Simple Training Plan: Preventing Customer Anger

UPDATED: June 14, 2023

I previously posted a couple of training plans that customer service leaders can use to train their teams.

The idea was to provide a low-cost alternative to hiring an expensive customer service trainer. These plans are designed to be cost-effective and easy to use.

The first was called Serving Upset Customers 101, which focused on helping customer service reps learn the basics of defusing an angry or upset customer.

The second was called Serving Upset Customers: Eliminating Repeat Service Failures. This training plan showed customer service teams how to learn from angry customers to avoid repeated issues.

This training plan is the third in the three-part series. 

It's called Serving Upset Customers: Preventing Customer Anger. The best way to handle an upset customer is to prevent that customer from getting upset in the first place.

Give it a try and send me your feedback to let me know how it goes.

Overview: Preventing Customer Anger

Participants will be able to do the following at the end of this training:

  • Create personal connections to avoid angry customers

  • Alert customers before they encounter unpleasant surprises

  • Avoid specific words that can trigger customer anger

  • Use the pre-emptive acknowledgement technique

This course is the third in a three part series:

  • Part 1: Serving Upset Customers 101

  • Part 2: Serving Upset Customers, Eliminating Repeat Service Failures

  • Part 3: Serving Upset Customers, Preventing Customer Anger

Resources Required:

Time Required: <1 hour per week for 3 weeks.

 

Pre-Work: Do This Before You Begin

You can boost the impact of any training program by properly preparing. Here are two simple assignments you should do before starting the training.

Assignment #1: Create a training plan. Use the Workshop Planning Tool to create a training plan:

  • Identify your goal for the training.

  • Determine what needs to be done to prepare for success.

  • Decide how the training will be run.

  • Create a plan to sustain your progress.

 

Assignment #2: Announce the Training. Tell your team what to expect by announcing the training via a team meeting, one-on-one conversation, email, or some other form of communication. Make sure you address three things:

  • Tell participants what the training is about.

  • Explain why the training is important.

  • Share how you expect participants to use the training in their daily work.

 

Training Plan: Eliminating Repeat Service Failures

This plan is divided into three lessons that each take place one week apart.

Pre-Work:

Ask participants to watch the short training video, Creating personal connections with rapport, before attending the first meeting.

 

Week 1: Kick-off. 

Call a 30 minute team meeting to kick off the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Review the purpose and goals for this course.

  2. Re-cap results from previous training programs (if applicable)

  3. Discuss ways that personal relationships can prevent customer anger.

  4. Assign training videos and activities for the next meeting.

 

Assignments for next week:

  • Exercise: Experiment with rapport-building techniques to create personal connections with customers.

  • Watch video: Avoiding unpleasant surprises

  • Exercise: Download the Expectation Management Worksheet exercise file. Use it to identify situations where you can help customers avoid unpleasant surprises.

 

Week 2: Avoiding Unpleasant Surprises

Call a 30 minute team meeting to check-in on the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Discuss the results of the using rapport-building techniques exercise.

  2. Discuss the results of the avoiding unpleasant surprises exercise.

  3. Assign training videos and activities for the next meeting.

 

Assignments for next week:

 

Week 3: Preventing Customer Anger

Call a 30 minute team meeting to check-in on the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Discuss the results of the Pre-Emptive Acknowledgement Technique exercise.

  2. Brainstorm common trigger words and more effective replacements.

  3. Discuss ways to sustain the learning and solutions from this course.

Three Easy Ways to Engage Your Customers

The Westin Portland was my favorite hotel.

It's slated to leave the Marriott (nee Starwood) family at the end of this month and I'm sad to see it go. I've stayed there many times and have always felt welcome. I even wrote about it in my blog and in my book, Service Failure, where I shared some of their secrets for outstanding service.

One thing The Westin Portland consistently did well was customer engagement.

I was surprised with a Westin Portland coffee mug and a handwritten note on my 10th stay at the hotel. I've stayed at several other hotels 10 or more times, but none of the others ever recognized me like that for my loyalty. 

I still use that mug.

Ali, one of the valet parking attendants, always recognized me when I arrived. At first, he greeted me with "Welcome." Soon, he greeted me with, "Welcome back!" 

During one three month stretch when I stayed there every week, Ali greeted me with, "Welcome home!"

Then, there was this incredible experience that proved small things really do matter. 

What is Customer Engagement?

The typical definition of customer engagement is unsatisfying.

Most of the sources I looked at defined customer engagement as any interaction with a customer. My issue with that is not all interactions are particularly engaging:

  • Transactional interactions are routine and unmemorable.

  • Problem interactions are often frustrating.

  • Marketing interactions often feel forced and too cheesy.

The one type of interaction that truly feels engaging is when customers are interacting with an employee or your brand in some way because they like you. These engagements cement a customer's loyalty and make that customer more eager to recommend your business to others.

Most of all, engagement doesn't feel forced or contrived. It's authentic.

 

Three Ideas You Can Use Right Now

Here are three ways you can engage your customers that cost little to no money and take just a small amount of effort.

 

Acknowledge the Social Love

This has got to be the easiest technique on the list.

All you have to do is acknowledge those moments when a customer professes their love for your brand or service on social media! 

Here's a fun exchange I had with Tesco Mobile. (I'm not even a customer, but they're incredibly engaging on Twitter.)

Of course, it helps to have a presence on social media. Patrick Maguire recently posted this story on his blog where a restaurant missed out on some really nice positive exposure because it lacked a social media presence.

 

Keep an Interest List

It's time to put your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to good use! Keep a list of special requests, favorite products, and other things your customers are interested in.

A restaurant can seat repeat guests at a favorite table. A dry cleaner can know exactly how much starch a customer likes in his shirts. A plumber can remember the name of the family dog and bring a dog treat on a service call.

You can even use this technique to generate sales.

Years ago, I managed a contact center for a catalog company that sold products imported from countries that made up the former Soviet Union. Most of it was new, but we also had our fair share of antiques and collectibles.

We'd turn to our interest list whenever a new shipment came in and call customers who were interested in particular antiques. These were people who were looking for something specific and rare, so they were actually happy to get our call!

Notice that the secret to making an interest list work is you need to capture your customers' interests. You can use the Five Question Technique to make this happen.

 

Build Relationships

We often have a chance to interact with customers in a way that stretches beyond a simple transaction. 

For example, The Westin Portland hosted weekly happy hours in its lobby. A lot of hotels do this, but what really impressed me is that many members of the hotel's leadership team, including the General Manager, would show up and spend time mingling with guests.

It was a chance to get to know the people who worked there on a much more personal level. I've even stayed in touch with several associates from the hotel over the years.

One of those people was Jeff Igou, who now works at the Westin Book Cadillac in Detroit. My wife and I visited Detroit on our recent baseball stadium tour and you'd better believe I stayed at Jeff's hotel!

Try to get to know repeat customers on a personal level. Make sure they know you, too. My research suggests that customers are 2-3 times more likely to give a business a top score on a customer satisfaction survey when they know an employee by name!

 

Conclusion

Engaging your customers can improve loyalty, referrals, and ultimately lead to more revenue.

The best part is it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. Just a little bit of effort and creativity can go a long way!

Lessons From the Overlook: Some People Suck

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a monthly update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

My monthly inspections of The Overlook have revealed a sad fact: each and every month, something is broken or stolen. 

The snow shovel went missing. The ice scraper we left for guests went missing two months later. People repeatedly steal batteries out of the alarm clocks. Three flashlights were absconded. Even our American flag disappeared.

Our flag?!

There's also been some damage, some of which was unreported to our property manager. A few broken glasses. A broken drawer dislodged from a chest (how?). The broom was broken in half. 

Luckily, it hasn't been anything major so far. Everything has been quickly repaired or replaced.

I won't lie. It's frustrating to see the damage and find that items have gone missing. It's also a reminder of a universal truth in customer service.

Some people suck.

Some of our tupperware went missing.

Some of our tupperware went missing.

The Wrong Solution

It's tempting to implement a heavy-handed solution.

Many businesses go this route. They overtly mistrust their customers and institute restrictive policies and unreasonable fees as a result.

Here's an example from a frozen yogurt place that I no longer frequent:

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

The sign was clearly intended to thwart would-be free sample abusers.

One might imagine roving hoards of sample bandits descending upon the shop and draining the yogurt machines of free samples and then merrily tromping out without ever spending a dime.

More likely there were a few frustrating abusers.

The rest of us who are mature enough to handle the heavy responsibility of self-policing our free sample usage feel penalized by a sign like this. It's uninviting and discourages people from trying new flavors.

Here's an example from another vacation rental.

My wife, Sally, and I have rented the same condo in Napa, California twice a year for the past couple of years. We drive up, bring our dog, and enjoy a week-long working vacation in wine country. 

Earlier this year, the owner suddenly decided pets were no longer welcome.

Apparently, some pets made a mess and few were even destructive. But not ours. Not even once. Would the owner make an exception for our well-behaved dog who has stayed at the condo multiple times without incident?

Nope.

And with that, the condo lost a regular customer and the many referrals we've given. Which brings us back to The Overlook. 

We could implement a more stringent damage policy, raise the security deposit, or put up nasty signs all over the house to remind people of the rules.

But that would suck, too.

 

Get Some Perspective

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the importance of knowing your numbers. 

It's infuriating to discover theft or unreported damage. While that's an emotional reaction, a rational review of the numbers reveals its not such a big deal.

Let's start with damage.

Dishes and glasses will break. Heck, I accidentally broke a glass at The Overlook on a recent visit. So we've stockpiled extra dishes and glasses so that when one does break, we can quickly replace it with a matching item. 

The cost per incident is typically less than $5.

Replacing a few dishes and glasses is part of the cost of doing business. Spread out over the many guests who don't break or steal anything, that cost is minimal. 

Side note: Having clean, matching, undamaged dishes and glassware is a surprisingly simple point of difference between The Overlook and the typical vacation rental.

What about theft? Empathy has given me a new perspective.

The Overlook attracts families, which means we often have young children staying at the cabin. Have you ever seen a couple of harried parents trying to corral their kids on vacation? Stuff gets scooped up and shoved in bags.

I'm convinced a lot of the minor thefts are unintentional.

For example, I can imagine a guest using the ice scraper to scrape their car windows on a cold morning. Perhaps they toss it in their car while they're driving around town in case they get more ice. The ice scraper eventually gets forgotten in the trunk until they arrive back home and unload their car. 

Should they have alerted our property manager and offered to pay for a replacement? Of course they should have. But replacing that ice scraper cost less than $10. I gladly replaced it so there's one available to the next guest who gets ice on their windows.

So far, there really is only one big problem with damage and theft.

 

My True Worry

The biggest concern I have with theft and damage is the impact on the next guest.

We try to minimize this issue. Our property manager inspects the property before and after each guest stays there. The cleaning crew also alertly spots problems. Sally and I personally inspect The Overlook at least once per month.

The challenge is its tough to spot everything in a house.

A damaged glass was put back in a cupboard behind other dishes. The weather turned warm right after the ice scraper went missing and nobody thought to look for it. Our property manager didn't realize we had an American flag, so how could she know it was gone?

For now, we try to put everything in perspective.

We keep extra supplies at the house. We inspect everything regularly. We react quickly to guest feedback when they alert us to a problem caused by another guest.

And we avoid the temptation to penalize our many wonderful guests for the actions of a few people who suck. Over time, we think this will help us build a steady clientele of repeat guests who will treat our cabin with respect.

The few guests we know who take items or cause damage and try to hide it just won't be invited back. So much for 100 percent repeat business.

Let's Stop Calling Customer Service a Soft Skill

The term "soft skills" is typically used to refer to a wide range of interpersonal skills.

This includes leadership, emotional intelligence, and customer service. There's no doubt these skills are important, but calling them soft skills creates a problem.

My friend Jeremy Watkin recently wrote about the debate over this term in this blog post for the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) blog on the topic. He asked 17 customer service leaders to weigh in. Nine were against using "soft skills."

Noticeably absent from Watkin's list were trainers. By my count, there were only two people who weighed in who had a background in adult learning. Both of those people were firmly against using the term.

I asked a few of my own training professional colleagues for their thoughts on the term, "soft skills." They were unanimously against it.

That's because calling a skill like customer service a soft skill makes it almost impossible to train and manage. Here's why.

Skill or Soft Skill?

Skills are definable, observable, and measurable. For example, you can see someone demonstrate certain skills to fix a car, program a computer, or cook a meal. 

Let's say you wanted to hire a customer service representative for your contact center. If you wanted to gauge a skill such as typing, you could administer a typing test. That would tell you the person's speed and accuracy.

You could also offer training to develop that person's typing skills (Mavis Beacon, anyone?). The training would focus on specific drills to improve speed and accuracy.

But what about critical customer service skills such as building rapport?

This is where many customer service leaders struggle. Interpersonal skills like building rapport are typically called soft skills because they're difficult to define, observe, and measure.

That creates a problem.

  • How do you train a skill you can't define?

  • How do you screen job candidates for a skill you can't observe?

  • How do you coach employees to improve a skill you can't measure?

You'll find it pretty difficult to answer any of those questions if you don't have a clear definition of the skill involved. And once you create a clear definition, it's no longer soft. It simply becomes a skill.

 

Why Terminology Matters

Keep in mind the term "soft skill" is applied to skills that are difficult to define, observe, and manage. So calling something a "soft skill" is often an unconscious attempt to avoid difficult work.

For example, imagine you wanted to train employees to build rapport with customers. How would you train that?

A typical response might be to do a class discussion, include some self-reflection, and perhaps add some role-playing for good measure.

Notice what's missing:

  • Definition: What is rapport?

  • Observation: What does building rapport look like?

  • Measurement: How can I tell if someone has learned to build rapport?

That kind of soft skills training is usually not training at all.

Training helps people develop knowledge, skills, and ability. So logically, if you can't define what exactly you're trying to train, you can't train it.

Take the time to define, observe, and measure rapport and its no longer a vague, ambiguous soft skill. It's simply a skill.

Here's an example that I often use in training:

  • Definition: Rapport is creating a personal connection with another person.

  • Observation: An example of rapport is learning a customer's name or other personal details.

  • Measurement: I can measure this through a simple training activity. Participants are given three minutes to meet three new people. At the end of the three minutes, they are asked to recall the following information for each person: Name, a hobby or interest, and a customer service strength.

Most customer service professionals will tell you they're pretty good at building rapport. But that's rapport in the ambiguous, unmeasured, soft skill sense.

My activity highlights an unexpected difficulty. In a typical training class, just 10 percent of the group will  successfully complete the exercise.

Now it's time to train.

I spend time working with the class to determine obstacles to building rapport. We discuss specific techniques that can make them more successful. When I run the activity a second time, typically 80 - 100 percent of participants demonstrate the ability to build rapport with three people in three minutes.

That's observable and measurable skill development.

 

Improve Results with this One Adjustment

The Association for Talent Development (ATD) is the premiere professional organization for training professionals.

A few years ago, ATD published a comprehensive handbook which is the definitive reference guide for adult learning. It's noteworthy that the term "soft skills" isn't referenced in this guide.

That's because skills are skills.

It doesn't matter whether it's a technical skill like typing or an interpersonal skill like building rapport. If you can define it, observe it, and measure it, it's a skill.

Make no mistake: defining customer service skills can be a difficult, time-consuming task. That's why most managers and trainers don't do it.

But taking the time to get clear about customer service skills opens up a world of opportunities for customer service leaders. Here are just a few:

  • Hiring becomes easier when you clearly define the skills you need.

  • Training is more effective when you know what to train.

  • Coaching is vastly improved when you can be specific.

Chances are, you're doing some of this already.

Customer service standards are ways of defining expected customer service skills. Quality monitoring and mystery shopping are examples of observing and measuring these skills. You're probably coaching those behaviors already.

So drop the word "soft" and just call them skills.

Insider Perspectives: Evan Watson on Using Improv

Evan Watson, Improv Actor &amp; Customer Service Professional

Evan Watson, Improv Actor & Customer Service Professional

Improvisational theater, or improv, is unscripted.

Actors are typically given a suggestion for a scene and they must make up their lines on the spot. The best improv actors seem to effortlessly generate interesting dialogue with instantaneous creativity.

Just like in customer service.

Many of the principles are the same. Your aim is harmony rather than disagreement. You have to risk feeling uncomfortable at times. And you need to work as a team with your fellow actors (or your customer) to create a successful scene.

Evan Watson is an avid improv actor. When he was working as a customer service agent for a large professional membership organization, Watson noticed he was using many of his improv skills to serve customers. Whether it was de-escalating an upset customer, providing product information, or just being a better listener, his improv training helped keep the conversation going.

Watson was able to convince his management team to try an experiment where he could teach improv skills to other employees. 

He was kind enough to spend some time with me sharing his experience along with a few tips for implementing improv training with your customer service team. You can also find him sharing customer service insight on Twitter.

Q: What do improv and customer service have in common?

"Improv is any kind of unscripted theater. There's usually a suggestion for a scene and the actors spontaneously create their lines based upon that suggestion. For instance, someone might say 'You're on a spaceship' and suddenly you're doing a scene about being in space.

"In customer service, I use a lot of improv skills. I don’t know what the other person is going to say next, or what they’re calling about when the call comes in. My improv training gave me confidence in the uncertainty. I sometimes treat the interaction with the customer as a scene and I'm playing a character in that scene. The scene just happens to be a customer service interaction. 

"It's helped me to not take it personally when a customer is upset. I can distance myself a little by imagining the customer's character is yelling at my character and it's up to my character to smooth things over."

 

Q: What's an example of an improv skill you use when serving a customer?

"One technique is called 'Yes, and.' The idea is to acknowledge what the other person is saying and then build on that.

"In improv, one actor might say 'We're on a spaceship!' and the other actor might say, 'Yes, and this spaceship is really cold!' This type of dialogue allows the actors to work as a team to build a scene rather than competing with each other.

"In customer service, you have to acknowledge the customer’s experience and needs. A customer might say, 'This product is really expensive!' and I could say, 'Yes, I understand your concern about the cost, and I’m going to help you get the most for your money.'

"The key is to make the distinction between acknowledging what the customer is saying and bending the rules. Notice I'm not saying, 'Yes, it is too expensive, and I'll give you 50 percent off today.' I'm just using the principle of agreement to be a better listener and try to help the customer."

 

Q: How did you introduce improv to your contact center?

"I had an opportunity to help train a class of new hires, so I thought it would be a good time to suggest to my management team that I take a couple of hours in the training to teach improv skills to our new agents.

"I was a finalist for ICMI's Best Contact Center Agent Award in 2015. Once I explained that improv skills contributed to my success, my management team was onboard with me trying out an experiment.

"There was another new hire class held at the same time, so I got a chance to compare the results of my class with the other one. Initially, we saw the new hires with improv training take less time to meet our minimum performance targets than the other class. Over time, we've also seen much better employee retention from the new hires who learned improv skills."

 

Q: How did you incorporate improv into training?

The exercises we incorporate into training are very different from what you might see performed in a comedy show. Each exercise is designed to isolate and develop a fundamental skill, like listening or focusing on your scene partner.

"We'd start by reminding participants that they are a character. This is not you. We want them to get out of their own head a little and concentrate on what their character might say. The first games are for the whole group to warm up and focus, so no one is thrown into the spotlight alone. Then we build up to games where you’re making up more dialogue, and always connect it back to the relevant skills for the job.

"So if I'm teaching the 'Yes, and' technique, I might have them do a few scenes that aren't related to work. We'll have them be in a zoo or at a theme park, or wherever.

"Then, as they become more comfortable with the skill, we'll move to a job-related scene. This might be a role-play around a particular issue that they could actually encounter when serving a customer."

 

Q: What advice do you have to customer service leaders who want to use improv?

"The best thing you can do is to see if there’s a local improv theater in your area that will come and do workshops. Get somebody with an improv background to come in and help you. It's much easier when you can start off working with someone who knows the skills, and you will get more out of the workshop than a fun time shouting random funny things.

"There are also a lot of resources online for improv games and other training resources.

"It becomes a way of thinking. The more you do improv, the more connections you'll see between customer service and improv."

How To Dramatically Cut Training Costs With Video

Customer service training is a challenge for many companies.

First, there's the cost. It's not just the consultant's fee, it's the labor cost associated with sending employees to training.

There's also a logistical hassle. Most companies can't completely shut down their customer service operation. So they divide employees into groups and stagger shifts or add in some overtime to provide coverage while employees are in training.

Sustainability is probably the biggest issue. If you're going to invest time and money into employee training, you want employees to actually use the skills they learn. A one-time training class probably won't do much to move the needle.

There is a better way: video. It's cheaper, easier to manage logistically, and far more sustainable. Here's why:

Cost Comparison: Classroom vs. Video

You may be a little leery about video's effectiveness. We'll get to that in a moment, but let's first tackle the cost.

The cost savings will get your executives' attention. 

Here's an actual cost-comparison I recently ran for a prospective client. The initial request was for my fundamental Delivering Next Level Service workshop. 

The client wanted live, classroom training for a team of 30 employees. The employees need to be split into two groups for the classroom training so operational coverage could be maintained. The training itself consisted of two half-day sessions.

That same class is available via on-demand video with a run-time of just under two hours.

That's a $18,060 cost savings for sending employees to the same class on video! 

 

The Operational Advantage

Scheduling live training is disruptive.

The client who requested training for 30 employees needed to keep the operation running, so only half the employees could attend at one time. The other half were needed to keep serving customers.

Even then it was tricky. One absent employee or a minor service issue could trigger a chain reaction of other problems that would pose a real challenge to a team running at 50 percent staff. 

Supervisors might need to get pulled out of training, which would be a disaster because its the supervisors who must reinforce the training after the class has ended.

Video is much less of a hassle. 

My Customer Service Fundamentals course on Lynda.com (a.k.a. LinkedIn Learning) is the same content as my live Delivering Next Level Service workshop. The video version is streamed on-demand, so each individual employee could take the class at a time that works for them. 

The total run-time on the video is just under two hours and it's cut into short segments that are 3-5 minutes each. It's designed that way so employees can watch a couple of videos, apply the skills on the job, and then watch a few more segments.

Which leads us to sustainability.

 

How Can Video Be As Effective as Classroom Training?

It's not. Video is more effective.

Traditional classroom training typically faces two problems that hurt learning. The first is work piles up while participants are in training.

Imagine you spend a half-day in training while your colleagues try to serve customers at half-staff. They're going to be relieved when the training is over because they were barely able to keep up without you.

Which means you're going to be really, really busy digging through all that work that piled up while you were in class.

The problem with being really busy is we instinctively work a little faster, take a few short-cuts, and rely on our old habits to get us through. That means that at the very moment we should be practicing new skills we learned in training, we're actually reinforcing our old skills.

It gets worse.

Training is useless unless you apply it on the job. That's tough to make happen with just a one-off training class. Employees need consistent reinforcement to adopt new skills, but how will that realistically happen once the training has ended?

Video, on the other hand, is built for reinforcement.

First, it's not intended to be watched straight through. That's a mistake called popcorn learning, where you sit down and watch the whole thing at once. 

The video should be watched in short segments, which means employees can learn a couple of new skills and then go try them out on the job before learning the next skill. All of my training videos have downloadable worksheets and hands-on exercises for participants to complete, just like they would in a live class.

Here's an example of a simple training plan that uses that approach.

Another advantage of video is participants can re-watch it as often as they like. That's an option that's not available with a live class.

 

Resources to Help You

I have 15 training videos on Lynda.com. There are even more from other authors, giving you a huge library to choose from.

You'll need a subscription to one of two services to access the library. Lynda.com subscriptions are slightly less than LinkedIn Premium, starting at $29.99 per month per person, with discounts available for teams of five or more.

A 30-day trial to is available for Lynda.com. Many professionals have a LinkedIn Premium account, which means you already have access.

You can stack the deck even more in your favor by hiring me to help set up your program. If you're interested, drop me a line and let's talk.

Even with my consulting fees, my prospective client stands to save over $10,000 by using video instead of doing live classroom training. Spending less money to get better results is usually a good move.

Simple Training Plan: Eliminating Repeat Service Failures

UPDATED: June 14, 2023

I previously posted a simple training plan that customer service leaders can use to train their teams.

It was called Serving Upset Customers 101. The focus was training customer service reps to respond effectively when serving an angry or upset customer.

This training plan is a sequel. It's called Serving Upset Customers: Eliminating Repeat Service Failures. It focuses on actions you can take after serving an upset customer to ensure the same issue doesn't happen again.

There’s one more training plan after this one, called Serving Upset Customers: Preventing Customer Anger. That plan focused on what you can do to prevent customers from getting angry in the first place.

Give it a try and send me your feedback to let me know how it goes.

Overview: Eliminating Repeat Service Failures

Participants will be able to do the following at the end of this training:

  • Preserve long-term customer relationships

  • Identify the root cause of chronic service problems

  • Share customer feedback with appropriate leaders

This course is the second in a three part series:

Resources Required:

Time Required: <1 hour per week for 3 weeks.

 

Pre-Work: Do This Before You Begin

You can boost the impact of any training program by properly preparing. Here are two simple assignments you should do before starting the training.

Assignment #1: Create a training plan. Use the Workshop Planning Tool to create a training plan:

  • Identify your goal for the training.

  • Determine what needs to be done to prepare for success.

  • Decide how the training will be run.

  • Create a plan to sustain your progress.

 

Assignment #2: Announce the Training. Tell your team what to expect by announcing the training via a team meeting, one-on-one conversation, email, or some other form of communication. Make sure you address three things:

  • Tell participants what the training is about.

  • Explain why the training is important.

  • Share how you expect participants to use the training in their daily work.

 

Training Plan: Eliminating Repeat Service Failures

This plan is divided into three lessons that each take place one week apart.

Pre-Work: Ask participants to watch the short training video, Preserving the relationship, before attending the first meeting.

 

Week 1: Kick-off. 

Call a 30 minute team meeting to kick off the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote. 

  1. Review the purpose and goals for this course.

  2. Re-cap results from Serving Upset Customers 101 (if applicable)

  3. Discuss ways to preserve the relationship with an angry customer.

  4. Assign training videos and activities for the next meeting.

 

Assignments for next week:

  • Exercise: Follow-up with an angry customer to preserve the relationship.

  • Watch video: Conducting an after action review

  • Exercise: Find the After Action Review worksheet. It’s contained in the downloadable exercise file packet that comes with the course. (You’ll first need to access the course the get the exercise files.) Use it to evaluate a recent experience with an upset customer.

 

Week 2: After Action Reviews

Call a 30 minute team meeting to check-in on the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Discuss the results of the following-up with angry customers exercise.

  2. Discuss the results of the after action review exercise.

  3. Assign training videos and activities for the next meeting.

 

Assignments for next week:

 

Week 3: Finding Room for Improvement

Call a 30 minute team meeting to check-in on the training program. Hold it in-person or via Zoom, Teams, or another web conference platform if your team is remote.

  1. Discuss the top customer complaints and identify the most common.

  2. Brainstorm solutions to some of the most common problems.

  3. Discuss ways to sustain the learning and solutions from this course.

Lessons from The Overlook: Patience

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a monthly update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

Rentals at The Overlook started with a bang.

My wife, Sally, and I bought the place in October 2016, took a month to do some light upgrades, and put it on the rental market in November. It immediately started renting nearly every weekend, a torrid pace that kept up through April.

That was the busy season.

Now we've hit the slow season and things are a bit different. The cabin is rented every other weekend. Monthly revenue is down 50 percent from our peak month.

There's also a to-do list piling up as small maintenance issues naturally arise with any house. Some outdoor lights needed to be replaced. We had to get some pictures to hang in our new game room. There's some exterior painting that needs to get done.

When are we going to find time to do it all? And how can we book more rentals so our revenue doesn't dip so much this time of year?

Deep breath...

We also bought the place to enjoy it ourselves. It's pointless if all we do is visit the cabin to do chores. There's nothing like enjoying a cup of coffee out on our deck on a crisp mountain morning and remembering why the cabin is called The Overlook.

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

Photo credit: Jeff Toister

How Impatience Kills Business

So many business objectives are undermined by impatience.

Want to fix poor customer service? Leaders often ask for customer service training without understanding the root cause. The laziest managers automatically default to incentives, which routinely fail to solve the problem and often make it worse.

Want to improve employee engagement? The go-to move is to hire a consulting firm to conduct a one-time survey, form a committee to analyze the results, and then do nothing.

Want to improve the customer-focused culture? Write a half-hearted vision statement at an executive retreat and then never speak of it again.

Impatience even tempts us to make poor decisions at The Overlook. 

Rentals are down, which is normal for this time of year, but we'd like more revenue. We could cut our nightly rate and spend more money on advertising. Both might help us get a few more bookings, but that tactic would also eat into our profits while straying from our year one goal.

In year one, we want to build a loyal guest following by making them feel welcome, connecting them to the mountain community, and providing a wonderful place for a retreat. 

We definitely don't want to be the Cut-Rate Discount Chalet, which is the image that lower rates and lots of advertising would create.

 

The Value of Patience

Patience was a consistent theme among the many customer-focused companies I profiled in The Service Culture Handbook.

One example is Clio, a leading provider of cloud-based legal practice management software. I worked with the company in 2014 and its leaders have been building Clio's culture ever since. Three years later, Clio won the 2017 award for Best Contact Center Culture from ICMI.

The company was already terrific in 2014 but its leaders stayed committed to the culture initiative year after year because they knew the company could be even better still.

Sally and I think about patience a lot as we work on The Overlook.

It took us several months to find the right contractor to turn an unused garage into a game room, but now it's awesome.

We're typically able to visit the property just once per month, so we try to use that time wisely. We've learned to rely on our key partners to help keep the place in peak condition. 

For example, our propane provider, Ferrell Gas, has a program where they automatically check our propane tank and keep it filled. That's one less thing to worry about.

The revenue will increase in time.

There's a predictable seasonality to the business that we're experiencing for the first summer. Meanwhile, we're studying our guests to find ways to make The Overlook even more appealing.

Our property manager, Idyllwild Vacation Cabins, is also working hard on our behalf. We need to trust that partner to help us grow. And they are—two new bookings came in during the day or so that I've been working on this blog post.

All the while, we're keeping in mind that we didn't buy The Overlook for a quick fix. This is a long-term investment and we're just getting started.