I was on a fascinating Twitter chat for #custserv last night with @JeffreyJ Kingman and @MarshaCollier. The topic was "Do Employee Incentives Raise Bar on Customer Service?" Here is the entire chat if you want to read it.  It includes other tweets using the #custserv hashtag but all of it is pretty good stuff.

I was thinking during this chat that there are both big and small things to consider while making sure your customer service representativeshave what they need to keep it together.

I came up with these 4 articles about various facets of employee management to pass along to you. Please leave comments with your thoughts!

Re-Evaluating Performance Evaluation

Telemarketers Talk Themselve Sick

One Employee Serving One Customer at a Time

Did you know that a call center can be certified as World Class? I found out from Ryan Bouwmeester through a comment he left here at the PhaseWare Files. Once I saw the website, I knew a post from them would be an excellent fit for our audience.

Today I have a post from the SQM Group that I think will be of interest to anyone in customer service and support.

SQM's World Class Call Customer Satisfaction Certification Program is designed to certify call centers performing at the world class call customer satisfaction performance level. Their customer satisfaction certification program is the most credible and rewarding certification program in the call center industry because certification is based on the customers' judgement of their experience using a call center to resolve their issue. Having customers' judge call centers makes SQM's certification the most credible and rewarding certification program in the call center industry!

In addition, their world class call customer satisfaction certification program assists call centers in their efforts to improve customer satisfaction, reduce operational cost and improve first call resolution.

SQM's certification program focuses on the customers' experience using a call center by conducting customer satisfaction phone, IVR or web based surveys within 10 minutes to 48 hours of the customer's most recent call. Surveys are conducted based on a random sample of customer calls. All customer surveys have 8 or more questions and take approximately 5 minutes to complete. For each call center site, a minimum sample size of 800 customer surveys is required. Each call center site is certified separately to provide distinction and recognition within their own company. If every call center within an organization is certified, SQM will certify the organization as world class call customer satisfaction certified.

Call centers that have greater than 75% of their calls meeting the SQM criteria of a world class call over a minimum of 6 consecutive months will be certified by SQM as a world class customer satisfaction performer. SQM's definition of world class customer satisfaction is when customers are overall very satisfied (top box response) with their call center experience, their call was resolved and they were very satisfied (top box response) with the CSR. Certification status is good for one year from the time the call center achieved certification. In order to maintain certification status, the call center must participate in SQM's certification program on an annual basis.

SQM began certifying call centers for world class customer satisfaction in 2006. In the first year SQM certified a mere 3 call centers out of all companies that participated in their studies. By 2009 the number of certified call centers had increased to 17. On average, approximately 5% of the call centers that participate in the SQM studies are certified as world class call customer satisfaction call centers. SQM is proud to announce that over 70% of their tracking clients improve their FCR performance year over year.

For more information on the SQM awards or certification programs, please visit their homepage at http://www.sqmgroup.com

Since 1996, SQM Group has been a call center specialist for benchmarking, improving and certifying sites, managers and CSRs for their first call resolution (FCR), employee satisfaction (Esat) and customer satisfaction (Csat) performance.

The self service center is becoming ever more ubiquitous as a customer support channel. And that is not a bad thing. Many customers prefer to look up the answer themselves rather than wait for an answer by email or call for one on the phone. It's convenient.

Or is it?

What if something about your self service center makes customers angry? What if it makes them feel helpless? In other words, what do these two customer emotions do to customer satisfaction levels and customer loyalty? It would seem on the face of it that both would lower satisfaction and loyalty. But while both are negative emotions each leads to different behaviors.

Scenario:

Your customer is trying to use the self support center but the interface is very confusing and some of the links are broken. How does he react?

Reaction: Anger

When a person is angry he is placing responsibility for the failure on an external source such as the provider of the self service center; in this case, you. The angry customer wants to do something about it. Usually that means rejecting your self service center (and your product) and switching providers. Boom, you've lost a customer.

What is the best approach to take to defuse this emotion and provide appropriate service?

Angry customers need both emotional support and technical support. The customer must have a way to directly contact a live person, someone with the appropriate skills to calm the customer and help resolve the issue. A general information line with a convoluted IVR system is inappropriate for this purpose. The customer wants to immediately speak to someone who can fix things, not deal with someone who must ultimately pass him off to someone else. A separate line for these types of issues should be offered to give the customer the immediate response he needs.

The first thing you (represented by the customer support agent) should do is apologize and let the customer know the problem is being worked on. The agent must listen and express regret for the inconvenience. The emotional support will relieve the anger and create an environment where the agent can give technical support and actively try to resolve the issue.

Reaction: Helplessness

Instead of anger, a customer may feel helpless when the self service center is misfiring, feeling as if there is no way to affect the situation. In the case of helplessness, the customer does not blame the provider, he only blames the technology so the relationship is spared. The coping response to this tends to be inactivity. Instead of doing something, he does nothing. He does not switch providers. He does not contact you about the problem. You may never hear of the issue. He will simply reduce his use of the self service center, and as time goes by, he will not increase his business with you, losing you an opportunity for a more valuable customer.

If, however, this problem comes to light, you only need give technical support. Because the customer who feels helpless blames the technology, not you, for the problem, there is no need to offer emotional support. If the problem is fixed, you and the customer simply move forward as usual. 

Impact on Loyalty and Satisfaction

So what are the effects of anger and helplessness on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty? It turns out that only anger directly impacts customer loyalty and overall satisfaction. A person who is angry blames you for the poor service and will display a significant decrease in these parameters.  Helplessness impacts neither. Because the technology is blamed for the poor service, the relationship with you is not affected. Loyalty and satisfaction stay the same as before.

Anger = Decreased Loyalty and Satisfaction
Helplessness = No change in loyalty and satisfaction

This makes it seem like helplessness is more innocuous than anger, safer for the revenue stream. And it is true that the angry customer impacts the bottom line immediately because he rejects the provider (you) and switches to a new one (your competitor).

However, the customer who feels helpless also impacts the bottom line in the long run because he will use self service less and will not increase the amount of business he does with you; his value to you stays the same. It  is a more insidious problem because it does not show in the customer satisfaction level. You may never notice. Gaining new customers can cover up the lack of increased business for a time but once the market becomes saturated for your product or service, helplessness will begin to erode revenue generation. 

Take-away

Be aware that a problem with your self support center can push a customer in one of two ways, each of which requires a different response. In any case, you must include an easy way to connect with a live person if at all possible. A click to chat or click to call should be available for when problems occur.

Offer the appropriate response for the emotion involved. Helplessness only needs technical support to fix the problem.  Anger must have emotional support as well in order to preserve the relationship.

This is not a cut and dried issue. Anger and helplessness are not the only things that drive customer behavior. Often there are other emotions and behaviors involved. Your agents will need the skill to recognize those times when anger or helplessness is the predominant driver in order to offer the correct response.

Resource: Beyond Just Being Dissatisfied: How Angry and Helpless Customers React to Failures When Using Self Service Technologies. By Katja Gelbrich, Professor of Marketing at the Faculty of Economics, Ilmenau Technical University, Germany.

In talking or writing about customer service, we tend to concentrate on service that is poor because the customer service rep is so non-forthcoming as to be non-existant. In other words, the Invisible Clerk Syndrome. Poor attitude, poor people skills, what-have-you.

In B2B this translates into Return Email/Call Avoidance Syndrome.

But there is the other end of the spectrum. In this financial climate it is a practice that is becoming more prevalant. It is that of being so eager to help that a customer eventually feels like getting a restraining order.

You are a customer service stalker.

It is understandable, of course. Businesses are feeling the pinch, they are being told the only way to differentiate is by service, and desperation and panic ensue.

What are some stalking behaviors?

• Immediately pouncing on a customer entering your area with the look of pleading on your face.
  
• Online equivalent: Sending a high priority email with a huge thank you and gushing about how how happy you are to have them as a customer, please call us, blah, blah, blah.
• Offering to help more than once in a 5 minute period.
  
• Online equivalent: sending emails every day for a week to "just follow up" in case the customer has questions.
• Following customers around "just in case" they need you.
  
• Online Equivalent: Endlessly offering friending or following on social media accounts, or finding out the customer's social media handle and starting to respond to every Tweet or post.
• Rattling off all the store specials without noticing the customer doesn't want to stop to listen.
  
• Online Equivalent: Sending long marketing emails with every possible special deal to everyone on your mailing list at least once a week and giving no option to opt out.

While probably not as egregious as being rude and unhelpful, this type of thing can chase a customer off almost as quickly. This is not what is meant by customer service.

Good customer service calls for a pleasant greeting showing customers you are aware of them. Online: answer calls and emails ASAP but only to say Hi. Anything more is stalking.

If the customer appears to be lost, that would be a good time to offer to help. On line: if using pre-emptive live chat, only ask once if they need assistance.  If the customer appears to know exactly where she is going or says no to chatting, anything more is stalking.

If the customer appears to have what she wants but does not seem to be in a hurry, you could safely offer to tell about store specials. Online: if a customer downloads material from your site or spends a lot of time there, you could safely offer live chat/email or automatic suggestions about products or services she is most interested in. If the customer is trying to leave or never downloads anything and leaves the site in less than 10 seconds, this would not only be stalking, but taking hostage.

Don't even think about following the customer around the store or requesting chats at every new page view (Online). That is stalking.

I know, you feel pressured, stressed, helpless in the face of financial ruin, but take a deep breath. Now take two more. 

Now, maybe you are relaxed enough that customers can feel like customers again.  Believe me, they will let you know when they want you.