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

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’d love to hear @Micah Solomon and @manns have to say about this, but here are my two cents:

• The culture has to permeate across the org- and for this, all of goals, mission, vision, training programs, management philosophy have to be on the same page. The customer service oriented culture would have to reflect in every single thing the Company does.
• The intangible but often overlooked element of employee welfare is another significant factor. Happier employees ensure happy customers.
• Incentivising curiosity would also go a long way in ensuring a successful customer service orientation.
   

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. 

Thanks so much, @akshara.sruthi and @rhea.desouza and @annapoorna.venketaraman  / @annapoorna.v and @SanaSiddiqui for organizing this, and thanks to everyone who participated!! 

A1: 

We can agree on one thing: Culture matters!

Culture fit on the other hand? Not so much.

We all know how much important it is to hire. But in the day and age of asking people to bring their whole self to work, and working without any biases, it seems to a challenge to accommodate everything. 
 
I’m quoting from a blog that my friend at work penned. 

“Just hire someone on the strength of their skills and monitor for culture strength later. People are curious beings that change every day and the person you interviewed won’t be the person who joins or the person you promote six months from now. Internal and external forces can change people so it’s best to not bank on the impressions you draw from a general conversation. Instead of investing time in looking for a culture fit (your impressions may or may not be accurate), you could just monitor for culture strength and take action if they’re detrimental to other people’s morale”

But if you insist on searching for something aspirational during a short job interview…I suppose you could look for a value fit. 

Source: https://www.freshworks.com/hrms/culture-fit-outdated-blog/ 

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.

A4. (part 2) Another side of this is leadership, that in the same way we can say that happy employees make for happy customers, we can help to inspire better customer service (and customers feeling special) by the way in which our service employees are treated. The analytical part of me also wants to bring in the associated metrics, that they need to be suited to what we want or need to achieve here (rather than simply something that another company uses).

Alright folks, this was amazing as always! Thank you so much for joining us @Micah Solomon. 

To all our participants @Arvind Ramamurti, @SanaSiddiqui, @foxcubmama, @rashmi.nag, @manns, @alyssia.correa, @Sonali18, @Nandita, @Kyra Hennessey, and @sebastian_brett - Thank you so much for all your insights, we now have a wealth of knowledge in our very own community about how to building a customer service culture. 
      
If you have any specific questions about this topic, feel free to tag @Micah Solomon here and ask your question! For now, have a good day/night ahead ☕ 

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.

A3. An obvious one that’s “not so obvious” is the assumption that the right things will just happen :)

This is so true! Can never just take things for granted