In the March 1, 2010 edition of BusinessWeek there is an article entitled“Customer Service Champs: USAA’s Battle Plan.” USAA provides financial services for military families and they understand their customers inside and out. They use technology to allow service men and women to deposit checks no matter where they are stationed. They have programs specially designed for the unique nature of their customers. They address their customers by their military title. They have created a company that puts the specific needs of their customers first.
I was especially intrigued by what the article refers to it as their Secret Sauce.
Training for call center reps lasts up to six months BEFORE they hit the phones so they have a true understanding of the customer before fielding calls
Employees don the attire of their military customer; walking “a mile” in their shoes, wearing Kevlar vest and eating military MREs (meals ready to eat)
Top notch benefits – happy employees make for happy customers
Huge Technology investment for both the customer service reps as well as state of the art mobile options for customers
Rarely do we find a company that is so customer-focused they require employees to “live the life” of their customers so they can understand their unique needs. What lessons can we learn?
If we step back from our business for a moment and turn our ENTIRE ATTENTION to the customer – their life style – their needs – would we find there were changes that need to be made in how we approach our business?
I’m excited to announce that I’ve launched a site dedicated to my passion for speaking about the importance of building relationships with our customers.
Customer Relationship Speaker is a site that provides detailed information about each of the programs I offer; keynote addresses and workshops.
I’ve been on “stage” entertaining and informing audiences since the summer plays in my backyard; my younger brother, our friends and our collie Oriole’s Prince Royalton as the captive audience. In the 70’s I was on stage in high school/college and in the 80’s the community stage called my name.
In the 90’s. with Pearle Vision, I had the pure pleasure of leading workshops in marketing and sales for our new franchise owners and have continued that passion of sharing knowledge and getting attendees to participate and learn from each other.
Looking for a speaker for your next associate event or corporate meeting? Visit Customer Relationship Speaker and view the different topics available.
Of course, I can always create something new just for your event – call me. Let’s talk. 330-414-8792.
I had the pleasure of taking a class “The Anatomy of a TV Script” from Emmy nominated television writer/co-executive producer, Ellen Sandler. Ellen worked on such popular shows as Taxi, Coach and Everybody Loves Raymond.
The two-day class covered a brief overview of the key components of a successful script, using the script entitled No Fatfrom “Raymond” for which Ellen was nominated for an Emmy. During the class, Ellen had many quotable comments, but the one that really hit me between the eyes is this:
“Simple isn’t easy…it’s just simple.”
Ellen was talking about writing scripts but it also relates to customer service. We point to examples of excellent service and we’ve even offered excellent service ourselves, but why aren’t we consist?
Great customer service is so simple. It’s about building relationships, effective listening skills and matching needs to solutions. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
Yet, why do so few businesses offer great service?
In the words of Ellen: simple isn’t easy.
So how do we make the simple ideas behind great customer service become easy?
Clearly identify what great service looks like to your customer
Practice makes perfect
Reinforce great service when you see it happen – right when it happens
Encourage and evaluate less than great service right after the customer leaves (what went well, what could you have done differently?)
Keep the lines of communication open with your customer to stay on top of their changing needs
Re-evaluate your service components – those things you will ALWAYS do for your customer
So simple isn’t easy but that doesn’t mean that simple is impossible.
I was just reading the latest newsletter from John Tschohl, customer service trainer, who talked about the fact that the need for customer service training is just as prevelent today as it was thirty years ago when he wrote his first training program:
Customer service frankly is not much better today than it was 30 years ago. The objections are still the same. If I train my employees they might leave. The solution is to put a big sign on each door to your business that says, “None of our employees have been trained”. In realty, that is what most organizations do.
Companies still have unlimited marketing money. Very few organizations understand it is 10 times cheaper to keep a customer than get a new one. Empowerment does not exist. Employees are NOT allowed to make decisions that might keep a customer. Their decision might be wrong. Waiving a $39 late fee is too expensive, but the same organization will spend $300 to acquire a new customer. Few companies know the lifetime value of their customers.
There are two great points in that short portion of his newsletter:
1. The fear of losing employees keeps some employers from providing training
2. Employers fail to understand the value of their existing customer base
In my most recent newsletter I ask the question Do you build marketing plans or customer relationships. Nurturing our existing customer relationships is a critical component to growing our business in today’s competitive environment. Failing to recognize the value of those who have done business with us – adopting an attitude of “Oh – WE HAVE THEM – must move on to gaining new faces” is setting us up for failure.
Customers can tell when we assume that they will stay loyal. They can tell when we’ve lost interest in wooing them. How many marriages fail because the couple fails to look their best, act their best and put their best foot forward. Is it so different with our existing customers?
Now compound the problem by not training and TRUSTING our employees to do the best for the customer.
One of the reasons people point to the Ritz as an example of customer service is because they:
Train their people
Give them the tools to ensure a great customer experience
Trust their employees to do what is necessary to fix a problem
Empower their employees to represent the brand in a positive way
Do the powers that be worry about losing their staff? Maybe. But that doesn’t stop them from doing what’s right with respect to their customer.
Here’s a wacky thought:
What if every employer trained their employees to treat every customer as they’d like to be treated.
What if we treated our existing customers like a new love interest – doing everything we can to be the one they keeping choosing year after year?
Imagine learning from some of the most well respected names in the social media industry: Brian Clark, Ann Handley, Michael Sletzner and Gary Vaynerchuk.
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Social media is the latest, most effective way to reach your customers, build relationships, garner opinions and make a name for yourself. Are you using social media effectively? Click here for more information on the Social Media Summit.
I was just reading a recent post at Dennis Snow’s blog in which he asks if Training is the Answer when an employee exhibits customer service issues. He states:
When employee performance doesn’t match expectations, it’s important to look at what factors may be involved. Lack of training may be the issue, but it’s just as likely that something else is afoot. Are the right people being hired? Do employees have the tools they need to do the job well? Is substandard performance corrected when it occurs? Is strong performance recognized and rewarded?
I too am a fan of training, however, if the training isn’t reinforced by management, the “feel good, customer-focused” attitude one gets from a rousing training seminar will soon fade.
As Dennis states further in his blog – if you ask an associate to be nicer to customers and they do, then motivation for consistent behavior is the issue. If you ask them to be nicer and they aren’t – then perhaps training is needed.
But what about the assoicates who WANTS to be customer-focused but the tasks and messages they receive from their boss lead them in a different direction?
I once had a boss who would holler from the roof tops that “superior customer service is our number one goal.” Yet he would follow that up with detailed reporting on numbers of customers serviced in an hour, seemingly impossible sales goals and extra community out reach tasks that forced our customer experience to be one of “order taker” rather than relationship builder.
For a company to truly exhibit a focus on the customer – that belief needs to start at the top. The mission, vision and values of the organization need to support a focus on the customer. Then if each layer of management’s roles and responsibilities support the customer-focus that will translate to the hourly employee who has to actually execute the customer-focused behavior.
Do we have employees who could be better listeners and more empathetic to their customers? Yes. Could training help? Absolutely!
However, as managers we also need to ensure that the messages we send to our team keep the customer in the forefront of everyone’s mind rather than as an after thought.
My cross-stitching group had their annual Christmas party at the local Bob Evans last Friday night. We love it there. It is close, affordable, always has a nice big table for the seven of us and the menu is filled with wonderful comfort food.
Six of us gathered, giggling, hugging and causing quite a raucous. One father and son stopped by our table upon leaving and said that he’d wished he’d ordered what ever we were drinking because they’d enjoyed listening to our laughter.
It was a good night. We ordered, knowing the seventh in our party was to be late and just before she arrived, the waitress – a young, lovely, NEW employee, brought a bread basket over for the four of us who’d ordered banana bread.
The last in our party finally arrived and ordered an egg breakfast. It arrived after our food and didn’t have any bread.
“Don’t a get toast with my egg?” she’d asked?
“There’s bread on the table already,” the waitress said.
Now we had been rather loud and each needed a little individual attention; one member can’t have food touching so she’d asked for extra bowls for her beans and one needed lots of diet coke (okay, that would be me) and so perhaps she became confused. She asked what kind of toast and went to retrieve it however, the eggs and bacon were consumed by the time the sad little toast arrived.
“It’s dessert,” I said cheerfully.
As the bills came to the table, for of course we needed separate checks, the seventh in our party found she had been charged double for her sad little toast.
When she questioned the bill the waitress said – “There was already bread on the table and so I had to put it on the check as an extra order.”
My friend questioned this and so of course did several others in the party. A rousing toast debate began.
The flustered, NEW, waitress sought counsel from her manager however, the end results was that the toast would remain on the bill.
My friend said “Not to worry, I’ll pay the bill but I’ll never be back.”
A lost customer over toast. $1.49.
The rest of the group was up in arms – you can’t boycott the place we have dinner! Something must be done.
So just how many people does it take to dispute $1.49 serving of toast? Five to share the story with the manager at the cash register, the person in question standing by embarrassed and me – taking notes for this blog post!
Well – the price was removed. Whew. What a lot of effort.
How could this have been avoided?
EMPOWERING THE EMPLOYEE.
Had the employee understood the fact that the customer comes first and been trained to have a little financial lea-way when a customer kicks up a fuss – she could have been the hero instead of the shamed.
Whether the customer was right or not (and in fact, this time the customer was right) an employee needs to be trained to see the big picture. My friend was clearly upset. The reason for her upset? Toast that was late and on her bill in correctly. A double injustice.
I can’t really fault the waitress. At one point she said that if she took it off the billed, when her tickets were AUDITED she would be in trouble. So clearly she had been trained that the financial accountability was more important than the customer experience.
Too often managers are short-sighted – eyes on the bottom line and possible bonus instead of the fact that it is through the graciousness of our customer and their business that we even have a bottom line to view.
Are your employees empowered to FIX THE PROBLEM right then and there?
It is times like this when I’m reminded of the Ritz Carlton credo of GOLD STAR SERVICE. As employees they can say: (Check out Number Six!)
Service Values: I Am Proud To Be Ritz-Carlton
1.I build strong relationships and create Ritz-Carlton guests for life.
2.I am always responsive to the expressed and unexpressed wishes and needs of our guests.
3.I am empowered to create unique, memorable and personal experiences for our guests.
4.I understand my role in achieving the Key Success Factors, embracing Community Footprints and creating The Ritz-Carlton Mystique.
5.I continuously seek opportunities to innovate and improve The Ritz-Carlton experience.
6.I own and immediately resolve guest problems.
7.I create a work environment of teamwork and lateral service so that the needs of our guests and each other are met.
8.I have the opportunity to continuously learn and grow.
9.I am involved in the planning of the work that affects me.
10.I am proud of my professional appearance, language and behavior.
11.I protect the privacy and security of our guests, my fellow employees and the company’s confidential information and assets.
12.I am responsible for uncompromising levels of cleanliness and creating a safe and accident-free environment.
Are you shopping this holiday season? Are you noticing a smaller number of employees roaming the aisles and available if you have questions? You almost have to hunt one down, don’t you?
Shopping has become self-serve.
I was talking about it with my Dad the other day and we realized that we handle shopping challenges differently. If he is at the grocery store looking for toothpicks and can’t find them; he’ll hunt down an employee for help.
If I’m looking for toothpicks and can’t find them it becomes a challenge. I must get in the mind of the merchandiser. “if I were a toothpick, where would I be?” Well, when do I use toothpicks? When I’m baking.
So I head to the baking aisle. Hmmmm. No toothpicks. So where else do I use toothpicks? Appetizers. I use them to hold together my appetizers. So I look by condiments because when I serve spicy bite-sized pieces of sausage, I serve them with hot mustard. No toothpicks.
It takes awhile, but finally I think ALCOHOL. Toothpicks and olives in a martini. So I look near straws and find toothpicks. It is a game. If I’m not in a rush – I feel great satisfaction. If I’m in a hurry, I get pissed.
As the economy takes hold of the retail industry and businesses fight back by cutting down on the extra associates that used to walk the floor and be there for me before my frustration levels hits HIGH, our perception of the experience dwindles.
So retailors – ever smarter than shoppers – came up with a solution. A new script for the cash register employee.
“Did you find everything you were looking for?”
Have you been asked this? What do you usually say? “Yes, thank you.”
Why do you say that? Well, because as a customer – you’ve already spent the amount of time available in your busy schedule to shop and if you didn’t find what you were looking for; it will either wait until next time or it wasn’t all that important. Am I right?
So have you ever said “No.” Try it some time and watch the face of the employee.
They don’t quite know what to do. Most, when asking the question of their customers don’t even take their eye off their task. It is just a few extra words their boss told them to say. It is suppose to make people happy.
Now, if the associate stopped ringing my purchases, leaned toward me and asked “Did you find everything?” I might believe they really wanted to know the answer.
So the other day I said “No, thank you, I didn’t find it. I looked here and here and here and then tried to find someone to help me and I couldn’t.”
The associate said, “Oh, that’s too bad.”
Wow. That was helpful.
I know their boss MEANT WELL (and in some cases that might mean something) but as far as I’m concerned, asking if I have found everything as I’m on my way out the door is just a case of TOO LITTLE TOO LATE.
So what is a business to do? How can you convey concern, interest and empathy with half the staff?
The idea has merit – if you don’t have floor staff and the only customer interaction is at time of check out – then asking the question makes sense. However, it needs to be followed up with a response that conveys service.
If the associate asks the question before ringing up purchases then there will be time to look for the missing item and add it to the sale.
If a customer says no, the proper response should be “what couldn’t you find? Perhaps I can help.”
This leaves the door open for customer success!
If the product isn’t something you carry – having an associate confirm the fact that you didn’t find it because it wasn’t there to find rather than just being shelved in a place you wouldn’t think to look (like in the case of toothpicks) is somehow comforting.
Of course, going above the expected would be to suggest where the item might be found – i.e. a competitor. Remember the Santa in Miracle on 34th Street who sent customers from Macys to Gimbles for a better deal?
How do you feel when asked if you’ve found everything after you are done shopping? Do you believe the employee cares?
I recently asked the following question of my LinkedIn connections:
“Will your budget for training be cut in 2009 because of the downturn in the economy?”
Here’s what I learned:
Leslie G. Ungar wrote:
As a coach-speaker-consultant my perspective is from the other side of this question. So far, knock on wood, I have not found the economic downturn to be the determining factor for whether or not a company invests in training.
Of course from my perspective, a downturn is the time a company most needs to invest in training in order to identify and communicate their company’s competitive edge.
Interesting question! We are developing a whole new training program now that Jody Miller has joined us in San Antonio. We may stage the timing differently but not cutting.
Katie McCartney wrote:
Quite the opposite. It is the time to learn!
Elaine Martin wrote:
With over 30 years of experience in business and corporate life – my guess is that there will be 3 things which soon get cut or frozen from the budget in tough times…..they are travel/relocation, hiring, and TRAINING. Everything else is deemed to be vital for operation. Short sightedness is amazing!
JULIAN BRAY MCIPR ~ Facilitator / Moderator wrote:
The short answer is YES
Jim Kuhn wrote:
No – Life LIne Screening is increasing our training budget so as to support the implementation of a Learning Mgt. System. Jim Kuhn
Robert Felber wrote:
While all businesses must evaluate and continue to prepare for the worst economically, training and continuous improvement are areas that we will continue to pursue in full-force. We may look to tailor our efforts and watch which courses are available at what costs. We also may reduce the number of people attending the ’same’ course and repeat the information learned in an internal group session. – Rob Felber.
Linda Murfin wrote:
No!
I have a wonderful advantage of access to webinars through my travel suppliers. Some have a smal fee but many or totally free. All it costs is the used to participate. This training is a great investment because it allows me to learn more about the vacation products I am selling and sell more of them.
So What is the Up Shot?
Most recognize that as the economy tightens we need to redouble our training efforts however:
Training needs to be focused
Instead of training everyone – one may receive the training with the added responsibility of sharing the new techniques with the rest
Training may be delayed
As the new year approaches, how will you view training for yourself or your staff?
How would you answer the question about your training budget in 2009?
Remember this scene? Tom Cruise’s self-absorbed character in the movie Jerry McGuire has finally realized what is important in life.
Renee stops him before he cries her a river and says “You had me at hello.”
Don’t we wish our customers would feel the same way? The first impression we give; our location, our merchandise, our staff, and their initial greeting – that MAKE OR BREAK MOMENT is so fantastic that when they look back on the experience they say:
“YOU HAD ME AT HELLO.”
On Friday I wrote about an unfortunate restaurant experience in which I waited in vain to be seated at a table. At one point an employee came within speaking distance to fill the salad bar but chose not to speak or acknowledge our presence.
It makes me wonder at the focus that is put on greeting customers in our company training programs. We worry about making sure the employee knows how to clock in and out, how to make the widgets we sell, how to fill out paper work and other task oriented assignments, but how much time do we spend on HELLO?
Do we assume people know how to greet effectively?
Here are just a few tips for greeting customers in person (please comment with your additions and together we’ll create a tutorial for how to say “hello”
greet within 15 – 30 seconds of their entrance to the business (think that’s too fast? Raise your arm up high and now count “one, one thousand, two one thousand” up to 30 and see if your arm gets tired – that is about the length of your customer’s patience
Put a smile on your face – even a fake one is better than none
Make eye contact – eye contact coupled with a smile sends a message that you are happy to see them
Say “HI WELCOME TO XYZ, HOW CAN I HELP YOU?”
If you are busy with another customer, excuse yourself for a moment to look up and say “hi” with a smile and eye contact and mention that you’ll be right there
If you know you can’t be right there – grab the attention of another associate or manager to help
Keep the person informed (I’m tied up but Sue will be right there)
If you are busy with a task (like the salad bar guy) ask yourself this question: who pays my check, this broccoli or the customer at the door? Then give your attention to the person or vegetable most likely to use cash
It’s that simple. Each company will have their procedures for after “hello” but everyone – even the person who has only been working 60 minutes – if they are visible to the customer – should confidently greet and welcome each person entering the business.
We’ll talk about the phone greeting another time. But remember this:
A potential customer greeted warmly is immediately made to feel valuable and that is the beginning of developing a relationship you hope will be lifelong. How long does it take to say hello? Just a second.
How long is the damage you can do to your business if you fail to greet promptly and warmly?
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In the March 1, 2010 edition of BusinessWeek there is an article entitled“Customer Service Champs: USAA’s Battle Plan.” USAA provides financial services for military families and they understand their customers inside and out. They use technology to allow service men and women to deposit checks no matter where they are stationed. They have programs specially designed for the unique nature of their customers. They address their customers by their military title. They have created a company that puts the specific needs of their customers first.
