4 ways to train customer service skills without awkward role playing

Why do we subject employees to role playing?

Managers often request it for customer service training, but participants don't like it. Here are just a few comments from a discussion on LinkedIn Live:

• "It's always awkward and stressful."

• "The interactions are just not natural."

• "It's unnerving."

It would be one thing if role playing was a highly effective customer service training technique. It's not.

I'm a customer service trainer who has trained thousands of employees, and I can tell role playing doesn't work.

There are alternatives that improve training without making your participants feel uncomfortable. Here are four that your participants will like better.

Why is role playing ineffective?

Let's take a moment to cover why role playing doesn't work for customer service training. As a trainer, I've used role playing in the past and have seen its limitations.

The first one is participants don't like it.

But there’s an even bigger reason. Role playing slows down learning. That's because a role play scenario requires participants to split their attention between two tasks. One is the skill they are trying to practice and the other is the character they are playing.

Here's an old video from the archive that shows what happens when people try to do more than one thing at once:

What can you do instead? Here are four techniques that work much better.

Option 1: Discrete skill practice

This option narrows your focus to one specific skill. Participants can practice the skill in a realistic manner without having to pretend to be a character.

This option works well for skills that are easily isolated. For example:

• Greeting customers

• Reading customer emails

• Using positive tone and body language

Below is a short video from my LinkedIn Learning course, Customer Service Foundations. You can use it to help your team practice using appropriate tone and body language.

The video includes an explanation of how to use the skill. There are demonstrations at :31 and 1:25 in the video to illustrate what the technique looks like in action.

After watching the video, have your team practice using positive tone and body language while responding to typical customer requests.

Enhancing your likability from Customer Service Foundations by Jeff Toister and Madecraft

Option 2: Walk-through

A walk-through is like a role play scenario played at half-speed without the unnatural acting.

Use it to walk through the steps of a service interaction. Pause to cover what to do and say at various steps in the process and have participants demonstrate each skill.

Walk-throughs are great for any situation that follows a standard procedure:

• Receptionists greeting office visitors

• Contact center agents answering customer calls

• Valet parking attendants delivering customer vehicles

You've probably done a walk-through if you've ever been a cashier.

1. The trainer walked you through the steps to ring up a transaction.

2. You were coached you through several transactions with live customers.

3. The trainer eventually left you to work on your own after you demonstrated a reasonable level of proficiency.

You likely had to call for help a few times when you encountered something unexpected, but generally you started getting faster and more accurate as you worked.

Option 3: Simulation

Simulations give participants a chance to practice their skills in a realistic way without playing a character. They can just be themselves.

There's a growing range of software solutions that provide simulations for customer service training. Those can be great, but there are also low-tech ways to run simulations.

Think of other situations where you could use the same skills. For example, active listening is an essential customer service skill. It’s also a skill that’s really useful when you’re just having a conversation.

Here's a simulation you can use to help people build their active listening skills by having a conversation.

1. Place participants in pairs.

2. Ask one participant to tell a story for 90 seconds.

3. Give the second participant 30 seconds to recap what they heard.

4. Debrief by asking pairs to describe the listening skills they used or observed.

Option 4: On-the-Job Practice

Daily interactions with real customers provide some of the best customer service training. You can learn something from each one and find ways to constantly improve.

Here's how to practice specific skills on-the-job:

1. Select one specific skill to work on.

2. Practice using the skill while serving customers.

3. Pause and review how well it worked.

4. Decide what adjustments, if any, to make.

5. Apply the adjustments while using the skill with more customers.

My Customer Service Tip of the Week email provides you with a weekly suggestion for on-the-job practice. You can try the tip yourself, or share it with your team.

For example, one tip is using the Acknowledge and Refocus technique to defuse upset customers:

1. Acknowledge the upset customer's emotions

2. Refocus the conversation on finding a solution

After a week of practice, customer service reps can become quite skilled at using the technique. You can then introduce a new technique to practice the following week.

Take Action

Ditch the awkward role playing activities for customer service training. Your employees don't like it and it's not effective.

Try one of the four alternatives instead:

1. Discrete skill practice

2. Walk-throughs

3. Simulations

4. On-the-job practice

Here are some additional resources:

1. Subscribe to the free Customer Service Tip of the Week email

2. Watch the LinkedIn Live discussion on role play alternatives

Performance observations: a step-by-step guide

If you want to solve a customer service problem, go and see it.

That's a performance observation. It's a process for observing employees doing their work to understand how they currently do things and what can be improved.

It's a go-to technique for improving performance, designing training, or identifying best practices.

You might worry employees won't be truthful if you observe them. Or perhaps they'll change how they do things just to impress you.

In reality, that rarely happens.

I've conducted over 1,000 performance observations. And ooh boy, I’ve seen and heard a lot! Most employees are brutally honest if you approach them the right way.

Here's my step-by-step guide.

Image courtesy of LinkedIn Learning

Step 1: Prepare

A little preparation can make your performance observation much more successful.

Start with a specific objective. Here are some common reasons to observe employee performance:

• Designing training that reflects how the job is actually done.

• Improving performance by looking for obstacles that hinder employees.

• Identifying best practices by watching what top performers do.

Next, identify the employee or employees you'd like to observe. The employees you select depend on your objective.

• Do you want to observe a mix of top, mid, and bottom performers?

• Are there specific employees you want to observe?

• Is there a particular process or activity you'd like to see?

If you aren't the boss, be sure to get permission from the employee's boss beforehand. You don't want their leader to be blindsided by you showing up in their work area.

Finally, notify the employee or employees you'd like to observe ahead of time if possible. They should feel comfortable with you being in their workspace and understand why you're there.

I once worked in a contact center where employees were expected to pitch the company credit card to certain customers. Our average acceptance rate was just 5 percent, but an agent named Betty routinely exceeded 40 percent.

So I contacted Betty’s boss to get permission to observe her. Then I scheduled some time to observe Betty’s credit card pitch.

Step 2: Observe

The performance observation itself is generally easy with the right preparation. I've found employees are typically very accommodating and willing to answer questions.

Here are a few tips that can make it go smoothly

1. Avoid interfering with the employee's work.

2. Listen and observe carefully. You'll often see things you don't expect.

3. Ask questions. Avoid making assumptions about why an employee does something a certain way. Get their perspective on it.

Important: Employees tend to be very honest if they understand you're there to listen, observe, and be helpful. However, you might get some resistance if they believe you're there to catch them doing something wrong.

Betty was happy to share with me. In between calls, she explained her process for pitching credit cards and answered my many questions.

The observation revealed insights that I wouldn't have discovered on my own.

For instance, Betty pointed out that she felt the credit card had some features that frequent customers could really benefit from using.

This sincere belief helped her pitch the card with enthusiasm, an enthusiasm I hadn’t seen from other agents. I wondered if a lack of enthusiasm prevented other agents from making pitches.

Betty also had a unique approach to her offer. She’d congratulate customers for being selected to receive the credit card. (The card wasn’t offered to everyone.) I noticed this made customers much more receptive to the pitch.

Step 3: Follow-up

There are a few follow-up activities once you complete your observation.

1. Validate your observations with other data.

2. Use what you learned to take action.

After I observed Betty, I reviewed call reports from other agents and confirmed something Betty had shared. Many agents simply weren't offering the credit card at all.

I dug a little deeper and discovered many didn't understand the card's features and benefits. They were wary of the card's high interest rate and didn't feel comfortable pitching it to the customers.

There was also another reason agents didn’t pitch the card: it wasn’t part of the quality assurance process.

These insights helped me create a plan for rapid improvement.

1. Pitching the credit card was added to the quality assurance process. It would now be a clear job expectation for agents.

2. Agents received training on Betty’s unique approach along with the credit card’s features and benefits.

The “Betty method” was a hit. Many agents were much more enthusiastic about pitching the card once they understood how it could benefit customers. They also found Betty’s approach fun and easy to use.

The contact center's average credit card acceptance rate soon increased from 5 to 20 percent.

Take Action

I encourage you to conduct a performance observation on your own. You'll likely gain something you can use to improve training, fix a problem, and elevate the team's performance.

This short video recaps the process:

Conducting performance observations from Instructional Design: Needs Analysis by Jeff Toister

Want to go even deeper? My book, Getting Service Right, reveals ten hidden and counterintuitive customer service insights that came from performance observations. You’ll discover:

• How incentives often make customer service worse

• Why employees find it so difficult to pay attention to customers

• What causes employees to give up and stop trying

Check it out —> download the first chapter

How to measure customer service training

You've sent your team through customer service training.

People seemed to like the training. It even feels like the team has a bit more energy than before, though you can't quite say for sure.

But you face a nagging question. Did the training really work?

Those post-training surveys don't seem like enough. Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation sounds interesting, but your executives don’t care about levels. They just want results.

This guide can help you.

There's no advanced math or exotic statistics. These are straightforward techniques that will be credible with your CEO. I've repeatedly used them to demonstrate the impact of customer service training to executives.

Why evaluate customer service training?

Measuring your customer service training programs allows you to answer the tough questions you’ll inevitably get from executives.

I hear these three questions most often:

• Does the training program work?

• How can we make it even more effective?

• Are there lessons that can be applied to other programs?

You can answer them all with a straightforward evaluation plan. Here's a step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Identify expectations

Start by meeting with the person who asked for the customer service training. The goal of this meeting is to learn what they expect the training to accomplish.

It’s important you do this before the training.

This allows you to focus the training on achieving their objectives. It also give you a chance to build evaluation into your overall plan.

Don’t be afraid to press for specifics.

"Improve customer service" is too vague. Improve what, exactly? From where to where?

"We received some complaints" isn't measurable enough. "We need to reduce complaints by 10%" is getting somewhere somewhere.

Here are three questions I ask during this meeting:

1. Why do you want to do this training?

2. How will you know if this project is successful?

3. What do employees need to do as a result of this training?

Those answers will provide you with the foundation of your measurement plan. They will also help you improve the training.

I was working for a parking management company when I received a call from the CEO with an urgent request to deliver customer service training at one of our locations. The three questions helped me get more information.

Why do you want to do this training?
Our client was a resort hotel. The hotel's general manager had complained about poor customer service and threatened to cancel the parking contract if performance didn't improve within 30 days.

How will you know if the project is successful?
The goal was to keep the contract.

What do employees need to do?
The team needed to average 90 points on mystery shopper evaluations within 30 days. The current average was 78 points.

This conversation made the evaluation plan crystal clear.

Notice my CEO didn’t care about the usual stuff that trainers obsess over measuring:

• Pre- and post-training quizzes.

• Training satisfaction surveys.

• Number of people completing the training.

This program had one simple goal: keep the contract.

The valet team needed to bring its average mystery shopper score from 78 points to 90 in order to do that.

This short video provides more information about gathering stakeholder expectations. There’s even a sample conversation with an executive who requested interviewing skills training.

Although the topic isn’t customer service, its reflects the same approach I’d use for any training program.

Identify customer expectations from Measuring Learning Effectiveness by Jeff Toister

Step 2: Gather data

Gather data that will help you determine whether the training program achieved its goals.

Start this process before you do any training. Getting data ahead of time gives you a baseline you can use to evaluate your results later on.

Data collection was simple for the valet parking project:

1. The mystery shopper form provided specific standards the valets needed to meet.

2. Recent mystery shopper results provided a baseline for their performance.

3. Ongoing mystery shopper results allowed us to track the team’s progress.

Bonus tip: it's easiest to use data that's already being collected for something else. This can save you time, money, and effort since the data is already there.

Here are a few places you might look:

• Customer service surveys

• Quality assurance results

• Customer complaints (by volume and type of issue)

• Performance observations (observing employees serve customers)

• KPIs such as revenue, customer retention, or productivity

Step 3: Analyze data

Once the training is complete, the next step is to use the data you collected to determine whether the training program achieved its goals.

This process was straightforward with the valet parking contract.

Mystery shopping scores immediately improved and continued to trend upward. They averaged 94 points by the 30-day deadline, which was above the 90-point target.

The hotel general manager agreed not to cancel the contract as a result. Keeping the contract was the primary objective, so my CEO considered the project a success.

Some projects require you to dig a little deeper. This short video will give you more ideas on analyzing your data:

Understanding data-analysis techniques from Instructional Design: Needs Analysis by Jeff Toister

You can often identify additional insights from analyzing your data. The valet parking evaluation revealed two important lessons that could help the rest of the business.

First, the valet’s improved performance came as a direct result of the manager sharing more frequent updates with the team about client service expectations. This became a best practice that was shared with the other locations and was emphasized in our manager training program.

Second, our client’s complaint caused the executive overseeing the account to check in with the hotel general manager more frequently.

The CEO asked his executives to spend more time with other clients and ask them for feedback about our operations. This immediately paid dividends, as several executives discovered other unhappy clients who hadn't yet voiced their concerns.

Take Action

Measuring the impact of your customer service training gets a lot easier if you plan for measurement at the start of your project. Take time to find out the goals behind the training request, and then design a plan to evaluate whether those goals have been achieved.

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can access my Measuring Learning Effectiveness course to get more in-depth techniques and examples.

Training course --> Measuring Learning Effectiveness

Here's a preview:

Evaluating learning programs from Measuring Learning Effectiveness by Jeff Toister

How the FIT model gets your team to love SMART goals

Do your customer service goals inspire the team?

If not, the FIT model might be the cure. It helps you write goals that give your team clarity, inspire teamwork, and encourage the right behaviors.

The FIT goal model also makes costly incentives, prizes, and leaderboards completely unnecessary. In fact, the model works by getting rid of all that nonsense.

This post outlines the three elements of the FIT goal model, how to use it, and why it's so effective at motivating customer service employees.

Types of customer service goals

Generally speaking, there are three common types of customer service goals.

1. Squishy

2. SMART

3. SMART + FIT

Squishy goals are too unclear to be useful. For example:

Improve customer service.

This goal is extremely squishy. It doesn't explain what needs to be done or how people will know if the goal has been accomplished.

The SMART model adds some much-needed structure that can instantly improve a squishy goal. SMART is an acronym that stands for five things:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Relevant

• Time-bound

Here's how that squishy "improve customer service" goal might look if you re-wrote it using the SMART model:

Customer service reps who achieve a 90% average satisfaction rating on the customer satisfaction survey by the end of the month will earn a $100 bonus.

This goal is much clearer now. But there’s also a problem.

Will employees see the goal as improving customer satisfaction or earning the $100 bonus? Those aren’t the same thing. There are lots of underhanded ways to improve survey scores without actually improving customer service. (Curious? Here are nine techniques.)

You can prevent those issues by making your SMART goals FIT.

What is the FIT goal model?

The FIT goal model can enhance your SMART goals. It helps you get more buy-in from employees to do the right thing and achieve results.

There are three elements that make up the acronym, FIT:

• Focus attention. FIT goals encourage the right behaviors.

• Intrinsic motivation. Tap into your employee's internal desire to serve.

• Team-oriented. FIT goals encourage teamwork, not individualism.

One customer service team used the FIT model to improve its SMART goals by doing three things:

First, the manager focused attention by reviewing survey feedback on a daily basis and discussing opportunities for improvement. This made it clear the goal was better service, not a better survey score.

Next, there was no incentive or reward attached to the goal. It relied on employees' intrinsic motivation to provide great service.

Finally, it was team-oriented because there was one goal for the entire team.

The FIT model encouraged a lot of behaviors you wouldn't normally see with individual SMART goals.

For example, customers were frustrated when they were transferred from the Tier 1 support team to Tier 2 when the issue was a simple one.

On their own initiative, Tier 1 and Tier 2 employees identified five common transfers that could be avoided by giving the Tier 1 team just a little more information.

Transfers instantly went down, which also reduced wait times for customers who needed to speak to a Tier 2 agent. Customer survey scores increased due to the improved service.

How to use the FIT goal model

Let's break this down a bit to see how each component can improve your SMART goals.

Step 1: Set a SMART goal

This embarrassingly amateur video explains how:

You can use this worksheet to help you.

Here’s an example of a SMART goal from a project I worked on. My client was an airport that installed self-service machines that customers could use to pay for their parking fee.

Achieve a daily average of 80% of parking customers using self-service technology to pay for parking by December 31.

Step 2: Focus attention

The next step is to focus your team’s attention on the right behaviors. Here are a few discussion questions that can help:

• Why is this SMART goal important?

• How is the goal relevant to the mission and/or strategy?

• What do employees need to do to achieve the goal?

Share that with the team, and then talk about it a lot.

The airport counted on self-service machines to reduced operating costs. Usage needed to be at 80% for the airport managers to achieve their budget goal.

Airport parking managers focused the attention by explaining this to the team when they shared the goal.

Step 3: Find intrinsic motivators

Connect the goal to things your employees care about. Avoid using external motivators such as incentives, since those can cause employees to focus on the prize rather than service.

Parking managers relied on intrinsic motivation by connecting the airport’s self-service goal to employees' genuine desire to serve.

Customers could save time and money by using the machines. They could by-pass the cashier line if they paid for their parking at a kiosk which allowed them to exit faster. Using the kiosk gave customers a 20-minute grace period to exit the garage, which often saved them a few dollars on their parking fee.

Employees were stationed by banks of self-service machines to explain these benefits and guide customers through using them. (This project happened at a time when self-service kiosks were relatively new.)

Almost everyone approached this work enthusiastically and enjoyed providing customers with extra assistance.

Step 4: Promote teamwork

Having a SMART goal for the entire team encourages more teamwork. You can enhance that in a few ways:

• Hold regular meetings to discuss progress and challenges.

• Encourage employees to experiment with new ideas.

• Share best practices via team meetings or knowledge bases.

The airport parking goal was team-oriented because the entire team was focused on the same goal.

Employees were encouraged to try new approaches. Managers held regular team huddles where employees could come together and discuss their ideas.

The results were tremendous.

Employees overwhelmingly bought in to the goal and hit the 80% target in just 8 months. The airport was ecstatic because they hit their budget goal and could now boast the best self-service usage rate of any airport in the country.

Take Action

SMART goals should be table stakes for any customer service team. You can get even better results by applying the FIT model.

Here's a short video from my Leading a Customer-Focused Culture course that provides more information about setting good goals.

Set good goals from Leading a Customer-Centric Culture by Jeff Toister

How experience guarantees can help you win more customers

Why are customers loyal to certain companies?

People buy from Amazon because is it consistently solves one problem quickly and conveniently: "I need to buy _____."

You can fill in the blank with nearly every product imaginable. Whatever it is, Amazon has made it as easy as possible to get it fast.

Starbucks has legions of loyal customers because it offers the most convenient way to get a caffeinated coffee drink. Just open the app, place your order, and it will be ready for you by the time you arrive.

In-N-Out Burger attracts customers in droves who want a delicious fast food burger and fries, promising "Quality you can taste." You can see your meal being made in the open kitchen with fresh ingredients.

All of these companies do one simple thing to win and retain their customers. They offer a guaranteed customer experience.

What is an experience guarantee?

Customers do businesses with companies they like and trust. An experience guarantee assures customers will have a consistent experience every time they do business with you.

Here's an excerpt from the book, The Guaranteed Customer Experience.

A typical guarantee makes a promise, such as how long a product will last without breaking, or that customers will be totally satisfied with their purchase. Behind the scenes, companies must work hard to keep those promises or risk losing both credibility and customers.

Guarantees often include a specific remedy in the event a promise isn't kept—such as refunding the customer's money or replacing a defective product. The remedy gives customers an extra amount of assurance and creates an additional financial incentive for companies to keep their promises.

The Guaranteed Customer Experience model applies the concept of a guarantee to the customer's overall experience.

You win customers by promising to solve a customer's problem, retain customers by making sure that promise is kept, and encourage unhappy customers to give you another chance by recovering from service failures.

Let's look back at Amazon, Starbucks, and In-N-Out to see how they use this concept.

• Amazon promises orders will arrive by a certain time.

• Starbucks promises a convenient cup of coffee.

• In-N-Out promises high-quality fast food.

All three companies have earned their loyal customers by being remarkably consistent.

How do you create an experience guarantee?

Start by identifying the problem your customer is trying to solve. This is at the core of the Guaranteed Customer Experience model.

Armstrong Garden Centers doesn't focus on selling plants, though that's what they sell. They focus on solving a problem their customers care deeply about solving: growing a beautiful garden.

The company's brand promise speaks directly to that need: Gardening Without Guesswork.

Everything Armstrong does is focused on helping customers become better gardeners:

• They only sell plants that grow well in the local environment.

• Employees give expert gardening advice.

• Classes and online tutorials are offered for even more assistance.

Think about the core problem your company solves for customers. One way to identify it is to listen for your customers' "I need to" statements.

What do they say they need to do when they do business with you?

Once you understand your customer's problem, you can create a guarantee to solve it that ensures your customer has a great experience.

An experience guarantee has three elements:

1. Promise: Win customers by promising to solve their problem.

2. Action: Earn trust by taking action to keep your promise.

3. Recovery: Restore trust through service recovery if a promise is ever broken.

You don't have to spell out all three elements for your customers, though you can. What's important is customers know that you promise to solve their problem and that you keep your promises.

Here are three more examples of businesses that earn loyal customers with an incredibly simple experience guarantee:

Road trip travelers want clean restrooms when they stop at a gas station. Buc-ee's wins repeat business by promising the world's cleanest restrooms.

Deli customers want fresh, great-tasting food. Elephants wins loyal customers by promising great local food from scratch.

Public transit customers want reliable transportation. TriMet earns riders’ trust by constantly monitoring its system and providing real-time updates.

Take Action

Here are two resources to help you win and retain customers with your own experience guarantee.

1. Workbook --> Download it for free

2. Book --> The Guaranteed Customer Experience is a guide to implementing this system.

How to create service culture training

You want to build a service culture. Naturally, you think of training.

This guide shares everything you need to know to get started. It includes step-by-step instructions for designing and delivering your training program.

I've also included my best advice on who should do this training and when. And, I'll also explain why you should never hire an external trainer to deliver the training.

---

Contents:

1. What is service culture training?

2. Defining objectives

3. Creating a training plan

4. Reinforcing the training

5. Who should deliver the training?

6. When is the best time for service culture training?

7. Conclusion

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What is service culture training?

Before diving in, let's identify exactly what "service culture training" means, starting with these definitions:

• Culture how people in an organization collectively act.

• Service Culture: a culture where employees act in service to customers.

• Training: helping employees build the knowledge, skills, and abilities to do their jobs.

Put them all together:

Service culture training is a process for helping employees know how to act in service to customers.

This goes deeper than a few tips, tricks, and best practices. Service culture training helps employees understand your organization's unique culture.

That means service culture training must always be specific to your organization. Let’s talk about how to build a program that’s customized to your needs.

Defining objectives

The first step in building any training program is to define your objectives. What do you want employees to know and do after completing service culture training?

Clear training objectives help you do a few essential things:

• Focus the training on what's important

• Eliminate unnecessary fluff

• Ensure people are actually learning

At minimum, your employees should be able to answer three questions after completing the service culture training program:

1. What is the customer experience vision? (more info)

2. What does it mean?

3. How do I personally contribute?

You might have additional objectives that focus on other elements of your service culture. Examples include:

• Upholding the brand promise and other guarantees

• Writing to customers using the brand style guide

• Following service standards when assisting customers

I like to use the A-B-C-D model to create clear, observable learning objectives:

• A = Audience: who is being trained?

• B = Behavior: what do they need to do?

• C = Condition: how will I assess their ability?

• D = Degree: how well do they need to perform to be fully trained?

Here’s an example:

Customer service reps [audience] will share three examples of how they contribute to the mission [behavior] during an in-class discussion [condition] with 100% accuracy [degree]

Toolkit --> Learning Objectives Worksheet

This short video provides some additional guidance:

Develop learning objectives from How to Design and Deliver Training Programs by Jeff Toister

Creating a training plan

A training plan is like the blueprint a construction team uses to build a house. It helps you visualize the entire process and make sure the plan is sound.

One shortcut is to use a previous training program as a template.

Think of something else you had to train everyone to know or do. It could be a new process, updated software, or anything else that employees had to incorporate into their daily work.

You can save time by following that plan to design your service culture training.

What if you don't have a template?

That's no problem. Just keep it simple. I really like to use the Tell, Show, Do approach to create straightforward training.

• Tell: Explain what you want employees to know, and why.

• Show: Share an example so employees can see the concept in action.

• Do: Have employees demonstrate the knowledge or skill.

Key point: Incorporating the "Do" portion in your learning design gives you an opportunity to observe whether or not employees understand each concept.

Page 10 of The Service Culture Handbook Toolkit contains a template you can use to create your training plan.

Get the Toolkit --> Service Culture Handbook Toolkit

This short video provides more information and ideas:

Design a training program from How to Design and Deliver Training Programs by Jeff Toister

Reinforcing the training

Training is use it or lose it. You must reinforce the service culture training or employees will quickly forget what they learned.

Think back to when you were in high school.

You probably had a locker that required a combination to open. At the time, you could open it in seconds without even thinking.

Now, imagine you're standing in front of that locker today. The combination is still the same. Could you open it?

Most of us couldn't.

You can use the 70-20-10 rule to reinforce service culture training so employees don't forget about what they learn.

The term "rule" isn't entirely correct. It's really more of a broad guide that explains how employees develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities they use at work.

70% = Daily Work

Most learning comes from our daily work, so it's important that processes, procedures, and policies align with the service culture training.

Let's say your company has a brand style guide. It includes a section on writing to customers in your company's brand voice.

Employees probably won’t follow the guide if you introduce it in training and then never mention it again.

But what if you aligned their daily work to match guide? Here are a few ways you could do that:

• Re-write email templates to match the brand style guide

• Update the quality assurance process to include adhering to the guidelines

• Re-write knowledge base articles so they follow the brand style

All of this would make it easier for employees to follow the guidelines in their daily work. You could even assign these as projects to various employees to help reinforce their knowledge.

20% = Boss or Mentor

Leaders have a huge impact on employees' understanding of the service culture. The best leaders talk about the culture a lot.

Here are a few ways to help you talk about the culture more often:

• Incorporate it into team huddles

• Hold daily quick review meetings (could be part of a huddle)

• Use these tips to prevent employees from tuning you out

You also have to walk the talk. Remember that you serve as a role model for your employees.

Guide --> 7 ways leaders can model great customer service

Who should deliver service culture training?

Your service culture training should be facilitated by an internal employee. This could either be a leader or a training professional who works for your company.

It should not be an external person like me. Two reasons:

1. You know the culture better than anyone

2. You will have much more credibility than an external person

That doesn't mean you can't tap externals resource for help. There are two specific ways an external trainer can help you.

1. Review your plan. Contact me for help with this one.

2. Design the training. I recommend Idea Learning Group for design help.

When is the best time for service culture training?

One of the easiest ways to sink a service culture training initiative is to launch it before it's ready. Make sure you complete all of the above steps before you start.

The final step is preparing your employees. You want them to begin the training excited about the culture and ready to help it grow.

This involves careful messaging and a clear plan.

• Do employees know why you are doing the training?

• What do employees need to know before they attend?

• What will employees be expected to do with what they learn?

Planning Tool --> Workshop Planner

Here's a short video that shows you how prepare your team.

Prepare employees for training from How to Design and Deliver Training Programs by Jeff Toister

Conclusion

Service culture training is essential for any customer-focused organization. It helps every employee understand exactly what's expected.

Here are two resources that can help you continue your journey:

• Book: The Service Culture Handbook

• Training Course: How to Design and Deliver Training Programs

Report: Remote contact center agents have better bosses

Remote work is polarizing, especially for contact centers.

Team Onsite believes communication and teamwork improves when everyone is working in the same place. And Zoom fatigue is real, y’all!

Team Remote touts the cost savings, flexibility, and improved quality of life that comes from having agents work remotely.

Here’s some good news for Team Remote: your agents report having better bosses.

This was an accidental discovery.

In early 2023, I launched a study on contact center agent burnout. One question I asked was whether remote agents faced a lower burnout risk than onsite agents.

It was a dead end. Onsite agents are just as resilient to burnout as people who work from home.

Then I looked closer and saw something unexpected. Remote bosses are crushing the arguments for requiring agents to work onsite.

Remote bosses give more feedback

More remote agents report getting regular feedback from their boss than agents who primarily work onsite. A lot more.

This really blew my mind.

Improved communication is one of the big arguments for having everyone work onsite. The theory is you have a lot more informal conversations when you work in the same physical space.

Apparently, it’s not true. Why is that?

One manager explained that working in different places causes you to be more thoughtful about how you communicate. This includes giving feedback.

With remote employees, it's essential to put everything in writing and share regular reports. This allows feedback conversations to be more focused.

An agent who has worked remotely for several companies agreed. He told me that he’s had regular meetings with his boss in each company he worked for.

Perhaps onsite managers are less structured in their approach?

One bit of data from the study might back this up. Remote agents are more likely to work for a company that surveys their customers.

Remote bosses set a better example

When I managed a call center, I regularly picked different seats in the center and took calls alongside my agents. I wanted to set an example for the team.

So I was really shocked to see that remote agents are more likely to feel their boss sets a positive example.

How can the boss set a better example if you don't see the boss?!

That might be the whole point.

One remote agent explained that working offsite generally requires more autonomy, flexibility, and mutual respect. That really hit home—every great boss I've had shared those qualities.

Perhaps onsite bosses are too quick to take advantage of working in the same place. Here are a few examples I've witnessed:

• Hovering over an agent while they're on a call.

• Trying to have a conversation in between contacts.

• Panicking over the queue.

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Want more surprising insights?

Getting Service Right reveals 10 hidden and counterintuitive obstacles to outstanding customer service.

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Remote agents are more empowered

Across the study, empowerment was the top factor that made agents more resilient to burnout. This was true whether agents worked onsite or remotely, but there was still a gap between the two:

This one makes some sense.

Supervising remote employees generally requires you to give your team clearer policies, more resources, and greater autonomy.

Those are all essential to empowerment. (See my complete empowerment guide.)

Empowerment also requires good training. This was another surprise. I would have expected remote employees to feel they're getting less training than their onsite counterparts, but that's not the case.

Conclusion

This doesn’t settle the issue.

There's still a healthy debate between having your agents work remote or onsite. And, I don't think there's a single right answer. Different options probably work better in different organizations.

But this data counters many of the traditional arguments for having agents onsite.

Here's one more insight that might surprise you. Team Onsite is quick to point out that people develop better relationships when they work in the same location, while remote employees are isolated and sad.

The data debunks that:

Want to learn more about agent burnout? --> Get the full report

• Discover 11 factors that make agents more resilient

• Identify the profile of an agent at risk of burnout

How to help contact center agents avoid burnout

This blog is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Is burnout gripping your contact center?

A worldwide survey of contact center agents revealed 59 percent are at risk of burnout, including 28 percent who face a severe burnout risk.

Burnout is defined by the American Psychological Association as "physical, emotional, or mental exhaustion accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered performance, and negative attitudes towards oneself and others."

That spells trouble for contact centers. Agent burnout can lead to:

• Poor customer service

• Chronic absenteeism

• Turnover

The survey investigated what factors made agents more at risk of burning out, and what factors made them more resilient. Agents with the lowest risk of burnout tend to be:

1. Empowered to serve customers

2. Compensated fairly

3. Supported by their boss

The survey examined 15 factors and found a total of 11 were tied to lower burnout risk.

Get the full report.

Burnout study overview

A total of 951 contact center agents participated between January and February 2023. The responses were anonymous. Agents from multiple countries and companies participated.

Participants were first asked to complete a burnout self-assessment provided by MindTools. The assessment generated a burnout risk score on a scale of 15-75:

• 15-32 = Little to no risk of burnout

• 33-49 = At risk of burnout

• 50-75 = Severe risk of burnout

Next, participants were asked 15 questions about their work environment. The topics ranged from the training they received to whether they had a good friend at work.

Of the 15 factors, 11 were correlated with a lower burnout risk.

This was determined by a 10 or more percentage point gap between agents with no burnout risk compared to agents with a severe risk of burnout.

There was some good news.

While 59 percent of agents surveyed were in the at risk or severe risk category, there is some improvement from a similar report from 2016. That study found 74 percent of contact center agents were at risk of burnout.

This post highlights the top three factors that make agents more resilient to burnout. You can download the complete study here.

Top three ways to prevent agent burnout

Having a customer-focused organization is table stakes.

A whopping 94 percent of agents who were not at risk of burnout felt their organization was customer-focused, compared to just 80 percent of severe risk agents.

But becoming customer-focused is a long journey. In my experience, it takes an average of two years. You can get there by following The Service Culture Handbook, and I think you should, but here are three things you can do right now.

1. Empower your agents

Agents at low-risk of burnout are much more likely to feel empowered than agents facing a severe burnout risk.

Empowerment is a process of enabling agents to do good work. It involves giving agents:

• Adequate resources to help customers

• Best practice procedures to be more consistent

• Authority to deviate from normal procedures when it makes sense

I've created a collection of employee empowerment resources to help you empower your team.

2. Pay your agents well

You've probably heard a disgruntled employee say, "They don't pay me enough to deal with this." Okay, you've probably said it at least once or twice yourself.

It turns out that adequate pay helps make agents more resilient.

This isn't too surprising.

Daniel Pink's groundbreaking book on motivation, Drive, revealed employees are generally motivated by three things:

1. Autonomy (see empowerment, above)

2. Mastery

3. Purpose (i.e. working for a customer-focused organization)

There’s a huge caveat to all this research. You have to pay people enough that they don't worry about pay. For most companies, this means above the mid-line.

Zeyenp Ton's excellent book, The Good Jobs Strategy, profiles customer-focused companies like Trader Joe's and Costco. These companies pay their employees well above market, despite having very low prices.

How can this possibly work? Three simple reasons:

1. Access to better talent. The best employees can earn more.

2. Improved results. Better employees, by definition, can do more.

3. Decreased turnover. People are less likely to leave a good job when they're well-paid.

Making the case for giving employees is all above math. Don't worry, I don't enjoy math either, so I wrote this guide to help you make your case.

3. Support your team

Agents who felt they had a supportive boss are much less likely to be at risk of burnout.

A supportive boss makes employees feel like they can succeed. They bring out the best in people, and help their team reach new levels of mastery in their role.

Supportive actions include coaching, encouragement, and even accountability.

Wait, accountability?!

Yep. Accountability isn’t punishment. Holding someone accountable really means giving them responsibility. (Employees like that.)

I won't lie to you. Being a supportive leader is tough. I mean, who’s got your back? Managers often feel stuck between demanding executives and (seemingly) needy employees.

It doesn’t have to be that way, so I've put together a collection of resources to help you get started.

Get the report

Discover 11 factors that make agents more resilient to burnout.

Download

Conclusion

Employees like working for customer-focused companies with great products, especially if they are empowered, paid well, and have a good boss.

You knew that already. Now you have some real data to back it up.

One surprise was about remote agents. People who primarily work from home aren't any more or less resilient to burnout than agents who work primarily onsite.

Strangely, remote agents were more likely to get regular feedback from their boss.

You can download the full report to read even more insights. And if you suspect burnout is a challenge for your contact center, drop me a line and let's talk.

Three ways to build better rapport with customers

You've seen the half-hearted attempts at rapport.

Employees say "welcome" with the enthusiasm of gray paint. They use your name like they're working through a checklist. (They are.)

It feels so transactional.

Rapport is essential to customer service. But here's the kicker—it has to be authentic. Asking a customer, "How's your day going so far?" with the sincerity of a robot can hurt the rapport you're trying to build.

So what makes it real?

I posed this question on LinkedIn, and it was a stumper. Most gave answers like, "You know it when you see it."

That's not much to go on. Try training an employee by telling them, “I can’t tell you exactly how to do it, but you’ll know it if you’re doing it right.”

You need to get much more specific if you want your employees to build authentic rapport. This guide can help.

What is customer rapport?

Let's start with a definition of rapport so we're all on the same page. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines rapport this way:

1. a friendly, harmonious relationship

2. especially: a relationship characterized by agreement, mutual understanding, or empathy that makes communication possible or easy

Harmony is the foundation of customer service. You want customers to like you. And, you'd much prefer to like them back.

Rapport, by definition, makes communication easy. You can better understand their needs and customers are more accepting of your ideas.

It's also tied to better service outcomes. In one study of fast food chains, friendly employees helped compensate for long wait times and poor order accuracy.

What makes rapport genuine?

Authentic rapport goes beyond just acting out a corporate-mandated service script. It is an earnest attempt to create a friendly, harmonious connection with someone else.

Three things in particular help you establish real rapport.

Step 1: Smile with your eyes

There's a world of difference between a fake, forced smile and a real one. The fake smile communicates, "I have to be nice to you," while the real smile shares, "I'm genuinely happy to see you."

The eyes are a marker of a genuine smile.

The 19th-century scientist, Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne discovered that facial muscles are connected to authentic smiles. Particularly, those around the eyes.

Today, genuine smiles are called "Duchenne smiles" after Duchenne's pioneering work.

Later, psychologist Paul Ekman mapped these facial movements and identified the specific markers of genuine and fake smiles:

• the cheeks are pulled up and the skin below the eye may bag or bulge

• the lower eyelid moves up and crows feet wrinkles may appear

• the skin above the eye is pulled slightly down and inwards

On the other hand, a fake smile might look identical at the mouth, but doesn't feature the same muscle movement around the eyes.

Do you think you can spot a fake smile from a real one? Test your skills here.

Authentic smiles carry tremendous power. They can be contagious, and positively affect the moods of others. You've probably experienced this when a stranger smiled at you and you reflexively smiled back.

Step 2: Use consistent body language

The same words, said differently, can communicate very different messages.

Saying, "Hello" in a robotic monotone while frowning communicates unfriendliness or disinterest, even though the word itself is a common greeting.

On the other hand, a "Hello" delivered with a genuine smile, a warm tone of voice, and a wave instantly communicates friendliness and welcoming.

This makes it essential for our tone and body language to send the same friendly signals that we're trying to communicate with our words.

A psychologist named Albert Mehrabian conducted a series of experiments to show the impact of our words, tone, and body language on communicating emotions.

Published in his book, Silent Messages, Mehrabian's research revealed that body language carries the most weight when our words, tone, and body language send conflicting messages.

He estimated how much each contributed to likability when the words, tone, and body language didn’t match:

• 55% body language

• 38% tone of voice

• 7% words

These percentages have since been mischaracterized as holding true for all forms of communication, but that myth is a different story.

Mehrabian’s research explains why scripted rapport often falls flat. The employee might say the right words, but the customer won't believe them if those words are delivered with absolutely no feeling or intent.

If you want to make a customer feel welcome, you have to go beyond the words you use:

1. Start with a smile. That influences your tone.

2. Use open, friendly body language, such as a wave.

3. Increase the pitch and dynamics in your voice to convey warmth.

Step 3: Demonstrate interest

Rapport, by definition, is a relationship characterized by "agreement, mutual understanding, or empathy." In other words, you actually have to care about what the other person is thinking and feeling.

The best way to demonstrate true caring is to take an interest in your customer.

I learned this lesson the hard way when I was a teenager working in a clothing store. "How are you today?" quickly became my go-to customer greeting until a customer went off script with her reply.

"I'm terrible."

It was unexpected. I must have looked stunned, because the customer followed up with, "Well, you asked!"

Indeed, I did. From that day forward, I resolved to care about the questions I asked, even if it was something as innocuous as "How are you today?"

Of course, you can ask your customers better questions than that. Use the Five Question Technique to come up with a list of question that will capture your customer's attention, break the ice, and help you discover more about them.

Conclusion

The ultimate measure of rapport is your customer's reaction.

• Do they return your smile or become stone-faced?

• Does their body language relax or become tense?

• Do their words and tone indicate enjoyment or are they guarded?

The goal is a smiling, relaxed customer who is enjoying themselves. That's the person who will be more open to your ideas and feel better about their experience.

You're tempted to think this is obvious. But the simple fact is employees at many companies aren't attempting to build genuine rapport.

Like any customer service skill, you have to put in the work to get better.

Friendliness is more important than speed for fast food chains

Imagine you had to improve customer satisfaction. You are given limited time and a small budget. (Okay, you probably don't have to imagine those limitations.)

What would you focus on to get the best results?

1. Increasing service speed

2. Reducing service errors

3. Improving employee friendliness

According to data from Intouch Insight, the answer is number three, friendliness.

A nationwide study of fast food restaurants showed that employee friendliness was most tightly correlated with customer satisfaction. Friendly employees can even help offset the impact of slower service or a higher error rate.

Let's look at the data.

How friendliness connects to customer satisfaction

The Intouch Insight study used mystery shoppers to evaluate the drive-thru experience at ten fast food brands.

More than 1,500 visits were completed. The visits were spread out over different times of day and evaluated multiple factors including wait time, order accuracy, and friendliness.

That factor most closely correlated with overall satisfaction was friendliness:

Chick-fil-A was first in overall satisfaction (tied with Carl's Jr.) at 95 percent. It was also first in friendliness, with 88 percent of shoppers rating employees as friendly. Carl's Jr. was second in friendliness, at 83 percent.

Wendy's came in last, with just 82 percent of shoppers satisfied with their experience. It also had the worst friendliness rating at just 58 percent.

It probably isn't a big surprise that friendliness is connected to satisfaction.

The more surprising results come from looking at other factors such as accuracy, speed, or even perceived food quality.

Accuracy and speed are less important to customers

One of the factors rated by mystery shoppers was whether they received the correct order. There were two big surprises here.

First, none of the fast food chains in the study were accurate more that 89 percent of the time. That means one in ten orders were wrong.

Not good.

The second surprise was the relatively poor connection between order accuracy and overall satisfaction.

McDonald's tied for Arby's for best accuracy, at 89 percent, yet it was ninth in overall satisfaction. Chick-fil-A, the friendliness leader, had pretty terrible accuracy at 83 percent.

Okay, so what about speed?

This seems like it should be very important. It's called fast food after all, and the whole point of a drive-thru is to maximize speed and convenience.

Once again, speed didn't correlate with overall satisfaction.

The drive-thru was the slowest at satisfaction leader, Chick-fil-A. KFC had the fastest average time at 5:03, but ranked eighth in overall satisfaction.

One reason it takes longer to go through the drive-thru at Chick-fil-A is because there tends to be more cars in line than at other chains. Chick-fil-A is much faster when you factor in the other cars in line.

Yet, there's still no correlation. McDonald's had the second-best speed per car, yet it ranked next-to-last in overall satisfaction.

These results back up another study that suggests customers' perception of wait time is influenced by more than just how long they had to wait.

What about food quality?

Intouch did its study in partnership with QSR, so I pulled data from a separate QSR study for this one. It analyzed online reviews and scored several dimensions, including food quality, based on what customers mentioned in the review comments.

Chick-fil-A had the highest food quality rating of the ten chains, but the real surprise was food quality didn't correlate tightly with overall satisfaction.

The line in the chart shows the food quality ratings. The number scale represents the ratio of positive to negative comments about the food.

Chick-fil-A had a score of 5.65, which means it gets 5.65 positive mentions about the food in online reviews for every negative comment. Yet co-satisfaction leader, Carl’s Jr., had a relatively poor food quality score of 2.29.

McDonald’s was last, with a score of 1.27. Burger King, which was mid-pack in customer satisfaction, had the second-worst food quality score of 1.43.

When it comes to quality, there's Chick-fil-A and then there's everyone else.

How can companies be more friendly?

Asking employee to be more friendly is easier said than done. Otherwise, friendliness would be the norm.

It helps to look at reasons why employees aren't friendly. Fast food employees tend to face a variety of challenges, including uncertain schedules, low pay, and demanding bosses. Even naturally friendly employees can find themselves struggling to smile in these environments.

Poor products and services also lead to mutually assured dissatisfaction. Customers get more angry, which makes employees’ jobs more miserable. Eventually, nobody’s happy.

For example, a McDonald’s cashier once looked me straight in the eye and said, “I hate people like you,” because I didn’t have exact change when paying for my meal. (This was a long time ago when paying with cash was the norm.)

It took my a long time to figure out why the employee was so rude.

You can read that story in the first chapter of my book, Getting Service Right. Download the first chapter for free right here.

Conclusion

This data reveals two important points.

First, Chick-fil-A has a well-earned reputation for great food and service but it doesn't pay a penalty for long wait times and poor order accuracy.

Second, friendliness isn't as obvious as it might seem. Otherwise, more fast food chains would put it on the menu.