3 things to know before scheduling customer service training

When I'm asked by a prospective client to provide a quote for their employees to attend my Delivering Next Level Service workshop, it may surprise you to learn I almost always ask a few questions first. Although I'm in the business of selling customer service training classes, there are three things my clients should know before they give customer service training the green light.

#1: What's the gap?

The purpose of training is to help employees bridge the gap between current and desired performance, so you should have a clear picture of the service you want your employees to provide and the service they are actually providing now. In many cases, this starts with clearly defining what oustanding service should look like (learn more about creating your own definition) so you can understand what it will take to get there.

#2: Is the performance gap caused due to insufficient K.S.As?

Training can help develop employees' knowledge, skills, and abilities. For instance, if employees don't know how to diffuse an angry customer, training can certainly help them learn how. However, there are often other obstacles the keep people from reach their full customer service potential. For example, I recently worked with a call center client who didn't staff enough people during their times of peak demand. This caused their reps to rush through calls and become abrupt with customers. The client resolved the problem by simply adjusting their staffing levels to better match their anticipated call volume. (You can read a short case study here.)

#3: Are you missing any of the three C's?

The knowledge, skills, and abilities that employees learn in a training class can fade over time if they aren't getting enough of the three C's.

• Recency. When was the knowledge, skill, or ability last used?
• Frequency. How often is the knowledge, skill, or ability used?
• Consistency. How consistently is the knowledge, skill, or ability used?

Are you heading to a meeting to discuss customer service training? Blog posts don't always print out on a neatly formatted page, so I've created this handy checklist you can print and take with you.

Closing the loop on customer feedback

If you collect customer feedback, or are thinking about implementing a feedback collection system such as a survey, consider adding in one essential component: a way to close the loop.

What is closed loop feedback?

Unlike anonymous feedback, closing the loop allows you to circle back with individual customers. Knowing how a specific customer feels about your product, service, or their latest interaction with your business can allow you to fix a problem, ask additional questions to dig deeper into a particular issue, or simply thank them for their business.

Why use closed loop feedback?

Let me give you three quick examples that illustrate the value of closed loop feedback.

A delivery driver for an express shipping company left a case of wine on my doorstep one day. Aside from failing to get the required adult signature, the driver subjected the wine to potentially harmful heat by leaving it outside. The shipping company never solicited my feedback, so I never bothered to tell them about this incident. However, the next time I ordered wine, I told the winery about my poor experience and insisted that they use another shipper. 

A termite inspector was overly pushy on two occasions, so when it came time again for another inspection I called another company. The termite company never bothered to follow-up with me to ask for feedback on the inspection or to remind me it was time to schedule another one, so they lost my business rather than giving themselves a chance to earn it back.

My wife and I had a poor check-in experience at a hotel that made it unlikely that we’d return. A few days after our visit, I received a follow-up email from the Front Office Manager in response to a survey I completed. He was closing the loop! In his email, he apologized for the poor experience, thanked us for our candid feedback, and offered to comp our room on our next visit. We ended up taking him up on his offer and even traveled with a friend who also booked a room at the hotel. The free room more than paid for itself after we visited the hotel bar, dined at their restaurant, and our friend paid for her room. Even more important, the Front Office Manager prevented us from taking our business to a competitor by closing the loop.

How to implement a closed-loop feedback system

There are many ways to do it, but here are a few you can easily implement:

Add an optional question at the end of your survey that allows customers to provide their contact information and give you permission to follow-up. Hotels often do a great job of using this technique.

Call or email customers in your database to ask them for direct feedback on your product or service. Netflix provides a great example, where they periodically email customers a one question survey such as, “When did this video arrive?” along with an invitation to contact them if more assistance is needed.

Ask customers in person. Why not ask for feedback directly when you have face to face contact with your customers? The technicians who work for Ideal Plumbing, Heating, Air, and Electrical always ask if everything is okay and if there is anything else they can do. 

Is incivility a root cause of service failure?

I'd like to share a not so radical idea.

Is it possible that the rude, self-absorbed behavior that many people display in public is one of the primary causes of poor customer service?

I recently ran a few errands around town and witnessed the following examples on my short trip:

• A couple enjoying coffee and pastries at Starbucks left a huge mess behind when they got up to leave.
• An aggressive driver cut off several cars in an attempt to beat them to a traffic light.
• Another driver sped up in a parking lot rather than stop for pedestrians.
• A customer at a car wash left his empty coffee cup on a bench when his car was ready.
• A banking customer cut to the front of the line ahead of other people patiently waiting their turn.
• A work truck ran a red light a narrowly missed running into several cars entering the intersection.

Some of these people assuredly work in jobs where they serve other people. If they behave selfishly, even dangerously, in a public setting can we really believe that they will be so different when helping customers? Maybe a little, but not much.

Most of my blog posts are action oriented and I try to provide a few tips you can use right away. This one is a little different, simply because I don't know the answer. Any ideas?

3 Ways Hotels Can Generate Loyalty on the First Visit

I recently had my tenth stay at two of my favorite hotels, the Napa River Inn and the Westin Portland. Both hotels recognized this milestone with a very nice welcome amenity in addition to the wonderful, personalized service they always provide. This special treatment made me look forward to my next ten visits, but it also got me thinking about how many other hotels I've stayed at where I don't care whether or not I return.

Welcome amenities at the Napa River Inn for our 10th visit

What can hotels do turn first-time visitors into loyal guests?

I spoke with a few hospitality professionals to get their ideas and reflected on my own experience to come up with three simple suggestions. I'm sure there are more ideas -- so please add your own as a comment to this post.

Sign 'em up!
Many hotels have loyalty programs, especially the larger chains. Why not encourage first-time guests to join? This should be standard procedure at check-in, but in practice it doesn't consistently happen.

A few years ago, I checked in to the Hilton Garden Inn in Henderson, Nevada. The friendly front desk associate invited me to join the Hilton Honors loyalty program and even offered to use the information they had on file to complete the application for me. It cost me nothing in terms of time and effort, but over the next year I found myself staying in several hotels within the Hilton family and soon reached their first level of status. All else being equal, points and status will influence guests' decisions, and I recently booked a stay at a Hilton over another brand I wasn't loyal to.

Smaller hotels without a loyalty program can simply collect email addresses and send out periodic newsletters. For example, the Napa River Inn sends out a special discount code just for returning guests. 

I stay in a lot of hotels, but I don't bother to join their loyalty program if I don't think I'll be coming back. It often takes a simply nudge from a helpful associate to get guests like me to join, but when they do, they might start feeling a little more at home.

Engage at Every Opportunity
Quick question - which associates have the most guest contact? In a smaller hotel, it's likely someone at the front desk, but in a larger hotel it might be the valet staff, housekeepers, or even the engineers. All associates, regardless of their position, should be trained to engage guests at every opportunity.

They can start with a simple question, "How is your stay?" In my experience, most of the hotel associates I encounter in the hallway or elevator rarely go beyond saying "Hello." An associate once asked me how my stay was going, but when I said, "Eh," she wasn't sure where to go from there and missed an opportunity to turn a mediocre experience into an outstanding one.

The associates who do get it right can make all the difference. For example, an associate named Darryl took time out from a painting project to engage my wife and I when we stayed at a resort hotel. He asked about our plans and then gave us inside tips on how to best enjoy ourselves. Darryl even encouraged us to come find him if we needed anything and he'd personally take care of it. (Read more about Darryl.) 

Follow-up
I've recently had a four night stay at three different hotels. One was the Napa River Inn and the other two were clearly not. At the Napa River Inn, I frequently encountered associates who were friendly, helpful, and outgoing. At the other two hotels I hardly had any contact with associates after checking in. I found myself feeling very disconnected from these properties, despite the long stay. 

Why take chances? Someone from one of the "other" hotels could have called my room halfway through my stay to make sure everything was going well. They could have sent up a free bottle of water. Perhaps one of the hotels could simply have responded to my repeated maintenance requests instead of ignoring them. Anything to check in and say, "Hey -- we know you're still here." Instead, nothing. No contact, which means no connection. I've already forgotten about them.

How quickly should you respond to an email?

More than two thirds of us expect co-workers to respond to emails within four hours or less, according to a recent email response time survey. Perhaps its no wonder that so many workers can't go five minutes without typing away on their smart phone or losing focus on an important task to answer another message in an endless series of email exchanges.

Of course, the results are a bit skewed by Generation Y (born 1977 or later). Members of this generation aparently do their best Veruca Salt impersonation when it comes to receiving email, since 43% of them expect a response within one hour.

People have a little more patience when it comes to receiving a response to emails sent to a business. Companies should always try to respond to customer emails as quickly as possible, but 75% of us are willing to wait at least a day:

The survey also asked how quickly we expect our friends to respond to email. Here, we're a bit more lenient, with 88% of survey participants saying they thought they should receive a reply within 1 or more days.

I conducted the same survey last year (see the 2011 results), so have there been any changes? The short answer is no, not really. The only thing noticeable was members of Generation Y have grown slightly more impatient, since 35% of them expected co-workers to reply to email within one hour in 2011, but that number has risen to 43% in 2012. 

What does all this mean?

Service, whether it's external to your customers or internal to your co-workers, is all about expectations. Should our co-workers be more patient? Certainly, but the reality is right now they're not. Do people misuse email? Yes, but screaming at your computer won't change that.

While we can't change others, we can lead by example. For businesses, I wrote a short post on managing customer service email three years ago that still feels relevant today. The top tip? Track email response times and set a goal of 1 business day for everything. (You can read it here.) For individuals, I wrote a post on 10 ways to avoid email overload. (Read that one here.) Perhaps the most important lesson there is to have the discipline to use email correctly rather getting sucked in to becoming part of the problem.