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Customer Service Glitches: Train for Recovery

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Every company has customers, so every company must pay attention to customer service. In our increasingly connected culture, where every meal, hotel stay, attraction, and service can be rated and reviewed by the masses on yelp!, Trip Advisor, Google, or any of the other countless websites, organizations interested in growth have got to get it right. One bad interaction can lead to a review that lives forever on the Internet. Usually, it’s the little things – and how you recover from them – that make a big difference.

Most every organization looks at the big things. Airlines generally get their planes in the air on or close to schedule and most bags get to where they should go. Hotels will have a room for you if you have a reservation. The supermarket will be open, the lights will be on, and the registers will be ready. Big stuff is the price of admission; little things separate the elite from the rest. Here are a couple of examples of how little things can make for a bad experience.

One of our consultants shared this story: I needed to pick up some nutritional drink for my son. The product is sold in a four-pack for about 10 dollars. I went to the store, picked up two four-packs and went to pay. The cashier rang eight bottles as one item. When I corrected her, telling her she only charged me for one instead of two, she said, “Wow! That’s really expensive. I didn’t realize that was two packages. That’s really expensive.” In the end, I did the right thing by pointing out her error, and in return, I was reminded of the price tag and almost regretted pointing out the error.”

How could the cashier have done a better job? At the least, she could have thanked the customer for being honest by pointing out the error.

Another member of our team recently had a home repair done by a local company. The work was warranted for a year, and soon after it was completed, something went wrong, requiring the company to come back to redo the work. After two unreturned phone calls, a letter was sent that finally got a response.

Clearly, a process was needed to improve responsiveness to phone calls.

Here are some idea about boosting your company’s customer service performance by investing in your people who deliver it every day.

Hire people who care about customer service. What does your selection process include? If you are hiring customer-facing employees, consider including behavioral interview questions for which the candidate must give you an example of competent customer service recovery. Role play common scenarios. Those who have done it well before will do it again.

Lead with a customer service attitude. Everyone in the organization – from the CEO to the first-level supervisor – must embrace and model strong service delivery.

Train and empower your team. Customer service training combined with employee empowerment – allowing your people to fix problems on the spot – makes a huge difference. Online retailer Zappos is known for empowered people who can make decisions to solve problems without getting supervisor approval. If you have hired and trained the right people, why not trust them?

Recognize service champions. People generally repeat the behaviors that get rewarded. Does your organization have a formal program to recognize and reward its service superstars? If not, why not?

Train for recovery. Things go wrong. Prepare for it. Spend time training on problem clarification, solutions exploration, and satisfaction confirmation. Statistics show that customers who have had a problem that was quickly resolved are more likely to be loyal to your company than those customers who never had a problem at all. We don’t want there to be problems, but recognize them as opportunities to bolster loyalty, and your team will look forward to the chance to be the next service heroes.

Measure It. How do you know if your customers are happy? How likely are they to refer you to others? How are you performing over time? Are you better this year than last? Mystery shoppers, surveys, and calls to customers can give you insight that might not be possible otherwise.

Customer service will never go away as a top priority. Leaders who embrace the challenge and view it as a way to differentiate their organizations from the competition will win. What can you do right now to better position your company to deliver superiors service? Try some of the tips above and let us know how it goes.

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Learning Dynamics offers powerful customer service training and mystery shopping services. Exceeding Customer Expectations can help your entire company enhance its service delivery efforts. Contact us today for more information.

 

 

Taking the Stress out of Sales Training

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bob sellThe Learning Dynamics team just completed a sales training roll out with a new community bank client. The program, Building Customer Relationships, is an introduction to sales concepts for people who do not consider themselves to be sales people.  This bank chose to include all of its branch employees; everyone from tellers to branch managers participated. What we heard loud and clear, from the senior leaders to the people in the branches, was that a hard-core sales message that could damage customer service was not what they wanted. We didn’t do that, nor would it be wise to do so.

The stress in sales training (and the sales profession in general) comes from asking people to engage in high-pressure tactics that put the company’s needs and interests ahead of the customers’. Most people don’t want to do that. They enjoy treating customers with respect and as they would want to be treated. For most, this does not include being “sold to.”

Here is an important point: the world has changed, and people will not tolerate the hard sell.

Daniel Pink, in his book To Sell is Human, talks about the nature of information in today’s economy. Everyone has information about everything. New companies launch almost daily to provide consumers with information, reviews and tools (e.g., True Car, Angie’s List, Trip Advisor and others) to educate themselves and to negotiate the best possible price. Many car buyers, to name one scenario, have done more research and know more about their dream rides than the people selling them. The old days of the seller having all the information and using this to set the terms of the deal are long gone.

Today’s sales paradigm must start with customer relationships. In our world where competitors and their information are a click or a tap away, smart companies will maximize the value and emphasis on that which cannot be replicated with an app or a few lines of code. That something is people.

Customers want to be understood. Honest, professional employees will want to help customers uncover unmet or poorly-met needs. That can only happen when there is a relationship built on trust that evolves into genuine conversation with the interests of solving problems and making the customer’s situation better.

When the customer wins, the company will win with happy employees who feel like they are making a positive difference. They also benefit from customer loyalty, referrals, and positive word of mouth.

If your employees are not building customer relationships, if they are using stale and wearisome sales tactics, you could find a better way. High pressure is not sustainable. Relationships built on trust, service, and value will stand up over time and will make it much tougher for competitors to poach your best customers.

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Learning Dynamics offers customizable sales and customer service training programs, including Building Customer Relationships. Ask us today about how we can help your organization.

Hire It and Inspire It

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Motivation is a topic that is included in several of our most popular Learning Dynamics training programs, and it is always a conversation starter in our classes. The question is this: Can you motivate others?

Class participants think long and hard about this before answering, and most groups are split with their answers. Some say, “Yes, of course.” Then they attempt to explain their reasons.

The other side, of course, says, “No way!”

Whatever your opinion, consider the idea that leaders – managers, supervisors, peers, even people below you in the organizational hierarchy – do not actually create motivation within their followers. Instead, they create the environment in which others can be motivated to bring their best and perform at high levels.

This is the big idea behind employee engagement. How do you get people to do their best, especially when there are so many companies filled with good, smart people who never rise to excellence?

First, think about going to the very beginning of the process. Whether you have a super star or a stunning dud on your team, someone hired that person. What went into the decision making process? Many organizations are placing greater emphasis on personality testing and cultural fit. And it’s for good reason.

Employees will excel where they are given the opportunity to do their best work in environments in which they can thrive. Find the people who will work in your organization as it is, not as you wish it was. And stop trying to pound the square-peg candidate into the square-hole job. If you aren’t sure about fit, get others involved in the selection process. Peer-level interviews can uncover all kinds of things that might not otherwise be discovered.

Once you have the right people, give them the tools, resources, training and empowerment to do the job for which they were hired. These inputs, combined with a strong, recognition-based culture will do wonders for most employees.

In the end, we all want to be included on a team that is aligned with our heads and hearts. Find those people, inspire excellence with leadership support and coaching, and motivation will multiply. Leaders, you cannot motivate others, but you can lead in way so others can find their own motivation.

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Bringing out the Best in Others is one Learning Dynamics training program that teaches leadership skills to create a motivating workplace. Contact us today for more information.

Do You Need to Have that Meeting?

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LD Logo ArtWe have been working with clients to help them avoid contributing to the wasted time that comes with unnecessary and poorly planned meetings. A recent estimate pegs the number at $37 billion in the US alone. That’s every year! As we’ve gotten out and interacted with groups, we have found that employees feel that some meetings just do not need to happen. That’s a great place to start cutting into the $37 billion.

The first place to start is to ask the tough question: What’s the worst thing that happens if we don’t have the meeting? If you cannot come up with a compelling answer, that can be a clue that the meeting should be cancelled.

Second, consider some options to communicate that do not require getting everyone together in a real or virtual room. Could more information be put in writing and shared via email, shared folders, or some other channel that would eliminate the need for the meeting?

Third, evaluate the effectiveness of past meetings. What were the results of the last meeting? Were the time and effort put into them rewarded with clear outcomes and benefits? If not, why not? Did you plan it well? Does your team agree on goals and follow up to keep progress moving?

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See Five Steps to Conference Call Success to get the most out of those calls.

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Importantly, there are some political and power issues at play when it comes to meetings and conference calls. The scary issue for many is, “How can I tell my boss that this meeting is a waste of time?” This is very common when organizations have standing meetings.

Each meeting should stand on its own, whether it is a standing meeting or an exception. If there is important work to be done, critical information to be shared, a plan, and follow up, go for it! If it is a meeting just because we always have a meeting at 10 on Tuesdays, do the critical thinking and analysis and consider killing it – even if for just this one time.

Managers who go through this thought process will do three things that immediately benefit themselves and their people. First, they will give productive time back to their teams (who doesn’t want that?). Second, they will send the message that the meetings we do have are important. Third, and maybe most importantly, they demonstrate that “this is the way we have always done it” doesn’t have a place in their company.

Get your productivity back. Kill the bad meetings and make the rest productive and goal-focused.

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Do you have ideas on how to boost the value of meetings? Have you ever cancelled a standing meeting? We would love to hear about it in our comments section.

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Learning Dynamics can help your company get the most out of its meeting investment. Visit the Learning Dynamics website to learn more about Meetings that Drive Results.

Time Management Starts at the Top

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HourglassTime management – or task management, depending on your perspective – is a perennial hot topic in employee performance conversations. How can we get more productivity from the team? How can we deliver this huge project without adding people? How can we get more done with the resources we have?

These are all valuable questions, and success at improving productivity using smarter time management techniques can pay big rewards. Keeping talented team members engaged in the important, rather than diving into the trivial, is a big part of the discipline. It must be said that senior leaders have a critical role to play, as well, by giving teams every opportunity to succeed. Here are some points to consider about how you and your organization’s executives lead, and how they might be hurting results.

Meetings. Everyone complains, “We have too many meetings!” Yet, we all continue to have them, and they are not all worthwhile. To be more direct, many are a waste of time, burning mountains of money. One estimate places the tab at $37 billion in lost salaries spent on bad meetings in the US alone. Before you have a meeting, ask yourself some questions. Do we need to have it? What if we don’t have a meeting? What will happen? Is there a better and more efficient way to communicate?

Schedules. Some organizations have moved to a work anywhere, anytime model, or at least flexible scheduling that respects employees’ lives and priorities. Are your people spending their best times – prime time when they are most mentally on – commuting or working a schedule that does not meet any business need other than “that’s the way we’ve always done it”?

Technology. This might seem like a no-brainer, but is worth a moment. Does your company have the technology – hardware, software and infrastructure – to be as efficient as possible? Conversely, are you clinging to old technology to save the capital expense, when an investment today can pay dividends for years to come.

Prioritization. Do your performance evaluations and management actions keep employees focused on the most important things? Do your senior leaders have a clear vision of what those things are? Do they explain the reasons for priorities to get buy-in from followers? Sometimes, realignment of priorities can get talented people moving more directly toward the goal. Try this: ask an employee at random, “What are you paid to do here?” Listen for the first response. Is it what you expected? Did the employee struggle? If you aren’t happy with the answer, look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Why doesn’t my team know what is important?”

We could generate a much longer list of time management traps, but this will get you started. Look at time management success as a priority for leadership and consider how your top people can make everyone more productive. It will be worth the effort.

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Learning Dynamics offers custom learning and development programs on topics including time management and effective communication. Contact us today or visit our programs page to learn more.

Performance Reviews Are Coming: 5 Ways to More Value

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2014 Review Score ImageAs the office holiday parties roll on, and wishes for happy holidays and the new year are shared, that can only mean one thing. Year-end performance reviews are just a calendar page away for many companies. Just like last year, it’s possible that you and your team look forward to them for only one reason: the money that comes from bonuses and merit increases.

Shouldn’t there be more to it, though? Shouldn’t there be some lasting value from the time invested in writing and delivering them? The answer, obviously, is yes. Last year at about this time, we shared some ideas on making the process better. Here are some others that can make this a performance-enhancing time, rather than just a performance-reviewing one.

Allow Time. Do you give your team enough time to prepare their self-review section? Do they even do one? Many workplaces (outside of retail, delivery services, travel and other seasonal industries) experience a little downtime during December. Encourage your team to reflect on the year now while there is some time to think before the January 2nd resumption of regular business rhythm.

Expect Specifics. If you are not doing this already, improve your review process by including a conversation and documentation about specific performance metrics from the year. Encourage your team members to review their own scorecards, dashboards and other reports as they evaluate themselves. The slower weeks in December can be a good time to pull that information.

Have Balance. While numbers are important in every business, there are also some intangibles that should be part of the conversation. These might include exemplifying company values, volunteerism and corporate social responsibility efforts, developing and mentoring others, and representing the brand.

Look Forward. Reviews are helpful in recording past results, and provide an opportunity to celebrate victories, thank employees for their efforts, and challenge them to improve. Be sure to include a look toward the future so progress in key results areas continues. See our related SMART goals story for more about this.

Collaborate on Goals. Nobody likes a goal given to them. Consider using a coaching approach to ask your employee about the goals she or he would like to set, and how it will be done. If you and your organization are clear communicators of mission and overall strategy, a competent employee should be able to articulate at least some goals for herself. Encourage and allow it to happen.

Reviews do not have to be drudgery. Instead, they can be valuable and contribute to improved performance. Work on it now and your annual review process can be an important part of your overall performance and talent development program.

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Learning Dynamics offers several customizable programs to help managers be more effective at giving performance feedback. Learn about Honest Appraisal™ and other programs at our Programs page

Thanks for Moving us Forward!

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Thanks!This week is the time for taking stock of our lives and being thankful. For all, this thought rightly includes our personal lives: family, friends, health and everything else. For leaders, it could and should include some reflection on the contributions that followers – individual contributors and junior leaders – make to create organizational success.

As our consultants facilitate training programs with leading companies, we are always impressed and inspired by the energy that people put into their work. The conversations and insights generated by our classes make it very clear to us that many people, especially those selected for participation in professional development initiatives, put everything they have into driving their organizations forward. They really do care and want to do well. They give a lot of themselves every day.

Another valuable observation that we make is that these people, many leaders in their own right, value the power of a thank you. Simple, free, specific recognition – a note, an email, a phone call, a literal pat on the back – gives these motivated team members the fuel they need to keep contributing at the highest levels.

It is a simple idea, but one worth remembering during Thanksgiving week. As a leader in your organization, don’t just be thankful for what you have. Be thankful for all that everyone does to help you and your company grow and thrive. And be sure to share your thankfulness with those who deserve it.

We at Learning Dynamics are thankful for the opportunity to help our clients build better and stronger organizations by Investing in PeopleTM. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

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Learning Dynamics offers customizable learning and development programs to help your organization grow and succeed. Bringing out the Best in Others is a powerful training session that will help your supervisors and managers learn to recognize and reinforce the behaviors your company needs to succeed.

Verbal Communication: What Are You Talking About?

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We deliver many communication skills training programs at Learning Dynamics. We can point to clients that have recognized this as a priority in every industry and niche. This doesn’t happen because Learning Dynamics has an army of sales people out pushing these programs. Instead, communication skills – especially verbal interpersonal communication – have been recognized as a key component of professional effectiveness by employers of every stripe.

The Center for Professional Excellence at York College of Pennsylvania conducts an annual survey of over 600 human resources professionals to get an understanding of their opinions and perceptions of their new employees. These HR leaders view good interpersonal communication skill as being an important component of employee professionalism. Those viewed as unprofessional often have, as you might expect, communication skill shortfalls.

Verbal communication is ranked the second most important professional skill.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers, in its Job Outlook 2012 report, also found that organizations rank interpersonal communication skills as being one of the most important workplace skills. Verbal communication skills ranked #2 on the report, compared with #9: the ability to write reports.

The good news is that verbal communication skills can be taught and are very coachable. This development goal could be even more important than ever as some have suggested that the widespread increase in texting and other non-verbal communication tools have stunted the skill of conversation for many.

An engaged and caring leader can help a team member plan for communication and offer valuable after-action feedback. Here are some coachable points:

Did you deliver the key information: the who, what, where, when, why, and how?

Were you concise enough?

Did your tone and non-verbal actions (body language) support or hinder the effectiveness of your message?

Extensive research proves that interpersonal communication is a key contributor to professionalism. Isn’t it worth investing energy and time into this critically important skill?

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Learning Dynamics offers many customized learning and development solutions to help your team communicate better. Communicating for Success and Personally Speaking™ are two options. Contact Learning Dynamics today to learn how we can help your organization excel with better professional skills.

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CompassLearning Dynamics hosted its Integrity at Work(R) showcase session this morning, and the conversation among the business leaders who attended was energetic and engaged. As we worked through video case studies and discussed the situations, the diversity of opinions illustrated just how valuable this training can be.

While there was much agreement on many of the issues discussed, there were some differences. Also, because different companies operating in different industries were represented, the stories of challenges faced were compelling. We recognized a handful of themes that are worth sharing.

First, does your organization have a published ethics policy? Many large organizations have stringent guidelines, chief ethics and/or compliance officers, and other tools to help guide employees. If yours is a smaller organization, it is worth the effort to have a policy and provide training. Even one bad decision can cost your company a lot, making education and prevention worthwhile.

Second, is ethical decision making part of the office buzz? Do you and your leaders talk about it? Do you take opportunities – teachable moments – to illustrate how policy and sound critical thinking about ethical issues have come into play in a particular situation? There is nothing like a real-world, this-happened-here example to help make your point.

Finally, do your senior leaders set the example? Leaders set the tone and create the culture. Your personal behavior and decision making, your commitment to doing the right thing, are very valuable to less senior employees. They will often do what they see their leaders doing.

Sometimes knowing what to do is difficult. Learning and using a tool to guide decision making can make it easier and results more consistent. Now, as much as at any time in the past, ethics grounded in personal integrity and bolstered by a clear thought strategy are needed in all organizational life.

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Learning Dynamics offers customized learning and development solutions for many workplace issues and skills. Integrity at Work ™ is one of them. Contact Learning Dynamics today to help plan your ethics training strategy.

7 Tips for Emotional Conversations

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Emotional Conversations

How do you prepare for a potentially emotional conversation? Many inexperienced leaders –  and others, too – struggle with this common scenario. Some avoid it. In most every case, reticence to have these discussions leads to stress, anxiety rooted in procrastination and fear, and lost team productivity and effectiveness.

It is in everyone’s best interest to handle these conversations as quickly as possible. Here are some tips that you can use yourself, or to coach others as they prepare.

Have a Plan: Detail everything about the conversation. What will be discussed? When and where will it happen? What is the goal of the conversation?

Deal with it Now: Unnecessary delay has many negative effects. Continued poor performance, the stress that comes from artificial team harmony, and the opportunity cost of spending time thinking about something that should have already been addressed are just the beginning. Deal with it and move on.

Choose Your Setting: Potentially emotional and negative conversations must be held in private. No exceptions. Ensure that privacy is a top priority. Avoid distractions like phones, computers and visitors.

Have a Clear Goal: What does the supervisor expect to change as a result of the talk? While this is part of the plan, it is worthy of its own bullet here because it is that important.

Have Your Facts Ready: Are you having a performance discussion? Use the reports and other tools that you need to make your case. Preparation will lead to an efficient and effective conversation based on facts, rather than a painful and vague discussion built on the sands of assumption.

Don’t Take it Personally: Keep the conversation professional and as dispassionate as possible. People can be naturally defensive, so expect it. This isn’t about you; it’s about the other person.

Keep it Focused and Concise: Don’t try to ease into the conversation with small talk. Greet the person, invite her or him to sit down, and explain why you are initiating the conversation.

Recognize that tough conversations are a part of all our work experiences. Learning how to manage them effectively and calmly can make this unwelcome part of our work lives less onerous.

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Learning Dynamics offers learning and development solutions to help your team members become better communicators. Contact us today to discuss your needs.