Lessons From The Overlook: Customer Service vs Customer Experience

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.

We recently had some upset guests at The Overlook. This story helps differentiate between customer service and customer experience, and highlights why you need to understand both.

Our guests had originally booked a different cabin with our property management company. That cabin suddenly became unavailable, so our property manager re-accommodated the guests with us.

They were clearly unhappy with the move. When people get upset, research shows they can become more judgmental and less open to ideas. In this case, the guests sent our property manager a slew of nit-picky complaints about The Overlook: there wasn't enough counter space in the bathrooms, there's only one television, etc. 

One complaint really caught our attention. The guests claimed our cabin had just three bedrooms, not four.

We disagree with their count, but serving customers is a perception game. Here's how customer service and customer experience both played a role in this situation.

The “controversial” fourth bedroom. Photo credit: Idyllwild Vacation Cabins

Definitions

Let's start with defining the terms customer service and customer experience. 

The two get mixed up a lot. There's a trend where customer service teams are renaming themselves the Customer Experience Team, but they're doing the same thing they were before. But customer experience is really much broader.

So what's the difference? Here's a simple, concise definition of customer service from the Oxford English Dictionary:

The assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services.

Customer experience is much broader. Here's a definition I really like from Annette Franz:

The sum of all the interactions that a customer has with an organization over the life of the “relationship” with that company… and, especially, the feelings, emotions, and perceptions the customer has about those interactions.

Customer experience encompasses customer service. It also includes product design, product quality, advertising, and many other factors not traditionally considered to be part of customer service.

Service or Experience?

Our guests' complaint about the cabin really having just three bedrooms helps differentiate between customer service and customer experience.

Advertising is part of the customer experience, since it helps set expectations for what a customer will get from your product or service. The Overlook is advertised as a four bedroom cabin:

• There are two bedrooms with queen beds on the main floor.

• There's an en suite master bedroom with a king bed downstairs.

• The fourth bedroom is upstairs from the main floor.

The fourth bedroom has a king-sized bed, a closet, two windows, and its own bathroom. Our guests complained that it wasn't really a bedroom because it doesn't have a door. 

The customer service aspect was our property manager listening to the complaint with an empathetic ear and trying to rectify the situation in some way. Adding a door wasn't a feasible solution during the guests' stay, so they were ultimately offered a discount as compensation for their numerous complaints.

Now let's look at the customer experience aspects that go beyond customer service.

• The bedroom's lack of a door

• The bedroom’s lack of a television

• The way the guests used the bedroom

Our guests' party included young children, and their perception was the kids sleeping in the upstairs room were too loud for the adults because the room didn't have a door. They also complained that the bedroom lacked a television, so what our guests were really looking for was a place for the kids to entertain themselves while not disturbing the rest of the house.

Improving the Guest Experience

It's easy to write-off these complaints. The same guests complained the cabin was dirty because the kids’ white socks had dirt on them after the kids were running around outside in their socks.

Yet there's often a kernel of truth in nearly every complaint.

Their biggest issue was they weren't staying in the cabin they originally wanted. The Overlook was clearly not a great fit for these guests who probably would have been happier in a cabin with a separate TV room where they could stash the kids. Our property manager might steer a similar family to a different cabin the next time guests need to be re-accommodated.

The upstairs bedroom is private and you can't see into it from the main floor, but some guests might still expect anything labeled a bedroom to have a door. So we've updated our advertising to explain that one of the bedrooms is a loft with its own bathroom.

There's a word of caution here, too. 

You could spend a lot of money if you tried to give every guest exactly what they wanted. For example, we could put televisions in every room and add a door to the upstairs bedroom based on the feedback from just one unhappy group of guests. But that would be costly and it wouldn't dramatically improve the experience for our ideal guests who are coming up to the mountains to enjoy the outdoors and the peaceful serenity.

We look at feedback in the context of our customer service vision: Welcome to your mountain retreat. So when some guests shared that they wished there were extra towels since they went hiking during the day and then used the hot tub at night, we saw this as an opportunity to enhance the experience in alignment with our vision. In this case, the cost of the extra towels was a worthwhile investment.

Take Action

Our property manager handled the situation well. The guests were placated in the end, though they probably won't be returning to The Overlook since it’s not a great match with their needs.

We met with our property manager afterwards to discuss the guest experience improvements outlined above. One of the many reasons we like working with Idyllwild Vacation Cabins is the owner, Martha, always looks for a way to improve her guests’ experience.

You can take action in your own business by understanding the difference between customer service and customer experience. Service is important, but you need other elements such as a good product, fair policies, and helpful advertising to create the best experience.

Personality Traits That Inspire the Most Teamwork

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A customer service leader recently confided in me that she was having a difficult time hiring new employees.

Sure the job market is really tight right now, but there was an additional challenge with her company's hiring process. The HR department used a pre-hire personality assessment to screen all applicants. Each applicants' results were compared to an "ideal" profile for the job that was supplied by the assessment company.

As an experiment, the leader had her existing employees take the assessment. She was surprised to find that very few of her current employees fit within the assessment company's ideal profile. This meant some of her best employees never would have been hired if HR had been using the assessment then.

A few months ago, I wrote about the danger of using personality assessments to screen job candidates. The bottom line is they are often a poor predictor of success.

So how do you build a cohesive team?

I've uncovered some research that identifies what traits make a team successful. You might be surprised to learn that individual intelligence and talent did not make the list. 

Here's what did.

Social Sensitivity

A study from Anita Williams Woolley, Christopher F. Chabris, Alex Pentland, Nada Hashmi, and Thomas W. Malone found that individual intelligence did not correlate well with team performance. What did matter in their experiments was social sensitivity.

Here's a helpful definition of social sensitivity from AlleyDog.com, which is a website for psychology students.

Social sensitivity describes the proficiency at which an individual can identify, perceive, and understand cues and contexts in social interactions along with being socially respectful to others. 

I recently wrote about the exceptional service culture at the USS Midway Museum in San Diego. In retrospect, part of the museum’s hiring process is screening for social sensitivity.

• Prospective applicants check in with an employee named Gary at the visitor center. How people treat Gary and interact with him is an important part of the interview process.

• Lianne Morton, the museum's HR director, likes to walk people out after the interview. People tend to let down their guard during that brief conversation, giving Morton a glimpse of their true personality.

Other customer service leaders invite applicants to sit down with a few of their potential coworkers for an informal conversation about the work environment. It's a mini-test of how the candidate will contribute to the team dynamics.

Managers can also promote greater social sensitivity among their existing employees.

• Use huddles to get the team together

• Avoid pitting people against each other with internal competitions

• Leverage simple technology to make virtual employees feel included

Dependability

There's something reassuring about working with someone whose word is bond. If they say they'll get something done, they do it, and do it well. You can trust someone who is dependable.

A study from Google found five dynamics that were shared among its highest performing teams. The top dynamic was psychological safety, where team members can do their best work and even take risks without fear. One of the best ways to create this type of environment is to stack the team with socially sensitive members (see above).

Dependability was the number two dynamic shared among Google’s highest performing teams.

I recently wrote about the reasons why some employees are always late. When I talk to customer service leaders, chronic absenteeism and tardiness is frequently a top challenge. 

There are a number of ways to screen job applicants for dependability.

One company I worked with had an office that was difficult to find. Whenever a manager called an applicant to schedule an in-person interview, the manager deliberately avoided mentioning directions to the office. Successful applicants either asked for directions (which were readily provided upon request), or they were resourceful enough to find their way to the office in time for their interview.

People who arrived late because they got stuck in traffic, couldn't find parking, couldn't find the office, or generally didn't anticipate the difficulty of getting there were not considered for the job.

You can also screen applicants for dependability by checking references. Ask former bosses and coworkers to describe the employees' work habits or scan their LinkedIn recommendations. You'll often see indicators of a person's dependability.

Another company gives applicants a small assignment and a short deadline. Applicants who turn in quality work by the deadline demonstrate their dependability, while applicants who can't make it in time or don't produce a quality project are not considered.

Finally, managers need to be a bit tough about dependability. 

Employees who are allowed to be chronically late to work, or are frequently given extensions on work deadlines can develop bad habits quickly. Starting meetings late to accommodate people who don't show up on time tells people that showing up on time doesn't matter.

Like so many traits, you need to demonstrate dependability as a leader if you want your employees to do the same thing.

Purpose

Here are all five dynamics of successful teams from Google's study:

1. Psychological Safety

2. Dependability

3. Structure & Clarity

4. Meaning of Work

5. Impact of Work

We've already covered numbers one and two. The remaining three all boil down to having a clear purpose at work. You can instill a sense of purpose among your team members through a clear and compelling customer service vision.

A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that gets everyone on the same page. 

• It provides clarity about what everyone is working towards, 

• instills a sense of meaning in the work we do each day, 

• and helps us understand the impact we are having on our customers.

I detail a process for creating a customer service vision, getting your employees engaged, and aligning work around your purpose in The Service Culture Handbook.

Here's an overview of the main steps:

1. How to write a customer service vision statement

2. Three questions that get to the heart of employee engagement

3. Customer service alignment assessment

Not coincidentally, creating a customer service vision statement makes an outstanding team building exercise!

Conclusion

Customer service leaders often focus too much on the individual.

They place job ads looking for "rockstar" employees. Incentives are created for individual performance. Employees are given individual scorecards and top achievers are recognized. 

Yet customer service is often a team effort. So if you want better teamwork, it's important to carefully consider how you build your team.

My Most Popular Blog Posts of 2018

As 2018 winds to a close, it's time to take a look back at the past year. 

One thing I like to do is review my blog to see which posts resonated the most with readers. There were a couple of surprises here, including my most popular one.

#1: A Hidden Reason to Be Polite to Rude Customers

Serving angry, obnoxious, or rude customers is one of the most difficult aspects of customer service. This post explored an unexpected reason to keep your cool. It turns out that if you handle the situation correctly, the next customer is more likely to enjoy your service and even empathize with your situation. The key is doing one thing.

#2 How Fast Should a Business Respond to Email?

This research comes from a survey of over 1,200 consumers in the United States. Spoiler alert: businesses should be aiming for a response time of one hour or less. What surprised me was who wanted the fastest response.

#3 What Exactly is a Service Culture?

There are a lot of business concepts we all think we agree upon, but it often turns out we're talking about different things. For example, you'd probably agree that leadership is important. Okay, so what exactly is leadership? Ask a room full of people and you'll get different answers. That's why I thought it was important to define what I mean by service culture.

#4 Nine Ways Your Employees Waste Time at Work

This post started when I found a survey from Salary.com where 57 percent of employees admitted to wasting at least one hour per day at work. I'll add my own commentary and say if that's what people admit to, the real number is probably much higher. That's because our workplace is filled with hidden productivity killers that we're not always fully aware of.

#5 Who First Said "The Customer is Always Right?"

I can't think of a single phrase that makes customer service professionals bristle more than this one. Customers are often wrong. And issues can get worse when a customer is wrong, but digs their heels in and hides behind the "customer is always right" mantra. So I decided to find out who first said this statement. The conclusion was a bit surprising.

How I Create Scenes for My LinkedIn Learning Courses

Note: This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.

One of the great things about training videos is the scenes where actors play out a customer service scenario.

It helps provide viewers with a more concrete example of concepts being shared. 

A common complaint for many training videos is the scenes are unrealistic and cheesy. I've seen plenty of those myself, so this is always in the back of my mind as I work with film producers at LinkedIn Learning to create scenes for my training videos.

Here's how I create scenes for my courses.

Step 1: Start With Something Real

My scenes are based on situations that have really happened.

I like to think of examples that highlight the concept I'm trying to share. It could be from my own experience as a customer, the many jobs I've had serving customers, or a story someone else shared with me.

For a segment on identifying customers' emotional needs, I thought back to the time I was a customer service manager for a catalog company that sold collectibles. Some of the angriest customers were people who ordered something as a gift, only to receive an item that was different than what was expected.

So for this movie, I wrote a brief dialogue based on that experience.

[scene: A contact center employee is talking on the phone with a customer. The customer becomes angry when the employee offers to do an exchange.]

Employee: "I'm so sorry to hear we sent the wrong item. I'd be happy to help you do an exchange and send out the color you ordered."

Customer: An exchange?! I was supposed to give it as a gift tonight. I can't do anything with this!

[end scene]

Here's what it looks like on film (the scene starts at :31):

Identify emotional needs from Customer Service Foundations by Jeff Toister

Step 2: Pick a Setting

The setting for a scene can have a tremendous influence on its authenticity. 

Here I start with a few general ideas and then share them with my producer at LinkedIn Learning. The producer works with the production team to create the right set, cast the scene, and ensure everything can be filmed on time and on budget, so there's a lot of collaboration at this point.

Sometimes, my ideas are easy to execute. The contact center set used in the video above was the same one used for my course, Phone-Based Customer Service. (Fast forward to 2:11 of this video and you'll see the same set, shot from a slightly different angle.)

Other times, the producer will make some suggestions to find a setting that's easier to build or perhaps will show up better on video. 

I originally wanted to do a scene at a movie theater snack bar for my course on Working with Upset Customers, because I had seen a customer get unreasonably angry in that setting. The producer I was working with suggested a coffee shop setting instead, because that set was already built. 

It was a great suggestion, especially because I've seen people lose it in coffee shops, too! Here's a video using that set (the scene starts at :59):

Tending to emotional needs from Working with Upset Customers by Jeff Toister

Notice the video also focuses on emotional needs, but the scenario is different than the first video I showed you. There are often overlapping topics between my courses, so I try to put a slightly different spin on it each time.

Step 3: Cast the Scene

Good acting can make or break the authenticity of a training video scene.

This step is almost entirely in the hands of the producer I'm working with. As a writer, I like to give my producer a general idea of what each character might be like without getting too specific, since there's a lot of diversity in the customer service world. 

The producers at LinkedIn Learning have extensive experience casting for training videos, and I've really been impressed with the choices they've made. The actors in my training videos are consistently talented and professional, and they do a great job bringing the script to life!

Of course, there are times when our production schedule, budget, or some other factors requires some creative casting. The contact center agent in this scene is actually my producer for the course, Sam.

Step 4: Build the Sets

The LinkedIn Learning production team does a terrific job building sets for various scenarios. 

We will sometimes have a conference call or exchange photos of different ideas to make sure we're on the same page, but I've learned to trust the process. Here are behind-the-scenes photos of the four sets we used for scenarios in the Customer Service Foundations course.

Reception Area

Retail Store

Contact Center

Living Room

Step 5: Film the Scenarios

One of the really fun parts of creating a training video is being on the set when the scenes are filmed.

I've worked with several film directors at LinkedIn Learning and have been really impressed at how they put cameras in just the right place, coach the actors through the scene, and capture just the right moments. 

My role on the set is mainly as an observer, though I'll occasionally provide the actors with some suggestions or clarification around the dialogue. The goal is always to make it come out as realistic as possible.

You can see a few more scenes if you fast forward to 1:47 of this video:

Take ownership of problems from Customer Service Foundations by Jeff Toister

How to Train Faster and Better with Microlearning

Contact centers constantly face pressure to make agent training faster, cheaper, and better. One way to achieve this is through microlearning, where agents learn new information or review content in small chunks at a time.

Chance are, you're using microlearning already.

For example, have you ever gone to YouTube to find a short how-to video? I did this when I had to change the battery on my solar-powered keyboard. I quickly found a short video and, a few minutes later, I had step-by-step instructions for doing the repair.

I recently joined Bryan Naas from Lessonly to present a webinar on how to train contact center agents faster, reduce costs, and deliver better results with microlearning. Lessonly builds easy-to-use training software that helps people do better work, so it was really helpful to have Bryan's perspective.

Here are a few highlights from the webinar.

Training and Reinforcement

Bryan and I shared multiple microlearning examples throughout the webinar. 

A simple one is my Customer Service Tip of the Week email. Anyone can sign up for free to receive one tip via email, once per week. These tips are helpful reminders to help us build lasting habits.

Budget-Friendly

Microlearning is generally inexpensive and can be deployed quickly.

The biggest cost associated with traditional classroom training is paying agents to attend training along with other agents to provide coverage while your staff is in class. One benefit of microlearning is you don't need to take your agents out of the queue for training, so it is far less disruptive to your operation!

A Proven Model

Bryan shared Lessonly's Better Work Method, which is a model contact center leaders can use to easily develop microlearning lesson plans. 

The first step in the model is to assess needs. It's very common for contact center training programs to deliver too much unnecessary contact, while omitting essential lessons. A simple assessment can help you deliver the right content at just the right time.

You can watch the entire webinar replay here.

Bryan and I mention a couple of links during the webinar that you can't see on the replay:

• Customer Service Tip of the Week

• Lessonly Demo

How to Give Feedback to a Defensive Employee

The feedback session wasn't going well.

A contact center supervisor was reviewing a call with an agent where the agent's lack of friendliness seemed obvious. She had replied to the customer's questions in a monotone voice with short, clipped responses, and didn't acknowledge the customer's frustration.

The agent's response was to the supervisor's coaching was to flatly disagree. "Well," said the agent, "that's friendly for me."

Customer service leaders often face this dilemma. How do you get employees to embrace feedback, when they don't agree their performance needs to improve? 

I was lucky to have a mentor show me a technique that works.

Step 1: Identify Observable Behavior

One of the challenges faced by the supervisor is that friendliness is surprisingly difficult to define. You might know friendliness when you see it, but describing it isn't so easy. 

The supervisor couldn't explain what exactly the employee was doing wrong or what specifically she needed to do to improve. "You weren't friendly," was ultimately a subjective assessment.

Leaders often struggle getting employees onboard with murky concepts like friendliness.

My boss, Debbi, was a mentor to me when I supervised a contact center training department many years ago. She taught me to overcome this challenge by focusing on observable behavior. These are behaviors you can actually see, rather than inferences.

For example, let's go back to friendliness. What specific behaviors did the agent display that led the supervisor to conclude the agent wasn't being friendly?

• Monotone voice

• Short, clipped responses

• Did not acknowledge the customer's frustration

So what does friendly look like? Here's an experiment you can try. Observe an employee you know is being friendly. Try to identify the specific behaviors they display that tell you they are friendly.

You can see an example in this short video. Skip ahead if you’d like to 1:20 to see a poor example and then a good example at 1:58.

Develop the perfect phone greeting from Phone-Based Customer Service by Jeff Toister

Step 2: Check Your Intent

Your intent in a feedback conversation is critical to getting that surly employee onboard.

The supervisor's intent with the unfriendly contact center agent was to get the employee to acknowledge she hadn't been friendly. Ultimately, the supervisor hoped the agent would accept being marked down on the quality monitoring form that was used to evaluate agent performance.

That feels pretty adversarial. And right or wrong, it's human nature to get defensive when confronted by an adversary.

I once made the mistake of confronting an employee about her bad attitude. She immediately became defensive and it didn't go well. That's because my intent was to get her to accept that she had a bad attitude.

My mentor, Debbi, gave me some advice that helped me change my intent with this employee. I started my next meeting with the employee by explaining that five different people had complained about working with her, and I wanted to work together to help her change that perception.

This time, I didn't try to get my employee to admit she was wrong. We focused instead on identifying specific behaviors she needed to display to convince colleagues she didn't have a bad attitude. It was still a difficult conversation, but we were now on the same side.

The next time you want to give an employee feedback, make sure your intent is to help them deliver a great performance the next time.

Step 3: Provide a Good Example

People can still disagree despite the best of intentions and seemingly clear, observable behavior. This makes it important to have an example of what good performance looks like.

There are a few ways you can do this.

One way is to share a visual. For instance, a chain of pizza restaurants has a poster showing two employees standing side-by-side. One is wearing their uniform correctly, while the other is not. This makes it easier to see what a "good" uniform presentation should look like.

Supervisors can also demonstrate the expected behavior. A hospitality manager who wanted his employees to give friendly greetings had employees observe him greet several guests.

Still another approach is to use your employee's past performance as a model. The contact center supervisor could have found a previous call where the agent was friendly, and played them for the agent back-to-back so she would better understand the difference between the two.

Debbi consistently coached me to set a positive example for my employees. So when I made suggestions to help an employee convince colleagues she didn’t have a “bad attitude,” I could show her examples of what I was looking for.

Take Action

Okay, here's the caveat.

These steps won't work 100 percent of the time. Some employees just aren't open to feedback, no matter how you approach them. In those cases, a poor performer should be told to improve or move on to another position.

Yet I've found that most employees will improve if you approach them the right way. My “bad attitude” employee made the adjustments she needed to make and completely changed how her colleagues perceived her. I made sure to acknowledge her progress and continued to communicate that I was on her side.

Lessons From the Overlook: The Power of Checklists

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.

I went to change the air filter on the heater while visiting The Overlook recently. 

Normally, there's an extra filter on hand to make this an easy chore, but I discovered I hadn't re-ordered filters the last time I'd used one. So I drove into town to buy one, but the size I needed was out of stock at both hardware stores in Idyllwild.

(Side note, I'm a big fan of Idyllwild's True Value, Forest Lumber. They pack a lot of merchandise into a small store, and the friendly staff are always very helpful.)

In the end I had to order a new filter online and have it delivered to our property manager for installation later that week. 

Changing the air filter was a minor hassle this time. It was also a terrific reminder that I had fallen out of habit of doing something very important: using a checklist.

Here's how a checklist is (usually) a timesaver at The Overlook, and why you should be using them, too.

An inspection revealed a pipe under the spa deck was missing some insulation. We asked our property manager to have it fixed before it caused any real problems.

Using a PM Checklist

When my wife, Sally, and I first bought The Overlook in October 2016, we created a preventative maintenance (PM) checklist. 

Our plan was to use the checklist when inspecting the cabin on our regular visits. It would help us remember what to inspect while identifying some maintenance items that had to be done on occasion. We've updated the checklist as we've discovered new requirements or added a new feature, like a game room.

We've found the checklist to be extremely useful. 

There's been some minor maintenance to be done each time we've visited the cabin, which is usually once every six weeks. Glasses are missing, lightbulbs are burned out, guests leave personal items in drawers, furniture has been moved, you name it.

The PM checklist also contains a lot of helpful reminders, such as pumping the septic tank, trimming trees, and checking our propane consumption. We also use it to identify when to re-order supplies such as spare glasses, dishes, lightbulbs, and cleaning supplies.

Forming a Bad Habit

We've strayed away from using the checklist during the past few months. The excuse was busyness.

A day trip to the cabin in September was a whirlwind of chores. We returned in October, but storm knocked the power out and put a damper on our plans. Another trip the first weekend in December was nice, but there was also a long list of chores that needed to be done.

In hindsight, these were precisely the times when a checklist would have been handy. It would have helped me remember to order new air filters for our heater or inspect the piping under the spa deck (see photo). I allowed myself to get so busy focusing on whatever task was right in front of me that I neglected to follow our own procedure.

Fortunately, the only fallout was a little wasted time from not having replacement air filters on hand. I know it could have been worse, such as a frozen pipe!

We'll definitely be using our PM checklist on the next visit.

Build Your Own Operations Checklist

A checklist is great to have if there's something you want people to inspect or a list of chores you want people to do on a regular basis.

• Retail shops use them for opening and closing the store.

• Contact centers use them when evaluating phone calls.

• A home repair technician uses them to inventory parts on the truck.

• A mechanic uses them when inspecting your vehicle.

• Restaurants use them for cleaning the kitchen.

There are probably multiple ways to build a PM checklist. Here's how we built ours.

1. Start with an initial walk-through.

2. Capture any items to add to your checklist.

3. For the first few times you use it, identify any needed adjustments.

4. Review and update the checklist periodically, at least once per year.

Another consideration is how people will access the checklist. This should be a function of who is using it, when they're using it, and where they're using it.

For example, you've probably seen an inspection checklist posted in a public restroom. This makes it very easy for the janitorial crew to identify what needs to be cleaned or inspected, and mark down the work that has been done.

We keep our PM checklist on a Google Doc, so it's easy for either of us to pull it up on an iPad and update it as we walk around the house. 

A Final Reminder

Our experience taught us that it's easy to use busyness as an excuse to stop doing things the right way. In the long run, not using the checklist cost us more time than it saved.

Four Corporate Customer Service Blogs Actually Worth Reading

Many companies that sell a product or service to customer service teams have a corporate blog. It's part of a content marketing strategy that brings visitors to the company website, establishes some brand awareness, and hopefully generates sales.

A lot of those blogs are hard to read.

They're overly self-promotional. Content is generic and written with no real viewpoint. Some become a dumping ground for poorly curated guest posts.

A few corporate blogs stand out from the crowd. They pair excellent writing with real advice that's both thought-provoking and actionable.

Here are four corporate customer service blogs I consistently read. Full disclosure: I know people at each of these companies. I also respect the work they do and really do subscribe to their blogs.

HelpScout

The HelpScout blog has a nice mix of product how-tos, insights from real customer service leaders, and posts that address topical issues such as working with remote teams. What I like about this blog is the articles are well-written and often contain a lot of helpful examples. For instance, a recent post about making content more inclusive was really thought-provoking.

Relate

This is what you get when you mix real journalists with industry thought leaders and consciously create distance between the blog and the corporate agenda. Though run by Zendesk, Relate almost feels like a separate entity. Heck, Zendesk even has a separate Zendesk blog. Relate is packed with highly relevant topics that don't get enough attention, such as an interview with Jenny Dempsey about self-care in customer service or this post on how to be a good Airbnb guest.

FCR

Posts on the FCR blog are primarily written by FCR's Director of Customer Experience, Jeremy Watkin. Since FCR is an outsourced contact center, Jeremy gets to work with a wide variety of client organizations, and he shares many of those insights in his practical, often folksy posts. A good example is this post about creating a voice and style guide for your customer service team.

Thematic

Data nerds rejoice! The Thematic blog weaves compelling data and solid storytelling to share some unexpected conclusions. For instance, a recent post on using customer feedback to prevent churn showed how one Thematic client was getting most of its customer churn from happy customers. There's a huge lesson there about not taking your best customers for granted.

What Blogs Are You Reading?

These are all blogs I subscribe to and actually read, but it's by no means an exhaustive list. Please drop me a line and let me know which corporate customer service blogs you read on a regular basis!

The Hidden Danger of Murky Buzzwords

Years ago, a company hired me to conduct customer service training that showed employees how to align their service with the company's corporate values. 

One of those values was integrity. 

I interviewed several employees and managers to prepare for the training. None of them explained integrity the same way. Some employees were aware it was a value, but hadn't given it any thought. 

"It's just some corporate thing," explained several people I talked to.

To put some context in place, integrity has been a buzzword for corporate values statements for some time. A 2004 study by Booz Allen and the Aspen Institute found that 90 percent of corporate values statements listed ethics or integrity. Even Enron, the company made famous for a massive accounting scandal that sent executives to prison, listed integrity among its core values in the company's 2000 annual report.

Herein lies the challenge for customer service leaders. So many buzzwords that guide our decision-making are murky. 

Common Murky Buzzwords

Here's an experiment you can try. Share the following terms with your leadership team. Ask each person to write down a brief definition of each one. Then compare what people wrote.

• Employee Engagement

• Customer Success

• Customer Experience

• Leadership

• Empowerment

My guess is you'll get a lot of great definitions, but they'll all be slightly different. 

This creates a real challenge. For instance, most leaders I speak with agree that employee engagement is important. Yet they have wildly different ideas of what it really means. It's pretty hard to improve something if we don't agree on what we're trying to improve.

I once sat in on a conversation between an IT director and the two managers that reported to him. He was frustrated with the department's performance, but was having a difficult time articulating what he felt was going wrong and what needed to improve. 

Finally, the director blurted out, "You need to be more managerial, or... you're fired!"

Nobody in the room, including the IT director, had any idea what "be more managerial" meant or how one could go about doing it. 

You can't improve something if you don't define it.

Sample Definitions

I don't want to leave you high and dry, so here are some sample definitions for the five terms I shared above. 

Keep in mind these aren't the only definitions. You're free to find another source or even come up with your own. What's important is you establish a common frame of reference with the leaders and employees in your organization.

Employee Engagement: An engaged employee is deliberately contributing to organizational success. (source: Jeff Toister)

Customer Success: An organizational function that helps customers get maximum value out of a product or service. (source: Hubspot)

Customer Experience: The sum of all the interactions that a customer has with an organization over the life of the “relationship” with that company… and, especially, the feelings, emotions, and perceptions the customer has about those interactions. (source: Annette Franz)

Leadership: A leader is someone who inspires people to take action. Leadership is the skillset or tools they use to do so. (source: Grace Judson)

Empowerment: a process of enabling employees to deliver outstanding service to their customers. (source: Jeff Toister)

The Power of a Common Frame of Reference

If you've read this blog before, you may know I'm a proponent of companies adopting a unique customer service vision.

This is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that gets everyone on the same page. It binds the group with a common purpose, and establishes a common frame of reference when it comes to delivering great service.

Some companies, like the client I mentioned at the start of this post, choose to use corporate values as the customer service vision. That's fine, so long as everyone has a shared understanding of what they meant.

Which brings us back to integrity. 

Through a series of workshops, my client's employees decided that "integrity" should mean doing the right thing for the customer by trying to be the customer's advocate. Together, we brainstormed real workplace stories that were examples of serving with integrity.

Suddenly, the word had meaning. Employees could use integrity as a guide when handling tricky situations. Managers could use it when giving employees feedback. Everyone was on the same page.

Take Action

Identify some of the buzzwords that are floating around your workplace. Take time to define them, and make sure everyone shares the same definition. 

This exercise not only gets everyone on the same page, it can greatly influence your next steps. 

For example, if a company is blindly pursuing employee engagement without defining it, leaders might conduct a survey, form a committee, and be done with it. But if leaders understand that an engaged employee knows what makes the company successful and is committed to helping achieve that success, leaders might first make sure every employee understands the company's vision and goals.

How to Keep Your Virtual Team Engaged

Do you have employees who work from home or in a remote office?

This arrangement is increasingly common in customer service. There are many benefits for employees and employers alike, such as eliminated commute times, lower office expenses, and greater flexibility.

There's also a big challenge—keeping remote employees engaged.

By engaged, I mean they understand what makes the business or team successful, and they're committed to helping achieve it. 

The challenge faced by many virtual employees is they often miss out on critical updates, or don't get to participate in "water cooler" discussions around the office where important decisions are made. And it's easy to feel left out of the natural camaraderie that develops when people work together. That office potluck is a huge bummer if you’re eating cold cereal at home while everyone else is enjoying Victor’s famous lumpia.

The good news is you can overcome this challenge with a little planning. Here are some key insights from leaders with experience managing virtual teams.

Promote Face-to-Face Contact

If feasible, promoting periodic face-to-face contact works wonders. It strengthens relationships and many people find it easier to communicate via other channels, such as email, once they’ve met someone in person.

Michael, a client experience team lead, has one remote employee. She works in the office once every two weeks. "I intentionally try to schedule these days when there will be key times for her to connect and interact with the rest of the team," says Michael. "For example, last week, she came to the office on the day of our office Thanksgiving potluck."

Jeremy, a contact center manager, cautions leaders to be respectful of remote employees' time when asking them to come into the office. "We’ve historically had a tendency to try to force them into the office when they may not want that in the name of engagement and inclusion when really, we should be figuring out how to engage and include while at home rather than forcing a drive into the office they’ve likely been avoiding. Periodically coming into the office is fine if it’s mutually agreeable vs. company-sided."

Diana, a customer support team lead, suggests focusing in-person time on relationship-building. “That actual in-person time together should also be more for bonding than getting work done, so don’t plan meetups to be packed 10 hour work days with no down time.”

Meeting in-person isn’t always feasible, but video can still bring you face-to-face with your remote team. Chelsea, a client experience leader, has weekly video calls with each person on her team.

Establish Communication Channels

Using the right communication tools is critical to keeping everyone informed.

Holly, a marketing vice president, suggests virtual teams adopt effective communication tools and establish some team norms around using them. "Slack is such a great way for a quick chat and I love Zoom for longer or more complex conversations. Being able to see someone's face makes a HUGE difference in really connecting to them as a person rather than treating them like an email address."

Michael adds some similar ideas. "Our Team uses a chat page (similar to Slack) and we keep her in the loop on as much as possible. If any key conversations have occurred at the office, I'll send her a message to fill her in. We're messaging and/or speaking with her on the phone each and every day to make sure she feels plugged in to the Team."

Mario, a support manager, echoes the importance of keeping people in the loop. He cautions managers against assuming that remote employees will proactively search for information. “You’ve gotta show them and remind them. If there’s a demo, record it.”

Crystal, a client success manager, recommends getting the right tools to make communication easier. “We’ve invested in special microphones for our stand-ups, because our remote team couldn’t hear well if someone wasn’t speaking loudly enough. Investing in that hardware shows the remote team members that we really do care about their experience.”

One word of caution here is to be mindful of timezones. "Someone working remotely doesn't always work 9-5, might be in a different time zone, or could be a night owl," says Holly. "Talk with them from the beginning about what hours they will be working. If you need them to work certain hours, mention that."

Involve Your Remote Employees

Years ago, I attended a conference for contact center professionals. There was a day of site tours, so I took advantage and visited a Starbucks contact center. 

One of the things I saw on the tour was pretty amazing. We were all given a tutorial on how to taste coffee. The mini-training showed us how different brews produce different flavors and smells.

The most impressive part was the tasting was led by a remote employee!

Keeping your virtual team involved is a key responsibility for customer service leaders. The old saying "out of sight, out of mind," definitely applies here if you let it!

Jeremy suggests planning to include your remote employees in team meetings. "If a small percentage of the workforce is remote it’s easy to forget about them while presenting. They can’t see all the content, can’t hear questions being asked, etc. Plan on how they will participate in things like breakout sessions and ice breakers."

Holly suggests being intentional about creating places for fun. "We have a few minutes at the beginning of team meetings for talking about family, travel, and just life in general. We also have a Slack channel where we share photos of our children, food we cooked, restaurants we tried, sports games we went to, and so forth. It's our water cooler."

Kev, a customer support manager, holds all team meetings via Zoom. “Even where people are co-located, they join individually on their own computer. This ensures everyone in the meeting is present in the same capacity, and prevents remote employees feeling they are second class in the meetings.”

Celebrating big events doesn’t have to happen exclusively in the office. Camille, a former client success vice president, made a practice of sending treats to people when they hit major milestones. “Remote folks seemed to appreciate receiving tangible things.”

Take Action

Working remotely involves a lot of video meetings. Here are some of the audio and video tools I recommend.

Ultimately, keeping your virtual team engaged comes down to good management.

• Make sure your employees know what's expected.

• Communicate regularly to keep them on track.

• Provide assistance when necessary.

• Recognize good performance to let remote employees know they're appreciated.

• Avoid micromanagement.

That last one is important.

Nobody likes a micromanager, but a micromanager can really be annoying in a remote situation. I know a remote employee whose boss used to email her at all hours, even late at night, and expect an immediate response. It was frustratingly annoying, and her engagement suffered.

Be thoughtful about the relationships you create with your virtual team, and engaging them should become much easier.