Are You Setting Your Quality Team Up For Conflict? Part II

In Part I of my post, I addressed conflict coming from Report Structure Issues.  Conflicts can also arise from the design of the quality program and poor training or the communication skills used.

QUALITY DESIGN FLAWS WILL BRING CONFLICT

When you are designing the tools used by quality analysts, you may be setting expectations based on a checklist rating skills using a “did it happen or didn’t it happen” method.  There are times when the customer interaction requires an agent skill to change or not be used at all.

A manager shared this story of checklist focused quality monitoring:

The agent had a flawless customer experience demonstrating great skills and the customer sounded very happy with the service provided by the agent.  She even complimented the agent during the call.

 At the end of the call, the customer said, “Thanks…you’ve answered all my questions. That’s all I needed.  I’m going to call my husband right now and let him know”.  The agent thanked the caller appropriately and ended the call nicely.

Despite this wonderful customer interaction, the quality analyst scored him negatively for one skill.  According to the quality rating form, the agent did not ask, “Is there anything else?” 

The customer clearly stated that she was satisfied and added that she had all the information needed.

Instead of hearing what the customer said to the agent about having “all I need”, the quality analyst was focused on the quality checklist box for “anything else?”  that needed to have a yes or no.

• Is your quality monitor format rigid without opportunities for the analyst to make exception for certain call types?
• Have you asked your analysts what think their job is?   It’s amazing how many managers expect their analysts to state what’s on their job description, when in reality, the analysts doesn’t see their role the same way.

• Do your analysts just see their role as a check-off of skills or are they listening to what the customer says to judge quality?

• Does your quality program rate technical skills separately from soft skills so you can see if agents excel in both or one of these?

• How often do you review your quality monitoring tools to insure that they are providing you with the information needed for coaching skills?

POOR TRAINING AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS WILL BRING CONFLICT

An agent shared this story with me recently and showed me the emails related to an interaction with a quality analyst who had given him major quality error, which he said was incorrect.  These are the emails exchanged:

Insurance Quality Analyst email sent to Agent:  “You’ve made an error in the data entered for this call.  I listened to the call and you did not speak with the actual customer.  You spoke with his wife.  If you disagree with this error, please respond.

Agent email response: “Yes, I disagree.  I did not make an error.  Please check the customer profile to confirm.

Analyst reply:  “No. You did make error.”

 Agent reply:  “OK”

If you just looked at the dialog in the emails, it appears that the analyst and the agent disagree on the error, the analyst rechecked and confirmed the error, and that the agent finally accepted the error.

However, this wasn’t the end of the story.  After further investigation, the error was finally removed.  So, what actually occurred?

The quality analyst said that she had listened to the call, heard that the agent was speaking with a woman instead of speaking with a customer named Michael Smith directly. This would definitely be a violation of their insurance procedures and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

After the agent’s supervisor listened to the same call, he heard the agent correctly and thoroughly verified the customer’s identification and had shared information with the Michael Smith on file.  Michael was the woman caller’s name.

The analyst admitted that she had not listened to the call a second time or even looked at the customer’s account information.  She said she had missed hearing the woman identify herself as “Michael” at the start of the call.

Then, why did the agent just respond with “OK” to accepting the error when he knew he had not done so?

The agent told me that others on his team were experiencing similar situations with other quality analysts.  When they reported these issues to their supervisor, they were told it had been sent to the quality manager for review, and the agents would later receive a canned “Your error has been removed” email from the original analyst.

The agent added that these false errors still continue and that he and his teammates have decided to stop interacting with the quality analysts who email and just forward these issues to their contact center supervisor with their reason for not accepting the error.

If these issues with communication and poor quality observation skills are continuing, it is obvious that the quality manager is not coaching with his team.

• Is the Quality Manager monitoring and rating calls together with each analyst to coach them on their observation skills?

• Is the Quality Manager pulling some random emails to check on their written communication skills and direct interactions with agents?

• If the analysts are also doing coaching with agents, have you sat in and observed them coach and then coached while they observed you?

Do your supervisors and the quality analysts have similar coaching activities and goals, and discuss with each other so that they are working towards the same results?

……….

This article originally appeared in the Contact Center Pipeline January 2013 issue

Guest Post: Crawl, Walk, Then Run: 3 Training Tips to Boost Agent Performance

I’m honored to have Matt McConnell’s wonderful article on training tips appearing on my blog today.  Matt is the chairman, president and CEO of Intradiem. You can read more about Matt and Intradiem at the end of the article.

 

The cat is out of the bag. Sixty-nine percent of contact center leaders say agent training positively impacts customer satisfaction. Yet, despite its effectiveness on quality and performance results, 46 percent of the same respondents don’t train their agents frequently. Notice a disconnect?

Most of the traditional methods used to manage agent performance just aren’t working anymore for contact centers. The ongoing operational demands, combined with the budget restraints and resource limitations have left many coming up short when it comes to developing and effectively training their front line. And many contact centers find themselves delivering the same cookie-cutter training for their entire workforce. The result is uninspiring training sessions for agents and lackluster results for your dashboard. Instead, consider a “crawl, walk, run” approach to maximize performance results using personalized agent training.

A contact center’s journey to achieving a high-performance culture isn’t an easy feat – it’s marked by milestones. Take your agent performance from its first wobbly steps to running at full speed using the “crawl, walk, then run” method below.

Crawl back to the basics.

By its nature, training should be targeted, but it’s difficult for managers to create digestible content that doesn’t require half-day sessions due to scheduling limitations. After all, you want to be sure your agents are able to take in as much as possible. However, adult learning theory affirms that short lessons have the best chance at retention. This concept is clearly important in a fast-paced environment like the contact center where the unplanned nature of calls gives agents less control over their day than most. So, remember to focus on first things first. A 15-minute learning break allows a short break for targeted information that is used on the next call for maximum reinforcement.

Walk the walk with personalized training.

Even if training is provided frequently, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t provide maximum value. If the center and the agent invest time in training, it should meet the needs of both. An agent does not want to be trained on something that isn’t relevant to their needs, and the center doesn’t want to train an agent on an area at which he or she excels if there is another area that needs improving.

Basing individualized training on performance meets the targeted criteria and provides the highest value.

According to recent data, we retain 5 percent of what we see/hear, 10 percent of what we read, 20 percent with a visual and 30 percent with a demonstration. Create quick quizzes at the end of training sessions to help agents retain more information and “walk the walk” by giving them ample opportunity to apply their new skill set.

Run circles around your performance goals by finding time for training.

Too often training is an infrequent occasion as opposed to a consistent, systemic part of the contact center operation. Many centers provide agents with access to a learning management system or knowledge base with the hopes that agents will go get the information and knowledge they need. Considering the enormous pressures to meet service levels, it isn’t hard to figure out why so much of what is scheduled doesn’t occur and why agents don’t often take the initiative to get the information they need when they need it. Yet dips in call volume occur when agents have little to do. The underutilized asset in this equation is this down time between calls. Pushing training to your agents during these small pockets of down time is the only way to ensure training happens frequently.

A Last Word

Performance-based training gives you the ability to deliver the right training to the right agent at the right time. By embedding a measurement system that shows how much, who is getting training as well as its link to performance, constant improvement through training becomes systemic.

About Matt McConnell
Matt McConnell is chairman, president and CEO of Intradiem. Matt co-founded Intradiem in 1995 with a vision of helping companies increase the level of customer service they deliver by improving the performance of their agents. Today, Intradiem is a leader in its market with more than 450,000 call center agents around the world using Intradiem every day. Matt is the author of the book Customer Service at a Crossroads and holds 11 software patents.

Intradiem, formerly Knowlagent, is the leader in intraday management solutions for contact centers. Its patented software increases agent performance and productivity by making idle time useful, enabling agents to work on personalized and prioritized activity queues consisting of training, coaching, communication and other off-phone activities. Intradiem’s call center solutions are on-demand, easy to use and require no capital expenditures. For more information, call 888-566-9457 or visit us online at http://www.intradiem.com.

Guest Post: The Little Things Really Do Matter to Customers

I’m pleased to have Stefanie Amini Guest Post on my Blog today.  I hope you enjoy her post as much as I did.

Stefanie Amini is the Marketing Director and Specialist in Customer Success at WalkMe, the world’s first interactive online guidance system.  She is chief writer and editor of I Want It Now, a blog for Customer Service Experts. Follow her @StefWalkMe

The Little Things Really Do Matter to Customers

Empathy is a social drive in all of humanity. It is the ability to feel what our brethren feel, and to care deeply about making them feel better, or to make them feel good with no obvious reward to ourselves. This empathic drive in our species is what has allowed us to persevere over the obstacles of our history, which were many, and has given us a very important element that lets civilization work – ethics.

But, there’s more to it than that. When we think about making someone happy, do we think about making them smile, or do we think about some grand gesture to ensure extreme elation in people? Usually, whether we want to admit it or not, we think far too grandiose when we talk about “making people happy”. We greatly devalue the power of simply making someone smile or laugh, or the pure goodness of showing just a brief nod of courtesy or respect to others. We underestimate how far these little things really go.

Businesses make this mistake too, and that’s a very unfortunate thing. Obviously businesses have a less than selfless motivation for making their customers happy, but a good business cares about their customers and their happiness above and beyond profitability too. Either way, the same paradigm exists and the same problems arise from it. Companies try too hard to make their customers happy by trying to unabashedly impress them with grand gestures that often either don’t work, turn out to be impossible, or are too general and absurd.

It’s time to think about this with a smaller metric. Consider the last time someone went out of their way to make some grand gesture to make you happy. Did you feel a little guilty accepting such hospitality? Probably. Now, compare this to someone who was just, with no prerequisite, was respectful, or just made you smile or laugh. They stand out in your memory, do they not? And was there any guilt in enjoying the laugh, smile or edification they bestowed upon you by this little, selfless and cost-free gesture? That’s highly unlikely!

Now, draw a parallel in business, with making your customers happy in the long run. One can divide this into smaller things, in the way of just showing extra courtesy to your customers, and bringing a humble but lasting smile to their faces. What are some ways to do this? Well, from one industry, demographic and scenario to the next, there are a ton that can’t really apply across the board, but there are some generalities in business where it does.

For one, in CRM, individuals who deal with distressed customers, but are willing to laugh with them, to empathize with them and speak to them on their level are an excellent step. Making a customer smile through empathy isn’t hard. If they complement your great customer service, thank them deeply and sincerely, because they will get a smile out of having made you smile in turn. See, it goes both ways with that.

Small incentives and shows of gratitude also work well. You don’t have to offer some grand free prize to a millionth customer, or as a reward for years of loyalty. Simply offer small discounts, or tokens of appreciation that may not even be worth a lot, but show that you care. This will get a smile out of the customer, and they will remember that you care. This will stay with them.

Finally, you probably don’t have to spend a fortune on CRM software or high technology to wow your customers. You need only to keep it simple, and make it very direct and easy for a customer to contact you. The ease of procedures and the simplicity of handling things will bring a smile to their faces, when they’ve been through the wringer with other companies in the past on this.

It’s the little things like this that make people smile, and while a smile is a little thing itself, everyone remembers someone or something that just brings a pure and simple smile to their face. Something that wows them is subject to novelty wearing off given time.

Coaching Numbers or What They Really Mean?

As Contact Center managers, you have a lot of power.  OK…some days it sure doesn’t seem that way, but you really do.  Your supervisors and quality team are listening to you and are observing what you are focused on.

When you talk about metrics, what are you saying to them? If you talk purely “number” goals all the time, your quality coaches will be talking just “numbers” too.  They’ll often repeat what you are saying word for word during their coaching sessions with agents.

When  metrics are discussed during individual agent coaching sessions, you need to make sure that your “coach” knows how to explain them in terms of Customer Experience.

One of the metrics numbers that seems to get a bad rap these days is the length of the call. Some coaches aren’t bringing it up at all in coaching sessions.  There were some managers who actually tracked and rewarded based on the length of call “metric” set. Some don’t reward but are seemingly obsessed with setting a number for call length average based on studying this metric if reported by any other call center in the universe.

I’m a proponent of monitoring and coaching all types of calls.  Long, short and in between.  I don’t advocate setting an exact length of call goal for every call and then holding agents’ feet to the fire.  I do advocate learning if the call was handled appropriately in a likewise appropriate amount of time.

Long Calls:  When I hear lengthy agent calls, I think about my Dad’s famous driving “shortcuts” whenever he took our family somewhere. When he mentioned that he knew quicker route, my Mom would roll her eyes and we knew what was coming.  We could always plan on adding 20 plus minutes to the original length of the trip.  Hopefully the shortcut would involve a stop for ice cream. My father seemed to find ice cream regardless of the route. His passenger “customers” at least were given a treat for their troubles and perhaps that was his true goal.

Some of our agents don’t see the service or sales target straight ahead, but instead, go in circles on their way to closure.  they are not taking the simplest and shortest route to reach the customer goal.

Unfortunately we don’t have virtual ice cream to offer our customers who are stuck in lengthy calls that seem to be going nowhere.

Short Calls: When calls are too short, I worry too because the agent may have missed an opportunity to be proactive, add some additional tips, or listen better for clues for upselling and cross-selling clues.  Worse still are the agents who blend speed with talking over customers. Sally may have taken twice as many calls as the other agents, but what is happening during those calls?  Are they brusque and disinterested sounding, even though she took care of “business”?

Metrics should always be a part of coaching as long as they mean something to the customer and our business needs.

I love to see quality monitoring forms for calls that incorporate metrics as well as the soft skills and other skills needed for best quality.

We just need to make sure that our coaches aren’t just reading metrics numbers to agents, but are instead preparing for their coaching sessions by reviewing those numbers and how they relate to skills demonstrated and the overall customer experience.

Poor Communication = Poor Banking Customer Experience: Part I

The words we choose — and how we deliver them — speak volumes to valued customers.

According to the 2012 American Express® Global Customer Service Barometer, nine out of ten Americans (93%) say that companies fail to exceed their service expectations. What’s more, more than half (55%) recently walked away from a purchase because of poor service. When asked to name what irritates them most, consumers blamed an insensitive or unresponsive representative.

Communication is the biggest part of the customer experiences we create. Can you blame consumers for walking away if the message they receive is that the retailer doesn’t care about them or their needs?

When I monitor service centers and bank branches, I often see missed opportunities to tell customers they are valued, and that the bank or credit union wants to help them. Communication is the key. It’s language and much more. Everything the customer sees, hears, feels and yes, even smells, is sending a message. Here are some strategies institutions can use to ensure clear, consistent, customer-focused communication.

Use Familiar Language

Many tellers, service representatives and lenders use industry jargon. Some may assume the customer already understands these terms and their implications. Others may lack experience, and are simply repeating official definitions they may not know very well themselves. Either way, customers will likely nod their heads even if they don’t understand jargon, because they don’t want to appear ignorant.

In contact centers, I often hear a customer finish with an agent who used jargon — and then call back immediately to ask a different agent the same question. The reason? “I didn’t understand what she was talking about.”

To make sure this doesn’t happen, employees can follow up any financial term with a simple “which means…” and then explain the product, service or issue in layman’s language, emphasizing the benefit to the customer or a key point of difference. Common terms that may confuse customers include:

• Account balance vs. Available balance

• APR vs. APY

• Billing cycle vs. Billing date

 

Create a Conversation

Explaining products to customers is a necessary part of the sales process. Too often, however, it becomes a one-way experience composed strictly of “telling.” Without real interaction, financial institutions send a message that the customer’s opinions don’t matter. To build the back-and-forth, it is important to:

• Ask more questions

• Avoid pushing the promotion of the month, regardless of the customer’s situation

• Offer choices and see what the customer thinks

• Avoid cold, canned phrases such as, “Our policy states…”

 

Show You Care

How we communicate is just as important as what we say. To feel valued, customers expect your empathy and interest. It sounds simple enough, but many struggle to make it work. The failure often occurs when representatives are more concerned with process than the customer’s needs or attitudes. Are you watching for signs that your front-line representatives are communicating disinterest? Some of these include:

• Flat, tired or bored tone of voice

• Not listening to the customer’s question

• Cutting off the customer in mid-sentence

• Scripted apologies: “I understand how you feel…”

In Part II of this article, I’ll discuss Body Language, Mixed Messages and Leadership

This post originally appeared in my article for Deluxe Knowledge Quarterly publication December 2012.

Coaching: Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan!

“Plan your work and work your plan.”

Never have truer words been spoken for the effectiveness of your supervisors or others doing Agent skills coaching. If there isn’t a good plan for coaching, your Coaches will be just going through the motions, missing needed sessions with agents or looking at coaching as just an interruption in their busy day.

Many supervisors have every intention of working with their agents on skills, but find that the week or even a month has gone by with just minimal Coaching done. Feeling rushed, their weak Coaching substitute of “telling the agent what to work on” happens instead of an interactive and focused coaching that brings results.

Effective coaching isn’t a once and done effort. Your Coaches need to plan for skills activities time with their agents and the motivation needed to encourage continuous improvement.

Many supervisors tell me that they are buried under reports and meetings scheduled by their manager. In order to help them be successful, we need to be clear on our expectations for coaching and remove any obstacles that our Coaches have.  We can demonstrate our interest in helping them succeed by our own planning and review of theirs.

Here are some questions to help in your process:

NOT PLANNING WASTES TIME

What are my Coaching mission and goals?  Are they based on a number of coaching sessions completed or focused on results?

Many supervisors are doing a lot of coaching but with minimal results. We must make sure that our supervisors aren’t just going through a coaching checklist to meet coaching “metrics”, but instead are doing what brings results in terms of agent skills development and increased customer satisfaction.

Some Coaches tell me that they see their goal as the completion of X number of sessions.  They make sure that they do the minimum required in order to stay in the manager’s good graces. Others say that they often feel that they are spinning their wheels and making no progress. They work with the same poor performing Agents each month, telling them the same things that are needed for improvement. These coaches are frustrated by the lack of results. Their manager just repeats the mantra “more coaching” without giving direction and working hands on with them to assist in developing a good coaching plan for each agent.

The goals for Customer Experience and development of agents must be clear for your Coaches and you must also provide them with the tools to reach those goals in terms of training and working side by side with them for success.

COOKIE CUTTER COACHING WASTES TIME:

 Am I holding my Coaches responsible for completion of certain results-based activities related to successful Coaching? Are they personalizing the coaching method based on the agent’s skills, experience and learning type?

Responsibility for results, not just actions is a big key to their success. Agent skills differ, length of time on the job varies and so the time that must be spent with each agent varies as well as the type of coaching done.

Instead, many newer Coaches make the mistake of coaching everyone just once a month, using the same coaching method with every agent.  They miss the opportunity to see results from those average or struggling agents who need a boost from increased coaching or approaching the skill needs using more personalized approaches. They will tell me they don’t have the time to Coach more.  Often it isn’t more coaching that’s needed but the right kind of coaching to help the agent change skill behaviors.

Managers need to make sure that the Coaches are not just “tellers” but coaching “doers”, rolling up their sleeves and working with their agents.  Initially more intensive coaching such as role-play, side-by-side call handling while the agent observes them handling calls may be needed.  Once results are seen, the Coach will be able to work on more of a “maintenance” coaching schedule requiring less time with agents who have improved.

NOT SCHEDULING COACHING WASTES TIME

Are they scheduling Coaching activities on their Calendar?

If we are working with our supervisor Coaches on how they communicate with the agent about skills, we may not realize the importance of working with them on their time management for coaching.  I find that if it isn’t on the Coach’s calendar or schedule, it isn’t going to have priority. If your supervisor is a Myers-Briggs type “P” (http://www.myersbriggs.org/) who may like to keep plans to a minimum, keeping a calendar with Coaching and alert reminders for it may not come naturally for them.

Recently, I walked a Coach through his calendar to demonstrate how the amount of coaching needed for effectiveness could be possible.  We discussed the need to be flexible in case an urgent situation conflicts with the time and how to deal with that.

It was interesting to watch his expression when he realized that scheduling blocks of time for his formal and side-by-side coaching sessions for the month made it seem less daunting a task.

NON-ESSENTIAL TASKS WASTE TIME

Do I help them find the time to Coach?

Holding a supervisor or quality coach responsible for results but not giving them the time to do it is a recipe for disaster. I’ve had Coaches tell me that they have the desire to do more Coaching but their manager always assigns them other activities.

Your goal should be to review how they spend their time, then find ways to free them from non-essential activities so they can spend 50 to 60% of their time Coaching.

We attend a great deal of meetings and often pull the supervisors in to tell them what happened or even have them attend some meetings with us.  While communication of information is a key to the success of our business, we should decide which meetings are crucial for the Coach to attend, and which can be summarized in an email you or another attendee sends out to share key information.

Reports are another time eater for many front line supervisors who coach.  Once again, prioritizing with your help is key. Can reports be handled by an agent who has potential for moving into a lead or supervisor’s role in the future?

MOTIVATE COACHES TO SPEND TIME WISELY

What am I doing to motivate my coaches to spend the time needed and get results?

Much as our Agents need motivation, our Coaches need to be rewarded for their efforts and results.  You get the behavior you reward so you need to make sure that you are aware of their daily coaching activities and observe them in action.  If you hear an agent showing improvement when you monitor or if customers give kudos to an agent, it’s a great opportunity to not only praise the agent, but the coach who has been working with them.

Verbal and written praise goes a long way to encourage your Coaches to keep working towards the goals for improved Customer Experience.  Monetary incentives if tied to actual improvements and not just activities can be great motivators as well.

You cannot wait to notice and give positive feedback a month or two later when you review quality reports.  Take an active role in observing and rewarding good efforts and results on a daily basis.

REPEAT COACHING WITHOUT IMPROVEMENT WASTES TIME

Are any Coaches wasting time Coaching the unwilling or unable? Have I given the Coach the tools needed to be successful?

If your supervisor is coaching the same agent without results, is it because the Agent is unable or unwilling, or does your Coach need coaching themselves to learn some new techniques?

Observe the coaching sessions and coaching activities each supervisor does and then meet with them to discuss.  Do they need some coaching skills training?

If your coach is doing all the right things to drive skills improvement and motivating the agent, you need to assess whether that agent really wants to improve or is unable to show further improvement.  Your coach needs to know that you will support them and make a decision to change a coaching situation into a disciplinary one if warranted.

Originally published in Contact Center Pipeline in October 2012

Creating A Great Experience With “Non-Customers”

Contact (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Based on some of the recent call experiences that friends have shared with me, it’s apparent that many companies aren’t spending training time on teaching ways for their agents to gracefully bow out of a call to a wrong contact or when the contact they reach says they aren’t right for the product due to (insert here an objection that can’t be overcome).

These fall into the category of “Prospect Experience” or “Possible Future Customer Experience”.

Here’s a recent example:

Agent using nice Smile and Tone: “Hi is this _____? This is ___ from ____ Insurance providers. We provide Health Insurance benefits for small businesses and individuals.”

Person called responds in friendly tone: “Hi (Agent’s name)…I’m only a one person business and I’m already covered by my spouse’s insurance policy through work so I’m not a good prospect for your company.”

Agent sounding irritated: “well OK… (click)”

This call was reminiscent of the bad telemarketing calls made from “boiler room” type operations years ago (and unfortunately still some in operation today) that trained agents to have a “hit and run” philosophy: 

Call as many people as you can as fast as you can and if they are the wrong party or an insurmountable objection is given,  just hang up on them and dial again.

(NOTE: Do not try this in your center! )

Given the way that the Agent opened the conversation and identified herself, it was evident that she understood how to create a nice first impression.  Perhaps she received training and coaching on this or maybe it is her natural style of communication when greeting someone.

Once the Agent experienced rejection, her tone changed completely.  If there was to be no lead or sale made, the Agent was finished with you and saw no need to end the call positively.  Her focus was clearly on the here and now immediate results regardless of the impression she left with that prospect.  And as we know, today our prospects and customers won’t tell only ten people about the bad experience they had with our agent, they will broadcast it on Social Media to hundreds, even thousands of people.

Another example of poor “non-customer” experience is when an Agent calls and the person they are trying to contact isn’t available. It usually goes something like this:

Agent: “Hi..Is Mr. (name) available.  This is (Agent name) from (company)?”

Person answering phone: “No he isn’t. Can I take a message?”

Agent using flat tone: “I’ll call back” (hang up click)

It adds little time to the calls to use  polite phrases such as “Thank you but I’ll just call him/her back later. Is there a good time to reach him/her?”

If your training program doesn’t include discussion and role-play related to creating a great “Prospect Experience” with those who don’t buy or aren’t the right contact, I hope you’ll start covering this during training and coaching these skills too.  We should be creating a positive experience, showing appreciation to and interest in every person we are in contact with.

A wonderful mentor who coached with me many years ago always said and rightly so …”Today’s no may be tomorrow’s yes”!

Being Thankful For Our Customers

As we plan for our Thanksgiving Day celebrations here in the United States,  it is a time for all of us to remember and be appreciative for what we have…family, friends, and other blessings we have received.  It should also be a time for us to be thankful for our customers.

Sometimes when I’m working with service agents and their leaders, I hear them complain about their customers.

“Why do they call for something so stupid?”

“That last guy had the TV blaring and I could barely hear him!”

“She was really upset.  It’s not my fault she didn’t get the package in time”.

We all have moments when we are thinking or saying negatives about a difficult customer. Anyone who says they haven’t isn’t telling the truth.  What is important is whether you allow these negatives to become a part of your daily approach to customers or remind yourself of your role, i.e. why we work in service.

How many of these calls are coming in daily?…”I don’t have a problem or complaint.  I just called to tell you how much I love your products and your service.”  If you have more of these than customers needing assistance or having complaints, we need to talk about how you are doing it

Let’s face it…our job is dealing with customers who are not always nice, polite, reasonable or happy.  But that is the nature of our job and without our customers, even the ones who make us take that deep breath and count to ten, we don’t have a job.

Our goal is to provide the best customer experience.  Our work only happens if we have customers.  If we work in customer service, we need to have appreciation for not only for the customers we love to work with, but also for the customers who are challenging and give us the chance to shine and do our best.

Let’s be thankful and count our blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Guest Blog: 3 Ways to Create a Positive Self-Service Customer Experience

Today I’m featuring another Guest Blogger who provides us with some tips on successful self-service.  Stefanie Amini is the Marketing Director and Specialist in Customer Success at WalkMe, the world’s first interactive online guidance system.  She is chief writer and editor of  IWant It Now, a blog for Customer Service Experts. Follow her @StefWalkMe

3 Ways to Create a Positive Self-Service Customer Experience

by Stefanie Amini, Marketing Director, WalkMe

How many times have called a company to reach their customer service team and gone around in circles waiting for the right option to come your way?  Then, when you finally find the right option, it still isn’t what you wanted.  So, what do you and most customers do?  Press 0… and then 0… and then 0-0-0-0, until you get through to a real person.

By the time customers in this scenario reach the rep,  they are irritated at the rep, as well as frustrated and angry at the company too.  This potential negative effect can spread like wild-fire.  When a customer is unhappy, they will tell 10 people as studies demonstrate.

Your phone menus and options may be designed to encourage customers to get the right help to avoid this bad customer experience, and have some sort of way out of the endless queue circle techniques, but does your website have it too?

Web menus often consist of FAQ pages, guidance documents, tutorial videos and live chat that attempt to direct the customer to the help they need in a web efficient manner.  This doesn’t necessarily guarantee they will get the right help they need – it can potentially lead to dead-end pages that result in frustration.  The usual customer web-user wants to find what they need in just three clicks.

If they haven’t found what they need in three clicks, it’s over and they may be looking at your competitor’s site next.

Finding tools and managing customer service through the web in order to make sure the customer gets the right information, allows customers to positively engage the site in minimal time.  Allowing customers to self-service can lower costs and make the customer feel in control.  Self-service adoption can also increase the brand’s power for the customer.

There are ways that you can help create a positive experience within your self-service options:

1. Create clear messaging and guidance in your websites menu – Do some market research, and even some focus groups to understand what the customer needs, and how they are asking the questions.  It will also help with your SEO efforts.
2. Clear menu on the call- Make sure the customer is getting clear and easy guidance to get the support they need. I spoke to a customer representative recently who was with a satellite TV company based in the US.  He said that they have an option on their phone menu that customers can select for different languages, however, they don’t have a team of people who receive from the different language route and can communicate in the chosen language. The rep can only offer that someone will call them back to assist.  Both parties are frustrated and this drives additional outbound calls as well as a bad customer experience.
3. Take a moment to look at your website menu navigation from the eyes of the customer

• Is it easy to use?
• Are you reaching dead ends?
• Does the flow of your website make sense or is it full of jargon that just leads to more user confusion?

These questions are factors that you must consider and can affect (or differentiate between) the creation of a frustrated user or a pleased one.

The bottom line:  Make sure to keep your self-service, whether in your phone menus or on your website, focused on making the customer happy and keeping the messages and direction for use clear and simple.

 

 

Are You Coaching Empathy First, Process Second?

As a consumer, I receive my own fair share of agent calls and make calls to companies for customer service assistance too.  I also monitor calls when I work with clients since this gives me a great view into not only the skills of the agents but also what their customers are saying.

PROCESS FIRST AND LISTENING ISSUES

Many of the Agents I interact with or monitor on calls are so focused on the process and procedure of what must be done that they aren’t really listening to the Customer or Prospect. These Agents are more concerned about pulling up screens and navigating, often making the customer feel uncomfortable during the process. Dead air, pauses, talking to themselves while searching for information or missing questions the customer asks or commenting on what they said.

One recent call I listened to demonstrates this perfectly. I heard a customer telling the Agent that she had to cancel an appointment due to a death in her family. The Agent was “flipping” system screens distractedly and simply said, “Uhuh…. We have an appointment open next Tuesday at 9 a.m., OK?”

Did the Agent satisfy the Customer’s need for a new appointment?  Yes.

Was the Customer problem was resolved?   Yes

Did the Agent show interest in that Customer during that “moment of truth”? Absolutely not!

“EMPATHY CAN’T BE LEARNED” – WRONG!

Not all Agents demonstrate poor empathy due to a listening skill problem.  Others just have no idea HOW to give empathy to anyone, whether a team member, customer or friend.

A University of Michigan study, presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, analyzed data on empathy among almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years. “We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,” said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research. “College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.”

We can’t assume that everyone understands or has experienced empathy personally enough to know how to express it.

To add to the problem, some Managers and Supervisors are also responsible for the lack of empathy shown by their agents. Training may focus heavily on the technical part of the call such as processes and product knowledge.  Metrics that drive “speedy” handling without regard to the “warm fuzzies”, as I like to call them, are pushed. Supervisors may tell Agents to be friendly and nice but don’t offer specific examples or demonstrate empathy on calls they handle themselves while the Agent observes.

WHAT CAN BE DONE TO HELP IMPROVE EMPATHY SKILLS

The most important thing Managers, Supervisors and Quality Coaches can do is to coach including role play, taking calls while demonstrating and offering phrases that can be used.  Helping the Agent put themselves in the Customer’s place to understand how they are feeling at the time of the call is important.

When you hold your next team meeting, discuss phrases and words that you can use to show empathy, concern and interest in the Customer.

“Mrs ____, I’m so sorry for your loss”

“My sympathy to you and your family”

“I don’t blame you for being upset”

“We really appreciate your business”

“Thank you for telling us about that problem so we could take care of it”>

“I’ll be glad to help you with that”

Remind your team that the customer is making a decision about them and about your company in the first 30 seconds of the call.  Taking time to acknowledge and show interest in Customers truly is as important as solving their problems.