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Next week is Customer Service Week! CSW is an international celebration of the importance of customer service and the people who work with and support customers of all types. This year, the celebration is October 4-8*.

According to CSWeek.com, the Customer Service Group has sponsored Customer Service Week since 1991. Here is another interesting fact from their website:

“A high point in the week’s long history came in 1992 when the U.S. Congress proclaimed Customer Service Week a nationally recognized event, which is celebrated annually during the first full week in October.”

Our book, Better Customer Service: Simple Rules You Can Apply Today, presents many concepts, models, and examples of how you can improve customer service. In recognition of next week’s official celebration, it is available at a 30% discount from routledge.com by using the code PBA30 at checkout. This discount is good through Friday, October 8.

See more information, including ways to celebrate your customer service people, at: https://wp.csweek.com/

Happy Customer Service Week!

*Note: Ed and I believe every week should be customer service week!

Actual social media exchange between a customer and a store owner:

“I really want this blouse.  There’s a waitlist online.  How long is the wait?”

“We restock if there is a big enough list.”

“I’ll come to the store this week and check things out.  Thanks.”

“You are so welcome!  We also have some shirts exclusive to our app-make sure you download that!

“Got it.”

—

Look back at this pleasant exchange.  Can you see one or more problems that might arise in the future, either with this customer or others?

Ed and I have found that a leading source of miscommunication is vague language being used by one or both parties in a conversation, and failure on the part of either to detect it until after problems occur.  Such words include common terms like “right away” and “ASAP.”  During the various interchanges we have during our day we might use such terms dozens of times with colleagues, customers, family, and friends.  How soon is “right away?”  “ASAP?”  In the above exchange, what about saying new stock will be ordered “if there is a big enough list”?  How big is “big enough”?

Although pleasant exchanges with regular customers who know the store owner well may never escalate into dissatisfaction and negative social media reviews, such exchanges are not necessarily confined to regulars.  If a potential customer feels unsure of what you mean then a first purchase may never happen.  Perhaps that customer would have been a lucrative one, but lost sales like that are difficult to detect.  To make matters worse, some regulars may lose confidence from repeatedly experiencing frustration with stockouts, failed promises, and other outcomes of miscommunication.  Potential customers can see such failings by reading your social media or hearing customers complain when they’re in one of your physical locations.

Training your staff (and yourself!) to avoid such vague language is possible!  When hiring, be sure to emphasize that clear, straightforward communication is practiced, and expected.  During training, both for new hires and for experienced staff, include some role plays so you and your workers are aware of such issues and are in synch with each other.  We have some exercises within the Resources link that can help.  (To get the most benefit from these exercises and other resources we provide, see our book, Better Customer Service: Simple Rules You Can Apply Today. It provides important background and examples that will help you use the resources better.)

Being prepared when customers, salespeople, or anyone else outside (or inside!) your organization uses unclear language can help to avoid miscommunication.  Detecting vagueness and clarifying what is actually meant can go a long way toward improving your customer service, whether your customers are the ones who buy from you, or may do so in the future, or are colleagues who depend on your work to do theirs.  Better communication really does equal better service!

“I’m sorry for the wait, it’ll be another twenty minutes or so. I’m sorry; we’re understaffed.”
I felt bad for the young hostess, and wondered how many times she felt compelled (or was told) to say that. We were looking forward to having some fresh seafood at this Tampa-area restaurant that we’d heard good things about, but the wait time had gone from the initial 30-40 minutes to “another twenty minutes or so” to past that and counting. We ended up being seated after about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Each of the three or four times I asked for an update, the “understaffed” apology was included in the new information. Why?

I’m sure you’ve either followed the news about the extra level of federal and state unemployment benefits, or heard stories such as the one above, or experienced it yourself. As of June 2021, there are millions of job openings around the country, but a similar number of people remaining unemployed. In some cases, the extra unemployment benefit equals or exceeds the amount people could earn given their industry experience and skill level! Thus, the help that was so crucial to make ends meet for millions of families has become a disincentive to going back to work. The result is understaffing, closed businesses that cannot hire enough staff to reopen, and many other negative consequences.

Countering the policies are businesses that are trying to use incentives to lure people to apply for their languishing job openings. As you’ve traveled around over the past few months, you’ve probably seen signs in store windows, in front of restaurants, and in many other places, offering signing bonuses for new hires. In addition to that private sector response, several states have ended their own extra unemployment benefit that had supplemented the federal ones.

Providing incentives that encourage desired behaviors, and disincentives for behaviors that are not, do not have to involve paying people more money. Enhancing the worksite environment, providing opportunities to improve skills and knowledge, and making sure the value the organization seeks to provide for its customers is understood by everyone are all ways to incentivize positive behaviors. Unfortunately, this also applies to disincentives.

In the early 1980s, just after I graduated from college, I worked as an assistant manager at a shoe store in Lexington, Kentucky. This store was a unit of one of the retail chains operated by a large shoe manufacturer. In my training I was taught that we could call other stores to see if they had a size and style of a shoe in stock when we did not and a customer wanted it. One day early in my time there that exact situation occurred; a customer wanted a particularly expensive style and we were out of his size. On this day, our regional manager happened to be in our store, as he made rounds of stores in our district (Kentucky and Indiana). I called one of our stores in Louisville, which was the closest location to ours. They didn’t have the shoe either. Later that day, I tried again with a second Louisville store. A few seconds later I heard the voice of my regional manager, who had now arrived in Louisville to visit our three stores there.

I cannot remember if I expected for him to be pleased by my initiative, but I have never forgotten his terse statement in an agitated voice. “You called a store while I was there this morning, and now you’re calling this store while I’m here. Stop calling so many stores! They have the shoe and it will be shipped to your store.” He then hung up.

Needless to say, this episode was in the back of my mind whenever I thought about the policy on checking with other stores. I think with today’s higher degree of connected operations a retailer likely has an easier way to obtain a shoe for a customer, but it wouldn’t happen at the store where I worked—the entire chain went out of business. I didn’t find out if there were many other managers with the mindset of that regional manager, but I decided to leave the company and pursue an MBA. (Ironically, a different regional manager called me after I had resigned to tell me that he had wanted to offer me my own store to manage. I guess he hadn’t heard about all my phone calls that first year!)

Having a policy that most people in your organization know about but that is not encouraged to be used sends mixed signals (at the least). Do you have such built-in disincentives in your organization? If you aren’t sure, talking with employees and customers regularly can help you discover them and take action. Remove them, and look for ways to replace them with incentives instead.

Whenever disincentives are reduced and the right incentives are in place, the current employment issue will be resolved. You may still have to wait for a table at a popular restaurant, but at least your wait will be less likely to come with a side of “understaffed.”

-Terry

How many times have you been surveyed or interviewed about customer service? Each time it probably involved a phone call, email, or website. But, have you ever been asked for your thoughts on a customer service topic while swimming?

Recently, when my wife and I were in Texas to see our new grandchild, we stayed at an Econolodge in McKinney. Upon checking in we learned that the pool had just reopened after more than a year. Being fully vaccinated, it didn’t take long for me to decide to take the plunge and go to a pool for the first time in about a year and a half.

Apparently some people are still wary about using such public spaces, because the next morning I found the pool was empty (of people, not water). There is a certain satisfaction in entering an empty pool, watching the small waves fan out and getting used to the temperature. I swam a few laps and then heard someone call to me from the edge. I looked over and it was the hotel manager. He asked if I had a moment.

“Sure.”

“How is the temperature?”

“It’s good.”

“OK. We just opened the pool and wanted to make sure we got the temperature right. During the pandemic we decided to install a heating system as an improvement. I have it set at 81° but wanted to see if that felt OK.”

“Yes, it’s OK. Maybe a degree warmer would be better but I think it’s fine.”

“I always like to ask the guests directly what they think. I believe that is the best way to find out what’s working and what isn’t.”

Hearing this made me very happy. How many times have you wondered what your guests, customers, or clients thought about a service you provide but worried that you might be bothering them by taking up their time to ask? What about your associates? Are there times you wish you understood more clearly their thoughts and beliefs about the company’s services, policies, etc.? Rest assured, most of the time your customers and employees will appreciate that you consider them a valuable source for improving your operations.

The Econolodge manager was courteous, paid attention to a guest’s needs, and showed respect for my time and opinion. He thus exemplified three of the rules featured in Better Customer Service: Simple Rules You Can Apply Today.

In the book, my coauthor, Ed Brewer, and I fully describe the background of these three rules (be courteous and kind, pay attention, and show respect) plus several
others. We include many examples and useful tools that can be easily applied very quickly to improve customer service in many different settings.

Here’s wishing that your customer service is going “swimmingly!”

-Terry