Leadership
Philly Urban Creators Inspires our Youth, with Poetry, Food Awareness, and Civic Imagination
Last week’s presentation with the Philadelphia Urban Creators was a tremendous success. We started with a quick recap on the Philly Rising session, since many of the students missed that presentation. The children who were present for that session eagerly caught up their peers on the highlights of the Philly Rising workshop. I was impressed at how well they had retained the information from the week before. It appears they are really taking in the sessions, both actively listening and understanding the topics.
Philadelphia Urban Creators Co-Founder Jeaninne Kayembe came to talk to our students about food access but she opened up the conversation to the students and what was on their mind was broader than food access.
Jeaninne introduced herself and opened with a spoken word piece, the students were instantly intrigued but what they recognized as hip hop and you could see an almost tangible respect for Ms. Jeaninne as she closed her poem. The poem was about earth, women, and respecting each other. It was a very moving piece; you can see the video of Jeaninne’s poem on the Philly311YouthEngagement Facebook page.
After her poem, Jeneanine asked the students if they had ever heard of Whole Foods. What do they sell at whole foods? Where is it located? Who lives there? What is the closest place to your house that you can buy food? Do they sell organic food there? Why not?
One child answers her matter-of-factly, “Because that is not where the money is.” Why do I have to buy the bottom of the barrel? She asks. “Everyone deserves good food.” Another student adds.
“Exactly!” she says, and with that she introduced their urban farm, located at 11th and York. She explains that her and her friends started this garden when they were not much older than our YEP participants. She told the students that they mostly started Hoodstock because they were bored, and also because they wanted everyone to have access to good quality, affordable foods near their homes. She talked to the students about how they found the land for their garden extremely dirty, it had diapers and drug paraphernalia, etc. and they cleaned it up, built garden beds and grew food. She told the children that when they started the organization they had a budget of $0 and have now grossed more than $500,000, attracting the attention of celebrities and local officials alike. She showed pictures from their annual music festival Hoodstock (play on Woodstock, but in the “hood”) with Nick Cannon.
The most important lesson she taught this group was that if you are passionate about something and you set your mind to it, you can make an incredible difference in your community. She also told the children that if they wanted to build an urban garden in their community that they could contact her and she would help them organize it.
Then she gave everyone a piece of paper and instructed them to write down five things that they like about their neighborhood and five things they would change. Many of the students said they wanted to see less litter, less criminal activity, more plants (trees, flowers, fruits and vegitables, etc.) and a greater sense of community.
This process of identifying what you want to see in your neighborhood is civic imagination. First you imagine what it could be, and then you take it into your own hands and you make it happen. One young woman spoke up about how angry she was about the state of her neighborhood, and she was angry at the police who come to her neighborhood and shoot the young black men, but she was also mad at the young black men who are not acting right and taking responsibility for their own senseless acts of violence. It was chilling to hear this young person express these complex problems with such insight and clarity. It is easy to see that many of these young people will grow up to be great leaders and have a real impact on their community and beyond. I hope that this program will help give them the tools that they need to achieve their goals.
This week, we look forward to our closing session, facilitated by our fantastic and incredibly supportive partners, the Philadelphia Youth Commission. It will be sad to see this program end, but we are starting our series at the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center next week. So even though we must close out our work with the Penn Treaty students, we will continue to expand this program and work with more young people to inspire, educate, and engage as many students as we can reach. As always, we thank all of our tremendous partners, for working with us on YEP and for all of the great work that they do every day to improve the lives of young Philadelphians all across the city.
Streamlining Customer Information through Video
As we begin to release new episodes of Philly311 TV, I thought I’d write a post about the importance of these videos from a customer service standpoint.
Philly311 TV is the digital engagement effort of the Philadelphia city government’s non-emergency contact center. I serve as the host of the show and interview a diverse range of employees throughout city government. We created the show as part of our multi-channel engagement strategy to provide customers with more information and access to our organization.
After lessons learned from Season 1 (filming 30-minute, talk-show formatted episodes) we decided to move to a more flexible format that would provide more value to our customers. In Season 2, we still film casual conversations in a studio setting, however, we cut these conversations into vignettes in post-production to streamline information for our customers.
With these vignettes, we can provide quick, immediate answers to some of our customers most frequent questions. We can use these videos to populate our social media streams, meaning that customers can see answers to their questions on their newsfeeds before they even ask.
Here’s a great example:
Another benefit to using video to answer customer questions is that it humanizes your organization. If customers can see that real people, who care, are behind your organization, they will be more likely to engage. It’s always better to have an explanation come from a person (or a video of a person) than from a word document, FAQ list, or an instruction manual.
Providing quick, engaging video answers to our customers has been a relatively easy process, and could be for your organization too. What are your thoughts on the using video for customer engagement?
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
5 Ways Government Can Improve Its Customer Service Excellence Brand
While government has started to incorporate more and more private sector strategies to improve operations, one effort where government is lacking is branding. Where private-sector companies are able to build brands that customers love and are enthusiastic about, governments tends to stray away from any substantial efforts to build a lovable brand.
While government may never be able to build a Starbucks-esque brand (where customers are constantly “wowed” and pass this wow along via word of mouth and social media) government can make small changes to the way it interacts with its customers to create a more open, pleasant, and collaborative experience for customers.
I recently read an article called “5 Lessons from Companies with Adoring Customers” by Hannah Johnson on the Get Satisfaction blog. The lessons outlined were incredibly helpful and offered great insight for how small changes can improve an organization’s brand.
Let’s take these lessons and adopt them for government.
1. Provide Customers Access to Decision-Makers when they have a Gripe
The words “open” and “accessible” are now synonymous with any progressive government. While some of this focus is on releasing data, constituents also want access to the top officials making decisions. Thankfully, there’s social media. Social media has leveled the playing field in terms of constituent accessibility. Now, all it takes to reach top officials is a tweet or a comment on Facebook. And you would be surprised at how impactful a genuine reply or even a retweet can be.
2. Don’t Just Innovate for Them, Innovate with Them
Social media and other technologies have also given governments the ability to brainstorm with customers and get their feedback. When designing a process, program, or event, why not post something on social media asking for input? Also, Tweet Chats (scheduled discussions on Twitter) sponsored by governments are a great way to engage and discuss new ideas with customers.
3. Identify, Incentivize, and Empower Customers
Governments should take this cue from the private sector and reward top customers. This does not mean that governments need to buy customers expensive gifts, but customers who are top proponents of services or programs should gain recognition or meetings with top officials. Another way to incentivize customers is through gamification. Gamify civic engagement by giving points for participation in programs or community events. You can also designate great customers as “Super Users” or other honorary names.
4. Treat Customers like Humans
Government may be limited by budgetary or regulatory constraints in terms of marketing messaging. However, customers need clear information from their government. In some cases, there’s not a lot of room for creative marketing promotions or messaging, as information about resources and other public services should not be misconstrued. Social media, however, allows government to step away from entirely robotic responses. Through the use of social media, government can have real, human conversations with customers, rather than only pushing out information. Human interactions can improve the way customers perceive government as a whole.
5. Allow Customers to Help Themselves
Governments are known for being overly bureaucratic. Now more than ever, customer want information, answers, and resolutions instantaneously. A way to appease the customers is to make many processes self-service. Let customers get the information they want, as soon as they want. If your current system don’t allow for the creation of self-service portals, create informational blog posts, or even a wiki so that customers don’t have to wait in a queue to get an answer they could find faster themselves. Empower your customers. They’ll appreciate you for it!
Can you think of any other ways to improve your local government’s customer service brand?
Customer Satisfaction: Innovating with Lack of Resources
My post originally appeared on the DigitalGov blog.
As government contact centers, we all face financial and technological constraints in our pursuit to improve the customer experience. One challenge faced by many contact centers is staffing limitations to handle the volume of incoming customer traffic. There are barely enough employees to operate phones, let alone work on meeting or exceeding the organizational customer satisfaction performance goals.
One initiative that was important to the City of Philadelphia’s 311 non-emergency contact center was the successful collection of customer feedback and coaching our employees to improve the customers’ experience with each transaction. The 311 Contact Center serves as the single point of contact for over 1.5 million residents, businesses, and visitors needing City-related non-emergency services and information.
With so many daily interactions between our customers and agents, how could we improve customer experience if we did not have the means to ask our customers about their experience? With a limited technology and staffing budget, it seemed impossible to implement a customer satisfaction program in our government contact center. We needed to find innovative solutions to effectively collect, and manage, accurate and real-time customer experience responses.
A Solution
To create a credible program to measure customer satisfaction, our contact center partnered with a national Fortune 500 company who, pro bono, helped to develop an effective customer satisfaction survey and we partnered with a local non-profit organization for surveying and data entry staffing support. The benefit of these partnerships were two-fold: building a best-in-class program and providing a training environment to enhance clientele’s skills through their experience in a customer contact operations.
For example, in an agreement with the non-profit’s Work Experience programs, we provide opportunities for their clients to gain experience in an office setting. Work Experience employees work in our contact center for up to 20 hours a week for an agreed-upon number of months (based on the program) or until they found employment. Work Experience employees administer customer satisfaction surveys via the telephone.
In Practice
Formal training is conducted for our Work Experience/customer satisfaction surveyors to familiarize them with our services, the data collection processes and why their role is critical to our success. After this, surveyors are given a list of anonymous customers who contacted us within the last 24 hours and authorized the use of their number for a customer satisfaction survey (asked by our contact center agents at the end of each phone call). Over time we have enhanced the sample questions the surveyors ask. The results are entered into a centralized database. Following are the current baseline questions used in our survey:
- Did the agent explain the process for resolving your issues or concerns?
- Did the agent have access to the necessary information to meet your request?
- Was your call (or e-mail, or visit) handled in a timely manner?
- Were you satisfied with the service you received from Contact Center?
- Would you like to provide any additional feedback about your experience with the contact center?
- Would you like to provide your name, phone number or e-mail address, if you would like to be contacted.
As part of the process, surveyors are able to transfer concerned or dissatisfied customers to a contact center supervisor or manager to follow up on or resolve their issue.
Results and Overview
Results of the customer satisfaction surveys are shared with our contact center supervisors for meetings with their teams. The previous day’s average is also displayed on our contact center’s reader boards. Monthly and quarterly customer experience results are shared with Senior Leadership within the organization and posted on the department’s bulletin board.
Overall, our ability to gather customer satisfaction data has been instrumental in our growth as our city’s customer service center. The data has improved our technology and business processes, external communication, and service offerings as we continue to strive for customer service excellence. We continue to use Work Experience programs to collect customer satisfaction surveys and we have also expanded our initiative to include social media data mining. Designated agents monitor social media “streams” to see what our customers are saying about us, in addition to their “wants” as they relate to our services.
While we still face budgetary constraints, our contact center continues to innovate and find means to continually improve our customers’ 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.rosettacarringtonlue.com.
Philly311 TV: Community Engagement is Customer Service
Video Posted on Updated on
The above video is a clip from our upcoming episode of The Philly311 Show featuring PhillyRising’s East Division Coordinator, Joandelis Marquez. PhillyRising is a program within the Philadelphia City government that targets neighborhoods plagued by chronic crime and quality of life concerns, and establishes partnerships with community members to address thoseissues. Joandelis and I had a great time discussing the innovative community engagement strategies she uses to connect with and serve her “customers.”
Community engagement is customer service–it’s just more targeted and personal. Often times, it’s more effective too. Some organizations view community engagement efforts as optional or philanthropic extensions of customer service. In actuality, community engagement should be mandatory because of the level of service these efforts provide. Through community engagement efforts, your organization is able to provide the most personal customer care possible. You’re also able to engage your customers by building human relationships.
Building personal relationships goes farther than you think. Not only do they humanize your organization or brand (making it easier to connect with customers) but they also lend valuable insight into your customer’s wants and needs. While surveys and customer data can be effective representations of of customer sentiment, through community engagement efforts you can literally hear what your customers are saying. Often in a more natural setting than a phone or self-service customer satisfaction survey, customers are able to voice their honest feedback in their own way, in person, on their own turf. Even if your community engagement efforts are small, this valuable feedback could benefit all of your customers.
How are you engaging the community?
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
Philly311 TV: Why is Internal Customer Service Important?
Video Posted on Updated on
The above clip is a sneak peek from The Philly311 Show episode where I interview Al D’Attilio, the Director of Human Resources for the City of Philadelphia. Al and I discussed the City’s hiring process as well as the services his office provides to the rest of city government. Based on my conversation with Al, it was clear that the Office of Human Resources sets a great example for internal customer service.
Internal customer service is just as important as external customer service, but it’s not often viewed as a priority. Taking the time to provide information or services to other departments can feel like it takes away from time spent doing our “actual job.” However, as an organization’s level of internal customer service improves, the overall efficiency of the organization improves as well. Employees who have easy access to information and the ability move projects forward can better they can serve the organizations customers. Great internal customer service usually results in great external customer service.
As few tips for improving your organization’s internal customer service include the following:
• Setting expectations and service level agreements between departments.
• Designating a “point person” for each department or a specific service.
• Creating a clear communication process and escalation policy.
• Communicating the positive relationship between internal customer service and the success of the organization to all employees.
I want to thank Al for setting the high standard for internal customer service. Does anyone else have any tips for how to improve your organization’s internal service delivery?
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
The Philly311 CRM has Kicked Off!
Last week, after months of strategic planning, we held the kick off for the Philly311 CRM: a new era of citizen engagement in Philadelphia.
As the project executive, I have seen every part of this process– the brainstorming, demoing, journey-mapping– but most importantly, I have seen the exciting potential for how Philadelphia can serve its residents.
While the backbone of this system will improve the City’s ability to share knowledge and work interdepartmentally, the CRM’s social functionality will provide a great deal of value to our external customers. The system’s robust infrastructure will create a social platform around the non-emergency contact center; the Philly311 CRM will facilitate conversations between neighbors and stakeholders who want to collaborate, share best practices, and organize events to improve their community. On our end, we’ll be able to capitalize on a variety of communications, including social media data, to better understand the needs of our customers so we can proactively serve and provide information.
My vision for the Philly311 CRM is to improve the customer’s overall experience when seeking out municipal information and services. The technology will provide more information and functionality to both City agents and customers, paving the way for more seamless resolutions. This, paired with the technology’s social capabilities, will add to the City’s current success in making positive transformations within municipal government.
In reference to the PhillyCRM, Managing Director Rich Negrin told me:
“A new CRM will open a world of possibilities for city government to engage with Philadelphia residents and will help provide the level of service they deserve. It will enhance our efforts to treat our citizens as valued customers. The new system is innovative, smart, comprehensive, and social. This marks a new era for citizen engagement.”
Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid also told me:
“The 311 CRM replacement project is part of the Mayor’s overall vision to use our limited dollars to modernize mission critical services and open up opportunities for improving customer service.”
As this exciting journey begins, it is necessary to thank Mayor Nutter for his leadership and support throughout this process, Executive Sponsor and City Managing Director Richard Negrin for his commitment to customer service, Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid for his insight and guidance, and last but not least, our diverse group of internal and external partners who have worked tirelessly to ensure that our citizens are served in the best way possible.
I look forward to updating you throughout this process. Any questions?
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
Essential Traits for a Customer Service Manager
Video Posted on Updated on
Above is a sneak peek at The Philly311 Show episode where I interview 311 Operations Manager, Sheryl Johnson.
What I loved most about speaking with Sheryl is her passion for customer service. This passion is so important to a customer service manager because it tends to transfer into the organization and its employees. From my time speaking and working with Sheryl, I took away a few key attributes that every customer service manager should have.
Innate passion for customer service. Sheryl’s level of passion for customer service is an asset to the organization, unfortunately, this level of passion can rarely be taught. The same innate passion should be sought out in your hires, the kind of potential employees who yearn for more than a just a paycheck. Among other aspects, these individuals should be evaluated on the way they have handled past situations rather than on the intricacies of their resumes. (See my blog post on how to hire the right customer service people.)
A clear understanding of the organization’s mission. A customer service manager must understand how his/her “shop” contributes to the organization’s mission and communicate this to employees to increase their level of engagement. Small ways managers can accomplish this is by celebrating milestones, achievements, and other types of employee recognition also helps to engage employees, relating their success to the success of the organization and vice versa.
Ability to identify special skill sets of employees and capitalizing on those skills. In a contact center, most of the day-to-day work is mundane. That’s why it’s important for a contact center to give employees special projects that cater to their skills or interests. This not only lets employees explore their passion, but it also helps create a more vibrant and creative environment where employees are excited to come to work.
What other traits does a customer service operations manager need? Let me know in the comments!
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 atwww.rosettacarringtonlue.com
How Are You Developing Your Talent?
Video Posted on
Above is the sneak peek for the The Philly311 Show’s latest episode with guest Jackie Linton, Director of the Center of Excellence. I really enjoyed sitting down with Jackie and discussing the Center of Excellence’s three core functions: Project Management, building project management capabilities; Organizational Development, developing talent for the future; and Performance Management, supporting departments in managing their performance metrics and facilitating external transparency. While all of these functions have a direct tie to customer service excellence, I would like to focus on organizational development (specifically talent development) for this week’s customer service tip.
Developing talent within your organization is crucial to your customer service operations for two important reasons: the first is that many of the employees who are on the receiving end of development programs are ones closest to your customers. Customer service representatives, supervisors, or even call center managers have direct contact with your customers every day, with the ability to make or break your customers’ overall experience. With such constant high stake interactions, these are the employees whom you should be developing the most. While most organizations carefully plan and implement training programs, development programs are just as important as they help to build the skills, knowledge, and confidence of your employees on and supporting the front line.
The second reason that talent development is so important in customer service is that a good development program helps to build employee engagement. While most organizations agree that higher employee engagement leads to better customer service, most organizations do not agree on the best ways to engagement their employees. Why not engage your employees by taking a proactive interest in their future? This will not only help your employees to feel valued but it will also help them take a vested interest in the organization’s success. (Forbes has a great blog post about why employee development is so important.)
As customer service professionals, what do you think are the best ways to develop your talent?
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
An Employee Engagement Miracle
Video Posted on
I loved WestJet’s “Christmas Miracle.” I couldn’t stop watching this viral video for a number of reasons. For one, it goes above and beyond the scope of customer service excellence. Through its gift-giving customer service effort, WestJet was able to bring its customers (and even its Youtube viewers) to tears. But while it was fun to watch customers receive surprise gifts, there was another aspect to the video that intrigued me: WestJet level of employee engagement in the company’s rich customer service culture.
Engaging employees in a customer service culture is a difficult task. It does not focus on just one area such hiring or on-boarding or recognition. To create a truly engaging customer service culture, there needs to be a set of processes in place, across the organization, at every point of an employee’s career. Here are a few of the ways that can help:
1) Choosing the right employees. Choosing the right employees, especially for customer service, involves a flexible hiring process that allows you to choose candidates based on fit. In customer service, this fit means placing less emphasis on what a candidate has done in previous positions, with more emphasis on what an employee would do in certain situations. Engaged customer service employees have a rare blend of passive, yet assertive traits that make them invaluable on the frontlines of customer concerns. These traits should be sought out before picking the best-looking resume. (See my post on choosing the best customer service people.)
2) Training employees with hands-on, peer-to-peer training. Micha Solomon wrote a great blog post on Forbes about “How Hiring and HR Build Customer Service Culture.” Solomon writes that hiring the right customer service employees is important because (A) they are ultimately on the front lines, serving as the “face” of the organization and (B) “The employees you hire will ultimately exert pressure–positive or negative–on other staff members, who, when its their turn, will directly interact with customers.”
While Solomon admits that the first reason (A) is a bit obvious, the second reason is important to consider. If you’re hiring the right employees for customer service, those employees should be the ones directly training new employees. Which do you think is more impactful: a powerpoint presentation from a middle manager or a hands-on lesson from an employee performing the same job as the new hire? At the very least, the new hires will behave in the way their peer trainer behaves as a way to “fit” with the organization. If new hires cannot behave in the same manner their per trainers behave, they’ll likely leave.
3) Combine empowerment with standard processes, without micromanaging. Empowerment is the new buzzword in customer service, and it should be, because empowered employees have the ability to best satisfy customers wants and needs. But it can’t just be about empowerment. There needs to be a standard, communicated process for almost every situation. Employees need to be well-versed in these processes; without them, most employees will feel lost. Once employees have a firm grasp of the set processes and procedures in your customer service operations, it’s important to communicate that they can deviate, should they find it necessary. Employees who are empowered by both education and the ability to deviate from the “plan” without someone standing over their shoulders are the employees who will feel most comfortable providing excellent customer service.
4) Meaningfully recognize employees, often. Employee recognition programs often drive performance and help engage employees, but only if these recognition efforts are recognized by employees. Do you think a paper certificate or gold star will have much impact on an employee’s level of engagement? Recognition efforts need to be personalized and thoughtful in order to build a community within an organization. This personal sense of community is especially important to customer service operations that deal with people every day. One way to engage employees through meaningful personalize, and fun recognition is to have an employee-led recognition committee. These employees will know how to meaningfully celebrate because they are planning for their peers.
What are your essentials to engaging employees? Let me know in the comments!
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
Innovative Customer Service Leadership Strategies 