InterWeave Moves You to WOW Performance

JD Power just announced the results of the 2008 utility study ranking the level of customer satisfaction that consumers have with their utility provider.  The study reviews six key factors: power quality and reliability; price; billing and payment; corporate citizenship; communications; and customer service. JD Powers provides rankings of ”Among the Best” “Better than Most” “About Average” and “The Rest”. 

Many of InterWeave’s customers often ask me what my opinion is of customer satisfaction surveys and how you should  use the data to change your business.  While I am a huge proponent of gaining customer feedback, it is important to understand what the data will help you to do and what the data WON’T help you with. 

Here are the challenges with customer surveys and things to keep in mind when you are reviewing JD Power’s information or another other customer survey data:

1. The information is often asked in terms of vague feelings.  “Was the customer service representative friendly?” “Was the customer service representative helpful?”  When you get the results of those questions, you don’t know what to change in order to meet their expectations next time.  Should your representatives smile more often, say hello or offer additional assistance in order to appear more friendly?  Your survey data needs to get to the details of the behaviors in order for you to effectively do something with the information.
2. The customer’s perceptions are skewed based on other companies they work with.  If your customers are dealing with other companies who provide much worse service than yours, your service looks glowing in comparison.  But does that mean that your service is EXCEPTIONAL, or is it just better than what they are accustomed to dealing with from other vendors?  Their tolerance levels are skewed based on other experiences that you have no control over.
3. Timing is everything.  When customers have a recent experience with you that is completely unsatisfactory, the survey comments are going to be geared toward the most recent experience.  When you have a lot of customer surveys it is important to understand if the comments are coming from a recent experience as a new customer or an overall impression based on several years of doing business with you. It may be important to segment your data to compare information from customers in similar situations rather than looking at all the customer situations as a whole. 
4. Every customer’s perspective on the questions is different.  What one customer views as a “10″, another customer could perceive as a “5″.  While the scale is explained to all the customers, each customer is using his/her own judgment as to what the definition of the standard is so your data is skewed based on personal interpretations of the question and the scale. 

So what should you do with customer feedback information to overcome these challenges? 

1. Put the information in perspective.  Recognize that this is one piece of data and is not the whole picture of your performance.
2. Ensure that your Range of Tolerance is higher than your customers.  When you observe performance, do not make excuses.  “He’s new” “She just got back from leave” ”We haven’t trained that yet” are not good reasons for tolerating low performance. Do not think to yourself, “It is good enough”.  That type of mentality will not help you achieve higher performance. 
3. Focus on your internal monitoring and mentoring pratices.  Put your customer hat on when you listen to your customer calls.  Would you be WOWed if you were the customer?  Evaluate your performance as if you were the customer and then communicate the necessary changes to the employees.
4. Focus on driving change rather than just reading data.  The data provides great insight, but the real focus should be on changing your performance so that your customers are WOWed by the service you deliver.

JD Power is one source of information that provides a high level overview of your customers’ perceptions of you.  Now review your monitoring criteria, your own range of tolerance for exceptional performance and listen to your calls from that perspective.  Are you WOWed?  InterWeave can help!

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So as you started your day this morning did you review your to-do list and jump right in with emails, meetings, customer issues and so forth?  I took some time this morning to make a list of my purpose and just what I wanted to BE at the end of my day, and not just what I wanted to do.  My list included Being: More inquisitive of current jobs that  I have not been as involved in, more receptive to new ideas, more focused to learning something new and more in tune to the real reasons why I was engaging in certain activities.  I noticed different items on my list than just making a to-do list of what I wanted to accomplish by the end of the day.  Once again it is proof that changing the question obviously changes the responses. 

I try to introspect on a regular basis to make sure that I am doing all I can do for others around me. My task list takes on a few new items when I think about the question of what I want to BE rather than what I want to DO.  It was an interesting perspective on my life.  I encourage you to take a few minutes and look at your life from the perspective of what you want to be.  I think the last time I looked at my life that way was when I was graduating high school and people were asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  I’m not sure I’m there yet…

For many years, I have wanted to embark on a benchmarking study and have finally made it happen!  If you are in the utility industry- this study is just for you. 

I selected 105 utilities and made 5 random phone calls into the utility to mystery shop the level of service and efficiency.  I have to say that the results were not what we expected.  The calls were all recorded and then evaluated against an established set of criteria. You can see some of the results by clicking on this link to the sample of the study and to see if you are included in the study: Benchmarking Study Sample

I announced the survey results at the CS Week Conference and have begun to receive press about the study.  Here’s a link to the first article that has been published about the study. “Study Aims to Raise Call Center Quality from Yikes to WOW!”

You will definitely want to take a look at this study to see the standards that we monitored to, the definitions of the standards and 100 call samples from the calls that were made.  This study will help you to start driving change today! 

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I went into Sweetbay grocery store last night to pick up a few things for a dinner party.  Since it is not my regular grocery store, I was struggling a bit to find the paper goods I was looking for and ended up pacing past the registers several times.  It was very slow and so four of the cashiers were standing there talking and watching me pace back and forth.  Not once did they ask if I needed assistance. 

15 minutes later when I was in the check out line, one of the cashiers who watched me walking back and forth, asked- “Did you find everything alright?” I was reminded of how much I hate scripted responses!  I was tempted to say, “You just watched me pace back and forth looking for the right aisle.  You tell me, do you think I found everything ok?” - But I was in a generous mood and didn’t feel like going into details at that moment. 

Sweetbay- Please teach your clerks what real service is all about- not just how to ask scripted questions.  Reach out to your customers when you see them pacing the aisles and offer assistance before your customers get to the check out line.  Not only will you be providing a higher level of service, you will also get more sales.  (I ended up leaving without everything I needed because I couldn’t find everything on my list and by the time I got to the register, I didn’t have any more time to waste!)

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New Hire training continues to be the topic of so many of my conversations lately.  Keep focusing on the creative and strategic methods for learning new materials.  I observed a few training sessions over the last few weeks and I found that a great deal of role playing is going on.  That’s a great thing!  But where I would be more purposeful in helping to drive change is in the reviewing of the role plays.   

As many of you know, I am a huge advocate of role playing.  But the vital piece of role playing is to review what you as the facilitator have observed while your participants are engaged in their activities. 

1. Be sure to walk around the room while role playing is going on. 
2. Listen to what is being said. 
3. Write examples on the board of what you hear and then when the class is finished, review some of your observations and ask what they would say instead. 
4. Provide examples so they can hear what it should sound like

I see a lot of activity going on in the classroom but I typically do not see enough reviewing of what has been learned and holding your participants accountable for following the standards. 

If you have questions about driving change in the performance of your organization, be sure to email me kking@interweavecorp.com with your questions.   

In case you’ve been wondering what else I do in addition to helping create WOW relationships, I am also writing a series of Christian children’s books.  The latest book- God is in the Window has just been released!  You can find the book and the inspirations behind my writing at Where Do You Find God?

My passion is helping to drive change in other’s lives and I love my mission of helping others to find that God really does answer all of our prayers.  Where have you found God today?  I find Him in special people and very unusual places all the time.  Just when I least expect it- God has a special plan for my day. 

Enjoy your God-filled day! 

Tip number 5 to help make your new hire training more effective focuses on the practicing of real situations.  It is common to have live practice occur during new hire training.  To enhance this activity, be sure that your trainers are actively walking around while your new employees are handling customer situations.  Every 45 - 60 minutes, have the new hires stop handling customer situations and have the Trainer review the interactions that have been heard.  Be sure to be specific of what you heard, what you want to hear and why this is so important to your business. Go through the specific types of customer situations and ask the questions as if you were the customer and have your Trainees respond with accurate information in a way that WOWs you.   

It is once again critical that Trainers are modeling the ideal situations in training so that they are providing the exact examples of what WOW performance should look like and sound like. 

Please sure to email me if you have questions as to what WOW performance should sound like in your business! 

kking@interweavecorp.com  

We’ll continue with the tips to create WOW New Hire Training with Tip #4:

Drive your new Employees to be Top Performers! 

I guess this tip sounds like a “no-brainer”.  Let me share with you some questions that I have heard asked by new hires in the past and what the Trainer’s responses were:

Question: What is our average handle time supposed to be?

Trainer Response: “I’m not sure but your Supervisor will be able to answer that when they come in on Friday.”

Question: What is our sales quota?

Trainer Response: “It was 13 sales per month last year.  But I’m sure they upped it this year.” 

Question: Does it matter if we tell them that there are 52 pieces in this set and that we won’t be offering it again after the holidays?

Trainer Response: “No it doesn’t really matter.  Whatever you think.”

These are just a few that come to my mind at this moment.  This tells me that we are not necessarily gearing our New Hires to be high performers.  Our Trainers should know these answers so they can reinforce the needs of the operation. 

And the final test:

Before your new hires leave training, have them handle a few live customer interactions.  How long does it take them to do it?  If they are taking more than 20% longer (on average) than the experienced employee to handle that interaction, your new hire is not ready to move to the operation.  Our job as trainers is to create high performers, not to get through the material. 

Visit InterWeave for more information on Creating WOW Customer Experiences. 

My tips continue on creating WOW New Hire training with TIP #3:

Focus your training design on the reasons why your customers are calling or visiting you. 

I still see training that has been designed as “silos”- system training, product training and some customer service or sales skills on the back end.  It is imperative that we design our training with our customers in mind. 

Start by listing all the primary reasons why your customers need you and what they want when they visit you:

1. Pay a bill
2. Start service
3. Stop service
4. Transfer service
5. File a complaint
6. Understand their bill and why it is so high
7. Return an item
8. Find out your address
9. Understand (or complain) about extra fees that you have assessed
10. Find out why you have cancelled them

These are the most common things that customers want from you.  Design your training around these requests.  Start with the easy ones and then make sure that you practice, practice and practice so that when your new hires leave training, they know exactly what to say, what to do on the system and what knowledge to pull from to answer the customer’s questions.  New Hires should not sound like New Hires when they complete training.  They just completed intensive training- they should sound like the most knowledgeable and reliable employees that you have.  If they don’t- go back and revisit your new hire training and investigate what is happening. 

Your Trainers should also be your best coaches.  Be sure to visit InterWeave for more information on creating WOW coaches!  

It is very exciting to be announcing the publication of my second children’s book; God is in the Window.  I am continuing to work my mission of helping others to find God in their lives; and what an exciting mission it is. 

On the InterWeave side, I continue to write articles, books and training manuals focused to helping to create WOW relationships with our employees and customers.  I’d also like to see how I can help others (especially children) have a WOW relationship with God.  

It is a priviledge to tell my stories of how to most effectively coach others and it is also a great joy to tell my true stories of how I have found God in my life- even in a refrigerator and a window!  I hope you continue to enjoy my stories.  You can order any of my books or other products through the shopping cart.