Month: November 2013
Most Social Media Is Not Social At All
At this point, most companies and organizations have integrated a social media strategy into their customer service operations. This is a must; it’s where most of their customers live. And as social media has become an anchor tenant in the world of customer service, what has followed is the sleuth of social media mangement tools such as Hootsuit, Tweetdeck, or the latest and greatest software du jour.
What has also followed are the permanent, salaried positions of social media coordinators/managers/representatives. Unfortunately, having technology and employees dedicated to social media does not mean that your organization is actually being social with your customers.
Social media strategy is like anything else, the right planning brings the right results. It requires time and thought and enough planning ahead so that it’s coordinated and effective. Unfortunately, social media requires an additional step: the willingness to deviate from the plan.
Here’s why. Planned social media posts are great. You can push out interesting quotes, articles, pictures, videos and facts to your customers on a regular basis. Planned posts give your social media presence a body. However, without the willingness to deviate from the plan, that body will seem like a robot. Who wants to follow a social media handle that only pushes out information? Unfortunately, not today’s online savvy customers!
Being willing to deviate from your social media plan really boils down empowering your employees who run your social media presence. Let your employees answer questions, interact with customers, ask questions that are “off the script.” If social media is actually going to be social, it requires a quick response, the ability to enter requests, or provide information, resolve customer problems and (perhaps most importantly) a personality. When implemented in the right way, customer service through a social media channel should feel like the customer is actually socializing with a customer service representative.
That is the real beauty of a great customer service social media strategy. Customers can “socialize and engage” with your organization and consistently receive a high level of customer satisfaction online.
I would love to hear from you on this topic. What types of customer service social media strategies would you recommend to improve the customer experience?
Rosetta Carrington Lue is the Chief Customer Service Officer and Senior Advisor to the City of Philadelphia’s Managing Director. Follow Rosetta on Twitter @Rosettalue or visit her blog at www.rosettacarringtonlu
VIDEO POST: Creating a Customer Service Service Culture in Government
Video Posted on
Although governments have made great strides in improving customer service, there’s still a stigma about how complicated the process can be. From both inside and outside of government, people assume that any major change is next to impossible. It’s assumed, for example, that it’s next to impossible to create a customer service culture in government. I’m proud to report that it’s not. And finally, I came across a video that outlines how scalable the process can be.
Above is a video from the wonderful Dennis Snow, the former customer service executive from Disney. Dennis Snow is outstanding leader and a well-known expert in the customer service business. In his video, Dennis outlines the four simple steps to creating a customer service culture. Remarkably, these steps are not just applicable to large corporations. These steps are realistic and scalable whether you’re directing the customer experience at Disney or at the Philadelphia City government. Here are Dennis’ steps:
1. Define your service culture. (For this Dennis says to choose three characteristics)
2. Make sure there is a hiring process in place to identify “customer service” people.
3. Make sure there is a training process to drive this service culture.
4. Hold employees accountable for their behaviors.
The important part about these steps is that they can be implemented in any organization, especially a government. In my experience, defining a service culture was easy because we aligned it with our mayoral goals. Hiring the right people also wasn’t a challenge. Once we had clearly defined the service culture we wanted, it was easy to find the kind of employees who shared the same values. (See my blog post on hiring the right customer service people) Our training process took time to develop. We wanted to make sure that every employee was well educated, had hands-on experience in serving our customers and empowered to serve nearly every need. Once the training was developed, however, we had our more senior-level employees act as “instructors.” This ensured buy-in. Our experienced employees knew our customer service culture inside-and-out and our new employees were trained on our culture immediately. The last step, accountability, is perhaps the most simple. Where organizations get caught up, however, is in the communication piece. Holding employees accountable only works when expectations are clearly outlined and reinforced. Our contact center worked this communication into the training program. (Our customer service values are also hanging on the walls.)
Does creating a customer service culture in your government agency (or any other organization) seem any more obtainable? Let me know in the comments. And don’t forget to thank Dennis!
Rosetta Carrington Lue is the Chief Customer Service Officer and Senior Advisor to the City of Philadelphia’s Managing Director. Follow Rosetta on Twitter @Rosettalue or visit her blog at www.rosettacarringtonlue.com.
Rosetta Lue – Philadelphia Business Journal
Customer Experience Excellence Best Practices
Chief customer service officer
Honored to represent the public sector as a Philadelphia Business Journal 2013 Woman of Distinction. Congratulations those great group of innovative and visionary women from the Philadelphia region.
See on www.bizjournals.com
One Way Businesses Can Survive Data Overload In A Sea Of Social Media [Infographic]
How do businesses stay on top of the deluge of information related to them created by social media users? Here’s one way.
See on socialbarrel.com
Sharing Customer Service Visions, Plans, and Focus Areas
As part of the City of Philadelphia’s Customer Service Officers Program, the City’s Senior Customer Service Officers and myself, Chief Customer Service Officer, held a performance management outcomes session with Managing Director Rich Negrin, his Senior team and Department Heads to present and highlight the progress of their customer service plans.
Remarkably, this meeting was scheduled for October 9, the middle of Customer Service Week, a national celebration designated by the federal government in 1992. What better way to celebrate than to honor the City’s CSO’s and their Department Heads to explore their customer service vision for the future?
After formal introductions, the CSO’s shared their department’s customer service mission statement and vision statements which were crafted in the beginning of the program. One of my favorite vision statements came from the Office of Fleet Management. It read:
“At the Office of Fleet Management, our vision is to deliver top quality service to our customers on time, every time.”
As part of the program, CSO’s conducted focus groups for both internal and external customers before crafting their customer service plans. We discussed this feedback next. As part of this session, CSO’s were able to have candid conversations with Commissioners and leadership within the Managing Director’s Office. Driven by real customer feedback, everyone at the table was able to provide details a department’s strengths and brainstorm on opportunities for improvement.
Next on the meeting’s agenda was to discuss areas of focus and customer service metrics. This was really the bread and butter of the meeting. As customer service plans often encompass a wide variety of initiatives, implementation can be difficult in terms of long-term sustainability. That’s why I worked with the CSO’s to identify one realistic but impactful area of focus for the first year of their plans. Once year one had passed (and the area of focus had seen progress) CSOs could move on to a second area of focus to ensure the improvements to their department’s customer service would stick around for a long time. While identifying their area of focus, CSO’s also identified their customer service metrics by which their department’s performance would be measured on a regular basis. These metrics would ultimately drive the customer service plans forward.
At the end of the one-hour meeting, I was proud of the CSOs and the progress they made over the past several months under the training program that I created for the team.
It was also a perfect way to celebrate Customer Service Week—by discussing the tangible plans our City has to improve its service delivery. I’ll keep you in the loop as these plans unfold!
Rosetta Carrington Lue is the Chief Customer Service Officer and Senior Advisor to the City of Philadelphia’s Managing Director. Follow Rosetta on Twitter @Rosettalue or visit her blog at www.rosettacarringtonlue.com
27 Magical Phrases for Public Speakers
27 magical phrases people should remember when doing their public speech!
- You can’t have an effect if they don’t reflect
- When you lift yourself up, you let your audience down
- Tease them before you tell them
- Turn their pain into your promise
- Speak like you talk, not like you write
- If you take us through the problem, take us through the payoff
- It’s the look before and after that line that makes the line
- What’s loose is lost (always tie each message to an anchor)
- Speak to one but look to all
- Too many speakers try to get across too much information in too little time
- Don’t add humor; uncover it
- What gets recorded gets rewarded
- It’s not about perfection, it’s about connection
- Put the process, not the person, on a pedestal.
- Never sell a product, always sell the results
- Don’t speak for standing ovations; speak for standing invitations
- No phrase, no stage
- If you are always dynamic, you are no longer dynamic
- Don’t make it up, dig it up (your story is in you and waiting to be told)
- Let me forget myself, remember my speech, and touch my audience
- You can’t create a message without first creating a mess. After all, a message is just a “mess” with “age”
- The phrase determines what stays
- A confused mind says no but a clear mind says go
- Put the result before the resource
- The harder your journey, the higher their conversion
- Sell the belief before the relief
- Let your long road lead to their shortcut
Hiring the Right Customer Service People and How to Use Them
Anyone in the industry will tell you that people are the most important asset to a customer service operation. While CRMs, mobile apps and social media channels are essential pieces to service delivery, it’s the real interaction with employees (in-person or electronically) that’s going to make or break the overall customer experience.
With this fact comes a great deal of responsibility for both you and your employees. What’s the correct method of training? How can you create standardized scripts while maintaining a “personal” touch? How can you prevent one bad interaction from ruining a customer’s experience?
Although each of these questions could be answered with its own blog post—the overarching answer is to hire the right “customer service people.” And although this may seem obvious, traits that are valuable for customer service representatives are different from the traits of other professions. Bill Thompson listed a few of these customer service traits on Salesforce’s Desk.com blog. Here they are:
- Genuine warmth: A person that exudes friendliness, caring about other people and an upbeat and outgoing personality.
- Empathic: Able to understand other people’s feelings and relate well and be sympathetic to someone under stress.
- A good listener: A person who trends toward active listening in order to fully understand an issue or problem before acting
- Conscientious: It sounds basic, but it’s vital to have people who by their nature take pride in taking care of every little detail perfectly
- Anticipatory: This sounds as though it’s antithetical to #3 but it’s slightly different. A person who is excellent at anticipating cause and effect can save much time in not just answering the main question but also digs deep to make sure every corner of the customer’s problem is fully resolved by the time the conversation is over.
- Optimistic: Again, it sounds basic, but an optimistic attitude is vital in avoiding burn-out as the daily exposure to people sometimes in stress and not acting in tune with their better angels can drag a person down.
Read Bill’s complete post here.
As you can tell from some of these traits, the best customer service people are the ones with a very particular personality—a tug of war, even, between loud and quiet personality traits. On the loud side we have genuine warmth, anticipatory and optimistic while on the quiet side we have emphatic, conscientious and a good listener. Because this personality is so particular—such a perfect combination between loud and quiet characteristics—it’s absolutely vital that once you’ve found this personality, you allow your employees to utilize it. Training and standardized procedures are important, but equally as important are empowerment. This means allowing your employees adapt to situations, to go “off script”—adapting to a situation and using the personality that made them such valuable hires.
In summary—hire the people with a “customer service personality” and give them the ability to use it. It is, after all, your organization’s biggest asset.
Rosetta Carrington Lue is the Chief Customer Service Officer and Senior Advisor to the City of Philadelphia’s Managing Director. Follow Rosetta on Twitter @Rosettalue or visit her blog at www.rosettacarringtonlue.com
6 Trends Driving Change in Government
Exploring how federal managers will respond to a changing environment.
I really enjoyed reading this article. It provided very insightful trends to drive change in government.
See on www.govexec.com
How Can Text Analytics Improve Your Feedback Program? | Medallia
» How Can Text Analytics Improve Your Feedback Program? |
See on blog.medallia.com
Innovative Customer Service Leadership Strategies 