Everyone is in charge of customer service

I spent last week helping two very different clients improve customer service. One was a boutique hotel that wanted to find ways to improve their already outstanding valet operations. The other was the receiving and mailroom department for a hospital and university that wanted to improve their reputation among university employees. The hotel was an obvious fit for my services, but you could argue that the work I did with the university was even more important. Serving their customers at a high level could literally mean delivering surgical supplies just in time to save a patient's life or tracking down some mis-delivered samples that a researcher ultimately uses to find a new cure for cancer.

High performing organizations make customer service a part of everyone's job. It's easy to imagine the importance of customer service in settings where someone has frequent, service-oriented contact with customers. The best companies realize that everyone has an impact on customer service, even when their connection to customers is less obvious.

The classic restaurant example
When we dine out we most frequently evaluate the restaurant's service based on our interactions with our server. Were they friendly? Did they get our order right? Was our drink refilled? Let's look at who else has an impact:

• The host or hostess seats you in a timely manner and makes sure there is someone covering that section who can serve you. There's a lot of logistics and teamwork required to make this happen!
• The dishwasher ensures your dishes and utensils are clean. You only notice this person's work if they don't do their job.
• The buser makes sure you have a clean table with the appropriate place-settings, keeps your water refilled, and quickly removes your dirty plates.
• The cook makes sure your food is correctly prepared and comes out as delicious as it sounds on the menu. You rarely see your cook, but you will definitely see their work!
• The manager makes sure everyone is working together in concert.

Good service will result if all of the above people do their job. All it takes is one person to drop the ball for a guest to have a poor experience.

Less obvious examples
I've provided customer service training for a lot of unusual groups over the years. One thing they all have in common is service makes their job easier and creates better results for the people they serve. Here are some examples of the types of people I've trained:

Accounts Receivable. This group used service techniques to speed up payments from clients while preserving client relationships when bills were past due.

Housing Assistant. A public agency that provided rental assistance to low-income families used customer service techniques to serve their clients more efficiently and improve productivity.

Loan Underwriting. An underwriting department improved their service to loan officers, which resulted in faster decisions and better client retention when loans were not approved.

Sales. Sales representatives leveraged customer service techniques to grow sales with existing clients and differentiate themselves with new prospects.

Plumbers. A plumbing company used customer service to stand out from competitors by making sure they did more than fix leaks. They ensured home owners could easily recommend their service.

Customer service training isn't the solution for every situation, but customer service should be everyone's priority. Feel free to contact us for a complimentary brain-storming session if you'd like to get some ideas on how to get everyone in your organization focused on service.

Five steps to attending a conference

Have you ever eaten too much pizza? At first, the pizza tastes so good. Every bite is delicious. And there's so much pizza it's exciting! You keep eating. Slowly, you start feeling all that pizza but it still tastes so good that you keep eating. By the end of it, your belly is so full you can't stand to look at another pizza for weeks. All you want to do is take a nap.

That's a lot like how most people attend a conference.

I'm heading off to the American Society for Training and Development's annual conference next week. A number of of colleagues are attending the Society or Human Resources conference in June and there are many other outstanding conferences at this time of year. Here's how you can make attending pay off.

Step 1: Set goals
Why are you planning on attending this conference. What knowledge, ideas, or products do you expect to bring back to the workplace after the conference? Set clear goals and the conference will suddenly become less overwhelming. It will also become easier to sell to your boss.

Step 2: Plan ahead
A conference can sometimes feel like Disneyland - there's just too much to do! Scan the conference program ahead of time to identify your 'must-see' opportunities. Is there a key speaker you want to meet? Is there a hot new product you want to check out in the exhibit hall? Is a famous author delivering a keynote that you absolutely must be in the front row for? You'll have a better chance of doing all you really want to do if you make a plan before arriving at the conference.

For many of us, planning ahead also means setting up meetings with key clients, vendors, and colleagues. Don't expect to just 'run into' important people. Remember, your contacts are likely to be overwhelmed too. Plan out your important lunches, coffees, meetings, and dinners before you arrive so it is all locked in on your calendar.

Step 3: You can't do it all
Keep this in mind: Too Much Information! There's too much to do and see at a conference and the reality is you will only benefit from a small portion. Don't try to go to every session you planned to attend, especially if something better comes up. In step one, you set goals then you created a plan in step two. Your goals are more important than your plan so follow them!

Step 4: Keep your eyes open
Every conference has a few unpredictable moments. You can capitalize on those moments if you follow your goals and allow your plan to be a guide and not a mandate. A chance meeting with a key client, an unexpected learning opportunity, or a private chat with a big name in your industry are all worth more than making sure you check off that next session on your list.

Step 5: Have an implementation process
I make a list of all my take-aways immediately after attending a conference. Even if I'm very tired, I find this is an essential activity. Then I give myself 30 days to do something with each item on the list or I toss it.

Make sure you have some sort of plan to put what you gained into action. Otherwise, you'll be like the kid who ate too much pizza. You'll be so conferenced out you won't want to touch any of it. All you'll have to show for your attendance will be a stack of business cards, pages of notes, and some well-worn shoes.

United Airlines will get bigger, ruder, and less efficient

United Airlines has just announced that they are buying Continental Airlines for just over $3 billion in stock. A company that lost $651 million last year is buying a company that lost $282 million so they can form the world's largest airline. Who will this benefit? Certainly not us.

Last year, United Airlines ranked last in the American Customer Satisfaction Index for major airlines with a score of 56. Their poor service became even more legendary last year with Dave Carroll's video, United Breaks Guitars, that has generated more than 8 million views on YouTube.

It's hard to imagine a company run as poorly as United Airlines can handle a massive merger with grace and style. In the short run, customers should expect even worse service as employees face the fear of uncertain job security, potentially contentious union negotiations, and the general confusion that is sure to come from this deal.

The one bright spot may be that Continental's CEO, Jeffery Smisek, will be at the helm of this new company. Contintental scored a 68 in last year's American Customer Satisfaction Index for major airlines, second only to Southwest which scored an 81.

Do you fly United or Continental now? If so, it may be time to cash in those frequent flyer miles and start looking for another carrier.

Too busy to get anything done

We all know a lot of busy people these days. What amazes me is how many people are so busy they don't actually get anything done.

• Small business owners are too busy to close new sales.
• Operations managers are too busy to improve productivity.
• It seems like nearly everyone is too busy attending meetings to take any action.

By contrast, my email inbox is completely empty right now. I know what you are thinking. I must either be some sort of productivity wizard or I'm alarmingly unpopular. Neither happens to be true. In fact, I'm naturally one of the most disorganized and inefficient people you'd ever hope to meet but I've managed to overcome this and appear to be very organized and disciplined. I feel less stress and get more done as a result.

Here are three things you can do to get unstuck and improve your own productivity:

Step 1: List your priorities

Priorities can provide us with a clear guide on how to allocate our time and what to work on next. You can gain some clarity by making a short list of your priorities. The essential step is to list them in rank order. There will inevitably come a time when you have to make a choice and having your priorities in order make it clear which way to go.

Step 2: Track your actual time spent

Spend a week tracking your time. You can use our time tracking worksheet to help you out.

Does your time spent align with your priorities? Are there any surprises? How much time did you spend on non-valuable activities such as pointless meetings, preparing PowerPoint decks nobody cares about, or making sure you get that new cover sheet on your TPS Report?

Step 3: Get unstuck

The third step is the hardest. It involves taking small steps toward aligning your actions with your priorities. Here are a few suggestions:

• Block off some time to set up your time management system. There isn't one system that's right for everyone, but your goal should be to spend less time organizing and more time doing.
• Enroll in a time management workshop. Yes, ours is awesome (thanks for asking!).
• Find a great guide. My all-time favorite is Getting Things Done by David Allen. Below is a link to the book on Amazon.

Is it time to hire more people?

Years ago, a new line of business caused me to staff up the small call center I was running in anticipation of a spike in customer calls. The new business tanked and the calls never materialized but I kept my team busy with 'make work' projects while we waited for our fortunes to change. After weeks of waiting, I came to work one Friday and our President told me I needed to cut my team in half by the end of the day to help ward off a cash flow crisis.

Many companies faced similar challenges in 2008 and 2009 and now they may be reluctant to add new employees despite signs that business is picking up. My own experience was painful, but I learned a valuable lesson about staffing that I'd like to share.

The hidden cost of high productivity

There may be a hidden cost to growing productivity by delaying staffing increases. Customer service can suffer in customer-facing positions if you don't have enough people to handle your volume. Product quality can decline if your people are moving so fast to deliver your product or service that they don't take care to do it right. Whatever your people are doing, there is a limit to how much they can do.

How do you balance cost versus quality? Compare your employees' output against how much you are spending on them. This can vary quite a lot in the short-term, creating a curve that looks a bit like a roller-coaster. You can control costs AND improve quality if you look for ways to smooth out the curve.

Here's an example from a real client who had customer-facing employees. Points below the lower red line indicate poor productivity. Points above the higher red line indiciate productivity may have come at the expense of poor service. (We don't know if service really suffered, but it's a sign we should investigate.)

Does this business need to add employees? One graph doesn't provide all the answers, but it does suggest my client should start recruiting and interviewing candidates so he can immediately increasing staff if this trend continues.

Is it time for you to add employees? Or, do you still have too many? Perhaps you don't even know how to measure your employees' output to create this type of graph in the first place?! Feel free to drop me a line at jeff@toistersolutions.com. I'd be happy to help you take a look.