Be Different or be dead

July 30, 2018

6 common customer service mistakes that will make you sick

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6 common service mistakes that will make you sick.

Most organizations are trying to use service as a key component of their competitive strategy yet my observation is that few actually deliver what I would call out-of-the-ordinary service.

Quite frankly, service generally is abysmal despite the rhetoric provided by leadership — it’s a dream with no practical way to make it come true.

These mistakes are at the root of the problem that, for most, the words and the music don’t match.

1. Putting cost before care

The only purpose of ‘customer service’… is to change feelings. – Seth Godin

After the aspiration — “our goal is to deliver service beyond expectations” — fades, reality sets in and the monthly income statement dictated the agenda.
What does the business case look like to deliver service goals? What will it cost to delight our customers, and how do we translate this into additional revenue?
At the end of the day, a proposal to outsource the service call center to a remote location with lower wages (and questionable English language skills) gets approved — the care factor is ignored.

Don’t talk about service excellence when you’re not prepared to invest to deliver it. You can’t creature memorable moments when costs are the primary concern.

2. Treating the frontline as bottom dwellers

Who in the organization delivers the service brand? It sure the hell isn’t the CEO or the Executive Leadership Team.
The irony is that the people who own the brand are relegated to the bottom of the chart. These are people who are “only” receptionists, service reps, credit reps and sales assistants. People who perform “junior” roles but who breathe life — or not — into the aspirational goal of superlative customer service.
It’s about time organizations honour the people who wear the badge of service every moment of every day.

3. Focusing on the abuser

Policies and procedures are typically used as mechanisms of control. They control the customer engagement process. They control the criteria for treating customers who have been wronged by the organization.
They are constructed to deal with the person who wants to ”abuse” standard protocol.

The customer who is assumed to be dishonest — “Before I serve you a drink I need your credit card (because others who came before you took off without paying and I assume you will do the same).
Here’s a novel idea: why not create rules and policies to make it easy for people to do business with you rather than punish them for what a minority number of people in the crowd has been known to do in the past?

4. Not saying “I’m sorry”

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. – Bill Gates

Mistakes happen because organizations have two resources that go wrong from time to time — people and technology. As it turns out, however, mistakes that are handled the right way actually build stronger customer loyalty than if the OOPS! never happened at all.

A successful service recovery is fix it fast + do the unexpected. To have an amazing service outcome, the mistake must be quickly remedied — after 24 hours you have lost any possibility of building loyalty — AND a surprise element must be added — something the customer doesn’t expect.

And it begins with the apology. “I’m sorry” opens the gates for a delightful service finale when things get screwed up regardless of whose fault you think it is. Quote company policy at your peril, because people don’t give a damn about your rules and policies.

5. Getting it right the first time

The essence of service quality teaching is to conform to customer requirements the first time. To avoid mistakes that will require you to redo your work to get it right, thus increasing the costs of supply. Repeat work = higher costs.

So the majority of attention and investment goes into this purpose with little acknowledgement that it MIGHT not get done right the first time. That mistakes might rear their ugly head and present an opportunity to actually come out of it all in a stronger position — read last point again.

Successful organizations plan for screw ups — how do we intend to deal with situations where we DON’T get it right the first time? Don’t fall into the trap of relying on achieving perfection with every customer engagement. Big mistake; it won’t happen.

6. Meeting expectations

The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them — preferably in unexpected and helpful ways. – Richard Branson

Doing what the customer expects is merely part of the answer to delivering brilliant service. It’s the basic action that must be taken in order to “play the service game” — you’re in the game if you do it but you don’t excel at it if that’s all you do.

Standout organizations try to anticipate what could be provided beyond what is expected; they set their sights at delivering more. They look for opportunities to add something extra to the customer engagement process — a bit of fun, some unique advice, a number to call for help if needed — small things that leave a memorable impression.

Stopping at what people expect defines you as a member of the service herd, indistinguishable from everyone else. Big mistake; limiting move.

If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000. –  Jeff Bezos

The cost of a service mistake is HUGE yet the rhetoric in many organizations continues with insufficient action to make any significant difference.

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

• Posted 7.30.18 at 04:13 am by Roy Osing
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July 16, 2018

Why a customer should never hear the two words ‘You should’

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Why a customer should never hear the two words ‘You should’.

A brilliant customer service strategy isn’t just about these factors:

Aspirations

It’s not just about what you aspire to be.

Yes, it’s critical that you have a service strategy that clearly differentiates your organization from others. It must address not only the element of service that your customers treat as their top priority, but also the one that your organization uniquely provides.

If what you do in a service sense mirrors what your closest competitor does, you really don’t provide a compelling incentive for people to choose you over others.

Technology

It’s not just about cool technology employed to facilitate customer transactions.

Employing the latest technology to maximize the efficiency of your service operations is essential — as long as it doesn’t detract from the experience your customers have when they do business with you.

And as long as its sole reason for implementing the technology is not to drive service costs down, as this end game will surely negatively impact service quality. Technology applied to enhance the customer experience and improve the use of internal resources must be the desired outcome.

Awards and Recognition

It’s not just about the awards you win for “providing the best customer service”.

This recognition is often provided by so-called experts in the customer service business who claim to have their fingers on the pulse of customers and who conduct surveys to determine the leaders in the service area.

Because they apply their own criteria on what superlative customer satisfaction looks like, your organization could be praised for achieving high marks in an element of service your specific customers don’t value as their highest priority — your award is therefore meaningless to your business.

Serving Leadership

It’s not just about serving leadership that places the emphasis on helping service employees do their job.

Serving leaders are critical to developing a successful culture based on delivering mind blowing customer experiences.

A critical component of this culture is a leadership philosophy based on helping and enabling people do their jobs — removing the roadblocks and “grunge” that get in their way.
Serving leaders are a critical ingredient to service culture, but more is required to sustain it in a highly changing and competitive world.

It’s about words

A brilliant customer service strategy IS about what is said and not said during the customer engagement process; the Moment of truth when the customer and company are connected for the purpose of satisfying what the customer wants and desires.

The organization’s service strategy comes alive in that Moment, whether it’s a real time conversation with an employee, a web page view, an advertising message or an audio response from your call answer device.

In that Moment, your service strategy is no longer a strategic intent; no longer a piece of paper with words expressed on it. It’s an experience that either renders your intent alive or dead; the truth or a lie — your strategy in that moment degenerates into reality.

Words can hurt, anger and amaze

Many words characterize the Moment; words that either leave the customer feeling heard, honoured and cared for or feeing berated, belittled and angry.

This is where most organizations fail. They don’t treat words used in the Moment as a critical element of their strategy that needs as much or even more attention than the service end game intent.

It’s one thing to say “When a mistake is made, recovery will be our #1 priority” and quite another to have service personnel equipped with the right words to manage the recovery Moment when the customer has been screwed over by their organization.

If the wrong words are chosen, the the recovery element of your service strategy dies — and your customer trots off to one of your competitors. If the right words are chosen (with the promised action of course) the customer is surprised, delighted and more loyal than if the OOPS! never occurred in the first place.

Service training must include what to say and what not to say, starting with the latter because the trash words must be expunged and replaced with the words that will support and enable your service end game.

”You should”

Start with “You should”; the one single phrase with so much implied meaning that it can singlehandedly scupper a Moment.
“You should”:
— follow the instructions (you dummy)
— upgrade your software (can’t you read?)
— call the billing department (and don’t bother me)
— have reported the problem when you were covered by your warranty (don’t expect any help now)
— be more understanding (leave me alone!)
— have known our policy (WE control YOU remember?)
— make your choice (can’t you make up your mind?)

‘You should’ explicitly says that your behaviour should be governed by my expectations of you, not by your reality.

How can that ever lead to amazing customer service and Moments that leave the customer breathless?

It can’t.

Mind your words.

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

• Posted 7.16.18 at 04:39 am by Roy Osing
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April 30, 2018

How better informed frontline people can be made a leadership priority

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How better informed frontline people can be made a leadership priority.

I believe that frontline people “rule the world”.

They control the customer experience and live the brand of an organization every moment of every day. If customer transactions go well, loyalty is created; if not, loyalty is destroyed.

Frontline employees are always on the receiving end of customer “Why questions” — “Why don’t you add this type of draft beer?” or “Why did you take spaghetti and meat balls off the menu?” Or “Why do I have to wait so long to get a customer service representative on the phone?”

These are tough questions to answer, because frontline people are rarely given the answers in the detail they need to satisfy a customer’s query.

Leadership, for whatever reason, generally chooses not to share the details on matters such as product line selection, pricing rationale, credit rules and customer service policies with customer contact employees.

They think either that the frontline doesn’t need to know the details or that they can figure it out themselves.

I once asked a teller at a Credit Union why I should do business with them and not a bank. She was startled with my question and said “Because we share our profits with our members, and banks don’t” — not a compelling answer.
The truth is it wasn’t her fault; she wasn’t given the appropriate answer by the leaders who should be supporting her efforts. And so she was left to improvise and invent the answer herself.

This leaves the frontline in the untenable position of not being able to answer questions that customers have.

On more than one occasion, “It’s a corporate decision” is the answer that comes back to me as the reason a particular decision has been made. They know the answer sucks but that’s the truth to them because they have been left out of the loop.

And, of course, this does nothing to assuage the customer.

Frontline people hate having to use the ‘corporate’ reference when engaging with customers; they feel incompetent and regret not being able to satisfy the customer.

But they have no choice because it’s the only answer they can give.

Leaders must make informed frontline employees a priority; here are four actions to make it happen.

1. Promote the frontline’s importance

Elevate frontline employees to the top of the “need to know” funnel. Effective customer engagement creates loyal customers and long term profitability so why would you not want to equip frontline employees with every tool they need to satisfy and dazzle customers?

And communicate what you are doing throughout the organization so everyone knows the cultural change being made.
Beats me why they seem to take the back seat to other groups when it comes to getting the information they need to talk to customers.

2. Determine their information needs

Ask frontline people — strike a frontline panel to help — what the top 10 questions customers ask them for which they have no answers.
And take their questions verbatim. Don’t allow some staff person to translate them into what they “really mean”, because all this does is allow their bias to enter the equation to distort the frontline truth.
Feed the questions back to the panel and ask for sign off before providing answers.

3. Modify the management performance evaluation plan

Rate managers’ performance in part on how effective they are at providing the frontline with the information they need. Ask the frontline to rate managers; they will provide honest input.

As president of the data and internet company, I implemented a report card process that had customer service reps rate my management team on their ability to equip them with the info they needed to serve their customers.
The first report card rated managers poorly; improvements in subsequent rounds were seen as action plans were implemented to address the shortfalls.

4. Engage the frontline in systems design

Who better to determine what information systems look like than the people who use them? Unfortunately this is rarely done.
Yes, we stipulate that systems designers determine the requirements of all stakeholder groups, but the frontline teams are not given top priority.

Frontline supervisors are asked along with managers in finance, inventory control, marketing and business development but frontline employees — those actually engaging with customers — generally aren’t given the chance to input directly to what the system should look like.

To deal with this issue, I created cross functional teams of frontline people who had the final say on how information systems that affected the customer contact process should be designed. And they were given top priority stakeholder status; others came after the needs of customer engagement were recognized.

This action did two things: first, it demonstrated to the rest of the organization that frontline needs were the top priority to support your customer service game plan and second, it showed frontline people themselves that their needs were paramount.

Informed frontline employees is THE essential ingredient in not only building a base of loyal customers, but also enhancing employee engagement.

Simple stuff and a competitive differentiator.

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

• Posted 4.30.18 at 04:29 am by Roy Osing
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April 16, 2018

5 easy ways you can be successful with angry people

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5 easy ways you can be successful with angry people.

Anger can be turned into adulation; pissed off can be transformed into hugs.

In the world of an organization, this fact is huge because, however unintended, customers get screwed over from time to time.

There are two actions that every organization should take given this eventuality.

▪️First, ensure internal systems, rules and procedures are designed to make it easy for the customer to engage with and do business with you.

Design your ‘inside’ with the customer in mind so they have a pleasant experience with you not a nightmare.

▪️Second, given the fact that Murphy’s Law is always lurking in the shadows poised to strike, develop a strategy to deal with customer screw ups.

Most organizations don’t even think about determining the appropriate course of action when customer engagement goes sideways; they hope and pray it doesn’t happen and put all their resources and energy into preventing its occurrence.

Prevention, as a singular approach, won’t work; it will help, but it will never avoid the unintended mistakes that makes a customer go postal.

Leaders should view dealing with customer complaints as a priority and as a vital component of the organization’s strategy to differentiate themselves from their competition.

Every customer ‘anger moment’ is disguised as an opportunity to improve the strategic position of an organization if the customer is handled the right way.

Customer Anger Management 101 — There are 3 overriding principles that need to be understood to achieve the benefits of anger.

1. Relationships

Recovering the right way from an angered circumstance can improve the relationship you have with the person you pissed off.

If an organization recovers from a complaint exceedingly well, the customer is delighted and they are more committed to the organization than they were before the anger episode. They remember the recovery not so much the problem that caused it.

2. Speed

Speed is of the essence; the screw up needs to be fixed FAST.
When you have committed an egregious act the customer expects their complaint to be rectified, but it must be done quickly.

Studies have shown that you have at most 24 hours to repair your blunder; after that period you’ve missed the opportunity to be in the game for a hug.
If immediate action is not taken, the hug never comes and your victim typically communicates far and wide how disastrous your service is and the crumby values you have as an organization.

3. Actions

Do more than fix the mistake; Surprise the customer with what they don’t expect. Even if the OOPS! is dealt with expeditiously, all you’ve done is met their expectations. It’s the surprise element that turns them from “expectations met” to leaning in for a hug.

The SURPRISE is the magic dust that amazes and delights the victim; leaves them awestruck and breathless. And bonds them to you more than they were before the OOPS!

Tactical plan — To implement these principles, you need a solid tactical plan that must be consistently practised in every anger moment to earn a hug and build a band of loyalists.

1. Apologize

Apologize regardless of who’s fault it is. Trying to blame the customer for the event won’t get you a hug.
Apologize for the impact the event had on the customer. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you” is a way to move forward into the recovery process without having to admit culpability for the OOPS!

And when it’s your fault own it! Your currency in the customer’s eyes depends on your honesty.

2. Shut up about company policy

NEVER quote company policy to justify what was done to piss the customer off. EVER!
People don’t care about them your and to remind them that they ‘don’t understand’ how you do business and that they should have behaved differently will only anger them even more.

3. Don’t escalate

NEVER have the issue referred to a supervisor as a means of control; empower your employees to solve the problem then and there.
This gives your employees currency in the customer’s eyes and enables a fast resolution of the complaint. And gets you closer to a hug.

4. Personalize your surprise

Never use common ‘trash and trinket’ items as the surprise vehicle you use to move beyond merely fixing the OOPS!
People hate them. Develop a list of more personal surprise tokens that employees can choose from depending on what they learn about the customer during the complaint experience.

5. Have humans standing by

Have a real person standing by any of your self serve applications.
Complaint recovery cannot be suitably handled through automated systems. When is the last time you enjoyed being served by technology - like an automated voice messaging system - when you had a problem with an organization?

Every organization looks for an edge over their competitors, but most of them miss an obvious strategy that can truly separate them from the herd.

Be the ONLY one that leans into customer anger and takes its energy to earn a hug — hugs breed success.

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

• Posted 4.16.18 at 03:44 am by Roy Osing
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