My Guest Blogger Marilyn Suttle: “Doing an End-of-Day Review is Powerful – Here’s How…”

Today I’ve invited a Guest Blogger to share one of her insightful posts.

Success coach Marilyn Suttle is coauthor of the bestselling book, “Who’s Your Gladys? How to Turn Even the Most Difficult Customer into Your Biggest Fan” and President of Suttle Enterprises LLC, a personal and professional growth training firm. Her programs produce breakthrough results with customers, coworkers, and even your children. For more information, visit <http://www.WhosYourGladys.com>

The end-of-day review is a powerful tool I use to improve my performance with clients, while raising the bar on my personal effectiveness. It’s a simple practice that only takes a few minutes.

Right before leaving work at the end of the day, ask yourself:

What went well? What would I do differently next time? What do I appreciate about my customers?

Here’s why:

When you ask, “What went well?” it unleashes your brain to zero in on all the wins of your day. That makes you more resourceful.

When you make a habit of noticing what’s going right, you’ll more readily apply those same tactics to future situations.

When you ask, “What would I do differently?” it gives your mind time to rehearse better ways of responding to future challenges. Those mental rehearsals can catapult your effectiveness. It also helps you to avoid self-blame, shame, and guilt.

When you make a habit of noticing what’s going right, you’ll more readily apply those same tactics to future situations.

When you ask, “What do I appreciate about my customers?” it keeps your attention on the people who are the reason you’re in business. It helps you get your mind off the one or two curmudgeonly customers that bring you down, so you can see the overall purpose and value of all those who do business with you.

It creates a sense of closure to your work day so you can be more fully present at home with family and friends.

Not all self-reflections are helpful. Some can even sabotage your success. “What went wrong?” is not a resourceful question. It makes the little problems big and big successes little.  Rather than rehearse better ways of handling workplace issues, you’re left chewing on troubles. As you leave for the day, you’ll feel frustrated, and your resilience will tank. You won’t be much fun across the dinner table with your family and it sets you up to start the next day from a less resourceful vantage point.

I’ve been doing an end-of-day review for the last several years. Last night, I sat down and did a similar end-of-year review. One thing I’m going to do differently – I’ll keep a notebook to capture my end-of-day reviews.

What do you think? How could you build upon what’s going right and make adjustments to better serve your customers?

Posted by Marilyn Suttle on www.whosyourgladys.com/blog

You Know How to Book the VIP, You Just Don’t Know How to Deliver

Image by k0a1a.net via Flickr

We recently took a cruise with Carnival which offers some fabulous prices on suites. They still have a few smaller ships and the suites we like have huge balconies where we spend a lot of hours watching the waves and flying fish. There are no extra amenities that come with the suite other than “VIP Embarkation” and “VIP Disembarkation”.  We are content with the big suite and balcony, and the promise of getting on the ship quickly and painlessly, and then exiting in the same manner. It would be a LONG drive home so the VIP Disembarkation is what we really were looking forward to.

When we arrived for boarding, we entered through the VIP line, were promptly taken care of and then sent to a special waiting area which was simply a separate room with a VIP sign and free water and coffee.  A customer service representative then came to each row of VIPs and announced how the boarding would work.  A bit of chaos when the boarding time came, but nothing too bad, i.e. it met our basic expectations but didn’t exceed.  We got onboard early and that was the goal.  A wonderful cruise that we thoroughly enjoyed followed.

During the last night at sea, our luggage tags were delivered, along with a separate letter which stated that as VIPs, we would receive priority disembarkation and needed to proceed to the _____ lounge in the morning.  We would be escorted off the ship when cleared by Customs.  Sounded very nice and efficient again, right?  But wait….where was the time to go to the lounge?  Nowhere in the letter.

I placed a call after searching again for the time to meet.   A nervous sounding young “Guest Services” man, asked me to hold…twice with no apology for holding by the way. It was clear that he had no idea what letter I was talking about.  He told me that if we carried off our luggage it was 7:15am for meeting time and if our luggage was waiting in customs area, 8:15am.  I told the young man that this couldn’t be right.  The general disembarkation for everyone was at these same times.  He repeated the same times and said he had no idea about the letter itself.  I hung up in frustration.

We are early risers so we decided to arrive at the said lounge just prior to the 7:15 time mentioned. No one was there. Not even fellow passengers.  We waited 10 minutes and a few people arrived.  They told us that they had gone in person to Guest Services and were told several different disembarkation times. No one at Guest Services knew about the letter, so these VIPs had decided to arrive early as we had. A few more minutes passed and still no staff had arrived to escort us off the ship or tell us what was happening.  We shared VIP horror stories as if telling ghost stories around the campfire.

I left the lounge in search of yet another VIP answer and found a desk just outside with a smiling young man selling “future cruises”.  He told me that this was his first week Onboard and he had no idea how VIP worked.  Then he added, “You need to visit Guest Services for that information”.  Queue the Twilight Zone music!  I thanked him and returned to my seat in the lounge.

Now it is 7:45am…no answers, no crew escorts have arrived at the lounge and the other passengers are as confused as we are.  Another passenger arrives and tells his group that he was told by a crew member that VIP were to wait in the Theater, not the lounge.  He said he showed the VIP letter to that crew member, who stared at it stating, “I’ve never seen a letter like this before”.

At close to 8am, another passenger arrives and says they were told that the VIP people have already left the ship.  Several of us pick up our bags and head for a nearby stairwell where people are clustered.  The crew member there is also VIP confused, has no idea what the letter in our hands is about, and leaves to check with a Manager.  No, she says when returning, it is not your turn unless you have all of your luggage in your hands. We did not and so our band of now angry VIPs returns to the lounge.

At 8:10am, a young crew officer finally arrives and in a whisper low voice (picture everyone leaning forward to hear) says, “If you received a VIP letter, please follow me”.

That was it?  No apology, no explanation.  We grabed our bags and ran to follow him as he headed for an exit area as if his shoes were on fire.

So, after all that, what are my VIP tips for Carnival:

1. Have someone in the Front Office actually proof read letters delivered to VIP passengers for the basics: who, what, where, when…  Is that asking too much?

2. If you are going to deliver VIP information, make sure Guest Services and staff coordinating disembarkation in the hallways/stairs has a copy and knows what VIP disembarkation means.

3. If you plan to escort a group off the ship “early”, please send a Crew Member in to the lounge waiting area to announce what is going on.  We don’t mind waiting as long as you communicate something…anything!

4. Is it too much to ask for water and coffee in that VIP lounge?  One passenger told us that they “used” to do it. Why did you stop?  It wouldn’t take much to set up a self-serve spot at the lounge bar top

5. Teach crew how to empathize and apologize if there is a mistake (like the letter without time on it) instead of blankly staring or stating, “I don’t know what this is”

Just FYI…I have that mysterious VIP letter safely tucked away in our documents here back at home and I’m waiting for the cruise survey due to arrive any day.  I wonder if I will receive the VIP or regular survey

“Do We Still Have A Call Center?”…and more scenes from Phone Hell…

It’s amazing to me that a CEO or top management at a company can put their best company front line people in the dingiest places to work and provide little to no motivation and training.

I’ve seen Call Centers or small Customer Service teams in old trailers, Reps hanging lunches up to avoid mice sneaking bites of their meal while they go into the warehouse.  Then there are the windowless dungeons of phone hell….people given just enough room so as not to touch elbows and bad chairs that squeak or are bent like contortionists.

I’d like to say that the management in these places were not aware of what was going on, but unfortunately, all of them acknowledged it was bad and often added comments like, “Well, we are going to relocate in a year or two” or “Well, the Reps haven’t complained about it”.  If no one complained, I guess that was because that company also had huge Employee turnover problems in the Call Center.  No one stayed around long enough to complain.  They stayed just long enough to find another job or on occasion post out somewhere else within the company.

Then there was the business that had an Exec who, when asked about the Call Center team said, “Do we still have one of those?  Where are they?”  In this case, the small team of five Call Center Reps were in a building several minutes away from the nicely decorated headquarters.  There was a light out in the corridor outside the Center — dark and creepy— shades of a Friday night fright flick.  The inside was no better. Grey walls, torn carpet, no pictures or anything colorful or interesting.  And, there was row… after row… after row of old files stacked on open shelves filling one-half of the room.  Reps complained of breathing dust in. A Rep had asked for headphone replacement parts for months to no avail and was now sitting 8 hours a day with her neck bent to one side to hold the phone while she typed.  To add to the bad atmosphere, there was an off-site Manager who only visited every couple of weeks and no Supervisor on-site.

When I sat with Employees at this center, listened to calls and observed their interactions with each other, the word that best described the overall atmosphere was Apathy.  They weren’t rude to the Customers.  They took down information and answered questions. They just didn’t appear to care at all.  All of the Service Reps had good work backgrounds in the industry.  All should have been providing a high level of Customer Experience on calls but weren’t.

Fortunately, this “Do we still have a Call Center” story has  a happy ending.

Image by Martin Cathrae via Flickr

I wrote an Operational review report for this client and outlined some opportunities for improvements for the Employees as well as the Customer Experience overall.  In one section of the report, I discussed how having a poor work environment was very demotivating to the team and in turn affecting both turnover and the Customers.  Happily the CEO admitted that improvements were long overdue in the small Center.  Within two weeks of making some initial improvements in the Center, the attitudes were greatly improved and so were the Customer calls.  I had recommended,  and they had implemented, some relatively inexpensive improvements such as installing an air filter to help with file dust,  painting walls in colors the team chose, purchasing new Ergonomic chairs that were more supportive, replacing some defective headphones and cleaning old computer equipment out of the area (yes, the Call Center had also been deemed a garbage dump by IT).  I also asked the off-site Manager to commit to more hours per week in the center doing coaching and motivating the Reps which she agreed to.

I’m happy to say that the Reps’ skills have greatly improved.  The improved work environment, increased support and motivation demonstrated that Management cared about them.  With the Reps’ attitudes and skills improved,  Customer feedback is more positive and the Reps themselves are noticing that Customers are appreciative of their efforts and smiles.

Simple but effective solutions.  This has been a real Win-Win-Win for all parties involved.

Why The People Part of Service Won’t Go Away

I just saw a Survey about Self-Service options for Customers which showed that only about 20% of Customer Support calls are deflected by Web-based self-service, such as knowledge bases, user forums.  I’m not surprised that the number isn’t higher.  I think of my own experience with websites promising all the answers and delivering little. I click and I click and I click again only to find myself back to the original information offered which still doesn’t answer my question. I invariably end up trying live chat, email or a call.

My favorite response tool has to be the canned emails received from someone far, far away who has pressed a button and sent a response to my carefully crafted question which has nothing to do with what I’m looking for.  Banks seem to be notorious for this given the complaints I hear from friends and family, and my own experience.  I begin to think that there is no live person responding at all and the name John Smith signed at the bottom of the email isn’t real.  Imagine that?  One company promised a 72 hour response to my email. Really?  Three days for somebody to answer a basic question not answered online?  You really don’t want me to email you do you?

Some are trying Social Media and are often clueless. They post something on Twitter and then disappear for two days.  Facebook comments or questions go unanswered.  Companies doing Social Media right are few and far between.

So why are so many Companies avoiding one-to-one contact with Customers?  I think there are two main reasons:  The high cost of staffing/training/retaining good agents and the idea that Customers want to point, click and be done with it.  I agree with both on the surface.

It’s very expensive to hire, train and then find ways to motivate and keep great people. But it’s costly when Customers have a bad Self-Service or canned Email experience too, often due to building a poor knowledge base or bad system programming. We know from studies done that a great number of people just walk when unhappy and never tell the Company their complaint so irritating them without live interaction to calm them down and rebuild trust can be a problem.

It’s also true that we live in a fast-paced age of quick response and immediate gratification required by many Customers, so doing things online without personal assistance is attractive to them.   I’m one of those who does love to point and click at times.  But what is gained if the speed is great but errors, freezes or bad information happens on your site?  Who is there to know what’s happening other than the upset Customer who may just find another Company with a better site.

A Customer Service live Agent experience may also be poor or great for callers so I’m not saying it’s perfect either.  I think the advantage of having a real person there is that sometimes I’m just looking for empathy.  Sometimes I want to hear someone say, “I know that (blank) is challenging to work with but I’ll be glad to walk you through it step by step”.  And, often one question I ask leads to another so I get help with multiple issues with the give and take of questions and answers.  Especially with a proactive Agent.

This is just my own personal opinion based on observations as a Consultant and consumer.  I think Customers will always want to have a friendly voice and knowledgeable person to talk with at times on the phone or in person. Even if your Social Media and Self-Service is tops.

Oh, and PNC….please answer my email with the correct information in less than 72 hours next time.