Name: Vasudha Deming
Web Site: http://www.impactlearning.com/
Bio: In her professional life, Vasudha is a successful consultant who regularly works with leading companies on the topics of service, values, and mission. She has authored four books, all published by McGraw-Hill.
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- Who are your internal customers?
- What do these customers need from you in order to do their jobs well?
- Are you in regular two-way communication with those customers?
- If internal customer satisfaction were measured, how would you rate?
- How is frustration over internal customer service affecting morale and turnover?
- What does my team need to do to both provide and receive excellent internal customer service?
- Praise good work often and use positive language.
- Coach as soon as you see or hear the behavior taking place.
- Give specific feedback on behavior and performance.
- Treat all employees fairly.
- Lead by example.
- Let your employees know that you care.
- Make coaching a priority.
- Make sure employees know they’re part of a vision, not just a job.
As Guy Kawasaki is often quoted, “make meaning, not money.” By definition, an excellent customer experience is more than just a transaction. It follows then that agents responsible for providing this transcendent experience must view their role as something more than task and procedure. A manager should make sure that employees understand—and embrace—the vision behind the commerce. - Set employees up for success. Successful managers provide their front-line staff with the tools, training, and resources they need to consistently provide an excellent customer service experience. Improving customer service requires a robust and ongoing commitment not just to knowledge and skills, but to operations as well. A customer service agent’s excellence doesn’t mean much if the software is antiquated or the warehouse is empty.
- Foster good judgment, creative solutions, and empowerment. Customer service representatives are in direct communication with customers every day. No one else in the organization has quite the same perspective and access. By trusting them to understand the situation and empowering them to do the needful, a manager charts a path towars excellent customer experiences.
- Hold employees accountable for their performance. All too frequently, companies invest considerably in training their front-line customer service staff and then do little or nothing to sustain the return on investment. Not only is this fool-hardy from a financial standpoint, but it causes management to lose credibility in the eyes of the employees. Why should they put in the effort, their thinking goes, if the manager never notices? The adage is awkwardly worded but consistently true: “What gets reinforced gets done.”
- Praise and reward employees for their success. The best way for a manager to ensure that excellent customer experiences become the norm is to recognize and reward the employees responsible for making this happen. This praise will keep the agents motivated and let them know that management is paying attention. There’s no need to be lavish or showy; just be sincere.
- Do they have a desire, need, or problem that your product addresses?
- Does your product appeal to one of more of the universal values — wealth, esteem, convenience, ease of use, convenience, or security? (For more on these universal values, see Sales—The Other Side of Service™).
- Customer-facing employees are poised, confident, and professional. They've been given the training and resources they need to do a great job and they've been entrusted to use good judgment and a diverse skill set to do the needful for customers. They enjoy their job and take pride in doing it well.
- Supervisors and managers (of the customer-facing teams) are continuously engaged with the people who report to them. They're "in the trenches" alongside their direct reports, providing immediate support, coaching, troubleshooting, or anything else. Further, they enjoy a strong rapport with the people they manage.
- Employees communicate with one another in a positive and efficient way. They recognize each other as internal customers and they show the same courtesy and respect toward one another that they do toward external customers (even if the tone is more informal).
- Employees are aware of the "ripple effect." That is, they understand how the quality of their work affects the work of downstream colleagues (and ultimately the company's external customers). They strive to meet their obligations in full and on time.
Every Job Is a Customer Service Job
April 6th, 2012
Every company hopes for customer service excellence. Only a portion of them, however, strategically aim for this excellence through their day-to-day business practices. And of those, an even smaller segment actually achieve (and maintain) the goal.
Of the tiny business population who can truly claim customer service superiority, one thing is certain: Every employee owns a piece of that prize. Simply put, a company cannot achieve customer service excellence without first attaining high levels of efficiency, quality, and productivity among its internal service providers.
Emphasize Internal Customer Service
All too often, companies place a strong emphasis on external customer care while losing sight of the fact that internal customers matter just as much. Why does it matter? Because somewhere down the line, the service provided to an internal customer will show up in an external customer transaction.
(Just in case it’s not obvious, an internal customer is defined as any employee who depends on the timing, quality and accuracy of a colleague’s work in order for them to succeed in their own work.)
As a customer service consultant, what I've seen is that those organizations in which a customer care culture is truly embedded do not make distinctions about internal and external care. Each employee's mission is simply to demonstrate excellence with each and every task. There’s an implicit understanding that every job is a “customer service” job.
Start With Awareness
In developing a company-wide customer service training program for a large insurance client, my colleagues and I created an activity called The Ripple Effect. Just like it sounds, the game aimed to show employees the impact of their work upon others’ ability to do their own job well). It proved to be one of the most popular sections of the course and provided some true a-ha moments on the part of the participants. Many of them admitted that they’d never seriously considered the ripple effect of their work on that of their internal customers—and ultimately on the company’s external customers.
In another initiative (this one too aimed at helping employees to recognize their interdependence), we created an Engagement Cycle which tracked a customer engagement from beginning to end and charted the various internal customer needs at each stage. Again the a-ha’s.
Define Customer Service as a Function, Not a Department
How does your organization view customer service—as a department, a specific job role, or as a responsibility shared by every employee?
To help you assess the level of internal customer service in your organization, begin by getting each employee to answer some simple questions:
Managers can ask themselves a couple of additional questions:
Teach Them to Be Good Customers
What does an organization want from its customers? Satisfaction, loyalty, and maybe a bit of appreciation.
Internal customer service works the same way. Employees will be motivated to continue providing good service to coworkers if they’re given appropriate feedback and, at least every once in awhile, sincere thanks for a job well done.
Are your employees satisfied? Find out today. Download this free employee satisfaction survey or paste this link into your browser: http://info.impactlearning.com/reg_esatsurvey.html
The Importance of Management Coaching
March 20th, 2012
When you think of coaching, what comes to mind? Most likely, you automatically think of someone leading their sports team to a championship, right? Now, while a coach is someone we often associate with sports, coaches are also managers and mentors in the workplace, guiding us to our own professional victory.
Coaching is one of the greatest things a manager can do for his or her employees, yet it’s often overlooked. The reason for this is that many managers may feel like they do not have time to coach, or that their employees are doing fine, so there’s no need to coach. While this may seem logical, the truth is that there is always a need for coaching.
To put it into perspective, think about your favorite sports team for a minute. Where would that team be if they did not have their coach? What would they do if they didn’t have their coach encouraging and directing them? For starters, the team, even though each member is talented, would probably feel a little lost or misdirected. They would probably just do whatever they thought was right, because no one was around to tell them any different. This is exactly what happens when there’s a team or department at work without a manager coaching them.
Coaching is vital to the success of the company and to each team or department. It is through coaching that managers connect with their employees, because it is through coaching that they show how much they care. Managers show they care by praising employees for what they do right, and they show they care by helping employees get on the right track when their performance is not up to par.
Coaching isn’t easy, but it is essential. When it comes to coaching, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Since finding the time seems to be a common obstacle to good coaching, it’s important that managers don’t view coaching as an addition to their job. In reality, coaching is their job. With managers being in very visible and influential positions, they have the ability to lead their teams to victory, or let their teams fall. No matter how big or small a team may be, the practice of management coaching is critical.
Coaching Tip
It’s a good idea for managers to keep track of how often they praise their employees. One way to do this is to start each week with a tally sheet containing each employee’s name. This will make it easy for managers to note—with a simple tick or tally mark—each time they praise an employee throughout the week. At the end of the week, this informal “praise report” will yield valuable data about the manager’s coaching efforts. This tally sheet will also help to make praising become a habit!
5 Tips for Managing an Excellent Customer Experience
June 21st, 2011
The ultimate aim of any business is to create and maintain customer loyalty. Success in this endeavor requires a successful convergence of a number of factors—the skills of the customer service providers, the company’s ability to understand and meet customers’ needs, the value proposition of the product offering, and more.
One crucial role is that of the customer service manager. When creating and maintaining a customer service strategy, a manager should incorporate the following best practices.
5 Tips for Managing an Excellent Customer Experience:
A manager can’t control all aspects of the customer service experience, but he or she can certainly make sure that the front-line staff has all the elements of success.
Why People Buy and How They Perceive Value
April 26th, 2011Some time ago, I wrote a blog post about the elusive nature of "value." The post told the true story of a man who started with a red paperclip and, through a series of improbable bartering trades, ended up in possession of a house.
I was reminded of this story when a recent episode of the NBC television show "The Office" explored a similar theme—at a company garage sale Dwight begins with a trivial item and keeps “trading up” until at last he's attained a telescope (which in predictable sitcom fashion then gets traded for a packet of magic legumes).
It's the eternal question for advertisers, marketers, developers, sales professionals and customer service strategists: Why do people buy and how do they perceive value? The more companies explore the question, however, the more layered the answer becomes.
Why do people buy?
Two key factors guide customers' decisions to buy — or buy into — your offering:
How do people perceive value?
Value results from a simple equation: What do you get in exchange for what you give?
As is evidenced by the two stories at the top of this blog post, however, this perception of value is nowhere near absolute. The concept of value is personal and highly variant — one man's telescope is another man's miracle legumes.
Adding to the fickleness of this aforementioned "simple equation" is the fact that our perception of value changes over time.
The need for value to perpetuate
Most of us are familiar with the experience of purchasing automobile insurance. When buying the insurance, "value" is overwhelmingly determined by cost. Once the car has been in a car accident, however, the customer's perception of value changes: How good is the service provided? How quickly is the claim handled? What is the level of care and concern extended to the customer?
Every company — across industries — can apply a similar analogy to their products and services. There's the value that leads to a buying decision and the value that leads to customer loyalty. The next rung on the ladder would be the value that leads to proselytizing — those customers who are so thrilled with the value of your product that they enthusiastically bring new customers to you.
In building a customer service strategy for your organization, it's important to consider how your customers perceive value, not just when buying but also in the long term. The goal of every customer-centric organization should be to provide enough value to customers that they buy from you, stay with you, talk about you, and bring others to you.
Work Works Best When Work Becomes Play
February 15th, 2011In Impact Learning's training and consulting work, we talk a lot about the concept of "transcendence," which of course can mean many things: challenging yourself to expand your capabilities; going above and beyond expectations; continually striving to improve; and learning to genuinely enjoy work (even the hard stuff).
I think the latter point is especially easy to accomplish for people in the customer service field. That's because customer service, as challenging as it sometimes can be, is an intrinsically rewarding profession. Simply put, it feels good to be of service to people, whether that means selling them shoes, answering their billing questions, or fixing their washing machines.
I saw a 2-minute video yesterday that reminded me—without even a single word—just how enjoyable an everyday transaction can be for both the customer and the service provider. Stay tuned; I'm going to give you the link so you can see it for yourself. But first I want to say a little more about it…
When you think about the job of an ice cream vendor, what comes to mind? Probably the simple, menial, repetitive task of scooping out a frozen treat and handing it over the counter. Well, here's one ice cream vendor who far transcends that mundane task and completely elevates the experience for himself, for the customer and for the crowd gathered round.
Part illusionist, part hawker, and part mime, the Turkish vendor has found a way to transform the daily grind into a story of fun, surprise, and human connection. I don't know how good the ice cream tasted, but I'm sure the customer will remember the experience for a long time to come.
OK, so here's the link. The video is available on YouTube, but I found it at www.positivesharing.com (if you don't see it right away, search for "ice cream"). This website features a series called Friday Spoing, a weekly dose of fun, brief, quirky videos so I suggest you find it there.
Enjoy–and don't forget to bring a little playful transcendence into your own work!
Is Your Company a Customer Sieve?
September 21st, 2010
As a consultant, I frequently have discussions with clients about the delicate balance required to keep current customers happy and loyal while also utilizing the necessary resources to woo and win new customers.
This issue is highlighted in a great article by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker.The entire article can be found here, but the excerpt that really got my attention is this one:
The real problem may be that companies have a roving eye: they’re always more interested in the customers they don’t have. So they pour money into sales and marketing to lure new customers while giving their existing ones short shrift, in an effort to minimize costs and maximize revenue.… Economically, this makes little sense; it’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than to hold on to an old one, and, these days, annoyed customers are quick to take their business elsewhere. But, because most companies are set up to focus on the first sale rather than on all the ones that might follow, they end up devoting all their energies to courting us, promising wonderful products and excellent service. Then, once they’ve got us, their attention wanders.
You know the story: You give your trust, money, and loyalty to a company only to have them trample on your needs as they beat a path to any potential new customers that might be lurking nearby. Here’s one of my more memorable—and painful—experiences …
I was once the client of an outsource call center. During the several weeks I spent on site I frequently worked on the call floor, monitoring and coaching the agents. Throughout these weeks, we (my company) had significant difficulties with the management team. Long story short: my organization was not receiving the resources, attention, and results we’d been promised when signing the contract with the call center.
So imagine my chagrin when one day a manager comes flying onto the call floor, hurriedly instructing the agents to look and sound professional: Sit up straight! Watch your tone of voice! Smile! Why this urgent call for decorum? As the manager frantically advised the agents, “a prospective client is coming in to check out our facility.”
I—a current client desperate to feel valued and respected by the vendor—was standing right there! At the time, I laughed. At the conclusion of the contract, I took my business elsewhere.
You probably have similar tales of woe from your own experiences as a customer. Care to share? More importantly, what solutions do you propose?
Customer Service: Is It In Your Company’s DNA?
September 16th, 2010When I consult with clients who are seeking to improve their customer service, a typical on-site visit might last anywhere from two to five days. It only takes a couple of hours, however, for me to glean whether or not a strong customer service is embedded in the company's "DNA."
By listening to calls, interviewing employees, observing procedures, and just generally soaking up the company culture, I can usually recognize early on many different indicators of a strong (or not) commitment to customer service.
Here's why: If it's in the company's DNA, it's readily apparent. Long before I might meet with the Executive Committee to hear about their lofty vision, I'll see (and you would too) that this vision is carried through to every job role and pervades the various actions and tasks undertaken by employees.
Following are four key indicators that a company has successfully embedded customer service into their DNA.
There are, of course, other indicators (many of which aren't discernible in the first few hours of a site visit), but the ones outlined above provide some pretty good (and quick!) evidence that a company is on the right track.