Customer Service Tips By Professional Speaker Shep Hyken

You can’t have great customer service without great internal service. As a reminder, the internal customer is anyone within our own organization who is dependent on us for anything. Taking care of this internal customer allows them to do their job, take care of another internal customer or take care of the outside customer.

Much of what is written and taught about regular outside customer service works for internal service as well. One of my favorite areas on which to lecture is on understanding the customer. While I have written about this in earlier articles, it bears repeating. It is really a simple concept. Sometimes we think we know what our customers want, but they really want something else.
Customer Service Debrief Helps Us Learn from Mistakes and
Successes

The letter comes and it is a complaint from an unhappy
customer. The customer tells the story in clear detail.
It’s obvious, we made a mistake. This had nothing to do
with an employee’s indifferent attitude. We just messed
up.

What happens next is that we respond to the customer,
hoping to get their business back by fixing what was wrong.
Then, we analyze how it happened. We debrief, brainstorm
and come up with a solution to minimize, if not completely
eliminate this problem in the future. This failure becomes
a great learning experience. In short, we learned from
our mistake.

The next day another letter comes. This time it is from an
ecstatically happy customer. Not only were our people
exhibiting amazing customer service, our system worked.
The customer felt we went above and beyond to take care of
him.

What happens next is we congratulate the people involved –
maybe even give them a little recognition in front of their
peers. And, that is it.

According to a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review,
that focused on failure, this scenario, as it applies to
failure in general, is very typical. We learn from our
mistakes and simply celebrate our successes. Several of
the articles on failure go on to say that we can learn as
much, if not more, from our successes. So, I thought about
how this applies to customer service.

Learn from our happy customers, especially if they are
willing to tell us their story. Interview them to find out
the details. Go back with a team and analyze why things
worked. Is this the norm? What’s in place that always
works? Can it be improved upon? Can it be repeated? Why
did this interaction stand out to this customer, while
others didn’t? Do other customers have similar
ecstatically happy experiences?

Years ago I took a course offered by the Afterburners, a
group of former military fighter pilots who teach corporate
America how to bring military strategy into their
boardroom. One of the very powerful lessons I learned
about the military way of “doing business” was that they
debriefed after every mission – both failed and successful
missions. To really get strong feedback, everyone in the
debrief session went rankles. In other words, everybody
was equal. Rank was not the issue. Open communication
and feedback was more important than genuflecting to the
hire ranking officers.

There is a lot we can learn from our customers’ accolades.
Don’t just revel in success. Learn from it!
In other words, we make assumptions. In order not to make mistakes, we need to get inside our customers heads and give them what they want versus what we think they want. The easiest way to do this is to ask questions.

Okay, enough review. How does this apply to the internal customer? When was the last time you asked your employees if they were happy with you? Or, when was the last time you showed your employees sincere appreciation?

What is all of this leading to? Some very important practical information. Apparently, some surveys are proving that managers and supervisors are not in sync with what their employees want.

Robert Half International conducted a survey and found out the top reasons employees leave to go work somewhere else. When executives, managers and supervisors were asked what they thought, their number one answer was money. They thought money was the motivator to cause someone to “jump ship.” When the employees who had left were surveyed, the number one reason they left to work somewhere else was lack of recognition and appreciation.

Another survey conducted by Challenger Outplacement Council, written up in Human Resource Update, found that the most important employee motivators are:

1. Recognition/appreciation
2. Independence
3. Contribution to the company
4. Salary

Another survey put together by Glenn Tobe & Associates asked employees and their supervisors what were their top motivators. The employees’ responses were a bit different than the supervisors. Notice what employees thought was most important versus what supervisors thought was least important.

Employees wanted:

1. Appreciation
2. Feeling "in" on things
3. Understanding attitude
4. Job security
5. Good wages
6. Interesting work
7. Promotion opportunities
8. Loyalty from management

Supervisors thought they wanted:

1. Good wages
2. Job security
3. Promotion opportunities
4. Good working conditions
5. Interesting work
6. Loyalty from management
7. Tactful discipline
8. Appreciation

Let’s look at other areas, such as employee perks. One of my clients took an area of his building and created a workout center for employees. He spent a large amount of money to put together a facility that was the best for the money based on the space that he had. He thought employees would go crazy over it. He was dead wrong! Yes, a few employees took advantage of it, but the facility was seldom used. All he had to do was ask the employees if they would use it. He eventually found out.

Consider holding a focus group, not for customers, but for employees. Make it easy for your employees to give you feedback on what their likes and dislikes are. A survey could be put together to help better understand their feelings. Occasionally take an employee to lunch to see what is on his or her mind. You may also learn about the feelings of other employees. Anheuser-Busch has executives ride with the beer delivery trucks, not just to see the customer, but to get feedback from the “front liners” of their business. Many companies have similar types of programs that let their executives get a pulse on their customers in the “real world.”

Realize that this is not a one time thing. Finding out what your employees think should be ongoing, just as it is for the outside customer. Determine which of these or other methods of employee feedback work best and consider doing it at least once every six months, if not more often.

Go back one more time to the Glenn Tobe & Associates survey and look at the difference between what the employee wants versus what the managers and supervisors think the employee wants! Creating MOMENTS OF MAGIC are not just for the outside customer!