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Equip Employees for Customer Service
By Richard Hadden and Bill Catlette
In case you haven't noticed, the state of customer service in the U.S. is at an all-time low. Of course, you've noticed. That's one reason millions of us flocked to the Internet this holiday season. And while e-tail shopping is hardly flawless, two of its greatest attractions are the absence of surly service reps and the long waits which inspired Wallace Wilkins's book Please Hold: 102 Things to do While You Wait on the Phone.
Yep, there's an awful lot of bad customer service out there. But it's not due to a lack of customer service training. There's no shortage of books and seminars to teach the unenlightened how to be nice to people trying desperately to give them their money. And it's not because customer service employees are innately rude. OK, some are, but most aren't. Where service is lousy, it's usually because we as managers haven't equipped our employees to provide the good service which we say distinguishes us.
If you already have more customers than you can use, stop reading here. Otherwise, the following is intended to help you get and keep more.
- Create a great place to work. Perhaps no connection is stronger than the one between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Companies like MBNA, the Delaware credit card company, know the most direct route to a happy customer is a happy employee.
- Hire helpful people. No degree of training will make a good customer service employee out of a curmudgeon. Hire people who actually enjoy helping people get what they want and need. Look at resumes for signs of volunteer service. People who have worked for nothing to help others can do wonders when you actually pay them for it. When applicants have service experience, ask about certificates, awards, and citations for excellent customer service.
- Improve your systems and processes. Good employees won't suffer dumb procedures. When my Internet service quit working, I told the service rep on the phone that I suspected the cable modem as the culprit. I told her that no technician need come out without a replacement modem. Impossible, she said, due to company policy. I pressed my point. Of course, the guy showed up modemless. He made the same diagnosis I had made, grumbled something unkind about his company's stupid rules, and returned the next day with a working modem. Wasted were his time, my time, and the company's money and service reputation.
- Reward people for providing good service. How many of you knew this already? Apparently not everyone does. I just bought a dishwasher at one of those huge appliance superstores (nothing at my house works). I knew what I wanted, but it took me 20 minutes and 3 ``sales associates" to find someone willing to take my money. When someone finally gave me some attention, I told him, ``I'm ready to buy. This will be the easiest sale you've made all day." He replied, ``Sir, we're not on commission." I said, ``It shows."
- Give them good tools and equipment. The four-slot commercial bagel toaster at my nearby bookstore café went on the blink this fall and was down to two working slots. This bogged down the entire service process and backed up the line of customers. Predictably, customers took out their frustration on the poor college student behind the counter, who couldn't possibly keep customers happy. The store manager petitioned the corporate office in New York for a new toaster, but the problem dragged on. Apparently no one important enough to approve such acquisitions as a $350 toaster had had time to consider the request. A more functional company would have given the manager the autonomy to serve her customers. As I write, three months later, the broken toaster is still on the job. The college student isn't.
- Cut the hold time. Whatever it takes. Just do it. Beyond the obvious damage this does to customer service, it's just the start of a vicious cycle. You make your customers wait. They get understandably irate. Then they take it out on the service rep, who isn't responsible for the problem, instead of the executive who is. The rep is demoralized and doesn't provide good service when the call is finally answered.
I've always wondered if there might be a connection between customer hold time and employee satisfaction, so I performed a quick, unscientific test. I called the regular reservation lines of four major airlines: Southwest and Continental, both ``Best Companies to Work For", according to Fortune magazine's list, and USAirways and American, whose reputations for employee dissatisfaction have received a lot of press in the last year or so. There was no wait at all for Southwest, and Continental's hold time was just under two minutes. USAirways told me my call was important to them for 5 minutes and 16 seconds before answering, and after 7 minutes, I hung up on American. I didn't have Dr. Wilkins's book and ran out of things to do.
If your business thrives on satisfied customers, look at your processes, tools, equipment, staffing levels, and the temperament of those you place on the front line. Eliminate the grains of sand that keep your employees from ``wowing" your customers. Give employees a great place to work, and they'll give your customers a great place to buy.
Please print the following attribution for this article: Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden, co-authors of Contented Cows Give Better Milk, help clients clobber the competition by having a focused, fired up, and capably led workforce. They deliver powerful conference keynotes and leadership training. They can be reached at 800-940-7006 (+1-904-720-0870 from outside North America) or www.ContentedCows.com.