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Trying to Hire Millennial Employees for Customer Service Roles? Make Sure You’ve Mastered These 3 Things First.

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One of the most significant challenges facing companies today is attracting and retaining right-fit front line customer service professionals. For sure, this is challenging, but you can find and keep good-fit employees if you know what’s important to Millennials as it relates to the job search and company culture.

Millennials now make up about 50% of the workforce. And Millennials approach jobs and careers differently from Generation X (my generation) and Baby Boomers.

When I work with companies on finding, hiring, and retaining the best customer service employees, I focus on three things.

1. Developing an attractive social presence (This is tremendously important merely to get Millennials to consider a company.)

2. Hiring for motivational fit. You want people who are motivated to deliver exceptional customer interactions, people who are the best cultural fit for your brand and your customers.

3. A solid coaching and motivation strategy. You’re going to have to coach to develop your people because this is extremely important to Millennials.

Let’s look at each of the three elements of attracting, hiring, and retaining Millennials. Continue reading “Trying to Hire Millennial Employees for Customer Service Roles? Make Sure You’ve Mastered These 3 Things First.”

4 Keys to Delivering Lousy News to Customers

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I’m sipping black tea and listening to classical music while I custom design a customer service workshop for a utility on the east coast. One of my deliverables for this training is to equip employees with the skill of giving lousy news to customers in such a way that the customer accepts the employees’ answer as the final word.

You’re in for a professional development treat today, because I’m sharing with you what I’ll facilitate in Philadelphia next month. You’re about to learn how to deliver bad news with confidence and in such a way that you minimize backlash from customers.

You can give a customer bad news easily and without fear of how your customer might respond when you use 4 Keys. When you have to deliver bad news to your customer, you need to:

Say what you have to say Assertively

Acknowledge how hard this is for the customer

Manage Expectations

Offer Options, when it makes sense

 

Let’s look at each key.

Key 1: Say What You Have to Say Assertively

Continue reading “4 Keys to Delivering Lousy News to Customers”

De-escalate Your Most Demanding and Challenging Customers In 3 Steps

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In a few weeks, I’ll be delivering my popular 3-Step De-escalation Workshop at Customer Contact Week in Las Vegas. Attendees in my session will learn precisely how to de-escalate with extremely challenging customers. If you’re in the Las Vegas area on June 21, check out my course and please say hello to me before or after the workshop.

Today I’m giving you a preview of the three steps I’ll be sharing in-depth at the Customer Contact Week Conference. My de-escalation steps are Respond, Reframe, and Resolve.

Step 1: Respond

Continue reading “De-escalate Your Most Demanding and Challenging Customers In 3 Steps”

The Number One Grammar Mistake In Email, Chat and Text Is….

Grammar Gaffes Make You Look Dumb

I was behind a truck recently that had a cool LED lighted border around the license plate. Little red lights danced around and framed the driver’s message. Here’s what this driver had displayed on his flashy license plate border:

“If your reading this, than your to close.”

Do you see what I saw? Not one, not two, but four typos! The message should read: Continue reading “The Number One Grammar Mistake In Email, Chat and Text Is….”

These 7 Questions Will Help You Hone In On and Solve Your Biggest Problems In Customer Interactions

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I just got off of a productive and inspiring video conference with a new client. I’ll spend this afternoon, and much of this week developing a fully customized training class for this company. In two months, I’ll fly out to Montreal to facilitate the workshop.

When I sit down to create a custom course for my clients, the first question I ask is, “What’s your biggest problem with customer interactions?” And then I get to work on how to fix that problem.

Asking my clients what their single most significant challenge is, forces them to hone in on what keeps them up at night, and it tells me exactly where to focus in my workshop. I follow this question up with ten or twelve other questions that help me to deliver precisely on my customer’s objectives for my training.

As I sit here preparing to start the design process for my client, I got to thinking, what if some of the questions I ask my clients for workshop prep might help you make improvements in your customer interactions. I imagine my questions will at least get you to fiercely focus on the most urgent issues and get you going in the right direction. They’ve never failed me.

So, here are some of the diagnostic questions I ask my clients to help me understand and fix their most pressing issues in customer interactions.

Continue reading “These 7 Questions Will Help You Hone In On and Solve Your Biggest Problems In Customer Interactions”

I Showed Up At My Workshop with Nothing But a 12-Foot Pole. And Here’s What Happened.

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Last week I facilitated a team building workshop for one of my favorite clients. Typically, I only deliver training on customer service, but my client had a special request.

My client explained that “We need to work together, make decisions together, and communicate according to the styles of each person. In essence, we need to build a strong cohesive team.”

So I designed a unique Team-building Customer Service event built around a 12-foot pole. Here’s what I did. I showed up with no workbooks, and after 19 years of delivering workshops, training sans workbooks is a first for me.

I stood in front of the audience and pulled out my pole. And I told my group of 13 people that their task was to merely lower the stick to the floor. It sounds simple. Incredulous, the group stared at me, like, seriously?

I divided the class up into two groups and explained the rules. You’ll start with the pole waist high, you cannot lose contact with the pole at any time, and only gravity can move the pole (that is, the pole couldn’t be pushed or pulled down).

After my instruction, I stepped back and watched. Within seconds, the group learned that this exercise was anything but simple. Continue reading “I Showed Up At My Workshop with Nothing But a 12-Foot Pole. And Here’s What Happened.”