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CIOs, Resolve IT Customer Service Threat – Blocked Teamwork

Some think that the greatest IT customer service challenge is the technical mindset of the team members. It isn’t. Most everyone who has the desire to deliver customer service can learn to do it well. I have trained thousands to do just that.

CIOs, the biggest challenge continues to be blocked teamwork among the silos. Whether you have outsourced or off-shored your front line, brought it back in house (which is happening more and more), or always had it in house, teamwork among front line and other resolver groups is where your customer service improvements will surface.

CIOs, IT Customer Service Threat is Blocked Teamwork Image by:eirikref

CIOs, Resolve the Obstacles to Teamwork for IT Customer Service

Fake Hierarchies. One of the biggest mistakes IT made was naming support as Level I, Level II, Level III. It has created a fake hierarchy of importance. Although it described the flow chart of how problems are resolved, it minimized the importance of the front line. Customers hope the problem gets solved on the first call and yet the front line struggles to get knowledge and training.
Many level II and III teams could share more knowledge with the front line for quicker problem resolution. Ask yourselves why they aren’t. The quick answer is time. That’s not the whole picture. Many times they don’t see them as teammates. They complain that the front line doesn’t do enough even when they have never seen how tough a job it is nor sat in those chairs.

Suggestions: Boxer Day (have them shadow/switch roles), shared service levels, physical co-location, reporting into one leader, shared metrics on customer satisfaction, same tracking/ticketing system, team building sessions.

Politics. Every organization has them yet it can kill customer service and internal customer (employee) productivity. Nonetheless there are IT organizations withholding key productivity tools from the front line — like remote control — because of political jockeying for what groups have the most power. It neuters the front line effectiveness and leaves the customers thinking the front line is of no value. They begin calling up just to get a ticket number and pressuring the front line to make everything a priority one.
Suggestion: Give the front line remote control to resolve more problems. Don’t turn the front line into ticket monkeys by yielding to power politics. Customers see pure routing centers as a block not a road to productivity.

The Deskside Bond. One hidden block to teamwork is the bond that deskside support team members have to their customers. As you centralize to a global service desk, customers continue to ask deskside onsite team members directly to come and help them. These team members struggle with how to get the customers to call the front line of service desk for problem resolution.
Some resort to saying, just call them to get a ticket number rather than championing the skills and value of the front line. Moreover, you may have some team members who don’t think anyone can take care of the their customers they way they do. All of this undermines swift problem resolution and customer service.

Suggestion:
Train deskside team members specifically on how to redirect onsite customers to the front line of the service desk.

I have delivered this people-skills training and practice sessions to deskside teams for years. And with the front line tooled and ready, the deskside team members will have an easier time of redirecting.

Responsibly pour the tools and knowledge into the front line of IT service desk and you will see customer productivity and satisfaction soar.

Include all teams into the IT service desk structure. Service desk is not just the front line. It is one large team that serves the customers with consistently excellent customer service.

Have all teams working together to proactively prevent problems and the need for customers to call. The front line of service desk learns the big customer picture across the organization. It understands the customers’ urgency, sees the impact of broken technology, and can provide great insights on preventing problems. The other resolver teams have deeper knowledge to build prevention.

Admittedly each customer hopes for a day of zero defects. When problems arise, they just want them fixed as quickly as possible to stay productive.

Resolve the threat of blocked teamwork and see the corporation value the IT organization as a critical partner in productivity.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, is a former IT professional. She delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service focus, teamwork, and leading change especially to technical organizations. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Leaders, THE Threat to Superior Customer Experience

A recent CBS Sunday Morning Show featured behind the scenes details of derogatory names companies have for their customers.

Leaders, THE Threat to Superior Customer Experience Image licensed from Istock.

Some Wall Street firms refer to their investors as “muppets”.

Hillbillies - Infrequent Travellers

Airlines nickname their infrequent passengers “hillbillies or Clampetts” referring to the old TV show The Beverly Hillbillies.

They dub very frequent customers as “Platinum Trash”.

Credit card companies nail the tag “deadbeats” to their customers who pay their balance in full every month.

As a customer service/experience pro, I listened with some outrage, sadness, and then wonderment.

The leaders of these companies don’t get it Even if they don’t use these words themselves, they have not done enough to establish a positive culture of valuing the customer.

THE Threat to Superior Customer Experience

Corporate Narcissism

Loving Everything But the Customer

Misapplied Thinking That Fuels This Threat

Freedom of speech. Freedom of speech does not justify hating the customers. If you cannot respect customers, then perhaps it’s best not to build your livelihood on serving them.

Bluntness relieves stress. There are days when individual workers may find working with customers frustrating. They may blow off some steam privately and offline to relieve the stress.
Yet the leadership is there to correct that course to ensure it doesn’t become a culture of disrespecting the customers. Leadership is there to teach and remind everyone what it feels like to be a customer and what the customer means to the business.

Treat the employees well and they will treat customers well. Not necessarily. If leadership and employees treat each other well and collectively disrespect the customers, it will not produce superior customer experience. You cannot hide loathing.

I travel a great deal and can always spot flight attendants and hotel staff who think positively about the customers and those who don’t.

I’m not psychic. It’s in every gesture and word they say. It’s in their proactive help or their indifferent delay.

When company leaders tolerate thinking that degrades customers – even behind the scenes — they are agreeing to it. From thinking comes attitudes and daily behavior with long term strategy not far behind.

How Sad
Picture flight attendants thinking, “I wonder how many platinum trash I will grovel around today?” Can you imagine flight crews dreading the boarding process with so many hillbillies?

Will these crews come across as personable and caring or resentful, impatient, and patronizing?

Do the employees of credit card companies know the value of a customer who pays their balance in full every month? It would be much more valuable to have each employee know that than to foster or tolerate corporate disgust of customers. If there is no business value, why keep them as customers?

As for Wall Street, the world has witnessed the outcome of runaway disregard for customers and their money. From the epithet of investors as “muppets”, we can see the thinking that produced the second greatest economic crisis in modern history.

Good News
There are many companies who have established a customer valued culture that inspires the thoughts and the actions of all employees.

There are airlines now helping the customers as they traverse airport concourses as well as on the flights. They are using kool technology, like Ipads, yet realize that the care comes from the heart.

As other airlines redesign planes to have more economy plus seats with extra leg room in coach class and fully reclining seats in business first, hopefully they will redesign the culture to value everyone who buys and flies. Why improve anything for people you view as trash?

As companies like Ritz-Carlton, Nordstroms, and Zappos, and outstanding hospitals like St. Jude’s Childrens’ Hospital and magnet nursing centers continue to shine their customer care for all to see, we can encourage leaders in other companies to see the true benefit of a customer valued culture.

Call to Action
CEOs and their leadership teams of confused corporations would do well to look at how companies have embraced customer value.

Delivering superior customer service experience doesn’t come from fancy technology, or marketing, or metrics, or branding. It starts at the heart of how a company thinks about customers and brings that thinking to life in its strategy, policies, and interactions.

Thoughts breed actions and many companies ask customers for feedback on their actions. What are your customers saying about your thoughts and culture? That’s worth exploring.

I am honored and thrilled to be working with many companies and professional practices that want to move beyond surveys and go all the way to a customer valued culture.

April is customer loyalty month. Let’s get started!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Special thanks to CXJourney on Twitter for sending me the URL link for the airline story.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service & experience, employee engagement, teamwork, and leading change. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Leaders, Engage Employees Through Entrepreneurial Spirit

Over the past 20 years, many people have asked me how I could have walked away from a well paying high perks career at a major pharmaceutical company to start my own business. Why would anyone want to leave?

The question always brings me back to one word — more. I wanted to do more, think more, learn more, share more, engage more, produce more, and have more of a values based work life.

Sounds like employee engagement doesn’t it? In the hierarchical corporate culture of twenty years ago, that didn’t exist.

Today, there are many employees who do not want the risk of self-employment yet are ready to be more engaged at work. Leaders you can take the organization to new heights of success when you engage employees through their entrepreneurial spirit.

Leaders, Engage Employees More Through the Inner Entrepreneur Image by:sentxd

Engage Employees Through Their Entrepreneurial Spirit

Engage for Results.

Engage with the funnel up.
20 years ago the funnel was inverted.

Don't bury the entrepreneurial spirit.

When you engage these entrepreneurial desires, you funnel talents into results.

Desire to learn. Entrepreneurs are always learning and they work beyond the normal level to make this happen. Picture the benefits to the organization of engaging this desire! Let this image replace the misguided focus and worry of people leaving after gaining experience.
There is no shortage of entrepreneurial talent who want the security of a paycheck with the opportunity to learn and contribute.

Desire to contribute all their talents. Entrepreneurs love the freedom to use any/all of their talents wherever needed and helpful.
Engage this spirit to build cross teamwork, bridge the gaps between departments, and help bring down the organizational silos.

This spirit is contagious and contributes to cohesive results.

Desire to be acknowledged. Yes, entrepreneurs value the recognition of their exhaustive commitment and work. So do employees. Acknowledgement of talents and contributions refreshes the spirit and commitment to your organization.
Acknowledgement of individual contributions to the whole, strengthens (not weakens) organizational results. It isn’t favoritism. It is a celebration of talents that inspires and engages more contribution and commitment.

More on this: 12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement

Desire to conquer obstacles. Employees who have seen tough times may have the same stamina and persistence to overcome hardship as entrepreneurs generally do. When you spot this trait, engage it with opportunity and acknowledgement.
Their gung ho spirit can be off putting to others in everyday work conditions yet it is invaluable for producing results and reaching organizational success.

Desire to use lessons learned. So many organizations are passing over people who are unemployed due to the economic crisis.
They also pass over people age 50+ claiming they are overqualified for positions. Others believe they will be resistant to change and innovation. What a huge employee engagement mistake!

If they are talented and interested in contributing their wealth of lessons learned, seize the day. They aren’t overqualified. They are exceedingly qualified. And innovative ability and maturity often coexist. They aren’t polar opposites.

Desire for responsibility. The entrepreneurial spirit is filled with the desire to make things happen. It is a deep reliability that is difficult to teach or coach. When you find it in your employees, tap it. It takes engagement to the ultimate goal — results.
This entrepreneurial drive for results is not a desire to replace you as leader. It is a thirst to fulfill their purpose for working.

Engage this desire with more responsibility without limiting it to leadership positions. Don’t mistake it as a challenge to your authority. Your organization will experience the full potential and unforeseen benefits of employee engagement.

Who in your organization has exhibited these strong entrepreneurial traits?

Engage these talents without structure. Remove barriers to using it. Tap the spirit without rewriting job descriptions. Spark a new culture of contribution that converts potential opportunities into transformational results for the organization.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on employee engagement, leading change, teamwork, and customer service & experience. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Customer Service: When You Hear Spaghetti, Don’t Serve Veal

I am pleased to welcome writer Pattie Roberts as the guest blogger for this post. Her thought-provoking personal stories serve up many lessons. Welcome back Pattie!

I’ve been thinking a lot about my Uncle Fritz lately. Every spring, as I begin the early garden cleanup, I see the coffee can “Tin Man” he made for me hanging next to the rose bed, and it makes me laugh and cry at the same time. I laugh because Uncle Fritz was a delightful nutball – wildly successful as an insurance agent, devoted to my Aunt Franny throughout her long battle with breast cancer, and truly offbeat in the way he expressed himself.

I cry because he was the definitive example of the one key thing that continues to be broken about customer service in American business. I cry even more when I think about how simple it is to fix it.

Customer Service: Does Caring Block Good Listening? Image courtesy of: Darktek13

The Story

Let me back up to 1987. My mother had just passed away and, as is typical in many families (especially Italian families like mine), we shared our grief over mountains of food. One evening we were at dinner at Ventura’s, which to this day remains my favorite restaurant. As usual, Uncle Fritz presided over the table and made his recommendation for our entrée choices. “Try the veal,” he exhorted, and everyone but me agreed.

I hadn’t had a good plate of spaghetti and meatballs in a while, and that’s what I wanted. Besides, I don’t eat baby things. Like veal. It’s a quirk, I know, but it is what it is, and it doesn’t really affect anyone but me, so I don’t see it as something I need to ‘fix’. “You should really try the veal,” he said to me as I was making my final selection from the menu. Non-sequitur: as I write this, I am really wishing for some Ventura’s spaghetti and meatballs.

Anyway, I try not to be confrontational over small issues (how could my food preferences possibly matter to anyone but me?), so I said something like “I’m sure it’s delicious but I am really jonesing for spaghetti and meatballs.” After a couple more exchanges like this we ordered – veal for everyone else, my beloved spaghetti for me. “Did you order the veal?” Fritz asked me. Fortunately Aunt Rose interrupted with a glowing anticipatory review of the much-vaunted veal so I didn’t have to answer – again.

This is what happened when our orders arrived. Uncle Fritz: “You didn’t get the veal?” Me: “I’m really happy with my spaghetti.” Uncle Fritz: “Here, try a piece” Me: “No, really, save it for yourself, I’m going to have enough trouble eating all this yummy pasta.” Uncle Fritz (cutting a big chunk of veal and putting it on my plate): “Try the veal.” Me (on the verge of an aneurism): “I don’t want the veal! I don’t like veal! It’s BABY COW! It’s bad enough that we eat grown up cows, we don’t need to eat the BABIES too! Take this off my plate!” Uncle Fritz (to my father): “What, she doesn’t eat meat?”

So what does any of this have to do with customer service? If I am the customer, and Uncle Fritz is the CSR, why in the name of all that’s holy didn’t he listen? He was sweet throughout the entire exchange, he was never snippy or mean, and he was paying for everyone’s dinner.

I had nothing to complain about except the fact that I was benignly but completely ignored. He wanted to make me happy, but he was rooted in his own idea of what that was, and oblivious to mine.

I think about veal, Ventura’s, and Uncle Fritz every time a CSR tries to talk me into or out of something I want or need. Being pleasant, concerned-sounding, and even generous is important, but it’s not enough.

Customer service has to be grounded in listening before anything meaningful can take place between the customer and the company. Even if the veal is scrumptious.

Some questions to ponder:
- Does passion and caring block good listening?
- Is it caring if the CSR isn’t listening?
- How can we balance passion and listening?

Guest blogger, Pattie Roberts, is a writer and research analyst in Annapolis MD. You can follow her on Twitter @hughsboo or on LinkedIn.

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Super Customer Experience: Are Your Teams Tooled & Ready?

How long do you think customers will wait for information and answers? Well Google engineers have found that for people surfing the Web, even 400 milliseconds (the blink of an eye) is too long. Wow.

Now picture your typical customer, pressured for a solution. Double wow.

This age of instant information has increased customers’ expectations of front line customer service knowledge and of the CSRs, agents, and technical support reps (TSRs) that deliver it.

Super Customer Experience: In the Blink of an Eye. Ready? Image by:miuenski

Are Your Front Line Teams Tooled & Ready?

Super Customer Experience Info Checklist

Can your front line reps see what the customers see on the Web? Can they at least see your own company website? In my consulting work, I often here the incredible answer, no.
I ask, why not? “Because we don’t want them to surf the net. Only the teams that monitor social media can see the Web.” Huh?

Wake up call from customers: “If we can see it, we expect front line reps to be able to see it too!”

Do the front line agents and all other teams use the same tracking system software (without cumbersome interfaces that create errors)? For a super customer experience, customers expect that all involved in delivering service will be able to see what they need.
Checkpoint: How many of your customers are dissatisfied because your service and support teams cannot access the same customer information? In today’s world of instant information, the customers don’t even think this could be happening. Instead, they just think you don’t care about them.

Do your front line technical support reps have remote control to the customers’ desktops? For customers with computer problems, remote control as an option has eliminated their stress, sped up problem solving, and increased their satisfaction. Many customers will grant permission for the rep to use remote control, yet many front line teams don’t have it.
Advice: Give front line technical support reps remote control. Don’t let organizational politics, internal turf wars, and hierarchical structure keep this wonderful technology from the front line.

Customers tolerance for front line technical support reps who can only route tickets to problem solvers continues to decrease. In today’s world of instant information, it seems antiquated and illogical and a far cry from a super customer experience!

It can be a big challenge in large companies to have seamless integration of systems and information. Yet the technology is available to make it happen and customers assume you will have shared information.

They expect it, in the blink of an eye, for super customer experience.

Will this challenge make it to the top of your 2012 goal list? They surely hope so!

Question:
As a customer, what other information would you want and expect the front line teams to have?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results. BS Mathematics. Masters Organizational Psychology. Former techie!!

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Modern People-Skills Reminders for Social Media Greatness

Social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, give us many opportunities to express our opinions to strangers. This often creates first and lasting impressions on people who have never met us.

Many would like to believe that authenticity — at any length — wins the day. This wishful thinking overlooks that people react differently to those they know versus those they don’t.

Relationships and the trust they build give interpersonal context to what is said.

Without those preexisting relationships, raw authenticity can come across as rude, self-absorbed, boorish, rigid, disagreeable, and even bullying.

Modern People-Skills Reminders to Interact w/Strangers on Social Media. Image by:ell brown

Traditional civility added to modern day social networking delivers greatness to social media presence.

Modern People-Skills Reminders for Social Media Greatness

These tweaks create and preserve a positive impression with authenticity.

If it sounds like an order, it can turn people off. When we add the word please, it becomes a request.

If a connection’s general behavior is a bother, we have the choice to unfollow/unfriend them. This may be a better choice than issuing them an order that everyone sees. One Twitter connection tweeted me, Stop tweeting quotes about … Everyone can see his tweet. What impression of him do you think it leaves?

Many people see sarcasm as a form of anger. The less they know us, the greater the chance when it’s directed at them. Perhaps this old rule applies well: If we can’t say something in a positive way, don’t say anything at all.

Questioning people’s motives — even with formality — can sound accusatory. “May I inquire as to why you are doing this?” sets a condescending tone requesting justification. Although analytic personalities find special comfort in knowing why, non-analytics see it differently.
If we like what someone is doing on social media and want to understand the value of it, then best for us to say exactly that. State the positive and it will be seen as positive.

Stating opinion as fact can leave a negative impression; stating opinion as opinion can invite a healthy positive exchange of opinions!

We leave a positive impression by owning our own feelings instead of assigning them to others. Statements like, “You are trying to discredit my opinion” can come across as insecure and childish. I like what Eleanor Roosevelt said: “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

People see listening and discussing as a positive sign of openness and strength. Arguing, bashing, and condemning can leave scars on our image and those bashed.

Civility provides a cushion of respect that eases hearing and acceptance of an authentic honest message. Bluntness lacks that civility and creates emotion that blunts listening and comprehension.

I vote for civility. It doesn’t undo authenticity. It allows others to see it.

What’s your vote?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

“Words can woo or wound; create bonds, not scars.”

7 Steps From Brutally Blunt to Helpfully Honest

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, customer service, customer experience, and teamwork. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Leaders, Does Customer Service Fix Failure or Build Success?

The Future of Customer Service & Customer Experience Without Silos

More and more C-Suite executives are seeing the business value of a super customer experience. Because B2B and consumer customers have easy access to more experiences and choices, customer experience is becoming a competitive differentiator.

Leaders, Customer Service -- Fixing Failure or Building Success?

Customer Service Teams

Will this be turning point of recognition that you have long desired?

Historically, leaders have viewed customer service as an expense that fixes company failures instead of brand building moments that contribute to business success.

They have poured resources into other aspects of customer experience (improved product design, redesigned sales channels) all with the view of reducing the need for customer service.

They have also looked for any way possible — from off shoring to automated reps in online chat sessions — to reduce the operational costs of customer service.

Now that customer reactions to those steps have been less than WOW, companies are reconsidering the business value of the culturally focused human touch in building company success. Who better to tap than current global customer service teams?

Customer service teams: Are you ready to embrace the changes needed to fulfill the new role?

Customer Service Leaders: Key Questions to Ready for Success

Metrics.
How many of your metrics are focused on measuring cost and justifying your customer service teams’ existence vs. measuring customer experience? Of course cost is always an issue. Yet in the new success role you will play, it only takes on meaning if paired with what you are delivering that the customers value.

Re-allocating Agent Time.
Customer service operations managers — how would you react if the leadership asked you to allocate agent time to participate in other customer experience activities — product design review, listening to focus group feedback, participating in projects to redesign the online customer experience? Would you want your agents to contribute to these opportunities or worry that that it would drain your department temporarily or permanently?

Networking to Build the New Role.
Customer service managers — are you currently networking with your peers in other customer experience departments? How are you actively working to break the silos and build success for the company with other teams involved in customer experience?

Retraining Agents.
On customer service teams where there has been an extreme focus on cost metrics (e.g. average handling time), you may need to un-train and retrain agents for this broader role. Are you open to this?

Also, if you have also set the culture to be highly competitive between agents by publishing individual agent metrics, you may need to build collaborative skills to work with other customer experience teams and to focus all on unity of purpose.

This change is low risk and high return. There are many customer service teams who have met their performance metrics without agent competition and internal collaboration improves the customer experience.

Reorganization.
OK customer service managers — now for the tough question. If leaders were to float the idea of reorganizing to integrate customer service teams into other customer experience departments, would you resist? This is difficult for it may mean a dramatic shift in your role and career.

Overcome the fear of this change by realizing the potential for your career in having exposure to these new opportunities. Just as your agents will flourish from this cross pollination of professional development, so will you.

Be aware of the signs that you are holding on and resisting change:

Insisting it won’t work because the cultures and goals of the various teams are too diverse. Instead establish the new goal of a seamless customer experience and build one culture to match it.
Foretelling catastrophe in operational performance if these changes are made. Performance has to match the newgoal!
Interpreting the idea of reorganization as a condemnation of all your efforts to date

Address the last one by stepping up and proactively lobbying to replace the old fixing failure view of customer service departments.

Show leaders in your company that you and customer service agents can build bridges between all customer service & experience teams for the success of the company.

If you truly want to rid your customer service teams of the fixing failure role, step up and champion the idea of a seamless super customer experience.

The future of customer service and super customer experience will be built without silos. Customer service managers — why not lead the way?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Leaders, Foresee the Burdens of Needy Customers

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Leaders, 5 Legacy Attitudes to Replace for Employee Engagement

As The People-Skills Coach™, leaders often ask me why they haven’t been able to engage employees.

In many cases, I discover that their attitude and communication is one of several reasons. In fact, there are 5 legacy attitudes to replace for employee engagement.

Leaders, 5 Legacy Attitudes to Change for Employee Engagement

I see leaders holding on to these legacy attitudes when they are solely focused on results and not the teams who must get there. They also do it when they assume that the people they lead are just like them.

These leaders succeed when they shift their philosophical beliefs. They engage employees much better once they see that people are diverse and that employee engagement does not block, reduce, or delay results.

Employee engagement drives results through inspiration and nourishes commitment to the highest quality, best results.

Your communication, people-skills, and interpersonal connection engage with employees to that end.

Leaders, Replace These 5 Legacy Attitudes to Engage Employees

Prove me wrong. Although this sounds like an inspirational challenge to employees, it also smacks of the legacy attitude — “I, the leader, am right until or unless you prove me wrong.” Change the focus from you to the idea in question. Engage employees around ideas and results, not around you.

“If that’s all you can do.” As changes in business require new skills of employees, they often struggle with how to stay competent and feel competent. On more than one occasion, I have heard managers say to these concerned employees, “well if that’s all you can do … ” (meaning their current skill).
This legacy attitude of questioning employees’ competence does not make them work harder. The issue is not effort; it’s skill redevelopment. They are already concerned about their continued competence. Lift them up and engage them with diverse opportunities to learn new skills. Disdain does not engage!

The Assembly Line Approach to Leading People

No news is good news. This not-so-golden legacy nugget is based on the idea that employees should routinely do what they are initially told until further orders arrive. Yikes – the assembly line approach to people! Can’t you just picture the little people widgets rolling along?
Meanwhile, communicating engages employees for best results. It gives them information about focus and purpose, and it inspires commitment to results. Engage with knowledge on how the company makes money. Offer worthy kudos for their specific talents that contributed to the end results.

Communicating how employees’ contributions advance the company’s greatness, nourishes greatness. Anaerobic bacteria are the only things that grow in a vacuum; people and businesses don’t.

Work things out for yourselves – you’re adults. Leaders who want to focus primarily on end results often side step team issues under the guise of empowerment. One recent article (the URL for which I cannot find at this moment) claims we should “take the bubble wrap off employees” and let them work everything out themselves.
Leaders, aren’t you employees too? Why not share your special insight to help reduce conflict and re-engage the team on the end result?

When you overlook team issues, success overlooks your teams. Abandonment is not a success strategy.
If you don’t see me doing it, don’t do it. Wow — the Simons Says approach to 21st century success. Leaders, will this attract top talent to your team? It might get you obedient followers but that burdens you with creating all the success.

If you want collaborative innovators who use their talent and acumen to produce success — replace Simon Says with something at least at the level of Pictionary! It’s much more engaging. (What game would you suggest?)

If your personality or experience makes you highly engaged and focused on results, you may make the classic mistake of assuming all employees are just as engaged. Yet if they were you wouldn’t wonder why they aren’t.

Focus on the reality of today’s leadership requirements. Engage employees through knowledge of the business, training, appreciation, and accountability to draw out maximum contribution to the best end results.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Related Post: Leaders, Take This Pain Free Journey to Engaging Employee Accountability

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service & experience, teamwork, employee engagement, and leading change. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Hiring My Pleasure Employees for Super Customer Experience

As I read 7 Horrible Phrases Job Applicants Say That Are Warning Signs, I discovered seriously bad advice that can ruin your customer service hiring.

It suggests that if a job applicant uses the phrase my pleasure or no problem, they will not serve customers well. It claims these are bizarre phrases showing the applicant it out of touch with customers.

My Pleasure Employees Deliver Super Customer Experience

Quite the opposite is true.

In fact, these my pleasure employees deliver super customer experience.

Hiring agents, CSRs, reps, and specialists who find serving a pleasure sustains customer experience in a way that training can’t.

The author and those he consulted have misunderstood this time honored phrase of deep service and civility. The phrase my pleasure is not, as he proposes, a focus on the employees’ needs.

My pleasure is a shortened version of:

My pleasure to serve you …
It is a pleasure to serve you
It is a true pleasure to be in service to you and others

The phrase no problem is a shortened version of no problem doing anything you request.

Many brands use the phrase my pleasure — from high end hotels to fast food chains like Chick-Fil-A restaurants.

Yet even if you believe that your customers would not like these traditional expressions of civility, employees with naturally giving hearts can learn to say other phrases. The retraining is quite simple. Not hiring this natural service talent would be a serious error of omission and disastrous for customer experience and your brand.

The Bonus of Morale

Employees who feel it is a pleasure to serve have self-sustaining morale. When you have enough of them on one team, the teamwork shines as they unite in this spirit. Their can-do attitudes make the difficult, easy and the mundane, special.

I would hate a simple misunderstanding about these phrases lead you to exclude the very customer service employees that will treat customers with pleasure and deliver super results.

Unless you detect true signs of selfishness or immaturity in the interview, hire this natural talent.

My pleasure and no problem are not red flags in hiring. In fact, they are green lights to super customer experience!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on the ultimate customer service experience, teamwork, and leading change. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Leaders: Replace the No Whining Sign

Harvard Business Review recently featured The No Whining Rule for Managers by Ron Ashkenas. His main point about accountability and focusing on solutions is rock solid. The question is how to get people to do that.

One of his client’s, a high level leader, resorted to a no whining sign. Be careful of this approach. It is not just a catchy slogan. It is a demeaning and dangerous approach to leadership people-skills that can infect your organization and spread like antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Leaders, Replace the No Whining Sign Image by: DBDuo Photography, Creative Commons License

Her outlook is that employees are adults, not children – so she tells them to stop acting like children (i.e. no whining).

But you show your immaturity as a leader by trying to ban behavior that is not based in laziness but in real barriers to adult communication (silos, titles etc…).

She assumes they know or should know what she wants. Don’t assume. As Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell’s Soup, advises “Declare yourself. Then walk the talk.

If you want your direct reports to engage in substantive problem solving communication, then, as a leader, show them by doing it yourself.

The phrase, stop whining is a whine! It is a complaint about what you don’t like — poorly disguised as an order.

“Leadership is about being effective in the moment with others.” ~Doug Conant, former CEO Campbell’s Soup.

Leaders, Replace the No Whining Sign!
Model the Positive to Eliminate the Negative

Model and model and model.
The best way to teach actionable behavior is to do it! If someone dumps a problem in your lap without any suggestions, ask them for their ideas. If they launch into complaints, ask them how to overcome those barriers. Don’t yield. Model.

Skip the labels. Labels demean. Stop whining may shame people into a short term behavior change yet it won’t breed positive can-do attitudes or develop a high performance organization. It simply breeds compliance to a commandant leader’s orders — when the leader is around.

It also breeds communication avoidance in those who don’t know how to break through barriers but don’t want to be demeaned. Avoidance reduces productivity – the exact opposite of accountability and performance. I have seen it repeatedly in response to leaders whose favorite phrases begin with the word stop or no.

Even with children, you see quicker success when you show them what you want them to do vs. what you don’t want them to do.

Create a culture of positive action by showing managers how well it works.
How leaders treat their managers is how the managers treat the staff. If you want the whole organization to replace complaining with problem solving and innovating, replace the no whining sign with your non-whining communication. They will then model it with their direct reports.

Do you really want an entire organization issuing stop orders? Or would you prefer they engage in behaviors that create success?

Free yourself from the trap of the should.
The danger of assuming is common knowledge. When leaders hear themselves saying, “we assume the employees have good skills“, they stop themselves and finish with, “yet it’s dangerous to assume. Let’s handle it.”

Leaders are not so commonly aware of the trap of the should. “These are high level managers. They should already have good skills.“ This thinking is a trap. It makes leaders replace the reality (lack of skills) with another label for the behavior (e.g. childlike, lazy, whiner).

Reality: Many managers are promoted by being good staff members. They were highly responsible for their own work. They weren’t facilitating solutions across organizational boundaries. Unless you witnessed stellar management skills in them when they were staff members that suddenly disappeared when they became managers, the issue is skill level.

As managers, they are apprentices who can shine in the new skills with great coaching and mentoring. If you believe or have evidence they are not capable of improving, then courageously find the right people for these management positions.

So free yourself from the trap of the should. It takes your eye off the real target — instilling more successful behavior and better performance.

To build mature accountability, show everyone what that is. Replace the no whining sign with behavior that green lights success.

I welcome your questions on how to turn interaction obstacles into (non-whining) successful business behavior.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on teamwork, leading change, and the ultimate customer service experience. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Customer Service: Does Our Experience Dull Our Empathy?

Former customer service agents and tech support reps often have empathy for customer service and technical support teams. They remember the pressure and are considerate.

It begs the question: Why do many customer service and tech support agents forget the experience of being a customer?

Experience should make it easier to give empathy, right?

Or Does Experience Dull Empathy?

Experience and knowledge can blind customer service agents and tech support reps to customers’ …

Emotions of needing help
Fear of not knowing
Frustration of being delayed in lengthy procedures
Impatience with being routed and transferred
Anger at being trapped in the maze of customer support
Vulnerability of having to trust others with their success

Experience and knowledge deliver confidence and a sense of control — the very things that lower fear and vulnerability. Unfortunately for some agents and reps this reduction in vulnerability also dulls their empathy.

And the saga isn’t over yet. When you add the pressure of customer service work to the picture, it often makes agents and reps even less empathetic to customers.

Consider: When you are under incredible pressure do you care less about other things that normally bug you? You just want to get rid of the big pressure so you minimize or overlook everything else?

YET … to the customer the things you want them to overlook still matter!

The best agents and reps overcome the dulling effects of experience and pressure by:

Being aware of how they feel outside of work when they are customers.
Repeating the following before each shift, one call at a time! This focus delivers empathy.
Picturing the customer relaxing as their reassuring words manage customers’ emotions and experience meets customers’ requests and solves problems.
Embracing the true role of service and support — to make life easier for the customer and/or get them productive again!

Agents — abandon the myth that your job is simply to solve the problem. Your job is to deliver a wonderful experience while solving the problem.

Turn your experience into a channel of empathy and an easy win for each and every customer!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, workshops, and keynotes on customer service experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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5 Psychologically Uncomfortable Career Shaping Opportunities

People often focus on major career shaping milestones like earning a degree or relocating for a better job. It’s harder to see the psychologically uncomfortable career shaping opportunities yet well worth the effort.

5 Psychologically Uncomfortable Career Shaping Opportunities Image by:kroo2u

When leaders and managers must decide who to place on new projects, in newly vacated job spots, and in managerial and leadership posts, they draw on their everyday observations of staff behavior. How you behave in difficult and uncomfortable situations creates an impression that shapes your career opportunities.

5 Psychologically Uncomfortable Career Shaping Opportunities

When You’re the New Kid on the Block. Moving onto an existing team can be uncomfortable. How will your expertise be received before you’ve had time to build trust? If you are adept at asserting without pushing, leaders see you as an asset to critical collaborations and sudden teams.

When Deadlines Loom and You Have Little Information. These situations can challenge your sense of self-confidence and competence. If you perform well without blaming other groups for the void, leaders see you as a resourceful asset worthy of trust for tough high profile assignments.

When You’re On a Toxic Negative Team. Do you succumb to the negativity — even if just to fit in? Or are you the lonely voice of inspiration that holds strong and re-inspires others? If you inspire in the face of naysayers, leaders see you as the turnaround titan that keeps productivity flowing.

When Emotions Are Running High. Many people hate conflict. Avoiding it impacts results. Fueling it can be disastrous. If your focus and insight triumphs over emotion, you pop to the top of the next leader list!

During Rapid Start-ups. Start-ups present a huge revenue and public relations challenge to companies. The learning curve is an expense. Delay is risky. The stress of these start-ups crushes many people. If you are a fast fearless learner undaunted by a lack of structured training programs, leaders see you as pure profit and risk reduction.

What does it take to develop these traits and seize these opportunities?

Desire
Persistence
Continuous improvement

You can strengthen your ability to blend into new teams, handle ambiguity, stay inspired, improve focus, and embrace fast change. In fact, you can achieve most anything you desire.

Leaders will notice; confidence and commitment burns bright.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Related Post: Be & Perform Like a Ferrari

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service, customer experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. Masters in Organizational Psychology. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Customer Service & IT Support Leaders: Do You Hear the Envy?

For decades, leaders have heard the same outcry from customer service, call center, and technical support teams: “We have to treat the customers well even when they are yelling at us. Why do they get treated better than they treat us?”

Service and support leaders, managers, and team leads ask me: “Kate, how do we counter that? Beyond our efforts to treat team members well, what’s the answer to this endless outcry?”

It depends on what you think the team members seek. If you hear it as an outcry for equality and fairness, you might be tempted to say “because they are the customers” or the old standard “the customer is always right.” Your reply affirms that it is not an equal relationship.

Well fairness and equality may be part of what customer service and tech support teams want. Everyone deserves to be treated with basic human respect and most organizations do not tolerate true verbal abuse on either side.

Customer Service & Tech Support Leaders: Do You Hear the Envy?

Nonetheless, the outcry continues.

I can affirm, after 23 years of training these wonderful teams, that the other part of the outcry is envy.

It’s understandable how agents, reps, analysts, and associates could envy the customers’ privilege of:

Showing anger and dissatisfaction; they can’t.
Receiving help; they give it and often don’t get help from other teams.
Participating in industry conferences; they rarely see the light of day.
Attending training for professional growth; they have limited access.
Having time to work projects completely; they are expected to perform well while simultaneously clearing the queue.
Working a regular schedule with holidays and weekends off; they often work shifts or are on-call.
Being respected and valued; few top leaders recognize service and support as vital to the organization.

Leaders, The Impact of Envy in Customer Service
The risk and impact of this envy is worthy of your attention.

It stops teams from consistently delivering the ultimate in customer service. If their heads and hearts don’t love being in service, they won’t.
Unchecked envy emphasizes the feelings of unworthiness and diverts valuable focus from service to the imbalance.
It impacts the teamwork critical to delivering outstanding service.
Unaddressed envy can fuel high staff turnover. Some turnover is healthy for service teams. High levels are a warning sign of a service organization in trouble.

Understanding this has given many leaders and me the chance to cultivate a non-envy culture that inspires and delivers service greatness.

Through workshops, we have helped the front line managers, supervisors, team leads, and staff to replace envy of customers’ privileges with pride in:

Breadth of knowledge
Continuous learning through experience
Great ease and style in working with people — valuable and not everyone has this prowess
Multi-tasking and ability to work under pressure
Professional skill of being empathetic and objective — many doctors don’t even have this
Inspiring yourself and others to excellence

To build and sustain a non-envy service culture, it is necessary to help service team members discover a sense of fulfillment. I rarely hear the cry of envy from service team members who are fulfilled in other ways.

Fulfillment squelches envy whether it comes from their family life, years of work experience, inner peace, gratitude for having a job, comparison to previous jobs, or a tremendous high from reaching results in the face of adversity.

Leaders, showing appreciation and recognition for service team’s work and helping them build a positive service team identity feeds fulfillment. Working with your peer leaders of non-customer facing teams to build the cross teamwork necessary for mutual success feeds fulfillment.

Declare your vision to your teams and ask them for their insight on how to achieve it. Telling does not engage excellence; asking does.

Offer training to develop their professional skills. Budget for temps to cover service demands while service team members present a case study of their achievements at an industry conference.

Face team problems, like envy, stress, and morale, and your teams will achieve success.

I look forward to helping you take your customer service and tech support teams from inspiration to action.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service, customer experience, teamwork, and leading change. For 23 years, she has turned interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer testimonials and results.

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Leaders, Pain Free Journey to Engage Employee Accountability

Leaders and managers ask the same persistent question: How do you engage employee accountability?

Many are excited to engage employees to be more creative and innovative.
They picture building accountability as hard fought battles of weight, responsibility, and blame.

Leaders, Take This Pain Free Journey To Engage Employee Accountability

Repaint your picture leaders and take this pain free journey to engaging employee accountability.

Define accountability as a celebration of honor, ownership, and learning. Far too many see accountability as carrying the blame for mistakes. Why would employees jump up and engage that negative idea?
Honor employees contributions and they will honor their responsibilities.

Support this definition of accountability with your behavior and communication in positive and negative situations. Finding fault stops progress; finding solutions ignites success.

Abandon the no news is good news approach to leadership. Applaud incremental growth and smaller accomplishments. It builds interest and the confidence to be accountable. Practical Examples: Leaders, 12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement
When leaders speak only with criticism, employees will forever define accountability as blame.

Illustrate accountability in pain free moments. Use the phrase “I take responsibility for not being clear or “I own that delay”.
What leaders say and live becomes the culture of the organization.

Employees engage when they can see what’s in it for them. So, what does accountability do for the employees? Discuss it. Listen to their views on it. Open up to what holds them back from it and their ideas to fix it. A pain free step to accountability!

Honestly address mismatches in job fits. If people are truly wrong for the positions they hold, their continued misses frustrate the team to the brink of finger pointing.
Prevent this pain with honest reassessment of the best job fit.

End each day or week with: “What did we learn that improved our ability going forward?” With this practice, employees skip the fear of blame and the disease of perfectionism and become accountable for excellence.

Accountability doesn’t have to leave scars. It doesn’t have to come from a demanding leader constantly nagging employees to do what’s needed.

Create the opportunity and culture for excellence and watch employees engage and embrace accountability. It’s welcome and pain free!

I look forward to launching this journey with you. I will take you from inspiration to action!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

10 Ways to Ignite Greatness Without Leaving Scars

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service & experience, teamwork, and leading change. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Super Customer Experience: Loyalty not Imprisonment!

As we work tirelessly to deliver super customer experience, I find and fix common everyday mistakes that drive customers away.

Recent experiences focus me today on ways we imprison customers which do everything but build loyalty. You might think imprisonment is too strong a word. Yet that is what customers report.

Super Customer Experience: Loyalty not Imprisonment

Give customers a get out of jail free card — fix these mistakes!

Ways We Imprison Customers!

Endless Loops. This is definitely #1 on the customers list. Beyond the endless unclear phone menus (voice response units – VRUs, IVRs), customers also feel imprisoned by agents, reps, and CSRs with poor skills.
The Story: A business owner needed to become a credit card merchant. The sales rep was clear, focused, and offered a great deal. The business owner signed up. The sales rep reported that the support team would send an email with account # and temporary password. Support would then call to finalize everything.

Super Customer Experience: Loyalty Not Imprisonment! Image: iStock for Editorial Use.

The business owner received a phone message from support saying “By now you have received your email with account # and password. Please call me, Mindy, at this phone number and extension.” The business owner left Mindy a message saying “We never received the email. Please let us know what to do now.”

Mindy left a second, third, and fourth message saying the exact same thing as her first message! When the business owner finally spoke on the phone with Mindy, she continued to say “you should have received the email by now.”

Imprisonment: The business owner finally said, “Time is money. Move me forward or I will cancel my account.”

Customer service is forward not stagnant. To customers, stagnant feels like imprisonment.

Release customers from status quo prison! For a super customer experience, move them forward to the solution.

Question: Where in your organization do customers get stuck in the status quo?

Lack of teamwork. Multiple teams engaged in service with little or no teamwork leave customers trapped in a maze. Customers must jump between teams to get a solution or jump out of the maze and choose freedom. That’s not conducive to customer loyalty.
For super customer experience, deliver a single point of solution not multiple points of failure. Build teamwork with shared technology, mutual service level targets, and one service culture.

Question: How many teams in your organization must work together to deliver a super customer experience? Do they all give it the same priority? If not, customers end up imprisoned in the maze.

Tunnel vision. A less evident yet still common mistake, thinking only from the company or agent perspective. Super customer experience requires seeing things from the customer’s view. Else the customers feel ignored and overlooked — imprisoned in solitary confinement.
Cultural tunnel vision in global service leaves customers in the dark.
Rigid script reading and poor listening slam the door shut.
Websites with poor e-commerce design drive customers away — to well-designed easy-to-use sites.

Shine the light of customer awareness throughout your organization to free customers from solitary confinement and to value them in your organization.

Question: Where in your organization is tunnel vision blocking super customer experience? Expand the vision. Replace the tunnel with bridges to the customers and to your success.

Customers want information and solutions that meet their needs. Online, in person, or on the phone, they seek positive easy experiences to get what they want. Imprisonment is not positive nor easy. It makes them want to break out, run away from the stress and find success elsewhere.

Think customer care not customer control. Think bonding not bondage. Think customer!

I look forward to working with you, leaders, and your teams to create super customer experience.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service, customer experience, teamwork, and leading change. For 23 years, she has turned interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer testimonials and results.

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