Domino's Brilliant Pizza Emoji Ordering Plan Needs Work

Domino's has always been about easy pizza.

Founded in 1960, they built their reputation on a 30 minutes or less guarantee. That lasted until 1993, when a jury awarded $79 million to a woman whose car was struck by a delivery driver running a red light.

They've long been a staple on college campuses. My school had a deal with Domino's where you could order pizza using your meal plan. My nutrition took a serious hit.

Domino's recently upped their game by unveiling their Domino's AnyWare program. It allows you to order pizza via a multitude of innovative channels:

  • Text
  • Tweet
  • Smart TV (Samsung)
  • Your car (Ford Sync)
  • Smart watch
  • Voice (through the Domino's app)

The concept is brilliant.

Domino's is trying to make it as easy as possible to order a pizza. The most talked about option is the ability to order a pizza by either texting or Tweeting a pizza emoji.

Unfortunately, the execution seems to be a bit bumpy.

In May, Khushbu Shah published a post on Eater called I Ordered Domino's With a Pizza Emoji and It Took Three Hours.

Shah detailed a painstaking process of setting up an Easy Order account and then having to place an initial order before being able to order with an emoji.

Even when that got sorted out it didn't quite work.

You could be easily blame Shah's experience on a few growing pains for a new service. Lessons learned and that sort of thing. After all, Domino's operates 11,900 stores around the world and delivers more than a million pizzas each day.

Something's bound to go wrong once in awhile, right?

Fast forward to last week. Gigi Peccolo published a post on the OneReach blog detailing her experience trying to order a pizza via text. 

Peccolo's experience was remarkably similar to Shah's. It was painstaking, counterintuitive, and filled with several seemingly unnecessary steps. She thoughtfully included screenshots on her post so you can see the back-and-forth.

It's obvious that a phone call would have been much easier.

The concept is great. It's just strange that three months go by from the Eater post to the OneReach post and not much has changed in the process.

Finally, there's an unintended consequence of ordering pizza via Twitter. People will know that you're ordering pizza.

The big danger for most of us is this may attract a few unexpected house guests. If you're Bryce Petty, the New York Jets rookie quarterback, you might take a little flack for ordering Domino's in New York.

How to Share KPIs with Executives

This post was originally published on the ICMI blog.

A busy contact center needed to hire more agents.

The manager presented her case to the executive team. Her proposal focused on key performance indicators (KPIs) that indicated the contact center was short staffed:

  • Long hold times
  • High abandon rates
  • Poor service levels

The manager was disappointed when the executive team rejected her proposal. She thought she had put together a strong case based on compelling data.

So, what went wrong?

The short answer is the contact manager focused on the wrong KPIs. Here's how to identify KPIs that executives truly care about.

Step 1: Target Hot Buttons

The first step is to figure out what issues executives care about the most. I call these "hot buttons."

There's no single answer here. Take the time to ask them directly. Listen carefully to the types of questions they consistently ask you.

Let's go back to the busy contact center. Executives there cared most about cost containment. They had recently invested in some new marketing initiatives and needed to rein in spending in other areas.

The manager's hiring proposal was rejected because she didn't directly address cost containment. In fact, it raised a red flag because hiring more people would increase costs in the short run.

A more successful strategy would have been to illustrate how hiring more agents would save the company money over time. For example, adding staff might improve first contact resolution, reduce discounts given for poor service, and cut down on customer churn.

 

Step 2: Link Executive Hot Buttons to KPIs

The next step is to link KPIs to the issues your executive team cares most about.

Here's how a different contact center leader successfully pitched hiring new agents to the company's CEO.

The manager started by recognizing that cost containment was the CEO's hot button issue. In particular, the CEO often asked about the volume of overflow calls sent to an outsourced contact center. (This was because calls sent to the outsourcer were more expensive than those kept in house.)

So, the contact center manager focused on the percentage of calls kept in house as a KPI.

Using this KPI, the contact manager was able to show that hiring more agents would reduce costs. Saving money was music to the CEO's ears and he quickly approved the plan.

 

Step 3: Create Clear Reports

Executives don't have a lot of time to read dense reports. They need clear reports that are easy to read. 

A great example comes from Lupe Zepeda, Customer Service Manager at CSA Travel Protection. 

She met with her executive team to identify and agree upon the KPIs they were most interested in seeing. Zepeda then created a report that was easy to skim and scan, but also contained additional information.

Here's the format: 

KPIreport.png

The report is shared with executives on a monthly basis. (That's their preferred time frame.) It provides a clear snapshot of the contact center's performance and allows executives to quickly identify any areas of concern.

The smiley column on the right hand side is a best practice. Some people worry that a simple, color-coded smiley graphic is too silly for an executive report. Executives actually like it because it tells them at a glance whether or not the KPI is on target.

 

Getting Started

Sharing KPIs with executives doesn't have to be difficult. Just keep in mind their primary purpose. They're called Key Performance Indicators because they're designed to provide a quick snapshot of performance.

You'll do well if you can use KPIs to show executives how your contact center is contributing to organizational goals and the specific issues they care about most.

How to Choose the Right Type of Customer Service Survey

Updated: June 12, 2023

Customer service surveys are confusing. There's an alphabet soup of options available to companies who want to survey their customers.

  • Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS)

  • Customer Effort Score (CES)

They all have their proponents and detractors. It's tough to figure out what to do.

Here’s an overview of each survey type along with a real case study where it’s effective. You’ll also see a short video overview of the three major survey types.

Do this before you select a survey type

There is one step you must complete before you decide what type of survey to use. Decide why you want to gather feedback from your customers and what you plan to do with it.

Here are four examples of organizations with different survey goals.

  • Software company: improve customer interactions with technical support.

  • Nonprofit organization: increase loyalty from annual donors.

  • Equipment manufacturer: reduce friction for employees needing help from IT.

  • Financial services: identify top problems faced by 30 biggest clients.

Each of these organizations have very different needs. Keep reading to learn what type of survey I recommended for each one.

What is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey?

A customer satisfaction, or CSAT, survey asks customers to rate their level of satisfaction with a product, service, or experience.

This is a versatile survey that can be used in many situations. You can use this survey to identify problems that frustrate customers and pinpoint factors that make your customers happy. If you aren’t sure what type of survey to use, go with a CSAT survey.

One downside is the CSAT survey has weakest connection to customer behaviors like loyalty. Other survey types can be more effective if you want to focus on something specific like revenue growth.

Recommendation: I suggested the software company use a CSAT survey to improve interactions with technical support. A CSAT rating combined with a comment field would allow the technical support team to quickly identify trends that made customers happy or frustrated.

What is a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey?

A Net Promoter Score, or NPS, survey focuses on a customer's likelihood to recommend your product, service, or company to others.

NPS surveys ask customers to rate how likely they are to recommend a company using a scale of one to 10. Here’s an example Suunto sent me after I registered a new hiking watch on their website.

The responses are then divided into three groups, based on their rating:

  • Promoters: 9-10

  • Passives: 7-8

  • Detractors: 0-6

The Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the detractors from the promoters.

Imagine 100 people take the survey, and there are 60 promoters, 30 passives, and 10 detractors. The Net Promoter Score for the survey would be 50:

60 promoters - 10 detractors = 50

The score takes into account the people who really like you and the people who don't. The people in the middle, the passives, aren't counted in the overall score, although their feedback is still important.

NPS is a useful survey type if your primary goal is revenue growth. It helps you pinpoint what factors make customers so happy with your business that they’re willing to recommend you to others.

One con is the NPS has a very narrow focus. It's not really useful unless your goal is to gain more referrals.

Recommendation: I suggested the nonprofit use NPS to survey donors once per year. Most donors made an annual contribution, so the survey could be timed about six months after the anniversary date of their donation. The results could provide a number of useful insights:

  • Identify dissatisfied donors so the relationship could be saved.

  • Determine what groups of donors were more likely to refer others to donate as well.

  • Discover trends to help increase the overall number and value of donations.

What is a Customer Effort Score (CES) survey?

A Customer Effort Score (CES) survey looks at how easy it is to resolve a customer service issue.

Customers are typically asked how easy it was to resolve their issue. The question has a seven-point rating scale that ranges from 1 (not very easy) to 7 (very easy).

Research has shown that the results can be a strong indicator of customer loyalty.

A CES survey can also help you find ways to serve your customers more efficiently. High effort is often associated with repeat contacts, chronic problems, and inefficient processes.

Like CSAT and NPS surveys, customer effort score surveys have a few pros and cons.

Pros include helping you fix problems, and identify wasteful procedures. Making things easier for your customers is also shown to drive increased loyalty.

Some cons are that the CES is transactional, so it might not work if your goal is to conduct a relationship survey. It also has a narrow focus, so this may not be the best survey for examining broader issues.

Recommendation: I suggested the manufacturer’s IT Director use a CES survey to evaluate IT interactions. He had been using an NPS survey, but this wasn’t the most appropriate tool since his customers were internal employees. His ultimate goal was reducing friction, which is exactly what a CES survey targets.

When should you avoid using a survey?

You should not survey your customers if there are more effective ways to get feedback.

Recommendation: I recommended the financial services company eliminate its customer service (CSAT) survey. The company had approximately 3,000 customers, but the bulk of its revenue came from 30 key clients.

The operations manager told me these clients were the ones he really want to get feedback from. In particular, he wanted to understand the top problems faced by these 30 clients so they could improve their service.

The manager could easily call all 30 clients to get their feedback directly. These conversations would reveal detailed information and feedback that a survey might not capture. And, they’d have the added benefit of helping the manager build a stronger personal relationship with each one.

Asking customers directly is one of several ways you can can capture customer feedback without using a survey.

Take Action

It’s important to choose the right survey for your specific goal. Start by deciding why you want to gather feedback from your customers and what you plan to do with that data.

You can find more ideas on my new customer service survey resource page.

This short video explains provides more details about each survey type.

Why You Should Stop Trying to Motivate Customer Service Employees

Nate Brown's conference session was packed.

People had crowded into the room to learn about gamification, the latest trend in employee motivation. The participants were customer service leaders attending ICMI's 2015 Contact Center Expo. In customer service, motivation is always a hot topic.

Brown was awesome. He led us in games and contests. People got involved. They were energized and loud. 

I felt bad for whatever session was going on in the room next door. I imagined them listening to someone drone on over a lame PowerPoint. Surely, those people heard the ruckus from our session and realized they had chosen poorly. 

Despite all the fun, I knew we'd be back here again next year. 

Perhaps gamification would be replaced by a new motivational fad. The scene would still be the same. People will crowd into the room in hopes of learning, once and for all, how to motivate their customer service employees.

They'd be wasting their time.

 

Why Motivation Isn't a Problem

Why do we try so hard to motivate customer service employees?

The easy answer is we want them to provide better service. OK, but why wouldn't they do that anyway?

That's really the million dollar question. 

We spend so much time on the how, as in "How do I motivate my employees." There's not nearly enough time spent thinking about the why, as in "Why do I think my employees aren't motivated?"

I've talked to thousands of employees over the years. They've consistently told me two things about motivation:

  1. They love making customers happy.

  2. They find it demotivating when they can't.

Compare these two statements with job satisfaction data for contact center agents from Benchmark Portal:

Job satisfaction begins to dip after three months. New hire training in most contact centers lasts 6 to 12 weeks. So, motivation declines right when training ends and the real work begins.

This suggests we don't have a motivation problem at all. Our problem is demotivation.

People start jobs with optimism. They're hopeful that the job will be fun and fulfilling. This is exactly what happens at companies with high-performance service cultures.

Employees in other companies quickly become disillusioned.

 

What's Demotivating Employees

ICMI discovered a shocking statistic in their report, Agent Apathy: The Root Cause of Poor Customer Service.

74% of contact center leaders acknowledge the fact that they prevent agents from providing the best experience possible.

This research suggests that most contact centers make it really difficult for employees to do what they want to do most - make customers happy.

Motivation would be much higher if we made it easier for customer service employees to serve their customers.

Research from the Temkin Group supports this. Look at the difference between employees who feel they're contributing and those who think they aren't:

People will go the extra mile when they feel like it means something. The fits nicely with research uncovered in Daniel Pink's book on motivation, Drive. 

I wrote a blog post about how this fits into customer service. Here's a short summary:

  • People are motivated by purpose (serving customers)

  • People desire mastery (the ability to do it)

  • People want autonomy (empowerment)

 

Making Customer Service Easy

Customer service isn't easy.

My book, Getting Service Right, explores employee motivation challenges and many other obstacles customer service employees face every day.

Conference Re-Cap: Customer Service Experience & CRM Evolution 2015

This week, I attended the Customer Service Experience and CRM Evolution conferences in New York City. The conferences were two of three conferences put on simultaneously by Information Today. The third was SpeechTek 2015. 

It was the second time I had attended the conference. (See my re-cap of the 2014 conference here.) This post provides an overview of the conference along with a few key insights from the event.

 

Background

You may want to start by familiarizing yourself with the background of each conference.

The Twitter backchannel is always a great way to see what speakers and ideas are resonating most with conference participants. You don't need to have a Twitter account to view Tweets posted to the conference hashtags:

 

Key Takeaways

There are always a few things that really stand out at a conference. Here were the top takeaways for me.

Shane Snow's Keynote

Snow is the Chief Creative Officer at Contently and the author of Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success. 

His presentation focused on a concept called Lateral Thinking. This technique, popularized by Edward De Bono's book by the same name, is a way of gaining insight by looking at problems from a completely new perspective.

One story Snow shared was how operating room doctors in a children's hospital cut errors by more than 50 percent by borrowing ideas from Formula One pit crews.

This really resonated with me because customer service employees often struggle to see things from the customer's perspective. Lateral thinking can often reveal new opportunities to serve.

 

Jason Young's Keynote 

Young is the President of Leadsmart, Inc . He's also the author of The Culturetopia Effect.

He focused on culture and drew heavily from his time working at Southwest Airlines. One part that really stood out was how Southwest uses its customer service vision to give employees clear guidance on the type of service they should strive to deliver.

The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit.

Young also shared a little bit about Southwest's fascinating history. You can learn more about their incredible business story from Herb Kelleher's book, Nuts!

It's no secret I'm a huge proponent of using culture to drive service. A key part of that is creating a clear Customer Service Vision for employees to follow. I even referenced the Southwest Airlines mission as an example in my book, Service Failure.

 

Burg Hughes's Presentation

This was my favorite breakout session. Hughes is the Vice President of Operations at BuySeasons. They operate three brands - BuyCostumes, Costume Express, and Birthday Express.

His presentation focused on how BuySeasons uses customer feedback to improve service and save the company money. Hughes shared multiple examples of how he investigated service icebergs to uncover problems and find solutions.

One story he shared revolved around a piñata the company sold. Here's the feedback BuySeasons received.

Source: Burg Hughes, BuySeasons. Customer Service Experience 2015 presentation.

Source: Burg Hughes, BuySeasons. Customer Service Experience 2015 presentation.

Hughes knows customers often don't complain. That means one complaint might really signal a problem experienced by many others.

So, his first step was to contact other customers who ordered the piñata. He learned that many of them felt the same way about the packaging.

Next, he took the problem to the distribution center leader. He learned that such a large box was used because it was the only box they had that could hold both the piñata and stick that came with it. 

Hughes shared that feedback with the merchandising team that sourced the product. They did some research and discovered they could change the stick for a slightly smaller one that came in two pieces and could be screwed together by the customer. 

This allowed BuySeasons to ship the piñata in a much smaller box. It addressed a source of customer discontent, but it also saved BuySeasons a lot of money on shipping since the size of the box factors into shipping costs.

Hughes shared example after example like this in his presentation. It was really impressive to see how a few points of feedback could translate into cost savings and happier customers. I call this having a customer service canary.

 

If you attended the conference, what were your biggest takeaways?

 

Inside Twitter's New Customer Service Guide

Twitter has published a playbook to help companies serve customers via Twitter. 

Overall, it's a very useful guide. It's also a pretty hefty volume, clocking in at 125 pages. This post is a "Cliff's Notes" version that summarizes a few key aspects:

  • Twitter's unique position as a service channel
  • Creative ways to engage customers via Twitter
  • Top challenges companies face
  • How to implement a successful Twitter care strategy

You can also download the full guide here:

TwitterLogo_#55acee.png

Twitter's Unique Position

The Playbook highlights Twitter's unique combination of attributes:

  • Public: Anyone can see it
  • Real-time: Tweets are immediate
  • Conversational: Anyone can join in
  • Distributed: Tweets can easily be shared

Here's a great example of an exchange between a customer and a brand:

Twitter claims that serving a customer via Twitter can cost up to 80 percent less than via phone. I couldn't find a source for that calculation, but it wouldn't be surprising given the short-burst nature of Twitter.

The Playbook also makes a really, really bold claim:

Twitter is the ideal customer service channel.

It's a bold claim. And, they could be right.

The argument hinges on the fact that customers are already on Twitter. They don't have to go to a company-specific channel such as phone, email, or an app to receive service.

Consider this choose your-own-adventure customer service scenario:

You experience a flight delay that will cause you to miss your connecting flight. You now need to get booked on a later flight.

Do you:

  1. Wait in line to speak to a gate attendant?
  2. Use your smart phone to navigate the airline's website?
  3. Call the airline and sit through IVR hell?
  4. Email the airline and wait two weeks for a response?
  5. Trust the airline's wonky app?

None of those sounds like a great option if you're in a hurry. 

The promise of Twitter is you can fire off a Tweet to let the world know you are bummed about your flight delay and the airline's super-responsive Twitter squad will see your Tweet and instantly book you on another flight.

Yeah, it does seem a bit far-fetched. 

But, imagine the possibilities if your company can pull off this magic! You keep the customer in their preferred channel. And, your brand's snappy response signals to others that you are on the ball.

(Yes, I know some airlines automatically re-book passengers in these situations. That service is far from perfect. One airline auto re-booked me to the wrong airport. #fail)

As a side note, Twitter's argument for being the best channel actually works better for text. Text is another way companies can serve you where you already are. Plus, it has the added advantage of being one-to-one versus one-to-one-to-many. 

In fact, text has amazing potential as a customer service tool.

In that same scenario, you could receive an automated flight delay notification from the airline via text. It could also propose rebooking you on another flight. All you'd have to do is text back to confirm. Voila!

 

Creative Use Cases

The Playbook lays out three general ways that companies can use Twitter for customer service:

  1. Issue resolution
  2. Proactive engagement
  3. Voice of the Customer listening

Many companies are familiar with issue resolution. A customer Tweets about a problem and the company tries to fix it.

The nice thing about using Twitter for issue resolution is other customers can see the resolution too. Let's say your customer asks a question a lot of other customers ask too. You can include a helpful link to additional information.

Proactive engagement is another way to use Twitter. This is where a brand steps into a conversation to offer helpful service. Hilton provides a good example with their @hiltonsuggests handle:

One word of caution here. There's a fine line between helpful and creepy when a brand is being proactive.

Voice of customer listening involves looking at the larger trends. Twitter's Playbook cites an example at T-Mobile where a change to a corporate discounting program caused a large spike in negative Tweets. They were able to quickly address the issue before it got larger.

 

Top Twitter Challenges

The Playbook also highlighted some of the top challenges companies face when using Twitter. The report mentioned two, but I'll add a third:

  1. Keeping up with volume
  2. Managing multiple touch points
  3. Low preference (my addition)

Twitter's analytics show that tweets to major brands have increased 2.5 times in just two years. They also show that approximately 40 percent of those Tweets go unanswered. 

(Note: a recent Freshdesk study puts the number of unanswered Tweets at 78 percent.)

Managing multiple touch points is also a challenge. A customer interaction might start in a store, migrate to the company's website, and finally escalate to Twitter. 

Companies struggle to maintain a consistent brand voice across all these channels. Many companies also lack the systems necessary to present customer service reps with a single view of customers who engage through multiple channels.

My own addition is that very few customers actually prefer Twitter. 

An Execs in the Know study revealed that only 9 percent of customers prefer social media as their primary channel. And, my own research shows that most customers turn to Twitter after failing to get a resolution from another channel.

Would more customers prefer Twitter if more companies got it right? I don't know, but I'd guess the answer is yes.

 

Twitter's Guide to Twitter

The most useful portion of Twitter's Playbook are the step-by-step instructions for getting started on Twitter or optimizing your company's presence.

They offer seven steps:

  1. Set your vision (here's a handy worksheet)
  2. Size and prioritize your opportunities
  3. Define the customer service experience
  4. Set goals for performance metrics (try the SMART goals worksheet)
  5. Establish the measurement mechanism
  6. Operationalize your strategy
  7. Iterate and innovate

You can download the full guide if you think these steps might be useful.

Are Bogus Customer Service Stories Hurting Your Cred?

The conference speaker had his audience riveted.

He was explaining how organizational culture influenced customer service. He told us a story about a fascinating experiment to make his point:

A group of monkeys were placed in a cage. There was a ladder in the middle of the cage with a banana hanging over it. Whenever one of the monkeys would go for the banana, researchers would spray the other monkeys with cold water.

The monkeys soon learned to attack anyone who went for the banana so they wouldn't get the hose. 

Researchers then began removing one monkey at a time and replacing it with a new monkey. The new monkey would inevitably go for the banana and get attacked.

Eventually, all of the monkeys in the cage were new monkeys who had never gotten the hose. Yet, they'd still attack any monkey who went for the banana.

The speaker used the story to emphasize his point that customer service teams picked up poor habits from their colleagues. The story was also bogus. The experiment never happened.

I approached the speaker after his presentation and asked him if he knew the experiment was bogus. His response surprised me.

"I know, but it's a great story!"

This got my wheels turning. Are we sharing bogus customer service facts and stories just because they're convenient? And, does this hurt our credibility?

Famous Quotes

People often use quotes to make a point. The trouble is that quotes are often distorted or misattributed in an effort to give them more impact. 

Pop quiz. Here are two famous quotes. Which is bogus?

There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
- Mark Twain

This quote is often used to describe how information can be manipulated. For example, your customer satisfaction scores may look rosy, but they could be hiding a big problem. 

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
- Henry Ford

The idea expressed here is that customers don't really know what they want. It's often used to describe the inherent danger of relying on customers for product development suggestions.

OK, so which of these quotes is bogus? 

The truth is both of them are. They've just become so pervasive that they're accepted as facts. So, the question is do these quotes hurt our credibility if they're false?

(Note: You can check the backstories here: Mark Twain, Henry Ford.)

 

False Statistics

Statistics are also used to prove a point, even when they're false.

For example, many customer service training programs refer to communication coming from three components:

  • 55 percent comes from body language
  • 38 percent comes from tone
  • 7 percent comes from words

It sounds right, but it isn't. These percentages are a myth.

You may also have heard this one. Happy customers will tell five people while angry customers will tell ten.

Like the other examples in this post, it sounds right but there's some important nuance. This statistic came from a study conducted by TARP on behalf of Coca Cola in 1980. The study examined word of mouth behavior from consumers who had made a complaint.

Both the 55-38-7 statistic and the "angry customers tell 10 people" story sound plausible. They're convenient. But, they're not really facts.

 

Unknown Sources

Customer service statistics and stories are often quoted without a source. They may or may not be accurate, but nobody really knows. Here's an example:

Only 4% of customers complain

I saw that statistic on the Stride blog. It cited a Help Scout blog post as the source. The Help Scout blog attributed it to a publication called "Understanding Customers" by Ruby Newell-Legner.

Finally, I'm getting somewhere! The only problem was I couldn't find any publication called "Understanding Customers." 

I did find Newell-Legner, so I sent her an email to ask about the source of the 4 percent statistic. She graciously replied:

I started my business in 1994 and the first five years was spent creating training programs from scratch. I remember finding a number of statistics from surveys and reputable sources (including some government agencies who document customer service statistics.) I created a true false test out of the statistics. I never changed the stat but it may be worded in a way that enabled me to make it part of my True False Test. Because it was so long ago, I do not have a record of where it came from. 

I can verify that the statistic is true as I wouldn’t make a statistic like that up. Years later, a client in the Navy posted my True/False Test on one of their servers and it was spread virally throughout the world. The program wasn’t even called “Understanding Customers” even though I talked about that concept before the True/False Test.

Over the years I have been contacted numerous times to inquire about the source. I am sorry to say, I cannot provide it. 

Let's assume Newell-Legner found this statistic from a credible source. There's no reason not to believe her. However, what about the blogs that quoted each other without verifying the source?

 

What's the Harm?

There's an old marketing fable about the Chevrolet Nova. The story is that the Nova didn't sell well in Latin American countries because Nova translated into "no go" in Spanish. 

You might guess that this story isn't really true. The Nova sold just fine in Latin America.

So, I'll leave you with the big questions:

  • What's the harm in using these stories, even if we know they're false?
  • How much responsibility should we take to fact check our stats?

Please use the comments section weigh in and let me know what you think.

 

Customer Service Pros Face Obstacles to Learning New Skills

A small experiment in Do-It-Yourself Learning has just wrapped-up. The idea was to see if customer service professionals could learn new skills on their own.

The results were very mixed.

None of the participants achieved their learning goals. However, many did make valuable progress. And, broader lessons were revealed about learning new skills.

Here's a rundown of what happened, what we learned, and how you can apply these lessons to learning customer service skills on your own.

Background

I launched the experiment a month ago on the Inside Customer Service LinkedIn group. 

A few people said they were interested. Then, the inevitable dropouts came. People were busy. We ended up with four participants plus me.

That's obviously not enough people to draw any scientific conclusions. However, there are still plenty of insights to be gained.

The first major question is why did people think they were too busy. Shouldn't we always be learning something new?

One possibility is that we can't shake the idea that learning new skills has to be a big formal thing. The reality is we're learning new skills every day as we try to solve the various challenges thrown our way. 

 

 

The Results

Each participant was asked to set a specific learning goal. 

Most of the goals were focused around building customer service skills. I set a goal to so I could participate, but I chose to focus on photography because it would be easy to provide visual updates. My goal was to take a landscape picture that my wife would agree to hang on a wall.

I'm happy to report this is now hanging on the wall in my guest bedroom:

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

It's a picture of a small mountain called Kwaay Paay in San Diego's Mission Trails Regional Park. The shot is taken from the park's visitor center loop trail. The top of this mountain is one of my favorite places in San Diego. The stairs in the foreground represent unlimited possibilities.

The other participants made progress even though they didn't achieve their goals. So, what got in the way?

 

Obstacles to Learning

Malcolm Knowles developed a framework for adult learning more than 30 years ago. It helps to look at the challenges participants encountered through this framework.

(You can also watch this short video explaining Knowles's theory.)

The framework consists of six principles:

Need to Know. People must have a clear reason for learning. This factor held back many participants and potential participants. Most of their learning goals fell into the nice-to-have versus need-to-have category.

Foundation. Learning should build on things we already know. There probably weren't any problems here.

Self-concept. People should make decisions around their own learning. This was the lure of a DIY learning project. It may also be a challenge since nobody was being held accountable.

Readiness. Participants have to be ready to learn. This was a major challenge in the experiment. People like the idea of learning something new, but there wasn't an urgent reason to invest a lot of time in doing it. Several participants told me that other priorities got in the way.

Orientation. Learning should be focused on solving a specific problem. This was a challenge for some participants and it kept a few people from participating. Each person was asked to define a clear and specific learning goal.

Motivation. Participants must be internally motivated to learn. Here, competing priorities hurt participant motivation. They had other, more pressing projects to work on. 

 

Lessons Learned

There was a common thread that ran through all of the participants. The people who expressed interest, but ultimately didn't participate, had this in common too.

None of them identified an urgent learning need.

That's the biggest lesson learned. Many of us like the idea of learning something new but we don't follow through on it. We're just too busy. Other priorities get in the way. 

Urgency is the key. Learning a new customer service skill shouldn't be abstract. It should help solve a real problem.

Start with the need and the rest will follow.

The other lesson learned is that most people perceive learning as a big, formal event. It doesn't have to be this way. In fact, most of us are learning something new every day. Knowing how to learn can simply make this process easier.

Am I discouraged? Yeah, a little, I really wanted the participants to build new customer service skills that could help them achieve great things.

But, I think I can learn from this.

New Report: Contact Centers Fall Short on Surveys

Contact centers struggle to use customer service survey data.

That's the conclusion suggested by a new report from ICMI called Collapse of the Cost Center: Driving Contact Center Profitability. The report, sponsored by Zendesk, focuses on ways that contact centers can add value to their organizations. 

Collecting customer feedback is one way contact centers can add value. This feedback can be used to retain customers, improve customer satisfaction, identify product defects, and increase sales.

So, what's the struggle? Here's a statistic that immediately caught my attention:

63% of contact centers do not have a formal voice of the customer program.

Yikes! It's hard to use your contact center as a strategic listening post if you aren't listening.

Let's take a look at some of the report's findings along with some solutions.

Key Survey Stats

Here are some selected statistics from the report.

First, let's look at the types of surveys used by contact centers that do have a formal voice of the customer (VOC) program:

Source: ICMI

Source: ICMI

Customer Effort Score (CES) presents an untapped opportunity. 

CES measures customers' perceived effort (see this overview). A good CES program will help companies identify things that annoy customers and create waste. This makes it a great metric for improving efficiency.

Why is efficiency so important in a customer-focused world? Here's another statistic from the ICMI report that explains it:

62% of organizations view their contact center as a cost center.

That means efficiency is one of the most important success indicators for those companies' executives. CES marries cost control and service quality by measuring efficiency from the customer's point of view.

Another revealing statistic shows what's not measured:

44% of contact centers don't measure customer retention

Keeping customers should be the name of the game for contact centers. If you don't measure this statistic, than customer retention can't be a priority.

 

Challenges With Surveys

The report highlighted challenges contact centers face with survey data. Here are the top five:

Challenge #1: Using survey data to improve service. Survey data is more than just a score. The key is analyzing the data to get actionable insight. That's a skill that many customer service leaders don't have. One resource is this step-by-step guide to analyzing survey data.

Challenge #2: Getting a decent response rate. Response rate is a misleading statistic. There are two things that are far more important. First, does your survey fairly represent your customer base? Second, is your survey yielding actionable data? Your response rate is irrelevant if you can confidently say "Yes" to these questions.

Challenge #3: Analyzing data. See challenge #1. You can't improve service if you don't analyze your data to determine what needs to be improved.

Challenge #4: Designing effective surveys. Survey design is another skill that many customer service leaders don't have. Here's a training video on lynda.com that provides everything you need to get started. You'll need a lynda.com account to take the full course, but you can get a 10-day trial here.

Challenge #5: Taking action to help dissatisfied customers. You'll need a closed loop survey to tackle this challenge. A closed loop survey allows customers to opt in for a follow-up contact. Once you add this, it becomes very easy to initiate a program to follow-up with upset customers.

 

Additional Resources

The full report provides a lot more data and advice on leveraging contact centers to improve customer service and profits. It's available for purchase on the ICMI website.

Here are some additional blog posts that can also help:

 

The Lost Art of Practicing New Skills

My BS meter was pinging loudly.

A participant in my customer service training class had just informed me that he was awesome at customer service. He told me he was only attending the open enrollment workshop because his boss had sent him. "I've never had a complaint," he insisted.

The very first exercise proved him wrong. 

It was a rapport-building challenge. Participants were asked to meet three people and learn three things about each person in three minutes. It seems simple, but it's really hard. Typically, only 10 percent of participants can do it on the first try.

Mr. Awesome wasn't one of them.

His problem wasn't a lack capability. His challenge was that he'd convinced himself customer service was easy. The participant's overconfidence prevented him from practicing his craft.

This post is part four in a series about Do-It-Yourself customer service training. We've been exploring techniques for learning new skills without formal training. 

Today, we'll focus on the lost art of practicing.

Background: The DIY Training Project

You might want to catch-up on the project so far before reading ahead.

  • The first post provided an overview of self-directed learning.
  • The second post focused on using goals to get focused.
  • The third post described how you can engage experts to help you grow. 

You can also check out the Inside Customer Service group on LinkedIn. A few people are using the group to document their DIY customer service training journey.

 

Why Practice is Essential

Imagine your favorite athlete.

Picture him or her performing at peak level. It could be in a team sport like baseball or football. Perhaps your favorite athlete plays an individual sport like golf or tennis. 

Whatever the case, picture this athlete at their best.

You know they don't just show up on game day and perform. There's countless hours of training, preparation, and practice that goes into their performance.

There's no reason we should be any different. If we want to get better at the customer service game, we need to practice. 

Practice does two essential things.

First, it gives us feedback. The participant in my customer service training class got immediate feedback that his rapport-building skills weren't as awesome as he'd thought.

Second, practice helps etch skills into our memories. Without practice, it takes just one week to forget half of what we learn in training.

 

How to Practice

Practice won't make you better if you do it the wrong way.

There's a kid in my neighborhood who plays the drums. He's terrible. He can't keep a simple beat despite having years of experience.

It's easy to understand why when you hear him practice. He never works on the basics. His sole aim appears to be nailing some sort of crazy Neil Peart drum solo.

So, what's a better way?

I like to use David Kolb's experiential learning model:

Kolb's experiential learning model

Kolb's experiential learning model

I've been working on my photography skills for the DIY Learning Project. My goal is to take a landscape picture that my wife will agree to hang on a wall in our home.

Here's how I used Kolb's model to work on my ability to using lighting to my advantage.

The first step is to reflect. I did this by reviewing some pictures I took to make note of what I didn't like about the lighting. Here's an example:

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

 

The color in this picture is washed out. That's because the picture was taken into the sun. A thin layer of clouds diffused the light even more.

Deciding what to improve is the next step. I found a training video on lynda.com called Up and Running With Lighting: Natural Light by Erin Manning. The course gave me some great tips to try out.

Experimentation is the third step. I took my camera to the Presidio in San Diego to try out some of the lighting techniques I'd just learned. This also allowed me to learn how to make adjustments on my camera.

This first photo is too dark:

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

This next photo is too light:

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

This last photo has much better lighting:

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

I used skills I learned from the training video to make adjustments that would improve the use of lighting for this scene.

All this practice leads to more experience and Kolb's cycle begins anew.

This technique is also perfect for developing your customer service skills. Here's how I used it in my recent training class to help Mr. Awesome actually be awesome:

First, we reflected on reasons why most participants (including Mr. Awesome) weren't able to successfully complete the rapport-building challenge.

Next, we decided what we'd do differently the next time. People quickly came up with some great ideas.

Finally, we ran the exercise again so participants could experiment with their ideas. This time around, Mr. Awesome nailed it. He really did a great job.

 

Recognize Progress

This brings us to the last piece of the practice puzzle: you must recognize the progress you are making.

It's unreasonable to expect perfection right away. Many people give up on learning a new skill if they don't nail it on the first try.

Don't be that person! Step back and take pride in progress. 

Here's an example from my photography project. I wanted to capture a beautiful beach I had seen in Hawaii. 

The original photo had too many shadows:

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

I took the new photo earlier in the day from a slightly different location so I could maximize the sun's natural lighting:

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Using pictures makes it easy to see the progress I'm making.

You might not have that luxury with the skills you're learning. But, you can still evaluate your progress by using Kolb's experiential learning cycle. Reflect on your experience, decide what (if anything) you'd like to do differently, and then experiment with new techniques.

Practice is an essential part of learning new skills. The payoff is discovering that you can do something you couldn't do before.