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!

7 things you should NEVER accept as a customer---and how to eliminate them.

1: Paying a fee for being broke

                This is just so evil. Late fees above $50 dollars on rent. Bounced check fees resulting from “stacking”. Minimum balance charges. Interest rates that vary depending on your credit. These are the ways unethical companies make money. You shouldn't have to stand for it.

Your move(s): Work with a credit consular or money manager to get less broke, find less predatory companies to work with, publicize the nefarious practices of the Evil Ones, use a service like Manilla to track your bills and payments.

2: Impatient service providers rushing to the solution

                Everyone’s rushed and overworked, especially front line reps at a call center. But it’s their job to hear you out (within reason!)

Your move(s):Sympathy, with an iron edge. "I know you're eager to help me, but I actually need to explain my situation a little bit more before we move to the solution, okay? Thanks."

3: The blowback from the previous rude customer landing on you

                You’re not the a$$hole who just threw your organic coffee at your barista, right? So why are you the one trying to turn her frown upside down?

Your move(s): Sympathy, with a humorous edge. "Wow, that last guy was some piece of work, eh? Well, we're not all like that, I can tell you." If this doesn't work, try yoga breaths, remembering your first job, and just letting it go. 

4: Huge mergers with the potential to significantly lower your quality of life

                Why more people aren't in a froth about banks, cable companies, and tech companies taking over the earth is a mystery to me. It’s going to make your life really, really miserable when ComCast/Time Warner has the power to throttle content from other providers, yet…somehow it’s pushed through.

Your move(s): Short of slowly weaning yourself off cable and the internet over time, I honestly don't know. This is so scary, yet so real. Any ideas? 

5: The first (unreasonable) “no”

                Refunds, rebates, replacements---sometimes you need to push a *little*. 

Your move(s): Just do it calmly and politely, and use the “threat sandwich”. Compliment the product or service, threaten to take your business elsewhere, and then assure the rep that you’re positive something can be worked out…can’t it?

6: Purveyors or service providers who fail to hold up their end of the “bargain”--after you've invested your time or money with them (i.e. 24- hour plumbers not answering the phone after 9 PM to come back and repair the drip they missed the first time)

                You paid for a service or good, not a marker at a blackjack game. Reliable, honest, and consistent service shouldn't be a gamble.

Your move(s): Ask for a recompense for the miss, and failing that, get on Yelp or Twitter and detail your disappointment. 

7: Consistently poor service, performance, or longevity of the product

                One or two incidents in the lifetime of a relationship is no big deal. Monthly or weekly screw-ups, multiple disappointments from the same company, and Houston, we've got a problem. 

Your move(s): Time to change your provider or brand. If you're stuck with a dud product or service (contracts, cable company monopoly), try to work with the company and see if you can improve the problems. If that fails...channel your righteous rage into inventing an alternative. 

Use these 13 expert tips to improve YOUR teams' customer service performance

1: Track numbers

                Telling someone that they’ve improved by 5% since last week is more powerful than a simple “Good Job, keep it up.” Especially for teams with commissions or bonuses at play.

2: Single people out, but list as many names as you can in your reports and emails.

                Everyone likes to read their name. List the top ten, the best in different categories, the most improved, best newbie—don’t list everyone, but give people a reason to scan your email blasts and reports.

3: “Rip” scripts from the floor and distribute them to your team for use.

                When you hear a great phrase—“I wish I could tell you differently, but unfortunately, that’s the case”—a phrase I heard 3 years ago that I can still remember comes to mind—jot it down and use it!

4: Use pop culture

                Whatever your agents are talking about or enjoying on their breaks—from Candy Crush to Breaking Bad—try to incorporate elements of into your reports, emails, and notes.

5: Talk to your people every day

                Things on the production floor change every day. Attrition, personal dramas, updates and upgrades—your agents often know more than you about the rapidly changing face of C/X in a call center.

6: Know your tech

                Technical issues with tools can be the Moby Dick of your C/X scores and results. Know what tools are helping, which are hindering, and the work-around-s.

7: Understand what customer feedback should be ignored

                Be familiar with the issues of policy or product that cause customers to complain. These are generally unrelated to the quality of service being given. Don’t get caught up in giving a low quality or customer service score to an agent simply because the customer complained. Know why they complained.

8: Give your team the benefit of the doubt

                When you first hear some of the things agents say you’ll want to shake them. Over time, however, when you get to know your team, you’ll understand that most of the time they’re really doing their best—they just don’t have the skills or tools to do so. They’ll respond much better to your advice and coaching if you come from a place of generosity.

9: Customize training and feedback

                Use the agent’s name in your comments, track their progress, and give them tips based on their particular strengths and weaknesses. Avoid using empty slogans and ‘value statements’.

10: Offer tips and tricks every day

                Agents often get bombarded with updates from corporate and other emails. Keep a file of quick and easy tips to share every day to stay current and to avoid having your emails pushed to the bottom of the stack by a ton of “Organizational Announcements.”

11: Use SharePoint, Chatter, Yammer, or other enterprise social media

                The fun (sort of) of Facebook or other collaborative sites,  in a contained environment.

12: Use data to find your bell curve of performance

                Know your team. Who’s performing where? Who should you focus on? Who’s your priority?

13: Catch people doing it right

                This is one of the most powerful pieces of advice I was ever given. A thumbs up, a literal pat on the back, a piece of candy slipped onto a desk with a whispered “Great Job”, an extended break after a big sale or extra hard call—all these go a long way to getting the performance you want. Remember: what you focus on, you get more of. 

Blitzed! 5 top tips for offshore employees dealing with US Holiday season.

It's coming....something twinkly this way walks!

They're running on the fumes of a candy cane frappachino.  They're trying to talk over the shrieks of visiting nieces and nephews,  and juggling tape, scissors, catalogs, and ornaments with one hand while writing their Christmas letter with the other: this customer is fragile. Handle with care!

Here's a few tips to help them handle the madness.

1: Tailor your materials to the "high middle" level of rep awareness.

My previous company put out company- wide communiques about Christmas, New Years, and Thanksgiving (yes, they missed a few holidays, but hey, they tried!). They included background, traditions, and greetings, as well as fun trivia.

They were geared towards the "intermediate" level, which I think was the right choice. Most agents are familiar with the basic idea of US Holidays-- they may have seen music videos, movies, or read magazines and books with these holidays featured. Some countries either celebrate the same holiday or have a version of it, so this raises awareness as well. Don't bore your audience with basic stuff-- at the risk of having them ignore it!

2: Give your reps an idea of what the customer (probably) loves about the holiday.

For Thanksgiving, it's all about the food and the football game. For Christmas, it's all about the big family gathering, the "loot" and the lights. New Year's is all about a resolution that everyone knows you'll break. If you give your reps a few quick talking points and sound bites, they'll make a much stronger connection to your holiday-season callers than with a tepid "Happy Holidays".

3: Go beyond the warnings about stress to the reason that the stress is happening.

Explain the pressures of travel, the expectations that those [expletive deleted] commercials set, the stress of seeing family members that were otherwise avoided all year, and so on. Try to bridge these to common experiences in your reps' lives, if you can.

4: Anticipate and adjust your top call drivers, and create training around these.

Quality and Operations may have done this already, but it's up to you to make sure your reps are prepped for the onslaught of returns, lost packages, and frantic orders that they'll face, especially if they're seasonal ramp employees.

5: Create a  training package for each holiday, with top call drivers, information about the holiday, sound bites, etc.

If you're off duty, traveling, handling the 50- people- just- quit -crisis, or just otherwise engaged, it's a smart move to have a place where you employees can go to get the information they need about the holiday. SharePoint, Chatter, Yammer, or other Enterprise Social Media/LMS is a great place to store this stuff.

And don't forget the reason for the season... Sharing photos, foods, or stories with your reps can help them "get it" much quicker and bettter than any Power Point presentation, no matter how awesome the graphic are.

Now get out there and start spreading some holiday cheer!

These guys are good! Check out the Part II of the Buffer saga!

Socks remain blown off! These guys are so good.

 

I have already shared the very well written email I got from Buffer with you. Now for Part II, in which I evaluate their follow up email.
And class, I don’t even use Buffer! I signed up but quickly realized that I don’t cache enough content or have enough tweets to make it worthwhile…at this time. But you bet your bippy when I do I’ll not only use it but recommend it to friends!

The email:

Hi there,
I wanted to follow up with you after yesterday's hacking incident. For many of you this has seriously disrupted your weekend - I'm sorry we caused that awful experience. The Buffer team has been working around the clock and I'm glad to say we're back up and running. We have also spent all of today adding several security measures.
There's one key step to using Buffer again: You will have to reconnect all your Twitter accounts, even if you've already done so. Go to the Buffer web dashboard to reconnect.
Other important things for you to know:

·  Reconnecting won't work in mobile apps, all Twitter accounts will have to be reconnected on the web dashboard.

·  Your Facebook posting will have resumed normally, there is nothing you need to do.

·  Signing in with or connecting a new Twitter account in the iPhone app won't work until our new update is approved by Apple.

I want to apologize again and say that I'm incredibly sorry this has affected you and in many cases also your company. We've written a blog post with ongoing updates as we uncover the full details.

What is left for us right now is to complete our technical analysis and take further security measures. We will follow up with another update on this soon.
I want to invite you again to hit reply to this email or post a comment on our blog post. We will be sure to respond to you as fast as we can.

- Joel and the Buffer team

I’ll once again quickly detail the things the team has done right:

1: Writing a follow up email at all! This shows they are serious, they care, and they’ve taken the time to communicate with their customers.
 
2: Empathy with a specific understanding of what it may have cost the customer—time, convenience, trust in the company. Understanding what you have cost the customer is key in crafting a sincere, believable and effective apology.

3: concrete steps showing what you’re now doing differently, in this case “adding several security measures”

4: Using formatting to emphasize points- bolding, spacing and bullets are all used very well here

5: Again, the apology “sandwich”—apology, steps taken, apology. Good move.

6: What’s next/ what can the customer expect? After something goes wrong and you’ve fixed it, there is still a dangling thread that some companies miss- what’s next. It’s also smart to move the customer “past” the unfortunate event and to looking to the future. These guys are good!

7: Offers (with links!) to communicate. So many times I’ve searched in vain on a bill for a web address, phone number, or any way to get in touch with the behemoth company who’s issuing commands at me. It’s nice to see a sincere attempt to communicate.

 

All around good show!

 

Wanna see how to blow your customers’ minds? Check out this amazing email from Buffer!

My socks are blown off. My chest hair is curled. There might be some people enjoying ice skating in what’s normally a very hot location. Someone somewhere stepped up to the plate and created a no B.S. apology email that is a thing of beauty and a joy forever! Go Buffer!

(I asked Buffer if I could feature their emails in a blog post and they said sure—another example of great customer experience!) Here’s the whole email.

Hi there,

I wanted to get in touch to apologize for the awful experience we've caused many of you on your weekend. Buffer was hacked around 1 hour ago, and many of you may have experienced spam posts sent from you via Buffer. I can only understand how angry and disappointed you must be right now.

Not everyone who has signed up for Buffer has been affected, but you may want to check on your accounts. We're working hard to fix this problem right now and we're expecting to have everything back to normal shortly.

We're posting continual updates on the Buffer Facebook page and the Buffer Twitter page to keep you in the loop on everything.
The best steps for you to take right now and important information for you:

• Remove any postings from your Facebook page or Twitter page that look like spam
• Keep an eye on Buffer's Twitter page and Facebook page
• Your Buffer passwords are not affected
• No billing or payment information was affected or exposed
• All Facebook posts sent via Buffer have been temporarily hidden and will reappear once we've resolved this situation

I am incredibly sorry this has happened and affected you and your company. We're working around the clock right now to get this resolved and we'll continue to post updates on Facebook and Twitter.
If you have any questions at all, please respond to this email. Understandably, a lot of people have emailed us, so we might take a short while to get back to everyone, but we will respond to every single email.

- Joel and the Buffer team

From the informal but still respectful tone to the bullet pointed list for ease of reading, this email just does so much right. Let’s go through it part by part:

1: A name- Joel.

Putting a name on the customer service engine of your product or services might not be a perfect move for every organization, but for Buffer, it works really well. It seems more human, and much more approachable than ‘Thanks, The Management”.

2: An informal, yet respectful greeting:

Hi there, I wanted to get in touch to apologize for the awful experience we've caused many of you on your weekend.

To the point, personal, and direct. No business fluffery or jargon here. Love it!

3: After a brief recap of what he’s apologizing for, he uses a sincere, simple empathy statement:

I can only understand how angry and disappointed you must be right now.

His grammar is a bit wobbly on “I can only understand” (he’s missing a key word here “I can only BEGIN to understand”) but I chalk that up to time pressure and just good old human error.

4: Letting the customers know they are working on it up front, rather than using a vague, cliché-filled fluff bomb to explain away the poor service:

We're working hard to fix this problem right now and we're expecting to have everything back to normal shortly.

5: Probably the best thing about this letter: a concrete list of steps you can take in bullet point form. God Bless Joel. He thought about the needs of his audience, rather than the need to cover his fanny.

The best steps for you to take right now and important information for you:

• Remove any postings from your Facebook page or Twitter page that look like spam
• Keep an eye on Buffer's Twitter page and Facebook page
• Your Buffer passwords are not affected
• No billing or payment information was affected or exposed
• All Facebook posts sent via Buffer have been temporarily hidden and will reappear once we've resolved this situation

6: Always a good move: reiterate your apology and remind people that you are taking steps to resolve it, fix it, or change it.

I am incredibly sorry this has happened and affected you and your company. We're working around the clock right now to get this resolved and we'll continue to post updates on Facebook and Twitter.

7: Offer to answer questions, with a very nice setting of expectations upfront:

If you have any questions at all, please respond to this email. Understandably, a lot of people have emailed us, so we might take a short while to get back to everyone, but we will respond to every single email.

Well done Buffer Team!

There’s also going to be a Part II to this blog entry, since I received an equally wonderful follow up email.

 

 

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.

 

 

You're doing it wrong: call centers.

Source: http://bjoernvold.com/

 

Recently, a viral video recording of a customer service call gone terribly wrong made the rounds of the Internet.

http://gawker.com/youve-never-heard-a-customer-service-call-meltdown-qui-1299857467

When it was posted on Gawker, comments ranged from sympathy with the poor agent to agreement with the caller.

I enjoy reading comment sections, and since my profession and interest is call center training, I read through almost all the comments for this article. There were 2 that really stuck out in my mind:

1: "It's not surprising that customers snap and have meltdowns like this — the way they treat you, I feel dread when I have to call any of the big companies. Transferred five times, on hold for 45 minutes, and suddenly I'm back at the starting point, forced to endure the whole recording urging me to use their website instead + the "speak your account number" system that never, ever understands me. I've been brought to tears by customer service — notably, AT&. […] Melting down accomplishes nothing. If you can connect with them, they might hook you up. Then when it's all over, three hours later, you can let out the tears."

2: "He didn't handle it admirably, but I have sympathy for the guy who lost his mind. It happened to me once when I tried to cancel my automatic payment with Sprint. After being disconnected at least 10 times, and being on the phone for 2 1/2 hours, I got a person who told me Sprint couldn't do that. I had to contact my bank to stop the payment. Something broke inside of me that day, my friends. I was actually crying with despair. […]"

(comments from Gawker.com)

Where did we go wrong? Why, with all the technological updates, customer experience blogs and experts, and mature call center staff,even overseas, are we still reducing our customers to quivering balls of tears?

It genuinely saddens me to read lines like “Something broke inside of me that day” and angers me to think that companies have the nerve to call experiences like the 2 above ‘service’ of any kind.

What are the issues identified by these comments?

1: It’s very clear that people HATE the IVR auto options, yet companies keep tinkering with them to make them “better”. My bank has a speech recognition system that asks me to speak my account number and PIN. Uh, bank? Has it ever occurred to you that I might not want to speak confidential information like that aloud?

We need to make the IVR better at recognizing speech, but we also need to offer a clear option for “human” in the *first* set of options, not after a Keystone- Kops- like chase through the phone tree from hell.

2: Lack of communication between platforms. The IVR doesn’t take notes. Department A doesn’t know what Department B does, nor do they care. Chat queues aren’t connected to voice queues, and can’t see any of the notes on the account from previous calls.

 This was one of the most common headaches I encountered in my call center production floor days. Nothing is more annoying to customers than having to repeat all the information they just gave “the robot lady”, and yet many companies still do not integrate their IVR and their CRM (or they don’t fix the issues with accounts that don’t “screen pop”).

3: Lack of awareness of common customer service requests. Stopping an auto pay should not take 2.5 hours and ten phone calls. Customers should not be “letting the tears out” after routine concerns like getting a new phone number, tracking down a missing bill, etc. Either major corporations are not aware of the top call drivers and don’t train to them, or they don’t care. Not sure which option is more chilling.

4: Understaffed and under trained call centers-. Yes, everyone is excited about the new social learning engine that will allow “the swarm” to collaborate on the customers’ issues. But that technology is still in its infancy and in the meantime, 3 hours-in-total calls, dropped calls, no supervisors, long holds….they’re clearly still an issue. We need more training, more supervisors, and more agents, plus better, more flexible staffing.

5: Lack of connection between the high level decision makers and the front liners. Just ONCE I would like to see the CTO or CFO of a megacorp take an irate phone call. Some of the corporate communiqués I’ve received are so out- of- touch as to be almost funny. “Customers will love our new Self Service option- it will save them time and money!” Yeah. Something like that. Only not at all.

 I’ve also worked with a company (that shall remain nameless) that insisted that all the product and service issues be dealt with by using “better scripting and delivery”. Hon, there’s no good way to explain charging 60 dollars a month for download speeds of 3.0 Mbps, with a cap of 200 MB okay? There just isn’t.

I think it’s clear that companies have a duty and a responsibility to step up to the plate and start getting serious about the quality of their call centers. I understand that customers sometimes don’t get it that if they want 30$ Internet, the cost cutting has got to start from somewhere, but I believe we can avoid the blatant “We don’t care about you” mistakes.

 

Let’s all step up our game.

Wear your Service Heart on your sleeve: Why service jobs are the best kind of jobs.

Service job. 

Image from "Weheartit" on Tumblr Images

What does that phrase mean to you? To many of us, it's a code word for a stop-gap job, a stepping stone job, or a job that is taken by people with few choices-- a last resort. 

I disagree with that characterization and I'd like to rally the customer service community to start revamping the image and connotation that goes with "service" and "service jobs". 

For almost my entire working life, I've been in service or "support". Even unrelated-seeming jobs such as window dresser and nanny have actually boiled down to "service." When I was younger I couldn't wait to get away from the dreaded customers, and it burned me to know that people I was waiting on were having fun while I was working. 

Now I think about service slightly differently, for a few reasons:

Expanding types of service jobs, such as online goods selling or DIY entrepreneurs have refashioned the market and injected a much needed "cool factor".

Whether it's the barista who knows everything about coffee and has a tattoo of a vintage esspresso maker, or the small batch craft beer guys, the rise in DIY and entrepreneurship has raised the profile of what we would consider "service" jobs. Celebrity nail polish artists, food truck rock stars, SuperNanny? They all work in service jobs!

I realize my years in service gave me valuable skills I could use later. 

I know the customer backwards and forwards, and I've sold all kinds of goods to all kinds of people. I've honed my sales pitches on literally thousands of customers, and I have had the benefit of dealing with hundreds of irate customers. This is equally true for all the teaching and child care jobs I've done: creating games and activities has translated into an effortless creativity and deep well of ideas for classroom training events. 

I found a way to look at the concept of service differently. 

In reading a non fiction book about the personal staff of the very rich (I can't remember the title to save my life!) I came across a term I love: "Service Heart". The person being interviewed explained that some people are just born with a service heart. It's natural for them to intuit what others need and want, and to figure out ways to create moments and events that delight, dazzle, and satisfy. This changed "service" into a kind of calling like the ministry or educating, that allowed me to think of service in a more elevated light, and I encourage you to do so as well. 

I joined a community.

When I started my professional Twitter feed, I was astonished at the amount of like minded people who were almost crazily passionate about customer service, the same as I was. Many had bios that strongly resembled mine! There are also entire businesses who make it their only goal to help other businesses provide better customer service! With a strong, active community around me, I came to see that customer service, and having a service heart was not just a bottom of the barrel designation: 

It's something to wear proudly on your sleeve!

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.