Move the start and finish line for customer service training

I've spoken to countless managers who have described a similar experience after sending their employees to customer service training. They observe a temporary bump in motivation and performance followed by a gradual settling down back to pre-training service levels. When this happens, the training might make everyone feel good in the short-term, but over the long-run it proves to be a waste of time and money if it doesn't help the team measurably improve their performance.

If you've experienced this challenge, a simple fix might be moving the training program's start and finish line to their proper place.

The Start Line
It's hard to find something if you don't know what you are looking for, or even why you are looking for it. However, this is what happens when employees attend a customer service training class without having done any pre-work or preparation. In the worst scenarios, employees may even regard the training as unnecessary or even a punishment if they don't have an understanding of what new skills they are supposed to learn or how it will help them provide better service.

The solution is to move the start line back a bit to include adequate time for preparation. Employees should be able to answer three basic questions by the time they arrive for the class:

1. What is the training about?
2. How will this class help me do my job?
3. How can I apply what I learn back on the job?

You can read more about the three questions here.

The Finish Line
Learning new skills shouldn't be the end-game for customer service training. The real goal should be learning new skills that can be applied on the job to achieve better results. Unfortunately, too many customer service training initiatives end at the same time the class does. No support, no follow-up, and perhaps no further mention. When this happens, it's no wonder that employee performance quickly returns to pre-training levels.

The real finish line should be when the training program's goals have been achieved. This means building in post-training support and follow-up to help participants master the skills they learned in class and make adjustments as they continue their development. (It also means setting goals - learn more here.)

Workshop Planner
I often use a simple workshop planning tool to make sure the start and finish lines are in their proper place. I meet with project stakeholders and complete the worksheet before starting any training program and use it to help them prepare their employees for a successful class and create an action plan to reinforce learning once the workshop is complete.

 Download the workshop planner

 Download a sample workshop plan

You can also watch this short how-to video:

Why companies need to cure their fee addiction

I recently dined at a restaurant with a few colleagues. Two of us ordered a glass of Red Breast Irish Whiskey after our meal. My friend asked for hers neat while I ordered mine on the rocks. Imagine my shock when I saw the bill:

That’s right, my drink was $1 more after the "rocks upcharge" was added. Charging $1 for ice has to be the dumbest fee I’ve ever seen. (If you’ve seen dumber, PLEASE let me know!)

Customers Hate Fees
The sheer outrageousness of that little fee completely ruined what was an otherwise acceptable dining experience. Just to make sure I’m not being overly sensitive, I did a little homework and discovered other customers hate fees too. Here are a few examples:

• A 2006 study by Bain & Company found that fees were one of the leading causes of customer dissatisfaction (read more in their whitepaper).
• A 2011 study by J.D. Power & Associates found that checked baggage fees decreased customer satisfaction by an average of 8.5 percentage points (here's the story).
• High-profile attempts to raise fees by companies like Bank of America have led to widespread public backlash and customer defections.

Bottom line: Fees can negatively influence customers’ perception of service, especially when the fees are for products or services that used to be free.

Companies Are Addicted
For many companies, the fee addiction is easy to explain. The company faces pressure to increase profitability from investors, the board of directors, or competitors. Charging fees seems like a good way to boost revenue, pass costs along to the customer, or both. The financial motivation associated with a new fee is generally easy to measure. Here are a few examples:

• Checked baggage fees added an estimated $3.36 billion in revenue to U.S. airlines’ bottom line in 2011 (source: MSNBC's Overhead Bin).
• Bank of America hatched their plan to charge customers using debit cards a $5 monthly fee after legislation cost them an estimated $2 billion in revenue (source: LA Times).
• Companies in a wide range of industries, from hotels to ticket brokers, use fees to make the cost of their product or service appear lower than it actually is.

Curing the Addiction
Companies will only reduce or eliminate unfriendly fees when they are convinced doing so will increase profitability. Making that case takes both data and guts.

Gathering the data isn’t always easy. It requires companies to look beyond individual transactions and examine their customers relationships. For example, when an airline charges a passenger $25 to check a bag on a flight, the airline knows it made an extra $25. What it might not know is whether the fee encouraged that passenger to book her next flight on another airline. Companies need to get closer to their customers through surveys, mining their CRM programs, and even face-to-face interactions to analyze whether fees are really a net gain or loss.

One way to add guts to the mix and make executives a bit braver is through a compelling success story. Here are a few examples from companies that resisted the urge to raise fees:

• In the mid-2000s, Charles Schwab reduced or eliminated many fees as part of its well-publicized turnaround that led the brokerage firm to increase profits from $109 million in 2002 to $1.2 billion in 2006 (read more).
• An estimated 650,000 people moved their accounts from Bank of America to a credit union in the fall of 2011 in response to an announced fee increase (source: Credit Union National Association).
• Netflix built a successful company with a business model that eliminated late fees for movie rentals. Of course, they also made two enormous blunders in 2011, but that’s a different story. 

Improve customer service training with learning objectives

A colleague and I were once asked to design a new hire training program for a call center’s customer service representatives. We asked a simple question to start the project that ended up sparking quite a bit of discussion:

“How will we know if a new CSR has been fully trained?”

If you’ve designed or delivered training before, you know this simple question doesn’t always have a simple answer. Typically, the initial responses are vague and subjective, such as “They won’t ask many questions,” or “They’ll have confidence on the phone.” In other cases, impatient stakeholders would rather skip the question altogether.

We finally did come up with a solid answer and the resulting program improved the quality of the client’s new hire performance while cutting training time by 50%. Those were great results, but they wouldn’t have been possible without clear training goals. (Read the short case study here.)

Easy as A - B - C - D
One of my favorite ways to write learning objectives is using the ABCD technique. 

A = Audience
This specifies the people or groups of people you expect to participate in the training.

B = Behavior
What do you want participants to do as a result of the training? Define the behavior in the broadest possible terms, such as aligning it with existing service standards. Example: “provide a correct and timely response to a customer inquiry.”

C = Condition
This describes the situation or circumstances where the behavior is completed. For example, “during in-class simulations” specifies how the behavior will be demonstrated.

D = Degree
This is how well the behavior must be performed to fulfill the objective, such as “five times without error.”

Sample A-B-C-D Learning Objective:
“Customer service representatives will provide a correct and timely response to a customer inquiry during in-class simulations five times without error.”

With an A-B-C-D learning objective, you have a clear objective that provides a clear target for your training. You can then tailor your content and exercises to help participants meet the objective. You also have a clear way of objectively verifying whether participants are fully trained.

Additional Resources
Learning Objectives Worksheet

Want to Learn More?
Consider attending one of these upcoming train-the-trainer workshops to learn more about developing effective employee training and development programs.

• Portland, OR (July 12)
• San Diego, CA (October 12)

Five reasons why ratings are down at Southwest Airlines

The American Customer Service Index released it's annual airline service ratings this week and the results for Southwest Airlines underscore what many travelers know already: the legendary customer service at Southwest is on the decline. The airline relinquished their long-held position at the top to Jet Blue after suffering a 4.9% drop in their satisfaction ratings, although their 77% rating still puts them well ahead of traditional legacy carriers US Airways, Delta, American, and United. (See the results here.)

What's behind the decrease in service quality? Here are my top five reasons:

1. The Merger
The airline's merger with Air-Tran is clearly pulling executives' attention away from other issues like service. While this is normal during an airline merger (see my post on the United-Contintental merger), it's unsettling to see it happening at Southwest. There's a great break down on the challenges Southwest is facing as a result of the Air-Tran merger on the InvestorPlace.com website (see their explanation).

2. Seating
It's getting harder to get a good seat on a Southwest flight. Their open seating system, unaffectionately referred to as the "cattle call," has long been a disadvantage for Southwest Airlines. However, the process is starting to get worse as their are more options for people to pay a fee to get a better spot in line. A-list frequent flyers, Business Select passengers, and people purchasing the EarlyBird check-in option all get on before everyone else who either doesn't fly Southwest often enough or isn't willing to pay an extra fee. A recent J.D. Power survey found that fees for checked baggage leads to significantly lower customer satisfaction (see their study here) and Southwest has so far managed to steer clear of this practice, but charging fees to get on the plane sooner is likely to have a similar effect.

3. Cleanliness
Southwest's planes seem to be getting dirtier. They pride themselves in turning around a plane between flights faster than their competitors which ultimately means they have to invest in fewer planes. However, this efficiency is starting to come at a price. The lavatories are often disgusting, food wrappers are left in the pockets behind the seats, and crumbs are all over the cabin floor. 

4. Rapid Rewards
The changes Southwest made to their Rapid Rewards frequently flyer program are, uh, unrewarding. In his book, The Amazement Revolution, Shep Hyken talks about the power of making customers feel like members. The old Rapid Rewards program accomplished this nicely. You received a free round trip ticket after flying eight round trips (or sixteen one-way flights) and they even tossed in some drink coupons. It was simple to understand and chart your way towards your next free trip. The new program is based on points that somehow correspond with the fares you pay and can be redeemed for... Well, I'm not really sure how it works. I stopped caring once I had to get out my calculator to figure out if I was getting close to a free flight. I'm sure the new program makes perfect sense to Southwest's accountants, but it fails to create the same emotional connections with customers that their old program did.

5. Customer Service
A little redundant, I know, but hear me out. I sent all of this feedback in an email to Southwest Airlines in keeping with my personal policy of sharing this sort of thing with companies before I write about it on my blog. Even the process of providing feedback was a service failure. I had to fill out thirteen required fields on their form just to submit my message and then I was directed to a screen that informed me it would take approximately five days for them to respond. Yikes! As you may know from my recent email response time survey (read that here), people generally expect a response within one business day. Five days is simply too long and after waiting three days without a response I've decided to go ahead with this post.

I'm a huge fan of Southwest Airlines and I hope they can turn things around. However, until they take steps to address some of these issues I know I'll be choosing them less frequently.

Update on Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 2:54PM by Jeff Toister

I received a response from a customer service rep at Southwest Airlines shortly after I wrote this post and three days after I emailed their customer service team. It was a thorough, albeit lengthy email that was mostly a canned message with a few personal notes. And, as a nice gesture, I was offered a $100 voucher to use on my next flight. That was very kind and definitely unexpected.

Here's a summary of the response I received:

• Open seating is part has made them successful and customers are overwhelmingly in favor of it. (No mention of my concern about charging fees to board faster.)
• The new Rapid Rewards program better reflects their evolution from a regional, shorthaul carrier to an airline that flies longer routes. The response also stressed the additional benefits of the new program, such as the ability to redeem points for any seat on any flight or using points to book hotels and rental cars.
• The lack of cleanliness on their planes is an unfortunate by-product of their quick turnarounds.

Anatomy of an Email Service Failure

Many of us rely on email for simple customer service transactions. All too often, we experience email exchanges like the one below that leave us even more frustrated than we were before.

The Situation
I play on an indoor soccer team and wanted to know our schedule for the upcoming season. Schedules for each season are typically announced the Sunday before a new season starts, so I emailed the company that runs the league to get the latest schedule. 

Me (Sunday @ 4:33 pm)
Hello,

Is it possible to get a copy of the schedule for Buena Onda via email? We play in the men’s over 30 league on Thursdays.

Thank you,
Jeff

Them (Sunday @ 4:50 pm):
(No message. The response simply contained last season’s schedule pasted into the body of the email.)

Me (4:51 pm):
Thanks for the quick response, though I meant the upcoming season.

Thank you,
Jeff

Them (4:53 pm):
The upcoming season hasn’t started yet…

Me (4:55 pm):
Are you saying that the schedule for the upcoming season hasn’t yet been created? All that’s posted on your website is that our team has a bye this coming week, but I’m trying to learn when our other games will take place.

Them (5:03 pm):
The last games for the current season are being played this coming Thursday.  After they are played we can align the league & schedule the next group of games.

Analysis
Well, on the bright side, the do get points for responsiveness. In a recent survey on email response times, I discovered that most people expect businesses to respond to emails within one day (see the survey results here). Now, a few negatives:

No personalization. Emails should include a salutation and the name of the person sending the message. It’s even worse when multiple people use the same general email address since you don’t know who is helping you. The person responded to my email could have added their name.

Failure to understand. The person reading the email didn’t take a moment to pause and think about which schedule I was referring to. If they had, they may have realized that I was likely wondering about future games rather than games I had already played.

Not answering the next question. CSRs responding to email should try to anticipate the next question and answer that one too. The anonymous person responding to the email could have combined emails two and three and saved us one round of back and forth. (Read more about this tip.)

Bottom Line:
While this email exchange hasn’t cost the company any business (yet), there are a few costs that all businesses should be wary of:

• Frustrating. Having to send three emails to get one question answered is frustrating.
• Wasteful. These excessive email exchanges can add up to a lot of wasted time.
• Referrals. Service failures like this make it much less likely for customers to refer a business.