Is anything more irritating than “I’m sorry if you feel that way?”

Customer Service means having to say you're sorry. 

Source: http://myblogspan.com/blogs/archives/december-3-2007.php

How many times have you listened to that dreadful “I’m sorry for any inconvenience that has caused you” during a customer service call, with a bitter little smile on your face, thinking “The hell you are!” 

We all agree that a faked or forced apology is more annoying than no apology at all. Even worse is the condescending “I’m sorry if you were upset”—the apology that leaves the receiver with the distinct taste of blame in his or her mouth. 

As Salon writer Mary Elizabeth Williams wryly notes in her column: “Just say you’re sorry. Just say it like you mean it.”

 

Why is it so hard for our front line reps to make sincere apologies that hit the mark and truly diffuse the angry customer on the other end of the line?

1: They don’t understand why the customer is upset or what the problem is 

Many of my trainees don’t have checking accounts, credit cards, or even pay rent. They have no idea that a declined credit card can make you feel as if a neon “DEADBEAT” sign is pointing to you in front of the store clerks and other shoppers, and why you’re so upset about the bank error that led to the decline.

 The offshore/ outsourced reps that many call centers employ may or may not be familiar with the ins and outs of daily life in the US to understand what bounced check fees ARE, much less understanding how infuriating and scary they are for customers. 

2: They see apology as admitting wrongdoing, and they’ve been trained never to say “negative things” about the company

Almost every client company drills it into the customer service reps that they are never, never, never to disparage the company, else it result in a fatal error score for the Quality Team, a client side escalation, or worse—an unceremonious firing. 

3: They may come from a culture where the “form” of apology is considered enough or the way the apology is said (the medium) is the message itself (the message)

For example, when I worked with Filipino trainees, their apology method was a sharp, high- pitched scream  of “AY!” followed by a rapid- fire trilogy of sing- song apologies. Needless to say, this sounded less- than- sincere to our average American customer.  They also tended to have flat, non-inflected voices, which wasn’t an issue in their native tongue, but when it came to issuing a warm, sincere apology, it became an impediment.

 For our Indian trainees, the natural rolling, sing- song tonality of their voices tended to make apologies sound almost like mockery or a huffy- high- school-er’s- caught- with- contraband “Sorrrr-rrrry!” Not great for Net Promoter Scores. 

4: They are intimidated by the customer’s outrage and scared, and just want to move forward to the solution

In many cultures, an angry outburst is soonest dealt with by pretending it never happened at all. This is something that doesn’t go over very well in the US either.

How can we help them? 

1: Create training materials that address the steps to “putting yourselves in the customers’ shoes” (rather than just directing your reps to do so). 

Also create materials that outline the common reasons for ire that come up with your account and LOB over and over, and explain why the customer might be angry.

For example, if your callers are complaining about a TV football game blackout, tie this to local sports and events, and use analogies and examples from local daily life. 

2: Explain the difference between apology and regret and when to use them. 

Short version:

·         Agent or company makes a mistake: apology.

·         Unfortunate situation that’s not the agent or company’s fault: regret.

This is where an “I’m so sorry that happened” or other “soft” apologies or empathy statements come in. “Gosh, that sounds rough. I’m sorry to hear that.”

3: Give your agents a detailed “map” of what an American- flavor sincere apology sounds like. 

Include wording, tone, emphasis, and timing!

For your reference, I’ve included an example of a quick breakdown:

• Admitting wrongdoing or mistake without excuse
•   Showing the other party that you understand exactly what was done wrong
• Acknowledging the extent of the damage and how it affected the other party
•    Making it right/ Planning to avoid it in the future

4: Help your scared reps become more confident with product and resolution training and remind them: 

How to handle Angry Customers:

What do they want?

1: To be heard, and acknowledged sincerely.

“I hear you. That sounds rough.”

2: To feel understood beyond the surface level.

“I know you were looking forward to using your new computer today. That’s really a let- down that it didn’t arrive.”

3: To hear a genuine apology.

“I’m so sorry we overcharged you. That’s our mistake and it never should have happened. I’ve refunded your money and I’ve changed your account so that should never happen again.” 

4: To have a mutually agreeable resolution.

“Okay, although we weren’t able to honor your coupon today, I’ve used the promo code to give you a similar deal.”

Now, go forth and remember that happy customers means you DO have to say you’re sorry.

Your email advisories and updates are awful. And they’re being ignored.

Your email advisories and updates are awful.  And they’re being ignored.

 Here’s what you can do about it.

Why do they stink so bad?

1: They’re getting lost in the clutter. Labeling them urgent, typing them in all caps in red ink, and adding the smiley with the string around his finger is not helping. 

Your reps see dozens --or more!-- of these per week- everything from HR job openings, Operational Announcements about the new VP of Operations over in the Bulgaria site, specific reminders from Team Leads about contests, to actual urgent reminders forwarded from the client that could cost them their jobs.

How are they supposed to weed out the gold from the dross?

2: You are caring too much or too little about the layout, formatting, and illustrations. The content is what’s important, and the design needs to catch the eye and engage the viewer, but if the content is deadly dull, all the great design in the world won’t fix it. 

On the flip side, sometimes your design is busy, overdone, and generally awful, distracting from the content. Some illustrations are also so clichéd that they scream “I’m a generic, boring, easily ignored email. Delete me.” 

3: You’re speaking business-ese. "This is just the kind of synergistic, customer-centric, upsell-driven, out-of-the-box, customizable, strategically tactical, best-of-breed thought leadership that will help our clients track to true north. Let's fly this up the flagpole and see where the pushback is." (From: Brian Fugere et al, “Why Business People speak like Idiots: A Bullfighter’s Guide”).  

Sounding like the proverbial “Pointy Haired Boss” is going to guarantee a delete after (at most) a quick once- over. This applies doubly if you’re sending messages to reps who speak English as a Second Language. 

4: You used a PDF and it’s blurry or otherwise looks like hell. I can understand (sort of) why you chose to use a PDF--- many internal memos contain trade secrets or other confidential information. But is there a reason why we can barely read the terribly boring memo? 

5: You sent it out and just hoped for the best. There was no survey, quiz, code to capture, follow- up, or spot check process. Hey, they know they’re supposed to be reading these things, right? 

6: You used your Blackberry to send urgent information and upon first glance, it looks like just another message.  Blackberry emails generally look very plain, often just black text on a white background—they sometimes even look like the “error” messages that Outlook sends- they use the same font and layout. Try to avoid this. 

7: You used email at all. Email has its place- it allows you to customize your recipients list, for one thing, among other advantages. More and more, however, we’re hearing “I don’t really read my emails.” I’ve personally seen many busy people simply glance once at emails before deleting them. Uploading your advisories onto a SharePoint or Website is a much better idea. 

Okay, so now what, smarty-pants?

If you choose email:

1: Make sure your subject line is NOT crappy: “URGENT! ADVISORY # 2479: NEW KU ROUTERS INSTALL PROCEDURES EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY!” is a flop. 

Subject lines should be punchy, direct, and attention getting. Instead perhaps try “Trouble explaining the new KU install? Help inside!” or “It’s here! All about the new KU routers inside!” 

2: Your design should be balanced between form and function. With so much visual “noise” out there, it should be eye catching and rewarding to look at and read, without taxing your design staff to their limits for a one- time project that will usually only get read once or twice.

Here are some online resources for basics in design

http://justcreative.com/2008/06/13/how-to-design-learn-the-basics/

Beautifully designed sites for inspiration

http://thedesignfiles.net/

http://www.designsponge.com/

 It would save time to design a template that looks great, with a space for updated artwork. Develop a “portfolio” of great artwork and simply select a terrific shot (perhaps only tangentially related to the subject, rather than on- the- nose) and plug it in. 

Below you can see an example of a template with a “click to add picture” spot. 

 And with a great picture and some sample text

3: Clearly articulate the WIFM: “Hey, team-- Have your customers been asking you about the new phone address book? / Have you been having trouble explaining the new billing cycle? ” (Etc).

Explain how this update should be used going forward, gently hint at any negative consequences (without using clichés like “Effective Immediately!” or the like), and stress the benefits of application for your team. 

 

4: Keep the advisories to a minimum. Don’t be the boy who cried “Urgent”. 

5: Include a call to action to show they’ve read it. A code that’s in a changing spot for each email. A quick quiz, a read-receipt, a prize for the first person who screen caps and emails it back to you…something! Having your reps physically do something, even if it’s just clicking a link, will help cement the information in their minds. Make sure that the information is applied, not just blasted out to an overwhelmed audience. 

Example

Enlarged and broken into two parts, then “glued” back together for easy reading.

Subject Line:

If you use SharePoint, Box, or other online shared resources sites. 

•  Update at a set time every day or week
•    Send out a link with a thumbnail—don’t rely on reps to just amble over to Box and check out the new content all by themselves. This email should follow the rules above.
•   Keep it scrupulously updated- weed out older versions and outdated materials daily or weekly at the most
•   Train all newbies on best practices in checking the shared resource daily—make it a habit from Day 1

Follow these tips to keep your updates and advisories fresh, relevant, and above all, READ!

Rebel Yell--- Throw those customer profiling materials out the window!

 Why you should rethink the way you teach customer service.

First things first…

What is a profiling- based customer response program?

Almost every customer service training program has a section (usually outright named “Customer Profiling”) that follows the stations of the profiling cross:

1: Lists the type of customers you’ll encounter (usually broken up into “Happy”/ “Irate”/ “Newbie”/ “Scared/ Anxious”)

 

2: Describes the common characteristics of these customer types—these are illustrated with either a smiley

or the dreaded “White Gumby” 

(white Gumby really gets around, by the way. I’ve seen him? (her?) On almost every awful PowerPoint Presentation in the last 5 years.)

3: Explains what these customers may be feeling or what may have led them to become this type 

4: Gives a few basic hints or tips on how to “manage” or “handle” that type of customer—usually very obvious stuff: “Just hear them out. Then acknowledge their concern and provide empathy.”

Most training designers and managers that propose and support “profiling” programs do it from the desire to make things more consistent, reliable, and streamlined. They tend to believe that most workers just want a solid, reliable system they can click into place and use over and over to “handle” the most irritating, overwrought, aggressive customers, or the most clueless, befuddled callers.

 Dovetail these beliefs with an operational viewpoint on bottom line (what’s the quickest, cheapest, and most effective way we can raise our customers’ satisfaction?), and a(nother) profiling program is born. 

With many companies expanding their footprint to more and more countries, it is important that your training program be scalable, and many training executives believe that individualized responses are anything but. 

All of this is understandable. 

So why is customer service STILL so poor in so many outsourced call centers despite these foolproof, airtight profiling programs? 

Where’s the miss? 

The flaws of profiling based customer service training:

1: Failure to adapt to huge social changes in the last 10 years.

With the technology customers use every day (cell phones, tablets, social media, the internet, television, even call centers!) becoming more and more adaptable, an inflexible, limited “one size fits all” customer approach is unappealing to most people. Think about it—your website lets the customer log in 24-7 from any device, allows them to create an account, log in and find answers, talk to their peers on forums, download documents, post reviews and comments, and customize their homepage.

Why doesn’t this extend to your handling customers over the phone or chat/ email? Why are you teaching your trainees to use the same stuffy “I’m sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you” with both a seriously angry customer and someone who likes to playfully kvetch to build rapport? 

2: It actually decreases empathy, rapport, and engagement with the customer.

We trainers know that one of the most difficult habits to break with our trainees and reps is “key word listening”—or what happens during the following exchange:

CU: “I got the kit; I’m just waiting for my grandson to get the radio transmitter off the dish.”

CSR: “Uh sir, were you informed that we will be sending you a kit to mail us back the equipment?”

 

Key word listening is pretty much what profiling- based training teaches. It teaches reps to listen for key words/ tone/ usage/ para-verbal noises (sighing, huffing, um’s and uh’s) and apply those to the profile matrix, looking for a match, and then applying the “prescribed” phrases.

But…different people use language differently—that’s one of the things that makes English so delightful for us English Majors and such a bear for non-native speakers.

How do you list all the possible ways a customer could try to build rapport? Show anxiousness? Show defeat and disgust with the company and its policies? Show their playful side by using “hot damn!”? (Robot hears curse word. Robot apologizes.) 

Consider the following example:

CU: “I’m all about the PDF, hee hee” (customer is trying to build rapport as she describes her software requirements)

CSR: [silence, keys typing]

Compare with this:

Customer: “So, what can we do about this? If I pay all $200 today, I can’t buy food this month.”

Employee: “Oh, I understand girl; I’m right there with you. Hang on a second… let me see what we can do.”

(Submitted by a customer, from the website http://notalwaysworking.com/)

3: It won’t fix the root cause issues that led to misapplied solutions anyway.

 

Cultural differences, language misunderstandings, even personality issues can all affect the way your representatives and trainees handle customers once they get onto the phones or onto the chat tool.  Using just written words on a PowerPoint slide to suggest how to handle customers may result in misinterpretations and misunderstandings.

We all have different ideas about what “explain things calmly” (or other proscribed scripts to “handle” customer types) means—to some that means with a flat affect and no emotion, to others that same thing might mean “be a broken record until the customer accepts your statements.”

Telling people (with no reinforcement, discover, or “aha” moments) that they “should” do A when faced with B rarely works. Come to think of it, does it ever work? 

4: It insults the intelligence and work ethic of your trainees.

 

I really, really believe in setting a bar of achievement that your employees will rise to, not creating a “fool-proof” system that “even a monkey could do.”

I won’t name names, but pretty much everyone I’ve worked with at the executive level has absolutely zero confidence in the abilities of the front level employees to make any kind of independent decisions. Yes, I can absolutely see why it’s scary to let bubble- gum- popping, ADHD, 3- months- and- I’m- bouncing- to- another- center- front liners make decisions that could cost you customers.

 But guess what? Customers revile being treated like a number, told that the rep can’t do anything, being reminded of “the policy” and listening to scripts more than they hate high prices, broken URLs, or shoddy products. 

You’re already losing customers with your ham- handed treatment of them as “irate” or “confused” (or as one EQ- challenged boss once put it “You got 4 types, okay? Lazies, crazies, daises, and hazies.”)—no one likes to be a number, a “type” or a label. 

Here’s some ire directed at a major telecom company for its use of scripted lines:

…. “So after 30 minutes of painful scripting they tell me it's a line problem.  Well duh!”...

Now of course if I were living in some kind of call center Utopia where agents had uniformly great judgment, there were enough supervisors to go around, no other departments ever got it wrong, and the product itself never caused the majority of the complaints, it would make total sense to give the front liners the directive to “use your best judgment” when dealing with irate, at- the- end- of- their- rope, crazy customers. 

But I live in the real world. 

So how do you address this? 

Create a customer service training program that does the following:

• Takes its core activities from real calls, real customer verbatim statements, real situations you’ve encountered, and real tools.
•  Encourages, through training, practice and coaching, the representatives’ own good judgments and actions and corrects the flawed or incorrect judgments and actions.
• Uses multiple ways to expose representatives to “the customer”—customer service review websites, role playing, listening to call recordings, games….anything but sitting through a theoretical lecture on “The Irate Customer and how to handle them.”

In short, training should be about teaching your reps to bring out and practice their own strengths in dealing with each customer as an individual, not a type.

None of us likes being a number, a statistic, or a “unit”, so why are we training our reps to treat our customers that way? Join the revolution and start thinking about customer service in a whole new way!

Zero Hour: Survival Kit for your first few days as a noob

Tip: Bring treats for your coworkers...never hurts!

Day 01: Marshaling your resources

Humans

Your people:

People who’ve been in the company and in your line of work are your first, and most likely easiest, resource. It just makes sense to make a list of your top questions (who is our department HR rep? Who is in charge of tech for my training rooms? Who makes the schedule for the training rooms? Etc) and politely request a meeting with one or two of your friendliest colleagues to get answers. 

If your coworkers are also new (I was hired in a batch of 4 people, all of whom were just as new as I was-- it can happen!), you can reach out to “sibling” departments—for example, if you work in Training, perhaps you have a Point of Contact (POC) in Operations, Quality, or Launch. If you are deployed to the Quality team, perhaps there’s a Communications team under the same umbrella group. 

One of the smartest things I did when coming on board as a Communications Expert was getting to know the Training Team personally, taking the time to develop relationships with them, and keeping in touch. Your “sibling” departments, coworkers, and immediate supervisors can all be valuable resources and touchstones. 

Admin, HR, Facilities, Travel, and Security:

Depending on your office, you may have one college student who manages the schedule, or you may have entire interlinked departments for different functions. Of course I don’t need to tell you to be as nice as pie to these people, right? Thought so! But I do need to remind you that you should not be too nervous or scared to take a moment to shake hands, take note of names, and perhaps even ask for a business card, just in case you need it down the line. 

Robots

Your timekeeping, HR, help-desk ticketing system, company homepage and like resources are key in keeping your working life running smoothly. Usually you’ll have a very quick run- through with a busy staffer whose job it is to get you in and out as fast as possible.

Take notes and ask as many questions as you can think of—why are we inputting minutes in military time? Why am I assigned that code? What is our department code? What happens if…..

It also helps to get the name, phone extension, and email of the person who walked you through the applications, so when (not if!) you find yourself with problems and questions, you can get in touch with the right help fast. 

Machines

Copy machine, phone, printer….it pays to know the name (each computer and printer has it's own "name" and you better believe that's the first thing the help line will ask you when you call. "What's the name of the computer you're calling about?" You don't want be stuck guessing "uh, Fred?"), locations, quirks, and POC’s for these items. Don’t wait until it’s broken and the client is about to get off the elevator on your floor for that big presentation to try to locate the POC/ tech guru—you’ll save yourself a lot of headache and heartache if you take a few moments and get the inside dish on the machines you use every day. 

Tools

General:

Originally for college students, but you can make use of these tools for training, coaching, and analysis:

http://www.associatesdegree.com/2009/07/27/50-useful-mind-mapping-tools-for-college-students/

Microsoft Office:

Without going into a lot of detail (we’ll save that for later posts), it pays off tremendously to take a few moments and learn how to use your Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, and Word to the maximum effect.

Here’s a few links to help you manage your Office Applications best:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/

http://www.bitbetter.com/powertips.htm

http://excel.tips.net/

http://www.exceltip.com/

http://word.tips.net/

Communications Software (such as Skype, Net Meeting, Meet-me, etc):

Day 1 at my current job saw me trying to melt into the background while my manager and her right hand man scrambled to make Web Ex screen- sharing- function work, screaming at each other, banging desks and phones, and generally going nuts. Not pretty.

Not only that, but they also had to desperately try to wrench a user name and password for a conference call bridge out of a reluctant, overburdened office mate who was otherwise engaged in trying to rescue his crashed hard drive. For his Apple i Mac, where he had hundreds of hours of video content saved. It was total chaos.

It would have helped to be familiar with the basics of the software in question.

Internet Browser/ Firewall :

I often conduct research on the web for my job, and it helps tremendously to know which browser you’re using (why isn’t this awesome typing practice application coming up? Is it my browser, my firewall, the page itself?) so that you can learn to avoid pages you know won’t load, will be blocked, or will only half- work. 

Having a plan is key, but knowing your own resources and how to use them is even more critical to success. Now go get 'em, tiger!