AchieveGlobal's blog

Service (Emotional) Intelligence

By Andrew Calvert

I recently had the honour of being a judge in a national experience award competition. I was invited to attend five attractions and grade them in several areas: Business Excellence, Service Quality, and Mystery Shopping to name three.

Every attraction had a good-to-excellent workflow upon entering the attraction, where to pay, where to get information about what to do. Signs were generally clear, queues well managed, routes clearly signed (in more than one language). Once I had my tickets I knew where I wanted to go, what I needed to do to get there. And this was generally consistent for all the attractions. But I observed a few things that really stood out: the people at the point of purchase were without exception totally indifferent to the interactions with their customers. No one asked a question, no one tried to engage me (remember your parents telling you that you only get one chance to make a first impression?) - a missed opportunity for them.

Once into the customer "flow" there were several more opportunities to connect with me (and my kids) to create memorable moments that I would later recall and tell people about (as I am now):

• An usher ignored me and my son (her back to me, staring into the distance) as we waited for a ride to arrive.
• Another usher (with no verbal interaction and no smile) pointed to the "tourist shop" as we disembarked from a ride.
• A man feeding turtles ignored me and my 3-year-old while he was less than 3 feet from us.

Even when there was interaction, the service was essentially passive - I had to ask for help. Very few service providers attempted to understand what I wanted or needed. Ironically, when I asked for help almost all were very knowledgeable.

One attraction, however, did stand out. Their cashiers were as numb to the customers as everywhere else, but that is where the similarities with the other attractions ended. Every staff member in the attraction had a smile or a word or two for me or my son. They asked questions about what areas of the attraction we had been to and mentioned their favourite areas or recommendations. In fact, they were so friendly that my (other) son asked me if somehow they knew I was a judge and were therefore extra nice.

And that was the difference that won my vote. Not the product: Every attraction was world-class. Not the process: They had all managed the journey through their space. It was the emotional connection their staff made to me and my family.

As a judge, I voted. As consumers, we vote all the time - by going back again and again because of how the staff and the attraction make us feel, and by telling those we know (and those, who, for example, read my blog) how much fun we had.  

A Restaurant Performs No Better Than It ' s Managed

It’s no surprise that people are eating out less. According to a recent article on Restaurant.org, restaurant owners have seen a steady decline in sales and traffic counts due to the slowed economy. With more consumers being very cautious about how they spend their money, the expectation for good customer service is extremely high. That makes it especially important to teach managers how to work through the barriers to good performance—maybe equipment, maybe policy, maybe workflow. If managers are trained to coach, to give feedback, and to recognize others, they'll build employees and build a work environment where everyone performs more independently and reliably. We’ve all witnessed bad service at a restaurant. In some cases, restaurant managers often make matters WORSE when called upon to resolve customer complaints. Because managers often skip training, believing that the frontline employees have a greater need, they are ill-prepared for sticky situations such as service recovery. Let us hear about your worst restaurant service experience. Did the restaurant manager stop by and try to smooth things over? More importantly – did their schmoozing work?

“Um, most people say I’m a people person”

Even in this troubled economy, many companies are recruiting. In fact, AchieveGlobal’s own front lobby was busy this week with candidates seeking our open positions. Frankly, it felt good to see people getting hired. I’m often asked if there are job interview questions that help choose candidates who will provide the best customer service—no matter what the primary job function is. You’re wise to screen early. Our experience shows that later development (training, coaching, etc.) improves the majority of employees but has little impact on the lowest performers. So it’s best to hire those with the most potential. Here are six questions that you might want to add to your formal selection process.

• If I asked your external customers from your previous job, what words would they use to describe how it felt to do business with you? (Listen for adjectives that demonstrate the STAR qualities: Seamless, Trustworthy, Attentive, Resourceful.)
• If I asked your coworkers from your previous job, what words would they use to describe how it felt to do business with you? (Listen for adjectives that demonstrate the STAR qualities: Seamless, Trustworthy, Attentive, Resourceful)
• Tell me about a time when you provided really good service. What specific things did you do that made your service so good? (Listen for a description of positive defining moments, the STAR qualities, the three dimensions of service—and hopefully not a description of “services” or amenities that the candidate gave away.
• Tell me about a time when you were a customer and received really bad service. What specific things do you think the service provider could have done better? (Listen for a description of positive defining moments, the STAR qualities, the three dimensions of service—and hopefully not a description of “services” or amenities that the service provider could have offered.)
• If you had to think of the one or two most important rules of good customer service--the things we should always remember when serving customers—what would you say those are? (Listen for human connection, feelings, emotional response, exceeding expectations, etc. There are no “right” answers, but you would hope the candidate would somehow mention human dimension issues.)
• Tell me about a time when you wanted to provide good service but something got in the way—such as a policy or computer failure or something else outside your control. What did you do? Did the customer end up having a bad experience? (Listen for personal accountability—the aptitude to create positive defining moments as often as possible, despite barriers. Listen for an understanding of how an experience can be overall positive even if some defining moments are negative.)

These questions are intended to explore the candidate’s personality, not the candidate’s awareness of service models, language, etc.—or not even whether the candidate has already learned good service skills. Those things can be trained later. But it’s easier to learn skills and language when you’re already focused on creating positive defining moments. And if you find yourself on the other side of the table, be ready to weave those answers into the conversation. At any level, in any role, interpersonal skills give you a competitive edge--but only if the interviewer knows you have them.

Greed is good

This is a perilous world we live in. Everyone around you is a threat.

• The corporate CEO whose salary makes your company unstable. 
• The union boss whose strike disrupts your supply chain. 
• The neighbor whose foreclosed house blights your street. 
• The government whose taxes negate your hard work.
• The environmentalist whose regulations constrain economic growth.
• The customer service rep whose sense of urgency is non-existent.
• The driver whose mobile phone conversation slows your commute.
• The salesperson whose motive is to close the deal and move on. 
• The foreign country whose exports out-compete your industry. 
• And now some manager whose bonus is apparently singly responsible for The End Of The World As We Know It.

Those people are evil. They are clearly motivated by greed! But wait—aren’t we all? In his recent Wall Street Journal article, “Greed is Good,” Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, wrote:

“Selfishness—that is, concern with one's genuine, long-range interest—required a man to think, to produce, and to prosper by trading with others voluntarily to mutual benefit. Rand also noted that only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism.”

In short, greed is the very engine that drives your company. Greed creates ambition. Without greed, your company will fail. Don’t believe it? Prove it!

• Eliminate your system of paying salespeople commissions.
• Stop any profit-sharing payouts to your customer service staff. 
• Kill any performance bonuses promised to managers. 
• Eliminate perks for large-volume clients.
• Downgrade business travel lodging to bare minimum quality.

Those might sound silly, but that’s the point. “Rational selfishness” is hard to define, but generally it means you want to give enough to keep the other person happy but keep as much as you can for yourself. Sway too far in either direction and the whole system collapses. Why is this important? Because a big part of performance improvement is “ya gotta wanna.” If an employee doesn’t CARE about improving performance, it won’t happen. What motivates your staff? Is it money? (probably) Is it respect? (yes, according to recent AchieveGlobal research) Is it that you care, too? (definitely) Then give them what they want. Even in these troubled times—or maybe because of these troubled times—people look out for #1. As altruistic and high-minded as people want to be, they are selfish. And, apparently, a little greed is exactly what our economy needs.

Confessions of a Red Carpetbagger

By Todd Beck I have a big ego, but I am not a snob. I don’t dress, eat, drive, shop, watch, or otherwise consume “as a statement.” In other words, I don’t have an iPhone. But lately I have been pretty haughty when shopping. In fact, I don’t even like to shop (see first paragraph) and yet nowadays, as one of the few people in the stores I visit, I find myself annoyed that salespeople don’t kiss my…well, ask me what I need and give me the VIP treatment. If I’ve got money to spend in this economy, they had better be especially grateful. Apparently I’m not alone in feeling that way. This recent BusinessWeek article, "Safeguarding customer service in a recession," profiles other people confused by the simultaneous reduction in customers (suggesting that companies should be fighting desperately to keep those still around) and reduction in customer service (the result of budget cuts). It’s a paradox—two opposing forces, that wouldn’t seem to co-exist, yet driven by the same bad economy. It’s the vicious cycle, the worst-case scenario. And although rationally I understand the need for cutbacks, when I’m the customer I don’t emotionally tolerate it. What’s funny is that I remember traveling in less affluent places, maybe in the Third World or in some tiny rural town in America. Yeah, the hotel or restaurant is old and tiny and sometimes even dirty, and I am lucky enough to be able to afford better. But I automatically lower my expectations to match the environment. I inherently “get” that they don’t have resources to treat me even half like I would be treated somewhere else. And emotionally I’m OK paying “too much” for lesser quality because I know they are offering their best. I become grateful for everything. Will we get to the point where we emotionally consider our vendors the same way? Will we keep lowering our expectations until whatever the staff provides is considered “their best”? Gee, I hope not. For all these decades we’ve been trying to raise the bar, improving customer service to meet rising expectations. This economic downturn has a lot to do with lowered accountability. I hate to think what would happen if as service providers we abandon that accountability, too.

All Global Is Local

By Todd Beck I've been to a lot of places in the world, and I've asked a lot of questions. One thing I've learned is that the same interpersonal skills that work here are the same skills that work there-wherever here and there are. Case in point: A few years ago I went to a prestigious university to participate in an excellent executive education program on global leadership. One case study was a complex factory simulation intended to illustrate the different needs of world markets. The activity was designed to run 30 minutes, with several opportunities for teams to try (and to fail) to reach agreement. However, our group had a mutually beneficial deal within 5minutes-much to the frustration of the professor. How did we do it? Three words: needs satisfaction selling. Not knowing any better, I applied the skills I'd learned in sales training and quickly discovered the need behind the need. Apparently knowing what the other person wants can make a global leader successful. Just because you want more proof: Last year I was in rural China working with our sales staff. At the end of the trip, the regional manager complimented me on being a "good" traveler-saying that I seemed to naturally be able to fit in and get along. I promise that's not from any local expertise. I still don't know much about Dongba culture or Naxi food. I can't even count to ten in Mandarin. But I can count to four when it comes to the simple customer service skills of Acknowledge, Appreciate, Affirm, and Assure. Apparently paying attention to people on a human level can make a global traveler successful. So there is the secret: Focus on the other person, not on where the other person is. If you have the skills to satisfy at least two customers, you could probably satisfy the world.

Top-Drawer Service Costs More Than It ' s Worth

By Todd Beck One of the most common (and personally frustrating) misconceptions about customer service is that people think it means to give away the store. They often tell stories about great "service" where they got a discount, a freebie, a kickback. That's not service-that's just price competition, pure and simple. And frankly, if you have to buy somebody's business, that means they're far from what might be called a "loyal" customer. In the business dimension, you need to stay competitive. So accelerate your delivery dates, offer a toll-free number, give cash back on purchases, put whipped cream on top, whatever. Of course, those are things your competitors can probably easily match. That starts a downward pricing/profit spiral for all of you. So is it worth it? The trick is to stay competitive in the human dimension. Tricky both because people are harder to manage than is pricing and because you have to find the human attributes that outweigh your competitor's business advantage. Whether you can more profitably compete on business or human depends on you. The good news is that being seamless, trustworthy, attentive, resourceful-the key qualities of human dimension service-are within the common empowerment level of every employee, ensuring accountability. An organization won't likely empower a frontline employee to lower the price or otherwise change the business dimension, but every employee can make choices about how to interact with their customers. So is it worth it? The business dimension is how you get customers to come to you. The human dimension is how you get customers to stay with you. What's the ROI for you of true customer loyalty?