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3 Ways to Guarantee Customer Service Failure

Flavio Martins — Sun, 13 May 2012 09:00:26 +0000

Chances are, your customer service just doesn’t generate the positive customer experience you want. No one wants to fail, so why does customer service fail so often in creating that customer loyalty? I want to suggest 3 ways we guarantee customer service failure.

Unless we have a monopoly on a good or service, customer service will play a part in proving value to customers. Creating value to customers through service, requires us to go beyond just having warm bodies answering the phone calls and returning email responses in 24-48 hours. There’s no value in mediocre customer service, real value comes from creating something unique, where customers actually ENJOY contacting your team.

Generic won’t get you there. Being plain is why you’re failing to achieve that special something with your customers.

3 Ways You’re Guaranteed to Fail in Customer Service

1. Customer Service is Not Original

Generic, boring, corporate-robot speak won’t win you any awards. Those books that teach you to smile and speak polite ensure that you aren’t rude, but they don’t knock customer’s socks off. Take off the corporate shackles and let your people be unique. A little bit of quirky? A little bit of edgy? If done in moderation it’s a great way to make customer service stand out just a little bit more than the rest.

2. Customer Service Just Blends In

What do you do that your competitors don’t? Customer service stands out and makes a difference when it’s actually different. Customer want value. Customer want action. Does your customer service actually act and provide the value customers want? If you don’t do any more than the competition, why should customers stick with you?

3. Customer Service Ignores Employees

When individuals in the organization feel disconnected, not cared-for, or that they don’t have an advocate on their side, the entire organization begins to suffer. Think that it doesn’t matter how you treat your people? Just take a look at some shocking confessions from customer service agents that prove that frustrated employees destroy the customer experience.

Just Shine!

If we’re always worried about things going wrong, we’re missing the opportunity to focus on making good things happen. Customer service isn’t perfect, things will go wrong. But having the clear desire in place to take care of the customer is enough to overcome those situations where service goes wrong. Don’t get bogged down on what went wrong. Learn from it, make changes because of it, and serve better because of it.

I’ve never once heard a customer praise company policies or hoop jumping to get things done. Customers want action. They want to see results. Empower teams to provide results. Set your service apart from the boring, tired, and old customer service ways.

Remember, customer service won’t ever be perfect. That’s not realistic. The human element will prevent that. But focus on helping the customer, destroying red tape that keeps customer needs and wants from getting done, and creating goodwill with customers by making personal connections with them, will set you apart from the competition. That’s providing REAL customer service.

If you liked this, be sure to check out these recommended posts!

5 Ways to Guarantee Customer Service Failure

TheMana.gr, LLC. is a premier customer service management blog. Flavio is a featured Customer Service blogger. Successful organizations embrace, live by, and innovate in awesome customer service, amazing customer experience, unique customer interaction and customer delight. 3 Ways to Guarantee Customer Service Failure

The Dark Side of Customer Service

Flavio Martins — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:00:43 +0000

I love customer service and spend hours each day, working, training, inspiring, promoting, and dreaming up ways to make customer service awesome. For all of the customer service talk and training that goes on, there’s a dark side to customer service that we’ve all seen too many times.

I recently came across a disturbing blog post with confessions of a customer service representative. It’s not pretty and it’s the reason why so many people hate customer service.

Where Customer Service Went Wrong

The mega corporations don’t send their customer service outside because of quality, they do it because it’s cheap. Shortcuts will be taken. When shortcuts are taken with employees in customer service, bad customer service happens.

What will it take for companies to realize that on the other end of the phone, or chat feature, or whatever “customer service” tool is a real, living, breathing person?

I don’t mean the customer. I’m referring to the customer service representative. Not placing adequate emphasis in connecting the right people with customer service gets us to where we are today.

Customer Service Confession 1 – Hate Customers.

What the customer thinks, feels, or wants is never a factor. From the moment your case/account/ticket/whatever comes to my attention…you are the enemy.

It’s easy to see the reason for the frustration with customer service. Of course it’s going to be a frustrating experience. Not much is going to get done. The incentive, too often, isn’t on getting things done. It’s in getting people off the phone.

Customer Service Confession 2 – Like the paycheck, but hate the job.

Everyone…insists you’ve made the right choice to begin this job. They tell you your “future” begins now. They assure you you’re “going places”.

During a hiring drive…you get hired in about 5 minutes flat. You get hired along with a horde of other people who have absolutely nothing in common.

Does that experience instill a feeling of importance? Would that inspire you to deliver the best customer service experience?

In order to attract the best employees and encourage the best performance, you need to treat people like the best. It’s not enough to just treat others like you want to be treated. Treat others based on the potential of what they can be.

The following can be found on the recruiting site for a major telecom, unfortunately known for poor customer service experience.

You provide world-class service…you will experience the same level of respect and care that our customers have come to value.

Customer Service Confession 3 – Pay enough to listen, not enough to do something.

If we get paid bare minimum, we will do bare minimum.

Remember what I said earlier about the living, breathing, real person on the other end of the phone? The customer service representative? Yes, believe it or not, customer service representative is a real person, with real needs. Customer service, unfortunately, is seen as a cost center. Since it doesn’t normally “sell”, it isn’t seen as a revenue generator, without generating revenue, it’s a prime area for business cost cutting.

How do we expect to get great service when we:

Expect professional work, at minimum wage pay.
Expect experienced employees, but only hire part time workers.
Expect experts to stay in customer service, but provide no incentives.
Expect great service, but measure employees against how many calls they churn out in an hour.
Expect dedicated people, but penalize them for bathroom breaks.

Some of the rules I’ve seen and hear in the customer service industry are just down right insulting. No, it’s not ok to start docking pay if the computer goes idle. We’re not in grade school anymore, we don’t need to ask for permission to go to the bathroom.

Customer Service Confession 4 – I never use my real name.

Working in customer service is like stripping; we’ve all had to do it at some point, and it’s not something we’re proud of.

Ouch. There’s a reason why it’s done. We create crazy customer service systems for tracking employees. These systems don’t emphasize providing quality service. The policies and practices we have to stick by are so un-customer friendly that we don’t dare associate our real name with the type of customer service we’re providing.

The State of Customer Service Today

Bad customer service isn’t the customer’s problem. It’s not the customer service agent’s problem. Bad customer service is a management problem. We’ve created the problem.

We create the company policies that customers hate. We create the rules and metrics that make employees hate their job. We create the environment of frustration and dissatisfaction. Why?

Is this the legacy we want to leave behind? When future generations look back, is this what we want them to remember about us? Making customer service meaningful can be done. Great customer service and customer experiences is up to us.

If you liked this, be sure to check out the archives of all of my posts.

The Customer Experience Super Powers

Flavio Martins — Tue, 01 May 2012 09:00:50 +0000

One of my amazing talents is my customer experience super powers. Yes, I’ve got them and you can have them too. You don’t need to be from a distant planet, be bitten by a radioactive spider, be bombarded by cosmic rays, or even have to be part of a secret government experiment.

These customer experience super powers can be had by anyone with a desire to fight against bad customer service and it’s evil minions of customer apathy, mediocre service, and generic customer experience.

Do you want customer experience super powers?

I’ll share the secret behind my super powers to help you in creating an exceptional customer experience with your own super powers. Will you join me in the fight for the great customer experience? Here are my super powers and the secret way you can get them too. My inspiration for this customer experience super powers comes from David Crandall and his brand superpowers.

Here are my 3 customer experience super powers and the secret behind developing each of them.

Customer Experience X-Ray Vision

Expertly able to analyze exact customer needs.
Quickly identify real customer solutions.
Drastically improve the customer experience.

Customer Experience Telepathy

The ability to communicate complex answers to customers.
Finding ways to imagine creative ways to solve customer problems.
Consistently able to influence customers to follow my solutions.

Customer Experience Information Consumption

A superhuman ability and willingness to consume large amounts of customer information and quickly implement it in the real world to solve real customer problems, creating a positive customer experience.

The Fight for Customer Experience Justice

In my customer experience justice fight, each day, I…

Solve customer service problems – all kinds of customer problems, big, small, interesting, boring, help large businesses, small ones too, and even individuals.
Lead others to perform great customer service – and teach others how to solve all kinds of problems.
Continually develop customer service – always searching and implementing new ways to do things faster, bigger, better.

You can have customer experience superpowers too! Developing these customer service skills isn’t hard. But you have to be committed and think like a customer experience super hero.

Believe that failures are the learning process of success.
Ask “why” instead of just saying “no”.
Believe that passion and energy are requirements to walk out the door in the morning.
Accept your fears, acknowledge them, keep doing things anyway.
Know you can exceed your expectations.
Commit to getting things done. Every single day.
Love people, love action, love service.
Smile. Laugh. Be cool.

So get out there and rid the world of bad customer service and start creating memorable customer experiences. I’ve shared my customer experience super powers and the secret way to develop them. What customer experience super power do you wish you could have?

If you liked this, be sure to check out the archives of all of my posts.

Customer Experience is Key to Fixing Employee Turnover

Flavio Martins — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:00:02 +0000

One of the greatest challenges to developing the customer experience and consistently delivering great customer service is dealing with employee turnover.

I’m asked about how to manage employee turnover more than any other question, and probably more than all of the other questions combined. Ask any customer service manager or if you attend any customer service type conference, and you’re bound to hear about the topic of employee turnover.

Typical Call Center Employee Turnover Rates

Call centers are generally associated with high employee turnover rates. It’s not a myth, high employee turnover at call centers is a fact.

33% – average turnover rate in US call centers.
47% – average turnover rate in retail call centers.
51% – average turnover rate in subcontractor call centers.

(Source: Global Call Center Report, Cornell University – ILR School)

It seems like everyone is looking for a solution. Some quick fix that will magically take care of the turnover problem that keeps businesses from delivering that exceptional customer experience and a consistently high level of customer service. But, there’s a reason why people are always searching for a solution and always talking about the problem.

There is no magic solution to fix employee turnover. In any customer service type of organization, managers have to deal with employee turnover. The problem isn’t really turnover, it’s premature turnover.

Nothing will fix employee turnover, but can prevent premature employee turnover.

Premature turnover takes place when you have people leave your organization before the expected time. Yes, there’s an expected time. For some employees it’s a few years, for others it’s more. Regardless of the employee, you should never expect them to stay forever, that’s just not realistic. But leaving is ok, as long as it’s expected. It’s the unexpected employee turnover that turns your organization upside down. Suddenly there’s extra work that needs to be picked up, new hires that need to be made, training that needs to be completed, all of this breaks the rhythm and flow of your team.

What you can do to prevent premature employee turnover:

1. Hire the right people for the customer experience and prevent premature employee turnover.

Too often hiring suggestions involve interviewing practices, experience, orientation, etc. But these suggestions miss the point of what makes great customer experience and customer service people. It’s about the people. You can’t take the wrong person and expect your process to fix the fit, it doesn’t. A bad fit will lead to higher employee turnover rates in the long run.

The customer service naturals shine and keep employee turnover low, because they get to make a difference. They want to connect with people, do the right thing, and feel like the work they do each day helps someone’s day be better.

2. Use employees to build the customer experience process to prevent employee turnover.

People connect with what they create. People are encouraged when customer service managers include them in the customer experience planning process. Your team will react positively from managers who listen to what they have to say and feel like their input is valued and used in the creation process. This connection of employees and their work will motivate and generate a sense of ownership that keeps people around longer, reducing employee turnover.

3. Reward great customer experience performers to prevent employee turnover.

One of the greatest sources of frustration to employees is feeling that their efforts aren’t valued. But can you blame them? Too often we create environments where people receive the same paycheck if they do average work or excellent work. So where’s the incentive to go the extra mile? Poor reward systems increase the rate of employee turnover. At the awesome helpdesk software company, UserVoice, they’ve mastered the art of balancing great work, reducing employee turnover, and creating an awesome customer experience.

You don’t need to put everyone on commission, people like stability. But reward quality. Reward performance. Rewards can be monetary, they can be recognition, and they can be part of the environment at work.

Recruit the right people, let your people create, and reward performance and your customer experience mission will fix employee turnover.

People are not your most important asset, the RIGHT people are.

-Jim Collins, From Good to Great

You can’t fix employee turnover, but your can provide the tools, resources, and environment to attract the best customer experience people and keep them engaged in helping you implement your customer service mission.

If you liked this, be sure to check out these recommended posts!

Imagination is Nothing. Customer Experience is Everything in Business

Flavio Martins — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:08:52 +0000

Too often we underestimate the power of customer experience. The customer experience innovators seem to always stay a step ahead of the competition. Every time the competition makes a move, the innovators make a different unexpected move keeping them on top and often increasing their lead of the competition. Customer experience innovation seems to consistently keep your business ahead in the game.

Perspective and focus are key to the customer experience.

Organizations that are successful at maintaining a customer focus have shown to achieve more success than the competition. They understand that customer experience is more than offering good customer service. It’s taking customer service to the next level.

In a speech in South Africa in 1890 Mahatma Gandhi said this:

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider of our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so.”

To effectively and sincerely perform in creating an exceptional customer experience and care for the customer, requires dedication and unity within the organization. Together, the efforts of an entire team focused on the need and wants of the customer will result in a satisfied customer and a fulfilled employee.

Focus on what matters in the customer experience.

We too often focus on means like IT systems, metrics, statistical numbers, acquiring new customers, and business opportunities rather than the end, which is developing a value offering and culture that is centered on an exceptional customer experience. At the end of the day, our success will be tied to our determination to go out there and make whatever it is we do exceptional for the customer.

It’s not imagination, it’s customer experience delivery.

Organizations focused on the customer experience always seem to stay ahead of the competition. Why? They understand their customers and what they want from the customer experience. The Kellogg School of Management has an executive program dedicated to teaching organizations the reason why customer experience matters.

The customer experience leaders:

1. Tailor the customer experience to the specific customer segment they serve.

2. Create value in their offering to their customers.

3. Consistently deliver outstanding customer service.

4. Ensure that all team members understand the role that they play in the customer experience process.

Andrew Cohen, Founder, Exposed Brick explains the role that customer experience has in creating positive feelings that customer have towards you and your organization.

“A brand is no longer defined only by advertising-driven perception. Rather it is defined by the customer experience in buying the product; satisfaction in using the product; and the services wrapped around the product with positive consequences.”

Positive good will comes from demonstrating real emotion and providing service with genuine care for the customer. The customer can do without us, but we depend on the customer. Customer experience focus is the process that aligns our thoughts and actions with the needs and desires of those we serve.

What’s your take? What ways have you found effective in developing a memorable customer experience?

If you liked this, be sure to check out the archives of all of my posts.