The feedback session was going poorly.

A quality assurance analyst was reviewing a contact center agent's calls. The agent was upset about her quality score. The agent bristled at receiving zero points for friendliness.

The analyst pointed out that the agent sounded disinterested. Irritated at times. There was no warmth in her approach.

"Well, that's friendly for me," was the retort.

The analyst was stymied. The agent clearly wasn't friendly. But a specific, observable, and measurable description of “friendly” was elusive.

You might face that problem, too.

Hiring, training, and giving feedback would all be easier if you could accurately measure customer service skills like rapport, listening, or empathy.

In this post, I'll show you how.

Step 1: Identify specific skills

Start by identifying the specific skills you want to measure.

Friendly is an adjective, not a skill. The analyst would have had an easier time if she could focus on the specific skills that made someone seem friendly to a customer.

Customer service skills includes a broad range of skills sets. Here are the big three:

Rapport
Understanding
Solving

There are many skills under these categories. Rapport is most connected to friendliness, so let's go with that for this example.

Step 2: Define each skill

Find a clear definition for each skill that everyone can agree on. Don't assume that everyone has the same understanding.

I frequently turn to the dictionary. Here's a good definition of rapport from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

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

This definition would have made the feedback session a little easier. The agent did not establish harmonious relationships with her customers. There was no agreement, mutual understanding, or empathy.

It’s a start, but there was still more work to be done.

Step 3: Identify observable behaviors

Make a list of behaviors associated with each skill. You need to make concrete observations if you want to measure a skill.

Let's go back to rapport. What would you need to observe to determine someone was creating a "friendly, harmonious relationship?"

Here are a few things:

Warm tone of voice
Positive phrasing such as "I'd be happy to help you"
Demonstrating sincere interest

Observable behaviors would have made it much easier to explain why the agent wasn't building rapport on her calls.

This is what the quality assurance analyst observed the agent do:

She spoke to customers in a monotone.
Used sharp, abrupt phrases such as "No," or "That's it?"
Displayed no interest in the customer.

See the difference between observations and inferences here:

Step 4: Create a rubric

A rubric is a guide that lists specific criteria for measuring each skill. This includes the level of proficiency.

Here's a sample rubric for the friendly skill:

Step 5: Calibrate

There's still going to be some level of subjectivity with these skills. The final step is to calibrate everyone to the rubric so the team views each skill the same way.

A calibration session should include all stakeholders:

Managers
Recruiters
Trainers
Quality Assurance Analysts
Employees

Here's a method that works well:

Gather the team
Review an interaction (video, call, email, chat, etc.)
Score the skills used in the interaction independently
Compare scores
Discuss differences

The goal is to gain agreement. Everyone should be able to observe the same interaction and give the same score.

Keep calibrating until this consistently happens.

Conclusion

Yes, this takes a lot of extra up front. That's why most people don't do it.

But that extra work has a big pay-off. Making customer skills specific, observable, and measurable invites consistency. You can now:

Hire people for specific skills
Train people to serve customers a certain way
Evaluate performance against objective criteria

Bonus: Discover practical ways to measure customer service training from my LinkedIn Learning course, Measuring Learning Effectiveness.

You want your team to grow their customer service skills.

The challenge is finding the right skills to focus on. There seems to be a million different ideas out there. Which ones are the most essential?

My advice is to focus on three fundamentals:

Rapport
Understanding
Solving

These skills are the foundation of consistently great service. Each of them has endless permutations and combinations, so they can be adapted to any situation.

I'm going to show you what each skill entails, why they're essential, and how you can train yourself or your team to master each one.

Rapport Skills

Building rapport is the process of getting customers to know, like, and trust you.

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

Think of your favorite place to be a customer. It could be a restaurant, salon, or a store. There's a good chance the employees there use rapport to make you feel great.

Rapport is more than just being polite or nice. True rapport must be genuine.

Why is rapport essential?

Rapport makes customer service easier. It helps customers become more:

Trusting
Willing to listen
Forgiving of mistakes

My research shows that customers are 2-3 times more likely to give higher ratings when then know an employee by name.

How to grow your rapport skills

Most of us have a good foundation of rapport skills. These are the skills we use to make friends and build relationships with people outside of work.

The key is identifying and using these same skills with customers.

Here's an exercise that can help. Watch the short video below. There's a scene that starts 35 seconds in which shows a brief customer service interaction. See how many of these techniques you can identify the employee using:

Making the first move
Smiling
Offering a warm greeting
Using positive body language
Calling the customer by name
Conveying enthusiasm
Demonstrating interest

Implementing techniques to build rapport from Customer Service Foundations by Madecraft and Jeff Toister

If you're an introvert like me, you might need a little help getting a conversation started. The Five Question Technique is my go-to move.

It works by identifying five possible questions ahead of time. Each question should be designed to put customers at ease and get them talking about themselves.

This short video shares some examples.

Understanding Skills

Customer service is about helping people. That makes it essential to understand exactly what help people want and need.

Listening is a big part of understanding your customers. Merriam-Webster defines listening this way:

to hear something with thoughtful attention : give consideration

Understanding skills also include reading comprehension.

Email, chat, and text are all popular forms of customer service communication. Your ability to read and understand these messages is critical to outstanding service.

Active listening, as the name applies, means participating in the conversation. The goal is to learn more about your customer:

How they feel
What they need
How you can serve them

Here's an example of great active listening.

A software customer called the support department to ask if the software had a particular feature. It didn't, but the customer service rep used active listening to dig deeper.

He asked the customer clarifying questions to understand why she wanted that particular feature. Once he understood the customer's true purpose, he was able to suggest a better way for the customer to accomplish her goal.

Why is understanding essential?

Understanding helps us discover what help customers want and need.

Each customer is different. They have different personalities, needs, and expectations. Many don't communicate their needs clearly.

Empathy is a part of understanding customer needs. It's the process of being aware of and understanding another person's feelings. That’s important because a big part of customer service is helping customers feel better.

How grow your understanding skills

Like rapport, most of us already use understanding skills in our personal relationships. This active listening exercise will help you identify some of those skills you naturally use.

Find a partner. It could be a coworker or even a friend.
Ask them to tell you a story. It could be about anything: their weekend, an upcoming vacation, or whatever else they want to talk about.
Listen carefully for the main idea of the story and why you think it might be important to the storyteller.
At the end of the story, give the storyteller a recap of what you heard. Ask your partner to tell you how close you came.
Finally, reflect on the specific skills or techniques you used.

Do you tell your partner that you’ve included them in a customer service training exercise? That’s completely up to you. For them, it could just be a fun conversation.

This short video contains two additional exercises to help you build your understanding skills:

Identify the real problem
What's my job?

Uncovering customer needs from Customer Service Foundations by Madecraft and Jeff Toister

Solving Skills

Our ultimate goal in customer service is to help customers. It starts by getting people to trust us through rapport and then understanding their needs.

Now, it's time to solve their problem.

Here's an example from Osprey, a brand I really love. I wanted to find a new backpack, and the Osprey rep quickly diagnosed my needs and made a recommendation.

Jennifer made it look effortless, but look carefully at some of the skills that were needed:

Rapport. (Okay, that opening line was probably scripted.)
Understanding. Jennifer quickly diagnosed my needs.
Solving. A lot of product knowledge was required to make a great suggestion so quickly. (The Raptor 10 turned out to be perfect.)

Why is solving essential?

Solving often involves helping customers feel better and restoring trust if a promise was broken.

Here's an example:

My wife and I used to own a vacation rental cabin. One winter, our propane service missed a delivery.

This was a huge breach of trust.

It was a cold winter and our cabin was fully booked with guests. We had just 10 days left of propane. If the tank wasn't filled in time, our guests wouldn't have propane to heat the cabin or cook meals.

This created a huge emotional problem: worry.

We worried about…

the consequences of running out of propane
having a negative impact on our guests
the cost of relocating guests to another cabin
getting a bad reputation and negative reviews for a poor experience
spending extra time trying to solve the problem

That’s a lot of needless worry that could have been prevented with better solving skills. It ended well, but not without a great deal of effort. You can read the rest of the story here.

How to grow your solving skills

Start with the end in mind. Visualize yourself helping customers achieve their goal and making them feel better. One exercise that helps is the Thank You Letter challenge.

Here’s how it works:

Imagine you delighted a customer.
Write a thank you letter to yourself from that imaginary customer.
Read your thank you letter each day for 21 days.
Try to receive that same feedback from a real customer.

The hardest part is sticking with it and remembering to read the letter each day. If you’d like, I’ll send you a daily reminder.

The combinations for building your solving skills are endless, but these three short videos will give you a great start.

This first video focuses on taking ownership. This means accepting responsibility for finding a resolution, even if you aren’t personally responsible for solving it.

Taking ownership of problems from Customer Service Foundations by Madecraft and Jeff Toister

The next video focuses on empathy.

Empathy bridges across multiple skills sets.