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A structured guide to the Customer Service Reader weblog, a collection of notes & commentary on essential works of experts in customer service and related fields.
Peer review
Introduction
The artful practice of customer service can make the world a better place. It can make you a better person, reform your organization, and bring civility to society.Lens modules:
Why bother? examines the effects of customer service on individuals, organizations, and society. What's in it for me? focuses specifically on the customer service provider. A radical's guide presents readings on how to launch a customer service revolution in your organization.
Customer service begins with understanding what customers want. To meet those needs in a manner that sets you apart, you must deliver service that stands out. This in turn requires an outstanding service culture, which you can only build by hiring, training, and developing the right people.
This lens also links to readings on the mechanics of customer service, such as complaints & recovery, and surveys.
Sub-lenses: Customer Service Standards; Customer Service Psychology; Customer Service Blogs; Customer Service Feeds; Customer Service Clues.
Why bother?
Better business, better people, and a better world.
Why bother with customer service? These articles address this question from three perspectives: the business, the service provider, and society.
- Strategic advantage through customer service
- An introduction to customer service and business strategy.
- What is strategy?
- Competitive strategy is about being different. A company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve. Michael E Porter in Harvard Business Review.
- Strategic advantage in retail
- The challenges of providing consistent high-quality service provides an opportunity for a retailer to develop a sustainable competitive advantage. Michael Levy & Barton A Weitz in Retailing Management.
- Variation is evil
- Consistency is the key to the successful execution of a service-based strategy. Jack Welch, in Winning.
- Customer service & the pursuit of happiness
- Most people don't expect to find happiness, working a customer service job. But customer service, by its very nature, presents unique opportunities for the pursuit of happiness, not only for individuals, but for society as a whole.
Gandhi on service
Every one of us does render some service or other.If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and will make, not only our own happiness, but that of the world at large.
Mohandas K Gandhi
Why are we here? What do we stand for?
That vision thing
On service and society, from the founders of visionary organizations.
- Core ideologies of visionary companies
- Core ideologies = Core values + Purpose. Definitions, and a sampling from companies studied in Built to Last, by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras. Includes links to current statements of values and purpose.
- David Packard
- A group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately - they make a contribution to society, a phrase that sounds trite but is fundamental.
- George Merck
- We are workers in industry who are genuinely inspired by the ideals of advancement of medical science, and of service to humanity.
- Masaru Ibuka
- The first and primary motive for setting up this company was to create a stable work environment where engineers who had a deep and profound appreciation for technology could realize their societal mission and work to their heart's content.
A closet radical's guide to the customer service revolution
A 10-point program adapted from the Little Red Book & The Harvard Business Review
Regardless of what position you hold in your organization, you can cause a revolution to take place. These guidelines are meant to help you manage a customer service revolution, and maybe not lose your head.See also: (1) Ron Zemke's interviews with other experts on why the Revolution falters, (2) Moderation is the new Revolution, (3) The revolution begins with you, from The 8th Habit, by Stephen Covey, and Managing Oneself, by Peter Drucker.
Bass ackwards
Don't count on leaders to lead
Most writers in the field of customer service maintain that the commitment of an organization's top management is critical to the success of any customer service initiative (see Leadership). I agree, but I don't.If the customer service revolution depended on our leaders, we'd be screwed. Most of them confuse customer service with lip service. They say the right things, but generally do not understand what they're saying. Outstanding customer service will not happen just because our leaders say they're customer-focused, or customer-centric, or whatever the current buzzword is. Almost as soon as top managers realize what it really takes, they lose interest. There's nothing sexy, or flashy, or fast about customer service. It's the tortoise, not the bunny.
And so it's far too slow for most managers, who are under constant pressure to produce immediate results. Customer service will never bring them that. Far easier to slash prices, advertise, buy a new crm system, cut payroll.
I am convinced that the revolution must be led by the masses. The elite are welcome to follow. Once we in the front lines show them the way, they may come around to Prime Minister James Hacker's point of view: "I am their leader. I must ... follow them."
Clientology
Customer service begins with understanding what customers want. And this understanding begins with understanding that they don't always know what they want. Traditional market research assumes that they do. Newer methods, such as those pioneered by Paco Underhill, Robert Zaltman, and Charles Cleveland, recognize that as much as 95% of our decision making is subconscious.A summary of factors is presented here. The following module links to several articles on this subject.
What customers want
- What customer-centric really means
- In the Harvard Management Update, David Stauffer defines "customer-centric" organizations as those which: (1) address & resolve customer issues completely, (2) ensure that everyone adopts an external focus, (3) give the frontline the power to do what's right, (4) let customers interact the way they want to, (5) give customers what they will want, (6) let customers determine how you organize.
- Berry on Retailing
- In the Harvard Business Review Leonard Berry writes that customers want us to (1) solve their problems, (2) treat them with respect, (3) connect with their emotions, (4) set fair prices, and (5) save them time.
- Bell on magnetic service
- Chip Bell and associates interviewed managers, employees, and devoted customers of well-known brands, looking for patterns or practices that yield customer devotion.
- Bell on customer needs
- In Customer Love: Attracting and Keeping Customers for Life, Bell lists 19 needs.
- Three elements of magical service moments
- Disney relies on high-touch, high-show, and high-tech to give its customers the magic that they came for.
- Customer delight
- In the Journal of Service Research, Adam Finn defines "customer delight" as an emotional response, which results from surprising and positive levels of performance.
- Easy to surprise
- The editors at Dartnell maintain that customers are easy to surprise, because their expectations are so low.
What customers sense
A clue is a hint, a sign, that tells us what a thing really is. A selection from Customer Service Clues.
Einstein on service
The value of a man should be seen in what he givesand not in what he is able to receive.
Only a life lived for others is a life worth living.
Albert Einstein
Hiring
Customer service begins and ends with people
Companies fail to turn customer service into a competive advantage because it's a herculean task to hire, train, and manage people to give great service consistently. Companies that are renowned for service are also known for an obsessive attention to these processes.
- The team with the best players wins
- Nothing is more important to winning than having the right people on the field. The team with the best players wins. Critical must haves, and the 4E 1P framework. Jack & Suzy Welch, Winning.
- Hiring for customer service
- It's not easy to find people with a service orientation and history. But it's much harder to create a customer service mindset in people who have not already developed the habits on their own. What to look for, how to find it.
- Nordstrom's #1 Customer Strategy
- Bruce Nordstrom: "We can hire nice people and teach them to sell, but we can't hire salespeople and teach them to be nice". Robert Spector, The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence.
- The living brand
- A company can deliver outstanding customer service when it considers employees its living brand, hiring and developing to reflect the brand's core values. Creating the Living Brand, in Harvard Business Review.
Training
- Emotional competence in customer service
- While knowledge and intelligence are useful in customer service, emotional competence is what matters most. This article attempts to classify emotional competencies, for hiring & training purposes, into three categories: basic competencies, higher-level competencies, and competencies for customer service leaders. It is based on the Emotional Competence Framework developed by the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations.
- Customer service training guidelines
- Adapted from Best Practices in Training & Development, Daniel Goleman et al, Emotional Intelligence Consortium
- Training at Disney
- How Disney transforms ordinary people into "cast members" with above-average customer skills. Disney Institute, Be Our Guest.
- Mission, Values, Pride
- For many organizations, achieving competitive advantage means eliciting superior performance from employees on the front line. The approach discussed in this article generates organizational energy through mutual trust, collective pride, and self-discipline. Katzenbach & Santamaria in HBR.
King on service
Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" to serve. You don't have to know the Second Theory of Thermal Dynamics in Physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be that servant.Martin Luther King Jr
Recognition & Accountability
- Catch them doing things right
- The real bread and butter for effective managers and leaders is the day-to-day monitoring and feedback of people's performance. The key to developing people and creating great organizations is to accentuate the positive, that is to catch people doing things right. Ken Blanchard, Customer Mania
- Reinforcement & intrinsic motivation
- Negative reinforcement will produce behavioral change, but in temporary and undesirable ways. Positive reinforcement causes long-term behavioral change in the intended direction. Lasting commitment to a habit, a value, or organization comes from a person's belief that it is inherently worthwhile. Tom Peters & Robert Waterman, In Search of Excellence
- 20-70-10
- Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Excerpts from Winning, by Jack & Suzy Welch.
- Driving service at Enterprise
- Enterprise Rent-a-Car drives performance by relating pay and promotions to the ratio of completely satisfied customers. CEO Andy Taylor desribes the process and its development. Driving Customer Satisfaction, in HBR.
Complaints, stress, and recovery
- The importance of complaints and recovery
- John Goodman, Basic Facts on Customer Complaint Behavior
- Customer service can kill you
- Alicia Grandey et al, Emotion Regulation in the Workplace: A New Way to Conceptualize Emotional Labor
- LEAP away from stress
- Reduce your stress by taking care of customers in the first place, and by defusing anger and fixing mistakes through recovery processes such as LEAP.
- LEAP to the customer's side
- Anyone can be nice to nice customers. That takes no talent. What separates the professionals from the amateurs is the ability to manage "difficult" customers.
- Anger triggers
- You can help defuse a tense encounter, or at least not make it worse, by avoiding behaviors that trigger anger in customers. Some common triggers to avoid.
- Empathy & managing relationships
- Empathy gives people an astute awareness of others' emotions, concerns, and needs. Neurological bases, implications for work, communication, and leadership. Daniel Goleman, An EI-Based Theory of Performance
- Dysfunctional customers
- Lloyd Harris & Kate Reynolds, The consequences of dysfunctional customer behavior, in Journal of Service Research
Chisholm on Service
Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth.
Shirley Chisholm
Surveys & Measurement
Surveys are useful as tools to track and encourage progress. They are best when they are simple to administer and analyze, and when results are communicated quickly to effect improvements in the front line. Complexity and a lack of clarity are bad for business.
Some companies successfully use surveys to drive performance by tying pay and promotion to survey results. But incentives often have unintended consequeces, and programs founder when the system is gamed.
Some companies successfully use surveys to drive performance by tying pay and promotion to survey results. But incentives often have unintended consequeces, and programs founder when the system is gamed.
- A survey of surveys
- An introduction to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Gallup's Customer Engagement Survey, and the Net Promoter Score.
- Wrong yardsticks
- Conventional satisfaction surveys and retention surveys have their uses, but have a limited ability to predict profitability and growth.
- Keep the survey simple
- Customer surveys should be easy to understand, administer, interpret and, most important of all, to act upon quickly.
- "The Ultimate Question"
- How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague? This question identifies your promoters and detractors. Promoters bring higher retention rates, higher cross-sell rates, constructive feedback, and cost efficiencies. Most important, Promoters are the source of that crucial word-of-mouth which drives corporate reputations and customer referrals.
- Driving service at Enterprise
- Enterprise Rent-a-Car drives performance by relating pay and promotions to the ratio of completely satisfied customers. CEO Andy Taylor desribes the process and its development.
- Service self-assessments
- The National Performance Review's Best Practices Report on "World-Class Courtesy" includes two surveys that you may adapt to assess your organization's ability to deliver outstanding customer service.
Predictions & Results
1-800-Mister-Leo
In the American Customer Satisfaction Index Q4Y4 report, Claes Fornell wrote:"Through heavy discounting, the holiday season did bring in more buyers for both traditional and online retailers. But because some companies also cut costs, resources to serve the increasing demand were sometimes lacking, resulting in crowding, longer lines, and slower service."
This holiday season will be a repeat of the last. Companies have invested heavily in advertising, and resorted to deep discounting, to drive customers like cattle into the kettle. Very few have invested in improving service. For most companies, the effect will therefore be an exponential increase in the number of dissatisfied customers.
More customers + Bad service = More angry customers
It's a safe bet that the ACSI report for Q4Y5 will show yet another drop in customer satisfaction.
Update: The Q4Y5 report is out. Marvel at my psychic powers.
What's in it for me?
- What's in it for me?
- Although much has been written about how customer service benefits businesses, writers have not paid much attention to how providing customer service also benefits the providers. Which is odd, because we're the ones that matter.
- Because it feels good
- "Providing great customer service is a triple win," says Paul Timm, a professor at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. "Your customers feel good, your organization prospers, and you feel good."
- Service ethics
- By serving others, we derive lasting satisfaction. Charles Watson & Pamela Johnson, in Executive Excellence
- Joy to the whirled
- Organisations are big social systems - they can create environments that facilitate and help people to increase their well-being or, they can decrease it. This, in turn, spreads back out into society. Charmin Hartel, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Monash University
- Q&A with Dr Ed Diener
- Can customer service providers find happiness? To answer that question, it may help to gain a better understanding of what happiness is. Ed Diener is Alumni Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. He is the Founding Editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science.
- Customer Service & the Pursuit of Happiness
- Most people don't expect to find happiness, working a customer service job. But customer service, by its very nature, presents unique opportunities for the pursuit of happiness, not only for individuals, but for society as a whole.
-
Good people make good service.
Good service makes good people. - The competencies that matter most to the success of customer service providers. When we practice service - whether on customers, family members, colleagues, or communities - we become better at these competencies. We become better people.
Shakespeare on Service
Remember I have done thee worthy service,Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, served
Without or grudge or grumblings.
Ariel, in The Tempest
William Shakespeare
CSReader blog - The Big Picture
- Customer Service Reader, the Blog
- Readings on Customer Service, from the best minds in the field
- Service & Society
- My interest in customer service stems primarily from a quixotic belief that it can make the world a better place.
- A closet radical's guide to the customer service revolution
- A 10-point program from the Little Red Book and the Harvard Business Review, including such classics as "gain the support of the masses", and "surround the city from the countryside".
- What customers want
- Meeting the needs of the customer begins with understanding what she wants.
- What's in it for Business?
- Articles on how customer service benefits businesses and other organizations.
- What's in it for Labor?
- Articles on how customer service benefits the people who work in these organizations. Not been a focus of writers and researchers, could use some help.
- Customer Service Psychology
- A CSR sublens on the psychology of customer service. Topics include emotion regulation, emotional intelligence, engagement, integrity, loyalty, subjective well-being, dyadic affective states, and other things I just made up.
CSReader blog - Focus on Execution
- Hiring & training
- Hiring is the critical first step in building a team that delivers outstanding customer service. Training is what you have to do because good people are hard to find.
- Emotional competence in customer service
- Codes each competency in the EIC's Emotional Competence Framework, as it applies to beginners, veterans, and leaders in the field of customer service.
- Standards of customer service behavior
- This CSR sublens features a collection of customer service standards published by businesses, non-profits, and government agencies. Standards define what customer service means, and what behaviors are expected of the members of the organization. They form the backbone of the customer service program. Without enforced standards, the program is spineless.
- Complaints
- Why they're important, how to stay sane while you manage whiners and screamers, and why we shouldn't call them that.
CSReader blog - Sources
- Papers
- Scholarly papers referenced in the Customer Service Reader blog.
- Books
- Books referenced in the Customer Service Reader blog.
- Customer Service Surveys
- On the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the Gallup CE11, Net Promoters, Rudeness in America, and others.
- Customer Service in the News
- Selections from Google News search results for "Customer Service", mainly.
Featured Source: Fred Reichheld
Fred Reichheld (who Tom Peters, in his usual restrained fashion, calls the "God-Guru of Customer Loyalty"), has written extensively on the links among loyalty, value, and profits.The Customer Service Reader blog makes several references to Mr Reichheld's work, including his warning that the current war on customers will have no winners, his definition of loyalty, his net-promoter concept, and how asking the "ultimate question" compares to other customer surveys.
There's a forum on Net Promoter here. I asked some technical questions about the Net Promoter Score and got some answers.
Building my notes on The Ultimate Question here.
Sources : On Strategy & General Management
Books & Papers cited in the CSReader blog. All lens profits go to Squidoo charities.
Includes links to entries in the Customer Service Reader blog
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials)
Notes/excerpts: Core ideologies / Core purpose / Merck mission / Sony's founding purpose / Empowerment prerequisite
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The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness
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Manage Your Human Sigma (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)
Notes/excerpts: Gallup's Human Sigma
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Managing Change and Transition
Notes/excerpts: Revolution management
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In Search of Excellence: Lessons from Americas Best Run Companies
Notes/excerpts: Close to the customer / Motivation
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Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors
Notes/excerpts: What is strategy?
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Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance
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The One Number You Need to Grow (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)
Notes/excerpts: What is loyalty / Wrong yardsticks
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The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth
Notes/excerpts: Ultimate notes / The ultimate question.
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Winning
Notes/excerpts: Welch on hiring / Variation is evil / 20-70-10
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Sources : Customer Service
Books & Papers cited in the CSReader blog. All lens profits go to Squidoo charities.
Includes links to entries in the Customer Service Reader blog
The Old Pillars of New Retailing
Notes/excerpts: Berry on Retailing
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On Great Service: A Framework for Action
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Discovering the Soul of Service: The Nine Drivers of Sustainable Business Success
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Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again
Notes/excerpts: What makes customers tick
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Dazzle Me
Notes/excerpts: Easy to surprise / Because it feels good
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Customer Mania! It's Never Too Late to Build a Customer-Focused Company
Notes/excerpts: Blanchard on recognition
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Be Our Guest
Notes/excerpts: Training at Disney / Setting delivers service / Service processes / Three elements of magical service moments
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Customer Service Training (Astd Trainer's Wordshop) (Astd Trainer's Wordshop)
Notes/excerpts: Kamin on benefits to business
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Retailing Management W/Student Tutorial CD-ROM
Notes/excerpts: Strategic advantage in retail
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Customer Experience Management: A Revolutionary Approach to Connecting with Your Customers
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Unleashing Excellence: The Complete Guide to Ultimate Customer Service
Notes/excerpts: Service standards
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The Nordstrom Way: The Inside Story of America's #1 Customer Service Company
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The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: A Handbook For Implementing Great Service in Your Organization
Notes/excerpts: Nordstrom's #1 Customer Strategy
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How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market
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Best Practices in Customer Service
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Christ on service
Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. He rose from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. John 13:1-5 Community service
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Customer Service in Wikipedia
We are revamping the Customer Service article in Wikipedia. Please help if you can. A discussion of current and proposed changes is on this page.Customer service is the provision of labor and other resources, for the purpose of increasing the value that buyers receive from their purchases and from the processes leading up to the purchase.
The modern concept of customer service has its roots in the craftsman economy of the 1800s, when (more)
Creative Commons License
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