Service attitudes
From LLN
Service attitudes
Primarily items from Leader's Digest on attitudes toward service--and how services are received.
Why understanding your customer isn't enough
- By Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest May 2009
According to Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen, understanding your customer isn’t the key to successful innovation. That’s because the customer is the wrong unit of analysis for innovators to focus on. Instead, said Christensen, organizations need to focus on the job their customers are trying to do with their product or service. For example, a fast-food company found that many of its customers were buying its milkshakes to drink for breakfast, while on long commutes to work. By focusing not on the customer, but on what the customer was trying to do –”consume a filling food on a boring daily drive” – the company was able to tailor the product for these early-morning commuters. The company also gained a greater understanding of its competition, which ranged from bananas to doughnuts.
(MIT Sloan Management Review, Improvisations, May 7, 2009.)
Maintaining the customer experience
- By Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest December 2008
In today’s economy many “consumer companies” (airlines, banks, retailers, etc.) are reducing service levels while at the same time even increasing prices. Cutting services across the board leads to unsatisfied customers, and in the long run, it’s a mistake.
Instead, companies need to challenge their assumptions about service and test them analytically. “Many will discover that long-held but seldom-reviewed assertions about what customers really want are wrong. ” They’ll also learn that they can reduce service “to just above the ‘patience threshold’” with only negligible drops in customer satisfaction. For example, customers are more willing to wait in line for some things than others (long lines the day after Thanksgiving don’t deter bargain hunters); but you have to know what your customers are willing to wait for and what they’re not.
Organizations need to analyze customer experiences rigorously and be willing to question their long-held beliefs about service to determine where the “breakpoints” are.
(Adam Braff and John C. DeVine, "Maintaining the customer experience," The McKinsey Quarterly, December 2008.)
- Editor's note: So is "just barely good enough" the new paradigm for service excellence?
Making the most of customer complaints
- By Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest October 2008
The way organizations handle customer complaints is as important as providing great service. Too often customer service must handle complaints without addressing the underlying problem. According to MIT Sloan Management Review, organizations should integrate three stakeholders into addressing and correcting service problems: customers, managers and “the frontline employees who deal with the customers.”
- The Customer. The customer’s biggest concern is fairness. So service recovery must re-establish fairness from the customer’s perspective. What do customers want? — “to have their problem fixed and to be reassured that it won’t happen” again.
- The Manager. The manager’s goal here should be to help the organization learn from service failures so they’re not repeated. “Learning from failures is more important than simply fixing problems…”
- The Employee. Frontline service staff “have the greatest job satisfaction when they believe they can give customers what they expect.” Employees’ attitudes, both “positive and negative, spill over onto customers.” Organizations need to support service staff so that they’re able to deliver successful service. When they’re not supported, these employees can treat customers unfairly and even sabotage service.
The authors suggest five strategies to address service problems:
- Create a statement of how and why your organization provides its services. Integrate into the statement the perspectives of customers, management and service staff.
- Draw attention to customer-service successes. Share stories, recognize creative ideas, praise heroes. Service staff work harder when they preceive that the organization’s goals align with their values.
- Give customer-service staff as much autonomy as your organization’s underlying strategy can permit. Organizations whose success is based on routines can’t give as much freedom as those whose ties to their customers are based on individual relations.
- Collect and share as much data as possible. Gather feedback about poor service, record it and make it available to managers and staff so that they have information they can use to resolve problems in the future.
- Use meaningful measures of employee performance. “A system for measuring customer satisfaction should be devised to help rate employee performance.”
(Stefan Michel, David Bowen and Robert Johnston, “Making the Most of Customer Complaints,” MIT Sloan Management Review Business Insight, Sep. 22, 2008.)
Zappos: delivering the wow
- by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest April 2009
Zappos, the online retailer, is an ambitious business experiment whose goal is to create a corporate culture that provides “world-beating customer service, no matter what business it is involved in.” Led by 35-year-old Tony Hsieh, Zappos combines “far-reaching service and the focused application of technology to win” happy customers. Shipping is free for all purchases—both ways—and there’s a 365-day return policy. In less than ten years, Zappos has grown to a billion dollar a year company. Products now include not only shoes, but also handbags, apparel, sunglasses, watches, electronics.
One of the company’s established set of ten values includes always delivering “WOW through service.” Half of every employee’s performance review is based on how well he or she has lived up to those values. Recruitment and training at Zappos are critical because staff are given such freedom on the job. For example, call-center staff may “do whatever they think is appropriate to rectify a customer’s problems without having to seek a manager’s approval.” This philosophy has brought impressive results: 75 percent of Zappos’s sales are from repeat customers.
Mr. Hsieh is building a platform for future growth, differentiating Zappos from other online retailers like Amazon. The company has caught the attention of other firms and is cashing in on it; they’re creating a subscription-based service for companies wanting to learn about its philosophy and methods.
While sales have slowed with the current recession, and there have been some layoffs, revenues are still growing, albeit more slowly. But for now “Zappos is still all about delivering the WOW.”
(“#20 Zappos,” FastCompany, Feb. 2009, “Keeper of the flame,” The Economist, Apr. 16, 2009.)
What you can learn about customer service from the Disney Institute
- by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest July 2008
The Disney Institute’s three and a half-day course has a lot to offer other organizations about how to deliver quality service. How are other organizations like Disney?
- They have customers from multiple generations.
- Their customers have increasingly high expectations.
- They have to deal with their own princesses and pirates.
- Every organization needs to sustain and engage its workforce.
An organization needs to maintain a delicate balance between quality employee experience, quality customer experience, and quality business experience. If you can keep your employees happy, they’ll deliver “great service” to your customers.
Disney sets out to exceed customer expectations by “paying attention to every detail of service delivery.” In fact, Disney staff are trained to want to exceed expectations.
At Disney customers are compared to snowflakes–no two are alike. Staff are empowered to deliver what they believe to be the “right service for each guest.” The company listens to what staff have to say, ideas are shared and “deserving workers” are recognized frequently. This process is formalized in “an annual employee attitude survey.”
Disney hires “based on attitude rather than aptitude.” Research shows that employees and customers “have the same expectations. Make me feel special, treat me as an individual, respect me and make me knowledgeable.” Disney also transfers “decision-making authority down to the lowest possible level.”
(Margery Weinstein, “Keys to the kingdom”, Training Magazine, July/August 2008, pp. 24-28, digital ed.)
Quality is a relative term!
- by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest February 2008
How do we know how our patrons will view a planned new service, and what can we learn from the for-profit sector?
The first lesson is: “Quality is a relative term... You can only assess quality by looking at an idea through the eyes of a potential customer.”
Take, for example, CVS MinuteClinics, which provide diagnostic services and treat simple, everyday maladies. MinuteClinics fill a specific, previously unmet need. (I love ours!) They’re “quicker, simpler, and cheaper” than going to a primary care physician. And the quality of their services is better. They can’t compete when a complicated condition needs treatment, but that’s not what they’re for.
The trouble starts when organizations think “their view of quality is the same as the market’s view of quality.;; As Peter Drucker said, ‘The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it sells him’.”
So be very wary if your organization “is planning to launch something without thinking about how the target customer measures quality.” Remember: “Quality is a relative term!”
- (Scott Anthony, "Is CVS Caremark out-innovating Apple?", Innovation Insights, Feb. 12, 2008.)
The spirit of service
- by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest October 2007
I read an article recently about the importance of the spirit of customer service in a retail store that applies to libraries as much as it does to stores. Every library (and every store) has employees “who would clearly rather be anywhere than...serving customers.” That’s too bad because the interaction between customer and the person behind the counter says a lot about the store (or library).
Every one of your customers needs to be handled “with a ’spirit of service’--an attitude that communicates the desire to make a difference in the life of each customer... In the end, it’s the employee, not the company that makes the encounter a memorable one.”
When things aren’t going well, stellar customer service is even more important. “It is imperative that every salesperson remember that no matter how bad things are going for them, the customer could care less--they merely want to be served.”
Every person who has contact with your customers needs to realize how much their attitude will add to--or detract from--the customer’s experience. Their attitude determines what the customer tells others about their experience. Consider this: every customer talks to an average of 30 people every 48 hours! “Similarly, if a store has 20 salespeople and each assists 25 people in a given day, it means that their spirit of service could be shared with 15,000 people in a matter of two days.”
What kind of impact do the staff in your library make on your customers (or users, or patrons or whatever)? Remember, it’s the employee, not necessarily the library, that makes the lasting impression.
(Mark Hunter, “The spirit of sales service,” Sales & Marketing Management’s managesmarter, Oct. 12, 2007.)
Leadership that focuses on the customer--really
- by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest August 2007
All too often genuine customer focus remains more theory than practice. Organizations often become inward focused, and while they think they’re focused on their customers, they’re really not. How can you make customer focus a reality in your organization?
- Demonstrate a genuine commitment to customer focus. Mandate that managers have regular direct contact with customers.
- Ensure that employees understand what’s at stake. Help staff see the link between what they do and long-term results.
- Enable all employees to address customers’ needs proactively. If staff have the power to address problems and the tools to take action, they’re more likely to make customer focus a habit.
- Ensure that your organization recognizes and rewards customer-focused behavior. Publicize “employees’ customer-focused actions”.
- Establish “systems that communicate customer insights among employees,” all the way to the top. Create processes that allow staff to easily share best practices with one another.
“Not only will the organization’s customers be more satisfied and more loyal, but chances are that its workforce will be, too.”
Anne Field, “Leadership that focuses on the customer--really,” Harvard Management Update, July 2007.)
Emotional intelligence on the front line
- by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest May 2007
Managers need to focus on the interactions that are important to customers--and on how their frontline staff handle those interactions.
“Many consumer-facing businesses perform poorly on the front line.” What’s missing is “the spark between the customer and frontline staff--the spark that helps transform wary or skeptical people into strong and committed brand followers. That spark and the emotionally driven behavior that creates it explain how great customer service companies earn trust and loyalty during ‘moments of truth’: those few interactions (for instance, a lost credit card, a canceled flight, a damaged piece of clothing or investment advice) when customers invest a high amount of emotional energy in the outcome.” Superb handling of these moments requires a response that puts the customer’s emotional needs ahead of the company’s.
One study showed that after a positive “moment of truth” at a bank, over 85% of the customers surveyed bought additional products; but when things “turned sour”, 70% reduced their commitment.
(Marc Beaujean, Jonathan Davidson, and Stacey Madge, “The ‘moment of truth’ in customer service,” McKinsey Quarterly, 2006, No. 1, and “Emotional intelligence on the front line,” The McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter, May 2007.)
Service with a very big smile
- by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest May 2007
The bigger employees’ smiles, the happier their customers! Researchers tracked 173 customer-employee encounters in coffee shops, scoring the employees’ “smile strength” at various points in the transaction. The bigger the employee’s smile, the more likely customers were to view that person as competent and the encounter as satisfying.
But requiring employees to smile can backfire! Forcing workers to act friendly when they don’t feel friendly can lead to job burnout and depression. Forced smiles also look phony, and customers know a fake when they see one.
Managers need to create an environment that encourages genuine smiles, and, the researchers suggest, “hire happy people.” ("Service with a very big smile," Harvard Business Review, May 2007.)
Breaking the tradeoff between efficiency and service
- by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest November 2006
Frances X. Frei’s article in the November 2006 Harvard Business Review discusses ways service businesses need to deal with customer variability. Even though Ms. Frei focuses on service businesses, her article provides useful insights for libraries. The first step in managing customer variability is understanding the forms it can take.
- Arrival variability. The resulting inefficiencies have inspired lots of solutions, including those in W. Earl Sasser’s Match Supply and Demand in Service Industries.
- Request variability. Customers’ requests can vary widely and that “poses real challenges for virtually every kind of service business.”
- Capability variability. Some “customers perform tasks easily and others require hand-holding.”
- Effort variability. It’s up to your customers (not you) how much effort they put into a “service interaction.”
- Subject preference variability. Not every customer has the same definition of being “treated well.”
Managers must choose whether to try to accommodate customer variability or reduce it. The secret to success lies in correctly diagnosing the behavioral problem, designing a mutually beneficial role for customers, and testing new approaches. The whole article is worth reading and has examples of companies’ successes and failures, including Netflix, which has capitalized on customers’ resentment of late fees from other DVD-rental companies. (Frances X. Frei, “Breaking the tradeoff between efficiency and service”, Harvard Business Review, November 2006, Vol. 84, No. 11.)
Customer-centric organizations
- by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest October 2006
Harvard Business Online’s ad for an interactive course on CD really caught my eye:
- Customer-centric organizations, where customers are everybody's responsibility and the language of the customer is key.
That’s an organization where all members of the staff from the bottom to the top embrace the customer as their responsibility and speak the same language as their customers.
Yes, libraries offer Spanish-language story hours in Hispanic neighborhood. But what about our vernacular? What does Circulation mean to library customers? What about Reference? Subject? Keyword? Are we learning to speak our customers’ language or still forcing them to speak ours?
Related articles
- Service and policy - Service-related notes from library blogs.
- Face time or Facebook? - Jeff Scott considers the relative worth of technological solutions vs. face-to-face service.
- Who needs reference librarians? - Jamie LaRue discusses changes that make reference librarians more important--but only when they're more active in their roles.
