Be Different or be dead

January 3, 2011

2 easy questions to decide who to hire into customer service

Source : Pexels

2 easy questions to decide who to hire into customer service.

A key element of the business plan that many organizations use to separate themselves from their competition is to create memorable experiences for their customers.
To blow ‘em away and leave them breathless with how they’ve been treated.

The problem is, however, is that these same organizations haven’t figured out precisely how to do it. They’re excellent at declaring the aspiration but fall short when it comes to delivering on their intent.

And as a result their customer service intent is no more than a helium-filled shallow promise with no evidence to back it up and their performance is unaffected.

Typically memorable experiences are created by people, notwithstanding the relatively unsuccessful attempts - in my view - that many organizations make using technology to do it.

Hire the right person

The most important and basic way of achieving this objective is to recruit people who ‘love’ human beings. People that have the instinctive desire to serve their fellow homo-sapiens. To take care of them. To satisfy them regardless of what they want.

Hire the right person into a service position if you want to dazzle the customer or leave them breathless from the service experience they’ve had with you

I’m not impressed with the quality of some people recruited into customer service positions because many of them are incapable of delivering even a mediocre service experience.

Why? Well, many of them have been placed in the position because of their seniority in the company, or because they are looking for a career move and they want to try customer service.

And as a result, these people find that they really don’t ‘like customers’ with all the complications they bring and they would really rather be doing something that didn’t involve interacting with other humans (and the customer who engages with this person suffers).

How does this happen? How does an individual who would rather be writing code, taking inventory or preparing financial statements ever get a job in customer service?

The decision making process to select people for service jobs is imprecise and severely flawed and in too many instances unqualified and unwilling people are let loose with your most precious asset — your customer.

So how do you fix the problem? How does an organization ensure they are hiring individuals who are not only capable of delivering mind-blowing service, but also look forward to doing it with every fabric of their body?

Can you train someone to like a human?

Many would say that you can train people to do it; certainly that’s what many human resource managers generally believe — why else would they use seniority as a criteria to place people in customer service?

The fact is, however, despite all the good intentions of cross-training, you simply can’t train someone to like someone else.

Source: Pexels

You can give them ‘how to have a smile in your voice’ training and teach them how to grin at others and use other tools intended to deal with customer better, but you can’t train a person to bring all the honest emotional energy to the table that is required to create a memorable experience for another person.

People who love people are born to do it, and so the challenge is to discover them and embrace them in your organization as they truly are the custodians of the loyalty moment when a customer decides to continue doing business with you (and to tell others how great your organization is) or to leave for another service provider.

So how do you spot these people who naturally care for — ‘love’ — other humans?

You have to start with the usual task of filtering through the profiles of potential candidates, looking for content that relates to serving customers as opposed to merely stressing academic achievements or other hard accomplishments.

Most people avoid what they believe is the soft stuff as it relates to their background, but for the delivery of remarkable service, the soft stuff is absolutely essential.
And check their references to see if others commented on the candidate’s capability to effectively deal with others with care and affection.

The interview

But the critical element of the hiring process is the personal interview and I discovered an effective tool to separate the individuals who could really create magical experiences for others from those that talked a good game but who didn’t have the attitude or inclination to do it.

Ask two simple questions

Here’s a rather simple but so effective way of separating the human being lovers from the ‘fish’ who may have been through some type of customer service training program.

▪️ First, ask the prospective employee “Do you love human beings?”.

They will realize that this is a bit of a trick question but will not know where you are going with it. It’s a fun question to ask as the interviewer to say the least.

Most people will say ‘yes’ in varying ways, ranging from the declaration ‘absolutely’ to the positive inference ‘sure’ and the questioning ‘of course’.
However, to satisfy the real intent of the question, you need to dig deeper.

▪️As a follow up question, pose this: “Tell me a story that will show me that you love and care about your fellow humans”.

The responses you get from this question will define two types of candidates: one, ‘The Intellectualizer’’ and two, ‘The People Lover’.

The Intellectualizer has figured out what you are up to with the question and conjures up a story with their mind that leaves you cold.
Their answer draws on logic — what they believe you expect to hear from them — and therefore it’s dispassionate to the point of being superficial and phoney.

Those that don’t have the innate desire to move people emotionally with their answer should be ushered out of the interview.

The natural-born People Lover, on the other hand, thrills you with a story that leaves you warm all over.
Their story paints a vivid picture of someone who cares about other people and who is creative at finding ways to deliver unforgettable memories for them.

This was the question that separated the people who really got what it took to serve others from those who had only a theoretical understanding of what it too to be a caregiver.

Do you feel the goosebumps

Those that were born to serve leave you with goosebumps while they tell their story. Their story is rich with detail and the threads that bind it together were all about the importance of connecting with people on the emotional level. And their authenticity pours out with every word.

These individuals were the real deal. I hired them with minor interest in their other qualifications. And they always did me proud the way they dealt with our customers.

And many eventually found their way into higher level positions in the customer service organization to provide the leadership necessary to sustain this strategy that was extremely effective is gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage for our organization.

So if you really want to achieve a service strategy based on remarkable and memorable experiences, hire the People Lover who will leave you with goosebumps.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 1.3.11 at 11:00 am by Roy Osing
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