Broadband remuneration schemes, and why they're important to customer service employees

If you're serious about customer service as a career, one important topic that will cross your mind is remuneration -- how will you get paid like a professional, in a sustainable fashion that will ensure the prosperity of you and your family? The thinking has always been that to earn more, you need to do more; whether it's more hours, or by taking on more responsibility; eventually leading to a management position. For a lot of people, management simply isn't their thing; so if you're going to go pro in customer service, how do you continue to develop more earning power without having to step into management?

Traditional remuneration schemes are what I call "narrowband", in the sense that each position offers quite a limited scope of earning potential, driving the notion that people have to get continually promoted to earn more.

I see two downsides to this: firstly as an employee, it creates a situation where I have to move further away from what I love doing (looking after customers); and secondly as an employer, I have to promote people to their "level  of incompetence". In essence, it's more often a lose-lose situation for everyone.

I cite these downfalls primarily from my experience in the contact center world, where all too often I saw employees who were fantastic customer service representatives pushing themselves towards supervisory and managerial roles that they really didn't want, simply to earn more money and provide a better future for their family.

The immediate result is a square peg in a round hole; someone who doesn't want to be in the job, irregardless of whether they had the skills necessary for the role. Desire and passion are first and foremost in determining the level of any employee's performance. Without these two elements, you basically have a robot, and ultimately the situation will go south.

The long term result, and the real impact these "promotions to incompetence" have, is that they starve the frontline of superstars; people who's desire and passion for customer service made them excellent performers. Unfortunately it's this very same passion and desire that puts them on the radar for promotion in the first place.

So not only does the employee lose, and eventually the employer, but also the customers are losing in the most direct way possible -- losing those that serve them well.

Broadband remuneration schemes recognize this dilemma, and address it through overlapping pay grades that allow employees to be remunerated broadly while staying in the same position, generally linked to performance advancement rather than promotion. Basically, you can earn the same or more as you would in a higher position, without leaving your current role. By simply excelling at that role and going to higher levels of performance, you then have the ability to access the pay rates of higher positions without becoming a supervisor or manager.

Here's an example of one scheme I developed and implemented:

The scheme recognizes three distinct bands, called here "inbound", "backend", and "operations". Within each band, there are varying grades defined by set performance metrics or additional responsibilities within the role, that employees to expand their skill sets and deliver better results, without having to consider shifting bands unless they really want to.

At first glance, many people push back at these schemes when they see, for instance, that a level 5 customer service representative will earn more than a level 1 supervisor, because the traditional mentality would then ask "why would anyone want to become a supervisor, if a senior customer service representative is earning the same or more?". It's a valid question, but it's steeped in the old world thinking that people only go for higher positions to earn more money.

By turning this concept on it's head, we now recognize that people want to go for higher positions for career and skills advancement, which does eventually offer better pay (generally only after performance levels are established), but it's now a more long-term action, rather than simply meeting the short term goal of increased remuneration.

Those that love doing what they do, and who aren't interested in climbing the corporate ladder, can now focus towards becoming the best they can be at their present position; ensuring the front line will always have ample supply of excellent performers, while also fighting the battle against attrition. Employers also benefit from having appropriately motivated people moving up the career chain, and in the long term everybody wins; employees, employers, and customers.

You'll start to see more and more companies implementing similar schemes in the near future, as they scramble for new strategies to ensure longevity in their customer service resources, and take steps to retain their talent and avoid the costs of attrition.

Similarly, those in the frontlines will become more committed to fulfilling their career goals by staying in a role that they love passionately, that fulfills them, and gives them the satisfaction that they are actively contributing to the success of the companies they work for.

Going pro in customer service is a serious opportunity for employees, so start thinking about how you can use this strategy in your business sooner rather than later, and reap the benefits from having a motivated group of people serving your customers with excellence and passion.

Cultural differences and service delivery expectation gaps

I recently returned from a week in Hong Kong, and in my travels encountered many "customer service crises" that piqued my interest in the cultural differences that affect the expectations for customer service. From country to country, region to region, the expectations of service change in line with the various demographics and cultures -- but what if you serve an international client base?

Many travellers and expats have experienced the briskness, if not downright rudeness, that can be received from "customer service" staff in Hong Kong. Yet this even happens in establishments that deal with international travellers regularly, and where you'd expect better -- such as in a good hotel, a McDonalds branch (who are reknowned for their cookie cutter style service), and even Disneyland.

What's worse is that it appeared to be the norm, and one can't help but think that businesses actually believed they were doing a good job. A little digging confirmed my suspicion that this was a cultural difference between east and west. In western culture you're taught to be polite and proper in public, whereas in eastern culture the emphasis is on politeness to those you know (such as family members and friends). OK, it may not be as simple as just a culture difference, but I think it's got a great deal to do with an inability to "love strangers", something that seems to be both nurture and nature.

What I did find in Hong Kong was a great deal of emphasis placed on efficiency; taking your order quickly for instance (so quickly that they didn't want to waste time repeating it for verification), is deemed more important than greeting the person with a pleasant smile. This was such a striking attribute that when I did eventually find someone who delivered great customer service (an older lady working in Disneyland), it was instantly noticeable.

The "gap" between my expectation and that of the person delivering it, really is the key element in this disconnect. The absense of something that is necessary to meet a customer's expectation ("I expect to be greeted by a warm welcoming smile" from an international western customer, versus "I expect my hamburger to be served quickly, no questions asked" from an eastern customer) can kill a relationship quickly, regardless of the efficiency of the transaction.

The only way people in customer service will learn the different expectations from an international customer base is through exposure, but the key to learning is knowing it's something you have to get better at. Next time you're dealing with a customer, think for a moment about their attributes -- nationality, age, profession, social status, and even religion; all these elements play a part in developing the expectations a customer will have, prior to anything brand or product related.

If you can tap into this information and use it to tailor your service delivery, you'll find customers connecting with you and allowing trust to be built; which is 80% of your journey done and dusted!

To get you started, here's a great resource that'll tell you about the different cultures, etiquettes and taboos of various countries; as well as some basic facts and figures about the countries themselves.

Surviving in customer service

I've mentioned before that most customer service operations have a major problem with attrition, and recent threads on LinkedIn have talked about a few of the underlying reasons (besides money) that cause people to leave their jobs. Having worked in many pressured environments, I know that one big factor that can cause a lot of people to walk out the door is stress.

Sometimes it's stress because there is always a lot to do, lots of phone calls coming in, lots of follow ups to take care of; but more often than not, the stress from being at the frontline can be the biggest contributor. Being the bearer of bad news, the receiver of customer rantings and abuse (and sometimes their downright bad manners) can all build up to ruin a perfectly good day. Go through it day after day, month after month, and it's easy to see how this can lead to the decision to pack it in.

The fact remains that these pressures will always be part and parcel of the job, and whether it's face to face or telephone/internet service delivery, employees will not be able to change how customers behave; but they can change how they themselves react.

The real key to successfully managing stress in the customer service environment is focus. Contact centers, for instance, are loud and distracting; you are surrounded by people constantly talking, moving around, having conversations, and even mini-meltdowns. Trying to get into the zone and focusing can be difficult, but it can be done.

This has to start the minute you arrive at the office, so it's important that when you walk through that doorway you leave all your non-work related baggage at the step. Being distracted by the kids, the house, the dog, the bills etc. will stop your brain from focusing on the job. A friend of mine used to arrive and then sit at her desk and do a little visualization, and actually imagined each of the things outside of work as little boxes, and she'd visualize arriving at the office and placing each box down on the step outside, and as she laid them on the ground she'd say "this is my worry about the children" and "this is my worry about paying the bills tonight", and then when she was finished with all the boxes of worry, she'd visualize herself walking into the office and sitting at her desk. Remarkably simple, yet very effective.

The next thing is to understand the rhythm of your daily routine. Every job has an ebb and flow, and if you understand this flow and learn to work with it, you'll find your day much easier to handle. In most contact centers there are peaks and valleys in the call volumes, and identifying when these happen and preparing yourself accordingly can be important in maintaining performance levels without stressing out. The message here is to pace yourself.

Many customer service employees go into high gear at the start of their shift, and by the middle point they are exhausted and drained, have probably already lost their patience, and spend the rest of the day watching the clock. This means that when the peak hits you're unprepared, you will make mistakes, and you won't be ready to deal with the "happiness" your customers will bring you.

One trigger for this attitude is the metric of "CPH" or "calls per hour"; a measure of the number of calls per hour the representative takes. Most people will work themselves to the bone taking as many calls every hour to try maintain this number, but if you understand that this number is an average of the TOTAL calls you take in a DAY divided by the number of hours you worked, and take into account that at some hours of the day you'll naturally receive more calls than at others (those peaks we were talking about before), then you'll see that pacing yourself is actually a positive strategy.

Viewing your work day as a long distance marathon, broken into segments of low valleys (where you can throttle back) and high mountains (where you need to gear up), and using your energy according to this rhythm, will ensure you can have the energy when it's needed to perform. The better shape you're in for those mountains means less stress, and that's our overall aim.

Where you're running marathons you find water stations dotted along the course -- these are your scheduled break times; and just like a runner you need to "re-fuel". So when your break time comes along, use it to the fullest. Leave the work environment completely, get outside if possible and stretch, relax your brain, and unwind. Try reading a book or magazine, have a snack or take your lunch, even watching a bit of television can help switch off for a bit. Don't nap, don't talk about work with your colleagues, and absolutely never EVER work through your break as a habit. This short time is your opportunity to prepare for the next segment in your marathon.

Another part of your daily rhythm will involve scheduling; whether it's the time to do your follow ups with customers, make return phone calls, or just doing your paperwork -- and if you have all this under control, it'll be easier for you to keep your cool. Use your Microsoft Outlook to block out your day, and use the Tasks feature to keep track of your things-to-do; or if you're old school, keep a journal book and write your daily task list in it, and then refer to it regularly.

During the day as you're jogging up one of those peaks, you might find a nasty black bear who could threaten to turn your day sour. A customer who's had enough and decides they're going to make your experience with them hell on earth. The customer's issues aside, this presents a challenge for you as a frontliner -- how to keep the customer happy and solve their problem, while taking the brunt of their fury for a problem you probably had nothing directly to do with. It's critical in these situations to do two things.

First is to avoid taking it personally, which sounds harder than it is when you are having your ear chewed off by an angry customer. Therefore it's important for you to find some tricks to remind yourself of this fact during the heat of battle. Whether it's a little post-it note on your computer screen, a picture of your family or parents, or a poster of the perfect beach side setting; anything that you can look to which will help you remember: IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU.

Second is to learn the signals from your body that will alert you to the fact you're ABOUT to lose your cool. It could be that your heart starts to race, your voice might become raised, you're face might redden; there's a bunch of different signals that'll give you a heads up to the fact you're about to have a melt down. Learning what these signs are will help you avoid hitting the wall, and keep the higher levels of stress at bay. When you see or feel these trigger signs, find an alternative to break the cycle. For some people this could be a simple as a stress ball, or standing up from their chair, or even looking out the window. What you're trying to do at this stage is break the escalation cycle, because after the triggers you'll hit a point of no return and things can become very nasty!

If you find the anger still creeping up and your tricks haven't worked so far, then ask the customer if they'd mind you putting them on hold (or if it's face to face, excusing yourself for a moment), and take 30 seconds or a minute to break off and calm yourself down. Don't slam the phone on the desk, or hit the computer screen, or anything violent -- just BREATH. Close your eyes for a few seconds, and count it out. We're trying to bring the stress levels down so you can resume dealing with things.

If that still doesn't work, then it's time to get help from either your supervisor or a colleague. You don't have to win every battle, so asking for help isn't giving up; and it ensures that both you and the customer are better off for the experience. Have someone else take the call so you can re-center yourself and prepare to continue the marathon. Later on, go back through the experience and work out what buttons were pushed to trigger your stress, and learn from the experience for the next time. Get someone to coach you on practicing to deal with the situation so next time you'll be as cool as a cucumber!

Should the situation really get to you and start to make you doubt yourself, take a minute to reflect back through the days and months of your job and actively search out some positive experiences where you really did make a difference to a customer. Maybe read a compliment or note from a customer, or some positive feedback from your supervisor, or an award you received -- anything to remind you of why you're doing what you do, and that you are indeed great at it! Don't let one bad experience bring you down.

Finally, when the working day is done, it's time to do a reverse of the visualization you did when you began the day. Once you've completed all your items on the to-do-list, you've logged out and clocked off, take a few minutes to visualize leaving boxes for the work things you need to do tomorrow, placing them on your desk, and visualize yourself leaving the office feeling light and relieved of them -- then make it a reality and get out of there! Congratulate yourself on another daily marathon done.

Go spend time with your family, your dog, your friends, anything to keep a healthy work/life balance. By taking a look at the bigger picture of your working day, developing some tricks and tools to help you maintain control, and establishing the right kind of focus to deal with the challenges of being in customer service, you're assured of keeping the stress-monkey off your shoulder and bounce back day after day doing the thing you love -- satisfying customers!

Mind the Customer Service Gap

Disconnects between differing expectations have been the basis for conflict for as long as humans have been around. Gaps in expectations between husbands and wives, children and parents, employers and employees, and customers and providers, will all lead to deteriorating relationships in one way or another; and when looking through the eyes of "customer service", obviously the customer/provider disconnect is a key concept for professionals in the industry to understand.

Quite often this topic is overly simplified into idioms like "build it and they will come", or "give the masses what they want", providing false comfort that all you need to do is simply ask customers what they want, build it, and then give it to them; soon you'll end up in service heaven. The truth is that there are many types of expectation, each playing a different role in determining whether your customers love your brand.

The podcast reference in this blog link is an interview between BTalk and Nick Coster from Australia's Brainmates, a product management agency that consults on everything from pre/post go to market strategies; including product planning, marketing, and support.

Nick Coster refers to a methodology that has its roots from the mid 80's called SERVQUAL, a 10 point concept developed by Zeithaml, Parasuraman & Berry, who established quantitative measures for benchmarking and evaluating the effectiveness of customer service strategies, and who also contributed to defining the "zone of tolerance", which was described as "the difference between desired service and the level of service considered adequate".

SERVQUAL was clunky and complicated, and later simplified into the RATER model, which focused on five key disconnects:  those between a customer’s expectations and perception, between what customers expect and what managers think they expect, between management perception and the actual specification of the customer experience, between experience specification and the actual delivery of the experience, between the delivery of the customer experience and what is communicated to customers.

There were plenty of detractors for SERVQUAL, and I certainly don't endorse anyone adopting the methodology without thought, but I find it an excellent basis to begin the journey of making customer satisfaction an intrinsic business concept. Those who are looking for somewhere to start can do no wrong in using the five gap areas as a basis for opening discussions with their customers, and formulating key actions to improve how they deliver their services.

I find a good (and novel) place to start is the gap between what the customer expects and what is communicated. The unspoken word can be such a powerful influencer, and preconceived ideas based on previous experience such a difficult concept to change, that becoming explicit in plain language about what you're going to do, how, why, and when, can immediately set a level playing ground between customers and providers.

A majority of customer complaints come from having paid money for an expected level of service, mostly because the provider wasn't upfront to begin with. This does mean having a good strong look at your competitive model, but that's part and parcel of being in the red ocean.

I also love the fact that these gaps have zero to do with your frontline -- it focuses on the gaps that are caused by management and the decision makers of the provider, and it's at that level of the organization where those disconnects need to be identified and closed.

There are case studies on the Internet that you can take a look at which will help you formulate your questionnaires and research for determining your scores using the SERVQUAL methods. Reading the case studies is good, but my opinion is that the scores really do not matter, and I certainly wouldn't encourage using them to determine whether you're doing better by looking for higher scores. At the end of the day, these are statistics, and we all know how these can be misinterpreted. I am a strong advocate of the belief that you'll know you are doing better if your customers start telling you so.

Instead, use the model to help define where you'll begin your journey, and then map out your path picking whichever gap areas you think are the most important. Talk to customers directly, and then investigate their concerns against your internal procedures, policies, capabilities and infrastructure, even your marketing, and match the concerns/problems against the gap categories. Whichever category has the most grievances would be where I would devote my time and resources.

One by one, day by day, you'll improve in your key areas -- those that have the biggest impact to your customers. Stick to your roadmap, and avoid shifting direction purely based on the prevailing winds.

Pretty soon you'll start to feel the impact through a decrease in customer compliments, getting more new customers, lower churn, reduced employee attrition, and best of all higher sales.

India warms to social media for customer service

In a country with over 1.2 billion people and a growth rate of 1.58%, businesses in India face a unique challenge in continuing to deliver high levels of customer service, when the size of their customer base increases in leaps and bounds.

More customers equate to more inquiries, calls for support, and complaints; and therefore more humans to deal with the volume. The problem is you cannot keep expanding your infrastructure infinitely, otherwise in 5 years time we'll see call centers the size of small suburbs. Every human, desk, computer, phone line, and all the other costs associated with handling a customer, also eats into valuable margin. Companies eventually reach a point where they become reluctant to just keep adding more.

In the past, this was "easily" solved - just outsource! Lower costs meant you could have double or triple the assets for the same price, and instantly beef up your customer service resources as needed. Yet companies soon saw the pains associated with outsourcing, such as cultural and language barriers, hesitation or outright rejection by the customer base, and a loss of direct control and a diminished care factor that comes with someone "outside the business" taking care of their dirty laundry. The outsourcing horror stories were painfully comical, so long as they were happening to someone else.

Even before outsourcing, there was also a trend towards what was known as "self-service"; essentially removing the need to provide additional resources by implementing technology solutions such as IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and very basic internet portals. These options would allow customers to service their own needs without the need for additional people. However, many companies noticed that these systems tended to generate problems themselves -- customers randomly bashing the phone keypad simply to talk to an operator, or filling out online forms with nonsensical messages and outright abusive rants, after having been shoved along a path where they felt they were being abandoned by the companies that they supported. These arms-length clinical approaches left customers feeling neglected, and very soon businesses were looking for the next solution.

Then, between 2004 and 2006, we saw the uprise of Web 2.0, a new form of the Internet that encouraged interaction, self design, open source, and more importantly an equal playing ground for anyone with a laptop and the desire to get involved.

It has taken many years for companies to even consider adopting such confronting platforms like Facebook and Twitter, preferring to leave them as "tools for fools", and treating them as very "anti-corporate". However, this time the tables were turned, and as customers have become more sophisticated and tech-savvy, they've considering this format as both convenient and engaging; and they want more. They now actively seek out companies who use social media, and have made it part of their personal buying criteria. They rely on peer referrals, and even reviews by people they don't know, choosing instead to leverage on the swarm mind in helping them decide who to transact with; and more importantly, who to trust.

Yes, you'll still need more humans, but Web 2.0 offers you the ability to retain your customer service talent in-house, use multi skilled agents or even home based employees to ramp up your numbers, and start engaging customers in a way that is becoming mandatory for commerce in the 21st century.

No, it's not as easy as plugging in more telephones and training hundreds of employees on scripted call routines, but it's the way of the people. This is a revolution, and companies who choose to ignore it (or even worse hide from it) will get left behind.

There are many consultants and advisors who can help companies to adopt strategies for integrating Web 2.0 into their business operations, and the rewards that will come from meeting your customers needs by getting online and making yourself available in these mediums, will easily outweigh the minor costs to make it happen.

Houston airports try high-tech surveillance to improve customer service

Houston airports have trialled a great idea of combining their existing surveillance systems (which given the threat levels in the last decade must be substantial) with predictive customer service models to deliver streamlined processing of customers, and a tool to better understand the bottlenecks and natural flow of traffic through the airport.

Use of technology in situations like this gives a very different skew on hearing the voice of the customer, which I think is a good balance given the sometimes biased feedback we know market feedback can be susceptible to. And rather than waiting for situations to occur that could give rise to customer complaints, such as lengthy check in queues, these systems will in time predict potential operational problems and flag for the necessary action well ahead of a crisis point.

Does it raise privacy concerns? Of course it will, but the technology is there whether we like it or not, and the fact that the positive aspects can outweigh any negative ones is certainly encouraging. I'd be more concerned about the security of data storage and access retrieval rather than being watched by a supercomputer as I traverse the airport terminal! I would just hope that the supercomputer prioritizes it's no-fly-list facial recognition software before the long-queue-detection-algorithm, lest I be queue jumped by a terrorist.

The emphasis here for professionals and businesses who care about customer service is the shift from reactive to proactive strategies. Given the horrendous encounters many people often experience in airports, I would imagine technology like this may be greeted with applause rather than suspicion.