One year old!

Greatest hits!

In honor of my one-year anniversary, I’d like to share some of my favorite posts with you:

• Why you should hire "hackers" to improve your NPS
• Taking your email advisories from zero to hero
• My most popular entry ever! 5 types of reps you need on your team
• What is "service heart" and why do you need it?
• Discover BranchTrack!

Top 10 reasons your employees are failing at customer service

Top 10 reasons your employees are providing poor customer services

1: They don’t know how to fix the issue

                This is the number 1 reason issues don’t get fixed. Lack of training, constantly changing policies and offers, consistent turnover that means newbies on the floor every 10 days…and so on.

2: They don’t care about fixing the issue

                It may surprise you (it did me!) to learn that many people work for reasons unrelated to “I want to do a good job and achieve something”. Pocket money, meeting romantic partners, having fun, making friends, or just getting a line on a resume may all be the reason Tootums is more interested in taking long breaks than helping your customers.

3: They aren't empowered to fix the issue

                This really grinds my gears. The company breaths down the vendors’ necks to find out why their NPS score is so low…only to find out that there’s a mandatory 7 minute AHT, after which a manager *must* get on the line, no matter how the call is going. (True story!).

4: They are overwhelmed or intimidated by the customer

                Some customers come on the line like a charging rhino- swearing, yelling, threats, huffing and puffing. For many of your reps, who might be 18 year old-s at their first post school job, this can be very upsetting and scary.

5: They have decided that arguing with the customer is more satisfying than fixing the issue

                This is admittedly rare, but for about 5% of reps (usually those in collections, tech support, or sales), they seem to enjoy arguing with the customer more than fixing the problem. Maybe because it’s a change in their boring daily routine?

6: The client company policy is forcing their hand

                Mandatory Early Termination Fees. Low, low, low bandwidth caps. A limit to refunds. A Byzantine return policy. Why, MegaCorp, why?

7: The vendor company (you!) policy is forcing their hand

                Sometimes the policy of the company that handles the outsourcing is at fault. When you count seconds as “over break”, you tend to alienate your labor force.

8: They are distracted by personal issues

                Breakups, family problems, money issues…you know the drill.

9: They literally don’t have the ability

                Also rare, but sometimes a rep is just…wrong for the job. They’re shy, easily confused, not verbally inclined, or just…not over-blessed with brains.

10: The customer is in the wrong or the issue is un-fixable             

                We've all been there. Sometimes the situation doesn't require customer service, it requires triage and patience. And a coffee break. 

Are you getting the most out of your up-sell efforts? How to up-grade the up-sell!

While I have you on the phone….A few quick upgrades to help your reps up-sell.

The temperature of the phone call should be warm, not hot.

It seems to be just common sense that your reps shouldn’t be trying to sell upgrades to irate customers, especially those whose issue did not get resolved. However, some companies, for reasons lost to time, have policies in place that require an up-sell attempt on every phone call. If this is the case, we’ll give you a few tips to handle that.

If your reps are allowed to make a judgment call as to who they offer up-sold products to, advise them to offer to neutral customers, customers whose issue was resolved during the call, or happy customers.

The up-sell should match a stated or implied need.

These needs could be in the form of a comment about the product, issues the customer is trying to resolve unrelated to the product (for example, the fact that the cable company won’t string cable to their location could be an opening to up-sell a satellite TV package), or connections you build with the customer (for example, you and the customer commiserate over high interest rates on your car note. Wouldn’t it be nice to get an annotated credit report every month showing you any risk areas?)

The up-sell should (ideally) seem like a friend offering advice or suggestions.

“You know what, Mr. Smith? While I have you on the line, I’d like to let you know about our MaxBuster 2000. You mentioned at the start of this call that rats have chewed through your phone line and you’ve had to call the exterminator 3 times this year. We actually have a subsidiary line of pest control products, and for a small extra charge we’ll have one of our Ratz-no-more professionals come to your house and deploy the product. No muss, no fuss! So, shall we get that set up for you today?”

The up-sell should be part of the *entire* phone call, not Frankenstein-ed on at the very end.

Have your reps build rapport, take note of stated and implied needs, and maybe even hint or allude to the up-sell product before the big end of chat alter call. One of the biggest challenges to overcome with customers is that the up-sell seems so different in tone and delivery than the rest of the call. Your reps are setting themselves up for a “no” when they switch from light and friendly “service consultants” to bitter robots determined to get through the “no” and onto the next failure. Make sure that the set-up moments are sprinkled evenly through the call.

What if your client requires an up-sell attempt on every phone call? (Or has other shot-in-the-foot restrictions?)

If it’s possible, write the reps a script that alludes to this. “Before I finish up today, we’re offering all of our customers our new MegaTornado Insurance Coverage. I know things didn’t go quite as planned on our call, but since this is a great deal, I wanted to make sure you had a chance to take advantage of it.”

Acknowledge that the call wasn’t ideal, that “all” of the customers are getting the offer, and that you’re offering them a deal/value/exciting product. Explain in a few words why you’re making the offer, perhaps even saying something like “Our company wants to ensure all of our customers get a chance to take advantage of this one time opportunity to get 2 Exercise Chairs for the price of 1. Is that something you might be interested in?”

With these few tips, your reps could be well on their way to more effective up-selling in no time.

Tutorial: PhraseHacking!

Many articles and tutorials offer lists of helpful phrases and magic words that can turn a call around. I say that’s only half the story. You need the recipe, not just the finished product. You need to know how to construct your own magic phrases—not just parrot the ones you found on in a listicle somewhere.

I’ve performed word-by word “autopsies” on some effective phrases I’ve used or heard used in my call center days, for your own coroner’s report!

The four phrases:

“Hi, I hope you can help me.”

“Okay, we are at $87.52 today.”

“So, I see by the notes that you’re considering closing out the account today.”

“Oh, I wish I didn’t have to say that it’s the case, but unfortunately, that’s what we’re looking at right now.”

 1.       For collections: (For requesting contact information from a third party)

“Hi, I hope you can help me.”

This phrase was extremely effective. Why?

1.       “Hi” (Informal greeting, sets a friendly tone)

2.       “I hope” (no one wants to dash your hopes)

3.       “you can help me” (a request for help is actually a more powerful psychological bonding tool than doing a favor, studies show. Use this to “bond” your listener to you.)

Overall, this phrase gives your listener a direction, and something to do, to get you off the phone graciously—i.e., give you the contact information. It also puts you in this position (see below article), ‘the powerful supplicant’.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/08/the_kindly_brontosaurus_the_amazing_prehistoric_posture_that_will_get_you.html

Frankenstein’s monster: making a similar sentence using the knowledge you gained from your autopsy

“Hello there¹, I’m hoping you might be able to² help me out here³.”

2.       For retail or other sales: (Giving tally)

“Okay, we are at $87.52 today.”

1.       “Okay” (casual usage, indicates wrap- up of job duties, sounds brisk yet friendly)

2.       “we” (magic word cubed. “We” creates a sense of teamwork, unity, and the subtle indication that you’ve been working with the customer this whole time.)

3.       “are at” (Some people don’t like roundabout ways of referring to dollar amounts- those numbers with no currency indicator you see on menus, or the like. I personally think it’s situational. When you’re the IRS, you don’t say “We’re at $15,528.53 today”. There are times to be exact, and there are times to draw the veil of subtly over what you’re doing. Shopping for pleasure is one of those times to blur the lines of harsh reality as much as possible.

4.       “today.” (You’ll be back! Or conversely “Hey, it’s just one day, tomorrow you can go on a budget! But YOLO!”)

There is something offhand, casual, and even at bit international about this phrase. Heard it at the H&M in Denver Pavilions shopping center and was so struck with it I decided to write this article.

Frankenstein’s monster: making a similar sentence using the knowledge you gained from your autopsy

“Alright¹, we’re² looking at³ 57.92 for you this time⁴.”

3.       For retention: (Upon opening up the case)

“So, I see by the notes [or “my other customer service agent told me” if you have a retention queue that is separate] that you’re considering closing out the account today.”

1.       “So” (this is the opening shot of a longer conversation, inviting explanations, which means you can give counteroffers.)

2.       “I see by the notes” (I pay attention and I care)

3.       “you’re considering” (You haven’t done it yet, but I am deferential to your wants)

4.       “closing out” (or some other delicate euphemism like “changing the status of”/ ‘discontinuing”)

5.       “today” (What happened in the recent past that dramatically changed your service so that TODAY you called us? Oh my gosh!)

I had to train my retention reps out of saying “You want to terminate your account, is that correct?” (So many things wrong with that, I don’t even know where to start!)

Frankenstein’s monster: making a similar sentence using the knowledge you gained from your autopsy:

 So¹, I can see that² you’re thinking about³ discontinuing⁴ your services with us today⁵.”

 4.       For all customer support bad-news situations:

“Oh, I wish I didn’t have to say that it’s the case, but unfortunately, that’s what we’re looking at right now.”

1.       “Oh” (universal signal for regret)

2.       “I wish” (further signaling that you care, and you regret having to give bad news)

3.       “have to say it’s the case” (firm yet polite way of setting expectations and boundaries)

4.       “unfortunately” (signally that you understand the frustrations/situation of the customer

5.       “that’s what we’re looking at” (I particularly like “what we’re looking at”- it orients the “team” to the mindset of problem solving and looking forward to solutions, rather than digging in and arguing about the policy or situation)

6.       “right now” (this signals that the situation is not ‘set in stone’, and the customer doesn’t have to contact the BBB or the Attorney General to file a complaint, things might change in the future)

Frankenstein’s monster: making a similar sentence using the knowledge you gained from your autopsy:

“Oh, gosh, what a tough situation¹. I wish I didn’t have to tell you this², but⁴ where we are5 right now⁶ is…”

I heard this phrase from a recorded call from India. I was tasked to find out why certain Indian reps were getting such high scores from our customers (answer: partly their Anglo-Indian accent, which sounded extremely high class and credible, partly their delivery—sweet and helpful.)

Well, you heard the medical examiner! Now you know why these types of phrases are so effective. Go forth and use your knowledge!

The biggest mistake your agents are making in bill explanation: the Memento problem.

For almost all major companies who outsource customer service, “Bill explanation” in one form or another is a top call driver to their centers. (For those that just want to know where Memento comes into play, see #4).

How do you get this pivotal service right?

1.       Listen very carefully to the customer and ask questions

There are generally only a few reasons the customer needs their bill explained: unexpected charge, or first bill, or new customer on an existing account (i.e., hubby calls in to make a payment when it’s usually wife’s job, or vice versa). Your reps will answer the same questions over and over. For most bills, I would say about 75%, a standard scripted explanation will be sufficient.

However, the remaining 25% will age you before your time and make you face your own mortality, because they are so challenging to understand, let alone script.

This is why it’s key to listen to all the information coming from the customer, ask targeted questions (list below) and  pay attention to what the customer says at all stages of the game.

 Generally, customers are the worst source of information about their own account—I mean, they’re calling you for information, right? If they knew, they wouldn’t be on the phone with you! But in the case of the double bill, the missing bill, or the bill that keeps coming in the wrong name, they usually have valuable information.

-        Targeted questions to ask (nicely!!!)

o   Have you had this issue before? If so, and if it was resolved, what was the resolution?

o   When did you first notice this issue?

o   What is the outcome that you would like to see here? (This may help with people who rant, ask questions, rant, go on a tangent, and then rant some more.)

o   Before I explain this, would you like me to refer you to our Self Help page (or other resources they could use to resolve the issues alone)?

 

2.       Use active listening to paraphrase the concern before commencing with the explanation

With outsourced agents who speak English as a second language, it’s a fact that nuances can be missed. With billing questions, especially tangled events like a promise for a % off that never happened, it’s very important to double check with the customer before “solving” the issue.

-        Paraphrase1: “So, you’re seeing a charge for $41.95 over and above your normal charge of $21.99, and you’re wondering what happened there?”

-        Paraphrase after catching the miss from paraphrase 1: “Oh, your entire bill is $41.95. Okay, so there’s an additional $19.96 that we need to find somewhere.”

 

3.       Match the speed, pacing, and comprehension level of your customer

I’m sure I don’t need to explain this advice in detail, but let me fill it out a bit by suggesting how you can determine the comprehension level of your customer.

-        Vocabulary. One of the easiest ways to determine the “reading level” of your customer- do they use industry jargon (such as “billing cycle”)? Do they seem familiar with billing practices at all? (It happens that we do get callers who’ve never seen an e-bill or even a checkbook!)

-        Question frequency- are they asking a lot of questions or are they just giving you verbal nods? A lot of questions usually means they aren’t following your level of conversation and it’s time to take it down a notch.

-        Type of question- pointed or targeted, or “huh? What?”

-        Verbalizations other than full words. “Uh, eh, oooh, mmm” etc. Listen to these to tell if the customer is understanding you or is lost

-        Total silence. You’ve usually lost them.

-        The structure of their explanation upon calling:

o   Example A (low structure): “Uh, yeah, um, about my bill? Okay, what happened is, I signed up for $29.99. And that was like, last year, or whatever. And now I’m seeing, I dunno, about $60.00 or something! So, uh, yeah.”

o   Example B (high structure): “Hi, Lorinda, you can help me by telling me what this charge is in the amount of $61.97 on my bill of June 1. My account number is…”

 

4.       Explain it as if you were telling a story: beginning, middle& end.

This is the biggest single mistake agents make: they start with the issue, not with the origin of the issue. Factoring in challenges with grammar and sometimes cultural expectations (“Don’t give bad or upsetting news directly, it’s better to talk around the issue and let the listener draw their own conclusions.”) and you have a vague, muddled, hard-to-understand bill explanation.

Most agents start with “Okay, so if we take 295 and minus out this month’s bill for 49.95, we have 250 dollars, right? So then we go back to August, and we see that there is a charge for 25.99, right? Okay, well that is 10% of 250 dollars.” WHERE DID THE 250 come from???

It is VERY HARD to think backwards for most people. It’s like watching the film Memento. Memento is a really cool film, but its limited audience and cult status are in place for a reason: it’s a brain buster.

Don’t try to challenge the intellect of your customers by making them think in reverse. Tell the story in the order that it happened, *starting with the origin of the issue*.

-        The steps in telling your bill story:

o   The precipitating event- the domino effect-the current state:

 “Okay, back on July 7, we were expecting to receive your old cable box. That was the end of the 30 day cable box receipt grace period. Since we did not receive the old cable box, a charge for 259.00 was generated. (The precipitating event) This charge then appeared on your August bill. Since you mentioned that you sent in a check from your vacation home for the usual amount of your bill, the additional 259.00 did not get paid in that cycle, leading to a finance charge of 10%, of 25.99. (The domino effect) So your September bill is now…” (The current state).

 

5.       Follow up with a test close and actually answer any concerns that you receive

After you’ve explained the source of the questioned items on the bill, (or solved whatever other concerns they may have), make sure that you ask “Is there anything else we could help you with today?” Sometimes customers don’t want to interrupt a very clearly earnest and trying very hard agent, but they couldn’t capture the explanation. This is their chance to ask again, or ask for more information. It’s also your last chance to have First Call Resolution, or to ensure that they won’t call back a few hours later on the same issue, because you didn’t really explain it well the first time.

6.       Guide them to resources where they can find answers on their own or through a community if they would like

Personally, I would suggest doing this after a good, solid “solve” and really at no other time—not before, not after a half assed solve, and certainly not after a no-solve! (Unless company mandates it, in which case….all I can do is shake my head). After a solid solve has been achieved, the customer is in the glow of happiness—you fixed their problem!

Now is the time to offer the vaunted value- add! Now is the time to ask them to “join the conversation” at #cablebillsmakemetingleinside. Now is the time to gently ease that baby bird of a customer out of the nest of the call center and into the welcoming arms of the community! Fly, baby customer! Fly!

3 crazy things customers think, and how to set them straight

Ring the bell! School’s back in! Educating your “confused” customer the right way.

Isn't CustomerWorld just lovely? Don't you want to live there too?

Source: weheartit.com

 

Your customers live in a magical, bluebell-sprinkled world called “CustomerLand”. The Internet is free, or 9.99. Money grows on trees, their word is law, and everything written in promotional brochures about customer-centric focus is literally true. HA HA! Poor customers.

They have some ideas that, shall we say, are hindering you in providing them with the best service. What are those common beliefs and how can we educate our customers without angering them or talking down to them, and making sure they listen and understand?

Formula for success:

1: Sympathize with the belief, no matter how nutty or misguided.

2: Taking your cue from clues the customer has given you, choose your education approach.

3: Educate the customer and if applicable, offer them choices or a compromise to help ease the transition from CustomerLand to the Real World.

Belief 1: The Internet is a natural resource like air or water.

 Since I can get it “free” at places like hotel lobbies, airports, and the library, why should I pay your company anything more than the barest minimum for an internet connection?

The Reality: Where to start? Free wifi is a “hidden cost” that you “pay” for with the cost of your coffee or your plane ticket. Some free wifi comes from your tax dollars, your retail taxes, school taxes, etc.

The Internet is never free, but wily businesses make it look ‘free’. If you want high quality, reliable internet connection for your home, you’re going to get what you pay for, just like most everything else in life.

How to explain this to your customers without a blow up:

Choice 1: Just one steelworker blue collar person to another

“I know, it’s crazy, right? Everything seems like it costs so much more nowadays. But you know what, when you pay for quality, you get quality. You get [whatever features and benefits they are paying for: warranty, truck rolls, 24- hour- access to help, etc]. So I know it’s a bit of a pinch, but you’ll have peace of mind knowing you’re getting a quality product.

Choice 2: Tour guide dishing on state secrets

“I know it seems a little high, but the thing is, it’s all about what the market will bear. It seems like some people are willing to pay pretty steep prices for unlimited data, so that’s where the prices are set right now.”

Belief 2: If only we could go back to the “good old days” when there was no outsourcing. If customer service reps were all “Americans”, we wouldn’t have any service issues.

The Reality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EokF_4MGjqI. This USA DMV employee sharpens pencils while a room full of people wait for her to call their number. One of many, many videos about American employees doin’ it wrong.  Point is, bad service is not limited to, nor does it originate in, outsourced call centers.

How to explain this to your customers without a blow up:

Choice 1: The Warren Buffet

“I know some call centers haven’t given our customers the service we’d like. But outsourcing some of our most common calls allows us to keep our prices low for everyone. If we sourced all of our work onshore, you’d be looking at much, much higher costs.”

Choice 2: The Mother Teresa

“I know, it’s hard to deal with outsourced centers sometimes. But you know, we’re really doing a wonderful thing giving people a job and a leg up out of poverty with these call center jobs. Sometimes we just have to look at the big picture and help our neighbors.”

Belief 3: Yes I did! (send that check, rebate form, item back to the warehouse)

This is a hard one. It’s very hard to argue something in the negative. You can’t “prove” that you don’t have something. However, the upside is, rarely can they prove they actually did do what they most likely didn’t do.

Reality: No they didn’t. (Or you have no record of it, which is pretty much the same thing).

How to explain this to your customers without a blow up:

Choice 1: That was then, this is now.

“Gosh, I wonder what happened. Well, the bad news is we don’t have the item, and we don’t have a record of it. So, your choices are….”

Choice 2: Hate the game, not the player.

“You know what, I gotta tell you, I just hate these new computer systems. Things are getting lost, not logged in, you name it. There’s always a chance it’s a glitch in the system. But what we need to do for now is…”

Remember, the customer lives in a world where there is one red phone on your desk, and he’s the only person you’ll deal with today, or her call is the only one in queue. Don’t break their fragile butterfly dreams, just gently guide them back to earth.

 

 

Ignore your Customer: The 8 types of Voice-of-Customer responses you can safely toss.

What do irrelevant VOC survey comments look like? (And how do you handle them?)

Source: Zazzle.com

When I first came to my language and cultural coaching job, I was appalled at the comments I was seeing from customers. They were so angry! Listening to my first few calls, especially those that had  angry comments attached, I could see why they were so mad. But over time, I learned that not every comment has merit, or is even true! 

Here's the easiest to spot types:

(Let's say your call center is handling KableForAll, a mega-provider of Cable Services )

1: Response clearly refers to another company's product or service. 

Looks like:
 "Every time I call you clowns, it takes three hours to get through. And then you still can't take my order right. All I want is to get easy, correct phone service. How hard is that in this day and age?!"

2: Response is mostly or fully based on the fact of outsourcing itself.

 Looks like: 
 "If President Whatever had a good head on his shoulders, he would BRING JOBS BACK TO AMERICA!"

3: Response is upset about out- of- scope issues:

Looks like: 
"Look, if I pay for a one year warranty, I think it's not too much to ask for you all to extend the courtesy by at least 2 months!"

4: Response is unintelligible or garbled. 

Looks like:
"yea, whatevs. You guys sux. Haterrrssss!"

Medium- Easy to spot

5: Response is based on the quality or standards of the product, and not your services:

Looks like:
 "This throttling is not what I paid for! GIVE ME MY FULL CABLE AND GAMES!"

6: Response is a reaction to a chain of events your rep just happened to be the last person to handle:

Looks like:
 "I am cancelling my service because since July of 2007 I have NEVER received good service. Good day to you!"

7: Response is specific, but upon reviewing the call, in your professional opinion, the rep did not commit the errors you read about:

Looks like:
"The rep kept me on hold for 45 minutes!! Is that what you yahoos call service!!! And when he got on the phone I could barely understand him, his accent was so thick!"

Hardest level: 

 8: Response is specific, but does not hit the issue. However, there were issues on the call, just not what the customer called out.

Looks like: 
"How many times am I going to call these phone lines and get an INDIAN on the phone? I am so tired of hearing the same scripted CRAP over and and over." (Your reps are not Indian, and do not use scripts, but they had accent and delivery issues). 

How do you handle these?

Well, every call center has its own protocols, but usually your Quality Assurance Team has come up with tags that will clearly indicate that the response is not relevant to your scores, and why. 

It's also key to have calibrations, both with your teams and with your clients. Ensure that what they consider an out of scope response is also what you consider out of scope. Equally important is the "why" they agree to toss out a survey response-- make sure that when you're discounting responses it's for the same reasons as your clients'.

Ensure that you are not biased, as much as you can. As a trainer and a coach, I had soft spots for certain reps, favorites, and people I did not give any inch of excuses for. We all do it. Just make sure you're not dismissing a comment because you "know Jim is a great guy" or giving more weight to a nutzy comment because that "Misty kind of *is* a b----".

Make sure you read the comments, the Quality Reports, and the breakdowns of the tags every time they come out. Again, different call centers have different tools, and they can sometimes vary from account to account, but most call centers track all kinds of stats. Ensure that you as a trainer or a coach work with your operations team to get access to those tools and reports and for goodness sake, use them!

Finally, it's important to do lots of audits. I used to audit almost 100 calls a week, and I became very good at spotting good calls that the customer would  wind up giving a bad review to. Calls where the customer couldn't get what they wanted, they were just plain mean people, or they had an axe to grind with the system or the product. 

Remember: when evaluating criticism, first consider the source.

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!