How to Make Vision Writing Your Next Team Building Exercise

Team building seems to be a hot topic right now.

I've heard from quite a few Customer Service Tip of the Week subscribers lately who are trying to create team cohesion and motivate a group of employees. They contact me to ask if I know of any good exercises or resources.

There's another group of subscribers who have also contacted me. They've heard me talking non-stop about the importance of having a customer service vision, and they're finally ready to create one. The big question is, where should they start?

My answer to both groups is the same. The ultimate customer service team building exercise is writing a customer service vision.

Why Separate Initiatives Are Doomed to Fail

Many years ago, I was asked to facilitate a half-day customer service workshop to help build team cohesion. There were several leaders who were supposed to participate, but they all found various reasons not to be there. 

It still seemed like the class had gone well, until two employees approached me afterwards. Both were visibly upset and one was in tears. 

They told me they appreciated the class, but didn't believe it would change anything. It was their managers that were the problem. The organization's leaders didn't provide clear direction and often made decisions that were in direct conflict with each other. 

It was a tough conversation because I tried to be supportive, but I couldn't offer any real solutions. The people who could, the organization's leaders, had chosen not to be there.

The experience reminded me that a cohesive team is a group of people working together towards the same goal. A half-day workshop, a ropes course, or a motivational speaker might instill a temporary shot of camaraderie, but it won't fix a fundamental lack of shared vision.

And a vision can't just be something that's proclaimed by the executive team. 

I've talked to many customer service leaders recently who want to create a vision, but for some reason do not want to involve their employees. The problem with this approach is it's not a shared vision. Employees aren't really given a chance to buy-in.

This may be the top mistake service leaders make.

How Vision Writing Builds Teamwork

Think about high performing teams that you admire. 

Perhaps its a team you have been on, or one you work with. It might be a well-known company with a strong service culture. It could even be your favorite sports team.

The common thread through all of those teams is they have a shared goal that everyone is working towards. A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that gets everyone on the same page, so it's a team-builder by design. 

I've outlined the process I use to help companies and teams create their own unique customer service vision in this step-by-step guide. Here are some highlights that illustrate how it makes for a perfect team building activity.

Step 1: Gather Input. The first step is to gather everyone's input on what the vision should be. This allows everyone on the team to have a voice. In my experience, there are always some clear themes that emerge, which shows the team has more in common than people realize.

Step 2: Write the Vision. I've learned through trial and error that 7-10 people is the optimum group size for writing a customer service vision. Your team may be much larger than this, which is okay. What's important is those 7-10 people are a representative sample of the various roles and levels within the group. The group assembles and writes the vision statement based on the input gathered in step one, so everyone is represented even if they aren’t physically in the room.

Step 3: Socialize the Vision. Once a draft vision statement is written, you want to share it with key influencers who weren't there. The idea is to get their buy-in, or if necessary, make a few minor tweaks. (I've never had to change more than a word or two.) From there, you share the vision with the entire team and begin using it as a basis for ongoing employee engagement.

The end result, if you follow the process, is you have a shared vision that becomes the starting point for all future teamwork. Make sure everything you do is pointed towards that vision, and you'll be continuously reinforcing the team concept.

Are You Stuck?

Here are a few resources to help if you're still stuck after reading this post:

• Check out this customer service vision resource page

• Take this mini-assessment

• Contact me and let's see if I can walk you through it

3 Questions That Get to the Heart of Employee Engagement

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Nicky placed the couple's drink order in front of them. He was tending bar in a hotel where most of his guests are travelers, so he asked the classic icebreaker question: "What brings you into town?"

The couple was attending an event the next evening and had flown in the day before.

Nicky started chatting with them and soon learned they had no other plans. He asked a few more questions to learn about their interests and then made some suggestions for things the couple could do during the day. He even pulled out his phone and showed the couple some pictures of his favorite sights.

We’d all like to have an employee like Nicky, who goes beyond the basics and is enthusiastically bought-in to serving customers. An employee who takes pride in their job, and brings a bit of their personality to work.

So how do you do it?

Skip the 12 question surveys, year-long projects, and blue ribbon committees. Here are three questions that will quickly get to the heart of employee engagement.

Employee Engagement Defined

Let's start with a clear definition:

An engaged employee is deliberately contributing to organizational success.

Unpack that a bit and you'll see there are three things that need to happen if you want to engage your employees.

1. Organizational success needs to be clearly defined.

2. The employee needs to understand that definition.

3. The employee needs to know how they can contribute.

Here's an example:

Donna worked in the customer service department for a medical device company. One day, she received a call from a hospital that was trying to locate a specific product for a patient that was scheduled for surgery in two days. Unfortunately, Donna didn't have that product in stock to ship out to the hospital.

Think about the difference between an engaged and disengaged employee in this situation.

A disengaged employee would be entirely transactional. They might be be polite when they say, "Sorry, we're out of stock," but that wouldn't be helpful. 

Donna was engaged. She understood her company defined success by positive patient outcomes, and not getting the right product to the hospital in time wasn't a good outcome. So she went out of her way to look for a solution and eventually found the right product at a competing hospital across town.

Three Questions to Assess Engagement

If you want engaged employees like Nicky or Donna, you'll need everyone to give consistent answers to three questions. These questions can be asked in discussions with individual employees or via open-text questions in a survey:

1. What is our customer service vision?

2. What does it mean?

3. How do you personally contribute?

The results will give you immediate clarity on what you need to do to improve employee engagement.

Question 1: What is our customer service vision? A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding customer service. There's no way you can engage employees if your company (or department or team) hasn't clearly defined success. If you do have a vision, but employees don't consistently know it, your engagement initiative should start with an awareness campaign.

Question 2: What does it mean? Understanding the vision requires more than just memorizing a statement. Employees should be able to describe its meaning in their own words, and those descriptions should be consistent from employee to employee. If not, you'll need to create a plan to help employees better understand the vision.

Question 3: How do you personally contribute? Employees can't make a commitment if they don't know how, so this last question is essential. Every employee should clearly understand how they are contributing to the big picture. Think of it as the "Why?" behind what you ask employees to do. If employees struggle with this question, you'll need to help them connect the dots between their daily work and the vision.

Bonus Tip + Resources

Most employee engagement initiatives are focused on frontline employees. I'd recommend starting by asking your executive team to answer these three questions.

Why?

It's not uncommon for companies to have disagreement at the executive level over what the customer service vision means or how employees' roles are aligned with that vision. You'll need your executives to have a clear picture of engagement if you have any hope of engaging your employees.

Here are a few additional resources:

I recently facilitated this webinar with HDI, sharing five ways to quickly boost engagement. There's some overlap with this post, plus some additional insight.

This post is drawn from The Service Culture Handbook, which is a step-by-step guide to getting your employees obsessed with customer service.

New Training Video: Leading a Customer-Centric Culture

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

In August 2013, I traveled to Carpinteria, California for a screen test at the online training video company, Lynda.com.

The test went well and I have gone on to shoot twenty training videos with Lynda, and later, LinkedIn Learning after Lynda was acquired by LinkedIn.

As part of my screen test, I filmed a short, unscripted course called Leading a Customer-Centric Culture. The idea was to capture me talking direct to camera, as if I was having a conversation with a colleague. Little did I realize at the time that the course would become the basis for the bestselling The Service Culture Handbook.

It's funny how things come full-circle.

My latest LinkedIn Learning training video is a new version of Leading a Customer-Centric Culture. This one is based on my book.

Course Overview

The training video is a step-by-step guide that shows you how to get employees obsessed with customer service.

It's based extensive research into leading companies and my own work helping clients build service cultures. The course is broken down into short segments to allow you to focus on one step at a time.

There are three key steps in the process:

1. Create a customer service vision

2. Engage employees with the vision

3. Align the organization around the vision

Here's a short video overview:

Get employees obsessed with service from Leading a Customer-Centric Culture by Jeff Toister

Resources

You can access the course on LinkedIn Learning if you have a subscription. You can also get a 30-day LinkedIn Learning trial that will give you access to the entire library of training videos.

The video is a great companion to The Service Culture Handbook:

• Amazon (single copies)

• BookPal (quantity discounts)

There's also a service culture toolkit you can download here.

One Thing You Need to Know About Young Employees

Note: This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.

Customer service leaders often grouse about their young employees.

They refer to them as "kids," meaning these employees are still in high school, working through college, or are recent college graduates. The typical complaints about these employees include:

• They don't know how to be on time.

• They lack a strong work ethic.

• They don't know how to treat customers.

• They expect recognition for everything.

• They lack common sense.

There may be some truth to these complaints. There is also a clear root cause for these issues that business leaders need to understand if they employ young people. Here it is:

Young employees lack experience.

Yes. That's it. The entire explanation. When you are young and working in your first job you have a lot less experience than you do after a twenty year career.

Think about how you learned the lessons you think of today as common sense. Somebody taught you. Perhaps it was a parent, a teacher, or a mentor. More than likely you learned a lot from your first boss.

Guess what, customer service leader? You are their first boss. 

That means its up to you to help them develop essential skills that many older workers take for granted. Yes, it will require some patience at times. 

I'm glad my first boss was patient with me. The very first customer I ever served was a service failure that was my fault. Here’s me telling that story:

Jeff Toister: Learning from early failure from Work Stories: Experiences that Influence Careers by LinkedIn Learning Instructors

And I made plenty of other mistakes along the way. 

But Christie, my boss, taught me the importance of greeting every customer with a smile, knowing your product, and treating coworkers with respect and appreciation because we all need to help each other. I have no idea what I would be doing today if Christie didn't take a chance on me when I was 16 years old and knew nothing.

Keep this lesson in mind and you'll do fine.

Many younger employees are eager to learn and do a great job. Young employees also have a fresh perspective that could be beneficial to many businesses. They just need someone to guide them. 

You can learn more about managing a customer service team from this course on LinkedIn Learning.

Lessons From the Overlook: Sometimes Work Isn’t Fun

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.

There are times when we have to put in hard work and long hours, and it seems like there's no reward in sight. It's natural to ask yourself, "Why am I doing this?"

I recently experienced one of those times with The Overlook.

My wife, Sally, and I try to visit the cabin every four to six weeks to inspect it, bring supplies, and do routine maintenance. Unfortunately, making that visit this past September was difficult. Sally was traveling extensively and I was frantically working on the launch of my new book before we went on vacation at the end of the month.

So I took a day to drive the two hours from my home to The Overlook, did work for a couple of hours, and then drove the two hours back that same day. It was a long day—especially since I worked on the new book before I left and again when I returned home.

I must admit, I felt a small amount of resentment. Not towards anyone in particular; just the idea of visiting the cabin and not being able to have any fun bothered me!

It was a reminder that you have to have fun when you can.

The kitchen has a new mat, a couple broken glasses were replaced, and everything is ready for our next guests.

Rediscover Your Purpose

Sally and I originally purchased The Overlook because we wanted a vacation cabin, and making it a rental would help offset the costs. We envisioned it as a place where we could relax while taking in the fresh mountain air, or use it as a home base for hiking and other outdoor adventures.

Our customer service vision for The Overlook reflects both the way we feel about the cabin and then way we hope our guests will feel also:

Welcome to your mountain retreat

I thought about this as I spent the day driving to and from The Overlook.

I realized that part of my frustration came from a short visit in August, where a thunderstorm warning cancelled a hike that I had been planning for a long time. Instead of spending the day hiking in the nearby mountains, I spent that time doing chores at the cabin. Now I was heading back to do more chores without getting a chance to have some fun.

Chances are, you too had a purpose when you started your job.

Maybe the job offered an exciting career opportunity, or you were excited about the chance to develop new skills. It could be you really admired the company or its products and wanted to be part of something cool and interesting. Perhaps you just wanted to help people.

And chances are, you’ve had days like mine when it wasn’t fun.

When that happens, it helps to rediscover your purpose. In some cases, you’ll realize what you are doing has meaning and you’ll feel better about it.

One way to do that is through the Thank You Letter Challenge. This guided activity will help you envision the type of service you'd like to provide to your customers, and then invest <1 minute per day towards making that service a habit. 

So why was I slogging up to Idyllwild on a day when I felt so short on time?

Make Your Vision a Priority

It's easy to put off work if you don't understand the purpose behind it.

If I was honest with myself, I didn't need to visit The Overlook in September. The summer is our slow season, made even slower this year by a terrible fire that mostly spared the town of Idyllwild but scared away many would-be tourists. All of the chores were minor and could have been put off for a month or so.

But our vision kept nagging at me.

We already had several bookings for October, including a week-long stay. There were things I wanted to get done that I knew would make an impression on our guests, such as replacing some worn-out mats in the kitchen and bathrooms and fixing patio furniture cushions that had been torn.

I wanted The Overlook to be a welcoming retreat for our guests, just like it is for Sally and me whenever we visit.

There were some chores left for a future visit that I knew would not impact our guests. For example, we have some items that need to be donated or recycled. But they're all tucked away in storage, so guests won't see them. That can wait.

Think about your vision the next time you feel tempted to avoid work. It's okay to put something off that's not value-added. Just make sure you prioritize work that impacts your vision.

This is also a good time to ask whether what you’re doing is really adding value to your vision. Years ago, as a young nonprofit leader, I cancelled my organization’s biggest fundraiser because it didn’t help our mission. It turned out to be a liberating decision.

Remember to Have Fun

Work is so much better when we can find the joy in it.

Back to our purpose, Sally and I have a trip to The Overlook planned for later this month. I'll have fewer to do on this visit because I did so many chores in September.. Which means I am going to do that big hike I missed out on in August.

I'm really looking forward to it.

Your job has to be fun at some point. There needs to be something to look forward to that can make those frustrating days a little brighter.

Perhaps it’s a project you’re itching to work on. Maybe there’s a goal your team is trying to achieve, and you know there will be a big celebration when you reach it. Or it could be you’re just happiest when you are making an impact on your customers, and you realize you need to fix some problems to allow that to happen more often.

Whatever it is, find the fun or the whole thing will become one big, dreary chore.

Introducing My New Book: Customer Service Tip of the Week

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

---

Thousands of customer service professionals around the world subscribe to the Customer Service Tip of the Week email. Now you can get over 52 of my favorite tips in one book!

Introducing the Customer Service Tip of the Week book. 

It's a sourcebook full of tips and reminders to help keep your skills sharp. Use it to discover new ideas or reinforce the concepts you learned in training.

How to Use the Book

If we're honest with ourselves, there are certain aspects of our service skills that can get a little rusty if we don't work on them.

Bad habits can get formed. Other priorities get in the way of our development. Sometimes, we're all guilty of a little overconfidence.

That's where the weekly tip comes in.

It allows you to stay sharp by focusing on just one simple thing. You can rebuild your skills over the course of the week in that area and then move on to something else the following week.

The book makes finding tips easy.

• Browse tips by category

• Find tips by the specific issue you are trying to solve

• Go in order, starting with #1

Special Features

The Customer Service Tip of the Week book has a few special features.

On the back cover and scattered throughout the book, you'll find quotes from frontline professionals and customer service leaders who use the tips on a regular basis.

Pages 12-13 contain a grid listing 10 service challenges and suggest tips to help solve them. These challenges are the top issues shared by weekly email subscribers.

The book is only available in paperback. I tested an e-book version and couldn't get the user experience right. After all, it's designed to be a quick reference guide that you might keep on your desk.

Obviously, an audio book was out of the question for a quick-reference type of book!

I recognize many customer service teams have limited budgets, so I managed to keep the price point low. The book retails for just $9.95 and quantity discounts can get the price down to just $6.96 per copy when you buy 25 books.

• Amazon (single copies)

• BookPal (quantity discounts)

Get It Signed!

You can easily turn your book into a signed copy.

1. Buy the book

2. Email your mailing address to me: jeff [at] toistersolutions [dot] com

3. I will send you an autographed bookplate

Why Some Employees Are Always Late

Many years ago, a coworker and I decided to walk across the street to the deli to grab a quick lunch. It was a hectic day and we both planned to eat at our desks.

”We'll be back in three minutes," she told her assistant.

"No, we won't." I replied. There was no way we were going to be back from the deli that quickly. My colleague insisted we were just walking across the street, ordering sandwiches, and coming right back.

"It will still take longer than that," I replied. She relented a bit and told her assistant we'd be back in five minutes rather than three. 

Being the kind of person who would time that sort of thing, I started my watch. From start to finish, the entire errand took us 15 minutes. This was three times longer than my coworker had promised.

Chances are, you routinely make similar promises or you know someone who does. 

Tardiness can be dangerous in a customer service setting. We might promise to get something done for a customer and then fall short of expectations when we're late. Or employees might be chronically late to work, which puts pressure on coworkers to pick up the slack until they finally arrive.

Here are some reasons why it happens.

We're Unrealistic About Time

There are numerous studies showing that people are generally bad at estimating how long a task will take. Here are just a few examples:

• People underestimated how long it takes to get gas by 51% (Konecni & Ebbesen,1976)

• Students underestimated how long it would take to complete their honors thesis by 39% (Buehler, Griffin, and Ross, 1994)

• People underestimated how long it would take to complete their Christmas shopping by 12% (Buehler and Griffin, 2003)

Put these results in everyday customer service contexts and you can see a recipe for disaster. Chronically late employees underestimate:

• How long it will take to get to work.

• How long it will take to finish a project for their boss.

• How long it will take to complete a task for a customer.

Type Bs Are Overly Optimistic

You may have heard of Type A and Type B personalities. Here are the definitions from the American Psychological Association:

Type A: a personality pattern characterized by chronic competitiveness, high levels of achievement motivation, impatience and a distorted sense of time urgency, polyphasic activity [i.e. multitasking], and aggressiveness and hostility.

Type B: a personality pattern characterized by low levels of competitiveness and frustration, an easygoing approach, and a lack of aggressiveness and hostility.

It's easy to imagine that many customer service employees fall closer to Type B on the personality spectrum. There's just one small problem—those people are much more likely to be late.

Studies conducted by psychologist Jeff Conte compared how Type A and B personality types perceived how long it took for one minute to elapse. Type As were pretty spot-on, guessing on average 58 seconds. Type Bs, on average, let 77 seconds go by before they felt one minute was up—33 percent more time than Type As.

This suggests it can take coaching, planning, and a great deal of patience to help some of your customer service employees develop a more realistic sense of time.

We Don’t Plan for the Unexpected

The way we structure our work day often becomes a recipe for tardiness.

Some people are unrealistic about their commute. They might leave their home 30 minutes before work starts because it takes 30 minutes to drive there. But that doesn't take into account a stop at the coffee shop, time spent looking for a parking space, and time walking into the building and to their workstation. 

Back-to-back meetings put pressure on our calendar, especially if the first meeting runs late or we must inevitably answer the call of nature. Most people don’t start dialing into a phone or web conference until the meeting start time, even though it can sometimes take a few minutes to get connected.

Many customer service employees have work schedules that don't allow enough time for essential tasks. For example, a contact center employee might need to document notes after speaking to a customer, but they'll struggle to keep up if they're expected to be immediately available to take another call.

Overcoming Tardiness

There are a few things you can do to overcome chronic tardiness.

Perhaps the biggest change is to decide that being on time is important. People who are chronically late often have a more laid-back approach to deadlines. So there's no incentive to change until they adopt a different attitude about being on time.

I’m a stickler for starting on time whenever I facilitate a meeting or a workshop. This quickly sends the signal that the start time is the start time, and I’ve noticed that people generally arrive on time after that expectation is set.

Another way to improve timeliness is to measure how long tasks actually take, and use that information to plan more realistically in the future. So if you think it takes just five minutes to walk across the street to get a sandwich, but each time you do it actually takes 15 minutes, you can adjust your planning.

You can also avoid disappointing customers by using the right language to set realistic expectations about how long something might take. For example, I like to pad my promised delivery date a bit just in case something unexpected comes up. This provides a bonus of frequently allowing me to get things done earlier than my customers expect.

Interview with Shep Hyken about The Convenience Revolution

NYT bestselling author and customer service expert Shep Hyken has a new book coming out October 2, just in time for Customer Service Week.

It's called The Convenience Revolution.

The book focuses on the next wave of service—making it easier for customers to do business with you. It's chock-full of case studies from top companies, both big and small. The best part is it contains practical ideas that can allow businesses of any size to out-service the competition.

Shep shares six convenience principles and invites readers to decide which principles work best for their business:

1. Reduce Friction

2. Self-Service

3. Technology

4. Subscription

5. Delivery

6. Access

I recently had a chance to interview Shep and discuss his new book.

Shep's always an entertaining interview, and he shared lots of great examples and ideas. You can order the book now.

• Buy on Amazon (hardcover, Kindle, or audio)

• Buy on 800-CEO-READ (discounts on multiple hardcover copies)

The Best Time to Provide Service Culture Training

Updated: March 24, 2023

Your service culture initiative will eventually involve training. The big question is, "When?"

Customer service leaders frequently ask me for advice on service culture training. My answer almost invariably surprises them:

“You aren't ready just yet. There are a few steps you should take first."

There is essential pre-work that should be done before any service culture training program. You'll know it's time to train when you've completed these three steps.

Step 1: Define Your Culture

Imagine you decided to invest in new accounting software for your company. There are a lot of different products on the market, so you decide to conduct a search for the best option.

Is that the time to train employees on the new accounting software?

Of course not! You must first decide which software you're going to acquire and then install the software so employees can actually use it before training them.

Service culture is the same way. 

There's no sense sending employees to training until you've defined your culture with a shared definition of outstanding service called a customer service vision. 

The vision should be the basis for your service culture training.

Without one, your training will be generic. “We’re sending everyone to generic training!” isn’t an exciting rallying cry.

You can create a customer service vision in one meeting. It takes just two hours if you follow this step-by-step guide.

Step 2: Create Learning Objectives

Let's go back to the accounting software analogy.

Imagine you've selected a software vendor and installed the new software so it's ready for employees to use. Now is surely the time to train employees, right?

Not so fast!

You must first know exactly what you want employees to do with the software. This might involve mapping out the various tasks employees will perform in the software and then designing a curriculum to teach employees those specific skills.

Service culture training is the same way.

You must start by identifying what you want your employees to know and do after completing the training.

I always advise clients to focus their service culture training program on helping employees answer three questions:

1. What is the customer service vision?

2. What does it mean?

3. How do I personally contribute?

Using these questions as a guide will make your training much more specific and focused.

Helpful tool —> Learning objective worksheet

Step 3: Plan for Sustainability

Okay, let's go back to the accounting software analogy one more time.

Imagine you implement the software and design a training program for your employees. Surely, now it's time to train, right?!

Not necessarily.

You want to time the training so employees learn to use the software right before they start using it. If you do the training too far in advance, employees will inevitably forget what they learned and they'll need to be trained again.

Service culture training works the same way.

Before you train employees, you want to be sure that their work environment will help sustain and reinforce the training.

This means aligning two things with the training program:

1. The employees' daily work.

2. Messaging from the employees' boss.

Examples of daily work include policies and procedures, resources, and tools.

Imagine the service culture training encourages employees to go "above and beyond" for customers. Are your employees allowed to go above and beyond? Do they have the resources and tools necessary to exceed expectations?

The training will fall flat if employees aren’t empowered.

Likewise, managers must be aligned with the training as well. A boss who constantly harps on employees to be efficient and control costs will probably override a service culture training program that encourages employees to find ways to "surprise and delight" the people they serve.

Guide —> 7 ways leaders can model great customer service

Take Action

The most customer-focused leaders I see have the patience to commit their organization to the process.

It may feel like slow-going at first, but you'll soon pick up steam and will suddenly be surprised at your momentum!

When you’re ready, The Service Culture Handbook can help guide your journey.

How to Get Customer Feedback Without a Survey

Updated: December 15, 2023

I frequently use subscriber feedback to improve my Customer Service Tip of the Week email newsletter. Yet I've never used a survey.

Customers are inundated with surveys, so think carefully before rolling out yet another one. You can get a lot of useful voice of customer feedback from several alternative sources.

Here are five ways to collect and use customer feedback without a survey.

Issue Alerts

Create a process to alert you to issues in real-time.

My weekly email will occasionally have a small issue such as a typo or a broken hyperlink. I try to proofread each email and test all the links, but problems occasionally do happen.

Typos are my kryptonite.

Thankfully, I can count on subscribers to let me know when there is an error. It's usually just a handful of people who email me about the problem, but that's all the feedback I need. Keep in mind most customers won't bother to tell you about small issues, but that doesn't mean they don't notice!

I have a process in place where I can flag a problem and fix it the next time I send out the same tip. In some cases, such as a broken hyperlink, I may re-send the email with the correction, although I try not to do this very often because I don't like swamping people's inboxes with extra emails.

Discussion question: What process do you have in place to allow your frontline agents to resolve or report problems?

Investigate Icebergs

A customer service iceberg is an issue that seems small and isolated on the surface, but is actually a sign of a much larger and more dangerous problem that's hidden from view.

Someone recently emailed me to let me know she had tried to sign-up for the Customer Service Tip of the Week email, but never received a confirmation. This was a classic iceberg because it was easy to dismiss the problem as a one-off where maybe she just missed the email or the confirmation wound up in a spam folder. 

I was tempted to just manually subscribe her to my list, but I decided to investigate. 

My research led me to a helpful exchange with a support agent at MailChimp, the company that powers my newsletter. With his help, I identified a technical setting in my account that would make my emails more recognizable to corporate email servers.

Here comes the kicker—my weekly subscription rate instantly doubled!

Some of those extra subscribers undoubtedly came from a marketing campaign I was running. But some of that huge increase was certainly due to this technical issue. I never would have found it if I hadn't investigated the iceberg that came from just one email.

Discussion question: What do frontline employees do when they encounter a strange or unusual problem? Are they trained to search for and identify icebergs?

Invite Conversation

There are a few books that have absolutely changed the game for me. One was Kevin Kruse's book, Unlimited Clients.

A key piece of advice in the book was to invite conversation with your customers. The first version of the book had Kevin's phone number and email address right on the cover, and I can tell you from experience he actually responded!

So I took Kevin's advice and added a special invitation to the welcome email I sent to new subscribers. 

Subscribers have always been able to reply to any email and send a message directly to my personal email address. However, this invitation substantially increased the number of people who actually emailed me.

It's not everyone. (Thankfully—I don't know if I could keep up!) But a couple times a day I get an email from a new subscriber who tells me a little about themselves.

It helps me learn more about them and I often try to share something helpful in response. I've also learned those subscribers are more likely to share their feedback as they begin to receive the weekly tips.

Discussion Question: How can you invite individual customers to engage in a one-on-one conversation?

Catalog Unstructured Data

Something really amazing happens when you take all those individual conversations you have with customers and categorize them.

I went through hundreds of emails from subscribers and categorized the customer service challenges they shared with me. When I decided to put my weekly tips in a book, I put the top ten challenges in a chart and identified tips that could help with each one.

Going through several hundred emails may seem like a lot of work, but it really doesn't take that much time. I probably spent an hour. 

It goes even faster if you catalog feedback from individual customers as it comes in. A lot of customer service software platforms have a tagging feature that allows agents to do this on the fly. If your technology won't do it, you can have agents use a spreadsheet or even a piece of paper.

Here are some resources for capturing unstructured data:

• Give your agents a “CX Magic Button”

• Try applying sentiment analysis

Discussion Question: How can you capture and analyze unstructured data?

Be a Customer

I learn a lot by subscribing to my own email.

This was a trick I learned from working in the catalog industry. Catalog companies would mail themselves a copy of each catalog so they could time how long it took to arrive and could verify each catalog arrived in good condition.

Subscribing to my own email allows me to do something similar.

For example, the Customer Service Tip of the Week goes out each Monday at 8:45 am Pacific time. One week, the email didn't arrive as expected. I double-checked the system and discovered I had set that particular email for 8:45 pm. 

Oops! Fortunately, I was able to quickly change the send time and the email went out only a few minutes later than normal.

Discussion Question: What can you learn from being your own customer?

Take Action

Here are all the discussion questions in one spot:

1. What process do you have in place to allow your frontline agents to resolve or report problems?

2. What do frontline employees do when they encounter a strange or unusual problem?

3. How can you invite individual customers to engage in a one-on-one conversation?

4. How can you capture and analyze unstructured data?

5. What can you learn from being your own customer?

All of these questions can yield terrific customer feedback without ever resorting to a survey! Best of all, the feedback you get from these sources can often be quickly used to make improvements.

You can get five more survey alternatives from this old post.

And, if you really want to use a survey, my course on LinkedIn Learning can guide you. Here's a short preview.

Welcome from Using Customer Surveys to Improve Service by Jeff Toister