Coffee Hangout with Micah on Oct 19 at 11:00 AM EST: Building a customer service culture 

Hey everyone! Welcome to our coffee chat.

Today we have @Micah Solomon joining us to talk about  Building a customer service culture

Micah Solomon is a customer service consultant, keynote speaker, and a senior contributor to Forbes.com. He is termed the “New Guru of Customer Service Excellence” by The Financial Post.Hisi techniques and achievements have been featured everywhere from Fast Company and Seth Godin's worldwide bestseller Purple Cow to Wall Street Journal Radio and Inc. Magazine's "Customer Service Makeover" feature. Micah Solomon  also co-authored Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building a Five-Star Customer Service Organization which has been recognized as one of the groundbreaking customer service books of recent years. 

We’re super pumped to have Micah join us today to give his expertise. 

First question for today is here below. To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering this question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the quote the option

Q1: What do you think about the concept of hiring for culture fit? 

A1: 
Q1: What do you think about the concept of hiring for culture fit? 

I think it’s both useful and dangerous.

It’s useful when it’s shifted slightly to be something more precise for what is needed to take great care of customers while being a valuable team member.  (I can talk about that more later.) When it’s more broad it can become dangerous:

1. Getting “groupthink” where innovation/outside-the-box thoughts aren’t welcome (unless of course the culture is one of outside-the-box thoughts). 
2. Lack of diversity.  Here’s a quote from author/diversity expert Michael Hyter that I’ve used in my books: 

   diversity expert Michael Hyter:

   The word ‘‘fit’’ in the absence of that support factor [fair consideration for jobs for people who happen to be different] can easily be misinterpreted as ‘‘being like me,’’ instead of what the position requires. Many organizations make the mistake of assuming that those tasked with selecting new hires are equipped to do so fairly because they are nice people or good workers. But failure to ensure the selection process is based on standard criteria with trained interviewers can result in unintentional bias in the spirit of looking for someone who’s a perceived ‘‘good fit.’’

Q1: What do you think about the concept of hiring for culture fit?

A1. It makes sense, especially because you want new employees to be in tune with company values, but first it assumes that the hiring manager(s), and those involved in the hiring process, are aligned with the corporate culture. Second, that they’re onboard with perhaps recruiting someone who is a great personal fit but lacking in the required knowledge, skills, and experience to “hit the ground running.” In many ways, it’s similar to the age-old recruitment conundrum of hiring someone who can grow into the role versus someone who is experienced but has an engrained way of working that’s different to how you want/need them to work – with the former eventually providing a better result than the latter.

I, like many, have learned the hard way that there’s much more to be gained from hiring potential versus the finished article and without any empirical evidence I’ve a gut feel the same is true of cultural fit.

A1:  I totally agree on hiring for customer-centric traits rather than skills only.  I talk about this a lot.  Here are the five customer-centric personality traits (in very very broad strokes) that are useful to consider in hiring: 

(you’ll never forget the WETCO traits if you picture it like a big wet dog at Petco): Hire your team based on the following psychological traits, even before you start thinking about the specific skill set you are looking for.

Warmth – simple human kindness.

Empathy – the ability to sense what another person is feeling.

Teamwork – the bias against “I can do it all myself” and toward “Let’s work make this happen together.”

Conscientiousness – detail orientation; ability to use a follow-up system.

Optimism – the ability to bounce back and not internalize challenges working with customers.

The use of “culture fit” by rah rah companies (you know who they are) sometimes devolves into something very different from this.  It ends up focusing on who is able to come to company sponsored happy hours, etc. 

I love the framework you’ve mentioned above - it can really help to understand the values of a person rather than ONLY the company value and fit.

Second question for today is here below. To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering this question Q2, start your answer with A2 and use the quote the option

Q2. What are some of the key elements of creating a customer service-oriented culture?

It’s a great point about not ending up with a “sheep”-like organization where everyone thinks and acts the same :)

Love the framework! 

A2. For me, a key element of creating a customer service-oriented culture is that every employee (and not just CS staff) understanding:

• The importance of customers
• What the business does
• Their own role in the business and its operations and outcomes

All of this knowledge is important before the way in which they are motivated (and their performance is assessed) as individuals and team members. Such that metrics in particular drive the right behaviours (and then outcomes). For example, a quickly closed customer case might allow an agent to hit a target but cost the organization far more than the agent has personally gained.

A2 As far as the key elements to create a customer service-focused culture, I would say they include 

• Employee selection

• Training, training, and more training

• Modeling by leadership (they need to “walk the walk”) 

• Ample benefits, staffing, and emotional support for employees

• Clarity of focus (using my matrix and other tools to get this part started) 

• Ultimately, what the goal is (and when you know you’ve achieved success) is when you create Positive Peer Pressure: where it’s clear that “the way things are done around here” is pro-customer. 

A.2 Some of the key elements to creating a customer-service oriented culture I believe comes a lot from building a team who have certain skills and traits and may have little to do only with professional training and qualifications. Have team-members who display traits such as empathy, active listening, attentiveness, proactivity and patience will go a long way in taking a customer-service first approach.

A2:

Q2. What are some of the key elements of creating a customer service-oriented culture?

 

The way I envision (and strive to create) customer service-oriented culture includes support for all stakeholders.  In the graphic below that I’ve created to visualize this, the goal is to fill all four question-mark boxes positively.  

It’s not easy. 

1. You need to successfully serve both your customers and the people who serve your customers (employees, vendors, subcontractors)
2. You need to do this successfully both when it’s sunny out and you’re well staffed and when there’s a hurricane on the horizon and you’re down one person. 

 

 

love that you’ve mentioned vendors and contractors as well!! Shows true empathy. And it’s bound to reflect in customer service.