easier to pay attention. It was a nice substitute for the music or talk radio that I’d normally listen to. The engaging content made my trip seem a lot faster.

It also got me thinking about all of the “podcast time” I really do have. I travel a lot. Planes, trains, and automobiles all have a lot of built-in podcast time. 

Soon, I was checking out other podcasts. I started listening to a podcast from my local online newspaper, Voice of San Diego. I even discovered Serial and got hooked. 

Check out the Crack the Customer Code podcast if you have some “podcast time” on your hands. I haven’t missed an episode yet.

You can also listen to my episode here or find it on iTunes or Stitcher.

Are You Giving Employees Too Much Feedback?

It only took a few throws for the young softball pitcher to get frustrated.

Her dad would take her to a local park to practice. She’d pitch and he’d catch. After each pitch he’d have something to say.

He actually had a lot to say. The father gave his daughter at least three pieces of feedback after every pitch. There was a lot of room for improvement.

Instead of getting better, the constant stream of feedback made her worse.

It sucked the joy out of the game for the girl. It would get inside her head. She’d overthink a process that’s meant to rely on muscle memory.

It was never long before she’d ask in an exasperated voice, “How much longer do we have to do this?” 

She wanted to quit.

Many customer service employees face a similar feedback deluge. A lack of feedback is clearly a problem, but there’s mounting evidence that too much feedback causes problems too.

The Impact of Too Much Feedback

Some might call it micromanagement, but it’s not just the formal supervisor to employee conversations. Employees get feedback from multiple sources.

Here are other examples:

  • Informal dialogue with supervisors
  • Conversations with co-workers
  • Reactions from customers

Employees in some industries, like contact centers, are inundated with metrics. Data is also feedback. It tells us how things are going and helps us make decisions for the future.

Too much feedback can hurt performance.

A 2007 experiment by Nicholas H. Lurie and Jayashankar M. Swaminathan consisted of an inventory management simulation where certain participants received more feedback than others. The group that received the most feedback performed 11 percent worse than the group that received the least.

A meta analysis of feedback experiments published in 1996 revealed that 38 percent of feedback interventions result in decreased performance. The authors of the paper noted two conditions where performance was most likely to decline.

The first was complexity. The more complex the feedback, the more someone has to think about it. The young softball pitcher is a great example of what happens when you overthink something.

The second was personal. The more personal the feedback, the harder it was to process. “Make sure you give each customer a friendly greeting” is easier to swallow than, “You really need to work on your abrasive personality.”

 

Real-world Impacts

An overabundance of feedback causes three types of problems.

The first is a lack of priority. Excessive feedback obscures priorities. For example, a contact center agent might be asked to maintain a certain average talk time and achieve a first contact resolution rate.

Which one is really the most important?

You might be tempted to say first contact resolution, but talk time will probably be the highest priority because agents get continuous, real-time feedback on that metric. 

Ironically, companies that have re-focused agents on first contact resolution haven’t experienced a spike in talk time. Both metrics look good when agents focus on the top priority.

The second problem caused by too much feedback is a lack of focus. 

Like the young softball pitcher, an employee thinking about a million ways they need to improve will have a hard time staying in the moment.

An overbearing manager might be tempted to give employees instruction at every turn. Soon, employees become so focused on not doing it wrong that they lose the ability to trust their own instincts to do things right.

The final problem is ego. 

Feedback that challenges the ego is hard to listen to. Constantly challenging an employee with feedback that feels personal causes their emotional defenses to dig in. 

Any manager who has delivered a poor performance review to an employee who expected stellar marks has seen how quickly an employee can get defensive.

 

Finding the Feedback Sweet Spot

Too much feedback is bad. Too little feedback is bad. So, how do you find just right?

Here are a few suggestions.

Agree upon performance

Make sure you have a clear agreement with employees on what good performance looks like. This makes it easier to provide feedback that’s about results and doesn’t feel personal.

One at a time

Try to keep feedback focused on just one thing at a time. If it’s a behavior, hone in what the employee can do that will have the biggest impact. If it’s a metric, select the most important one.

Give them space

Nobody likes to be micromanaged. Give your employees some space to apply feedback and make their own adjustments.

Follow-up

The extreme opposite of micromanagement is no feedback at all. Avoid this problem by providing periodic, focused feedback to help employees continue to improve performance.

 

Survey: How fast do you expect a response to email?

April 7, 2020 update: See the results of the latest email response time survey.

Email is still big.

Many of us use email constantly throughout the day. It's accessible on our laptops, tablets, and phones. And, according to ICMI's latest research, email is the second most popular way to contact customer service after phone.

So, how quickly do you expect a response to all those emails?

My annual email response time survey is designed to find out. You can complete the short survey below or click here to access the survey if it doesn't appear on your screen.

  • The survey is open now through April 13

  • You'll see the current results instantly

  • I'll post the full results on this blog April 14

 

**Update 4/14/15** The survey is now closed, but you can review the final results and analysis here.

Improve Agent Morale by Driving Results

Note: This post originally appeared on the ICMI blog.

There are two hot topics in the contact center that never seem to go away: improving morale and driving results.

The basic idea is we need to find a way to improve morale so we can drive better results. 

But, what if we have it in the wrong order?

What Demotivates Agents

A 2006 Harvard Management Update article  revealed that employee motivation is at it’s peak when employees begin a new job, but morale tends to decline sharply after the first six months.

This suggests that employees are naturally motivated. Something happens on the job that demotivates them.

For many contact center agents, it’s the inability to drive results. Agents consistently say they’re frustrated by obstacles that make it hard for them to do their job.

It could be a defective product, a broken process, or an unfriendly policy. Whatever the case, morale sinks when agents feel they can’t do something about it. Morale worsens further when they feel their ideas for improvement aren’t being heard.

Contact center leaders are consumed with motivating agents, but we should really focus on preventing demotivation by helping agents drive results.

 

Agents Love to Win

High performing teams thrive on achievement. Spirits soar when agents can solve problems and help their customers.

A terrific example comes from Rackspace, a provider of cloud management services.

A communications outage brought down their support center phone and chat systems. Customers were suddenly unable to get assistance.

Agents leapt into action. They reached out to upset customers on Twitter. Many used their personal cell phones to get customers on the phone and help them solve problems. 

Nobody in management told them to do this. Agents weren’t given incentives to go above and beyond. They were motivated to do it because they cared so deeply about serving their customers. 

Rackspace calls this Fanatical Support. It’s something their agents focus on every day, with every interaction.

Other contact centers see a similar connection between agent motivation and the ability to get results.

The customer service team at Phone.com, a telephone service provider for small businesses, focuses on providing awesome service to every customer. They’ve enjoyed exceptionally low turnover because agents feel empowered to be awesome.

One agent said, “I love working here because it's so much less scripted than other contact centers. We’re able to just focus on helping our customers.”

Having a clear, results-focused purpose keeps agents energized.

Managers in these contact centers don’t see themselves as cheerleaders or motivators. They’re enablers who empower agents to overcome challenges and drive results. 

 

Helping Agents Drive Results

Here are just a few ways to sustain morale by helping your agents drive results:

  1. Hold survey review sessions. Gather the team and dig into your latest customer service survey. Ask for their input on solving the problems that generate the most negative feedback.
  2. Enlist your veterans. Let your experienced employees share their knowledge. Have them help train and mentor newer employees. Give them special projects like updating your product knowledge wiki.
  3. Share macro data. Contact centers are awash in handle time, service levels, and other micro stats. Show your agents how they can impact macro data such as CSAT scores, customer retention, and customer growth. 
  4. Remove obstacles. A contact center leader’s number one job should be to make it easy for agents to succeed. Find and remove obstacles that get in their way. Let your agents know you’re going to bat for them!
  5. Give feedback, not scores. Contact center agents are constantly measured, but many crave real, substantive feedback. Look past QA scores and have a conversation with agents about specific techniques they can work on to serve their customers at an even higher level.

These are just a few ideas. Whatever you try, the goal is to help agents achieve better results. 

If you can help them do great things, you’ll see their motivation soar.

How to Empower Employees (It's Harder Than You Think)

Empowering customer service employees is difficult.

If it were easy, more employees would be empowered. This clearly isn’t happening. A recent study by ICMI discovered that a whopping 86 percent of contact centers don’t empower their employees to provide outstanding customer service. 

An empowered employee has the resources and authority to make decisions about serving their customer. The benefits seem obvious:

  • Fast decision-making

  • Happier customers

  • Happier employees

Best of all, less work for the supervisor, right?!

Perhaps not. Empowerment takes a lot of work. Avoiding all that work is one of at least five reasons why customer service leaders don’t empower their employees.

Empowerment isn’t for meek managers. But, if you’re up to the challenge, here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Establish a Vision

The first step towards empowering your employees is to firmly establish a customer service vision. 

This is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that focuses on the customer. Employees must be able to answer two questions about this vision:

  1. What does it mean?

  2. How do I contribute?

An employee who understands the vision will actively look for opportunities to be empowered. Employees who don’t understand the vision may view their jobs as completing a series of tasks or enforcing rules.

In my book, Service Failure, I shared the story of Brett Dodson, who managed the parking enforcement team at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). The customer service vision for Dodson’s department focused on improving access to OHSU’s campus. 

Embracing the customer service vision initially proved to be a challenge:

They relished the opportunity to issue a [parking] violation and viewed their role as catching people parking where they shouldn’t. A few of the enforcement officers would even watch for someone to park illegally and then wait until the driver left the vehicle so they could write a ticket rather than ask that person to park somewhere else.

Dodson wanted his enforcement officers to spend more time engaging in dialogue with drivers, explaining rules, and providing alternatives rather than catching people doing something wrong. 

Enforcement officers were empowered to do all that, but it took several months of coaching and feedback for the entire team to embrace this as their role. Dodson needed to change the team’s culture before they could fully empower themselves.

Eventually, the team achieved great results. The number of citations went way down, customer satisfaction went way up, and fewer people parked where they shouldn’t.

It was a great turnaround for the team. It also took a lot of time, effort, and commitment to get there.

 

Step 2: Identify Red Lines

The Ritz-Carlton hotel chain is famous for their exceptional service. One of their secrets is each associate is empowered to spend up to $2,000 to delight a guest.

You’re probably thinking, “There’s no way I’m going to let my employees just give away $2,000!” 

That’s understandable. Every situation is different. But, what the Ritz-Carlton is really doing with the $2,000 is establishing a red line.

A red line makes empowerment clear for employees. It tells them where the boundaries lie. 

Your red line could be any number of things:

  • It might be a dollar amount (you decide what makes sense).

  • It could be a policy that employees can waive.

  • It might be extra goodwill that an employee can provide, like a shipping upgrade or a free dessert in a restaurant.

There’s a second part to the red line. Employees must understand it’s the limit, not the only option.

Associates at the Ritz-Carlton don’t automatically spend all $2,000 in every situation. They’re expected to use their judgment to decide what’s best.

Anything less than the limit is a gray area. 

 

Step 3: Share Feedback

You should never punish an employee for making a gray area decision they felt was right.

Employees will shy away from empowerment if they feel every decision they make will be second-guessed and criticized. It's also confusing to be told "you are allowed to do this" and then be told "you shouldn't have done that."

You should, however, discuss empowerment decisions so you, the employee, and the rest of the team can learn from them.

Here’s an example:

A small contact center empowered its agents to get product samples from the warehouse so they could answer detailed questions from customers.

Employees were simply asked to follow an inventory control procedure that tracked these items since they weren’t in their normal location. Following the procedure was the red line.

A gray area was when an employee should get samples from the warehouse.

Should the employee immediately go to the warehouse whenever a question arose so the customer could receive a call back within just a few minutes? Or, should they make the customer wait until later in the day, when the employee had more time?

What if it was a busy time of day? In a small contact center, just one employee getting off the phone to do some research could extend wait times for other customers.

Should it matter if the customer wants to place a large order versus a small one? 

Should a customer with a large order history (i.e. VIP customer) get faster service than a new customer?

The challenge is you can’t just come up with a rigid policy that covers every situation. There’s always a new twist that you hadn’t anticipated.

A better solution is for the employee and manager to discuss these types of gray area situations. It’s an opportunity for the manager to listen to the employee’s perspective and to provide some feedback on the employee’s actions.

Valuable lessons learned inevitably come from these conversations. Lessons that can be shared with the rest of the team so that everyone eventually shares a similar philosophy.

 

Conclusion

Empowering employees isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of effort and commitment from the customer service leader.

In most cases, the payoffs make it worthwhile:

  • Your employees will be more engaged (nobody likes to feel controlled)

  • Your customers will be happier

  • You’ll eventually spend less time putting out fires

This short video can provide more ideas.

Five Reasons Why Managers Don't Empower Employees

The retail associate was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I had come in and asked to return a paper shredder for either a refund or store credit. The shredder was new, had never been used, and was still in the box.

The obstacle was the store’s rigid “no shredder returns” policy.

It was clearly designed to prevent the store from accepting returns on shredders that had been used and couldn’t be resold. That wasn’t the case here since the shredder was still new and unopened.

The associate recognized this and I could sense his embarrassment and frustration. Unfortunately, he wasn’t empowered to do anything except say, “No.”

Why does this happen? I've asked managers to share why empowering employees is such a challenge. This post explores the top five barriers.

A customer service employee with hands in handcuffs to signify that he is unable to do anything to help customers.

What is employee empowerment?

Employee empowerment requires giving employees the right resources, best practices, and authority to consistently do a good job. Here's how it's defined:

Employee Empowerment is a process of enabling employees to deliver outstanding service to their customers.

Many managers hesitate to empower their employees because they are stuck on the traditional view of empowerment, which is giving employees extra authority.

Using this updated definition can make empowering employees an easier sell. Who wouldn't want employees to do a good job?

You can learn more about the definition here.

Why should you empower customer service employees?

Middle managers often need to sell executives on the merits of empowering customer service employees. Empowered employees can improve efficiency, increase customer loyalty, and generate positive word-of-mouth.

For example, my wife and I forgot to cancel our order from the pet supply company, Chewy, after our dog died.

My wife, Sally, called Chewy to arrange for a return, but the gracious customer service rep offered to give us a refund without us having to ship back the order. We were simply asked to donate the shipment to a local animal shelter.

  • It was an efficient way for Chewy to ease the burden on grieving pet owners.

  • That kind gesture ensured we would remain loyal customers when we eventually got another dog.

  • And I'm sharing this story with you, spreading positive word-of-mouth about a great company.

Empowering your employees gives your organization a chance to gain all these benefits. Wouldn’t it be great if customers shared these positive stories about you?

What are the barriers to employee empowerment?

There are a number of reasons why employees are not fully enabled to take care of their customers. Here are five common barriers, although this is by no means an exhaustive list.

1. Fear

Managers are afraid that an empowered employee will make costly errors.

Let’s say that employees in the office supply store are empowered to determine whether to allow a shredder to be returned. What if the employee makes a bad decision?

Suddenly, the company is out the cost of the shredder since it can’t be resold. The costs can add up fast if employees make too many bad judgment calls. 

Managers feel safer creating a rigid policy so these bad calls don’t happen.

 

2. Inconsistency

Empowerment gets tricky when you have more multiple employees and many locations. Different employees might make different decisions in the same situation.

A great example is airlines’ limits for carry-on bags.

Let’s say a gate agent allows one passenger to board with three small bags, even though the limit is two. Another gate agent requires a different passenger to check one of her three bags. You can imagine how upset the second passenger might feel when she sees the first passenger boarding the plane with three bags.

Inconsistency also leads to unreasonable expectations. 

The first passenger might expect to board every flight with three bags based on his initial experience. He might become quite upset if a different gate agent enforces the two-bag limit on another flight.

A manager might feel its easier to be consistent if employees are all expected to follow the same rules to the letter.

 

3. Fraud

Some managers believe that customers are constantly trying to take advantage of the company to get freebies and discounts. They worry that widespread fraud will make empowerment too costly.

The math rarely proves this to be true, but managers perceive that it's a fact:

  • Customers will invent problems to get something for free.

  • Customers will make up a sad story to get you to bend the rules.

  • Customers will yell and scream until they get their way.

Creating rigid rules seems like a way to protect employees from these conniving customers. Employees can’t be bullied into giving away the store if they aren’t allowed to.

 

4. Time

Some managers don’t feel they have enough time to empower their employees. This isn’t without good reason. Empowerment takes a lot of work.

  1. You must create clear guidelines.

  2. Employees must be fully trained.

  3. You must continuously monitor their decision-making and give them feedback.

It can seem like its more efficient to just create a rigid policy and avoid all the effort that empowerment requires.

 

5. Role

Employees might not realize they’re empowered. Many see their role as something other than serving customers. The language they use when they describe their jobs can be very telling:

  • A cashier might say, “I ring up purchases.”

  • A hotel front desk agent might say, “I check people into their rooms.”

  • A contact center agent might say, “I respond to customer emails.”

Notice the emphasis on the transaction. Employees who have a transactional view of their customer service jobs are less likely to empower themselves.

  • The cashier might not respond when the customer tells them there was something they couldn’t find.

  • The front desk agent might be at a loss when a guest arrives complaining that the airline lost his luggage.

  • A contact center agent plowing through emails might miss a chance to go the extra mile to solve a customer’s problem on the first contact.

 

Take Action!

Here are some resources to help you overcome these obstacles and empower your employees.

One final thought.

You must be willing to let go if you want to empower your employees. An effective manager can’t control everything. You can’t be everywhere all at once or monitor every interaction.

You must be willing to trust your employees.

5 Ways to Customize Off-the-Shelf Training

Managers face a dilemma when they want to train employees.

Do you spend time and money on a customized training program, or do you skimp on customization to find an off-the-shelf program that fits your budget?

A customized program involves hiring an external consultant or dedicating an internal team to creating a course that focuses on your team’s unique needs. This training can be highly effective, but it can also cost an arm and a leg.

An off-the-shelf program could be a training video, public workshop, or a training class that’s sold in a kit (PowerPoint, workbooks, etc.). This option is much cheaper, but it’s also generic.

It seems like a tough choice. 

You want to help employees boost essential skills. The training needs to be geared to your team’s unique challenges. And, the total cost has to fit a limited budget.

This post will show you five ways to have your cake and eat it too. 

You can enjoy the benefits of an inexpensive off-the-shelf program that’s also customized to your team’s specific needs.

I’m going to use customer service training as an example, but these concepts will work for many other topics too.

#1 Pick and Choose Modules

Many off-the-shelf training programs are broken down into smaller learning modules. You can customize your training by only selecting the modules your team really needs.

For example, my Customer Service Fundamentals training video on lynda.com has a run time of 1 hour and 57 minutes. However, each of the 35 individual movies are just 3 - 5 minutes long.

If you wanted your team to work on listening skills, you might have them watch the Active Listening and Overcoming Listening Barriers modules. At a total run time of 8 minutes and 51 seconds, you’ve just saved a lot of time by not taking the full course.

 

#2 Focus on the Big Picture

Let’s say you want to give your employees training on working with upset customers. Not just any upset customers. Your upset customers.

You can easily create a customized training program by incorporating an off-the-shelf training program into a bigger overall strategy. 

Here’s a sample approach:

  1. Prevention. Engage your employees in finding solutions to common problems.
  2. Training. Have employees take an off-the-shelf module on Diffusing Angry Customers. (You can view mine here.)
  3. Recovery. Institute a service recovery program to follow-up with customers who have complaints and try to win back their business.

This holistic approach is bigger than just training. It focuses on achieving real results by embedding the off-the-shelf training into a hands-on action plan.

 

#3 Prepare the Team

You can customize an off-the-shelf training program by giving your employees something specific to look for.

I ask my clients to make sure all employees can answer these three questions before coming to one of my training classes:

  1. What is the class about? (They’d better read the course description!)
  2. How will it help me do my job?
  3. What are some situations where I can apply the skills I expect to learn?

Having your employees answer these questions allows them to customize their own learning. Throughout the training class, they’ll be thinking about specific ways to apply the content.

 

#4 Conduct Post Training Follow-up

Adding in a follow-up activity is an easy way to customize an off-the-shelf training program.

Let’s say you want to help your employees develop their rapport-building skills. You scan an off-the-shelf program and find a few modules that will help.

You can tailor those modules to your unique environment by holding a follow-up meeting with your employees. For example, they may have learned the Five Question Technique for developing really good ice breaker questions.

You can have a follow-up meeting to discuss the questions that each employee came up with. You can even hold a second follow-up meeting a few weeks later to compare notes on how the new rapport-building questions are working.

 

#5 Do the Application Exercises

Many off-the-shelf training programs include specific exercises and activities that are designed to help employees apply what they learn.

Many employees attend these programs, but skip the application exercises. Perhaps they’re too busy after the training. Maybe they’re just hoping to gain new skills via osmosis. 

You can remedy this by insisting your employees complete the application exercises.

For example, there’s a module on Managing Expectations in my customer service training video that has suggestions for helping customers to avoid unpleasant surprises. You could have your employees take this module and then try to implement some of the suggestions with their own customers.

 

People sometimes get hung up on the idea of customized training. My suggestion is to put your focus in a more productive place: customized outcomes. 

You don’t need a big budget or a lot of time to leverage off-the-shelf training tools to improve customer service results.