Improve Customer Care in 2011

As you start to make plans for 2011, consider making customer care a priority in your organization. Rid your workplace of old employees' poor customer care habits and train new employees the right way.

With the current economy and workforce demographic shift, learning programs must be aligned with business goals and challenges. Customer care should be one of those goals.

The 2010 Major Issues Survey from the Institute for Corporate Productivity illustrates the priority. Nearly 37 percent of respondents indicated that focus on the customer service is an issue to a high extent, and more than 55 percent indicated so to a very high extent. However, high-extent respondents indicated that their companies are only 38.80 percent effective in addressing it, while very-high-extent respondents indicated only 21.71 percent effectiveness.

In a Harris Interactive Study of 2,049 U.S. adults, 80 percent of respondents indicated that they have decided never to return to a company after a bad customer service experience. Customer care is a defining issue for businesses, and to grow, organizations must attract new customers and retain their current customers.

Frustrations with customer care have come into focus during the past 10 years, according to researchers at the University of Iowa. Dozens of studies confirm that today's organizations have less committed workers, have made cuts to customer service operations and have reduced hiring and training. To remain competitive, organizations cannot survive on pricing; they must offer outstanding customer service.

The technology revolution has brought new tools and software for customer relationship management, profiles, trends and customer history. But technology can't solve the fundamental need for trained employees to deliver the following:
· Increased consistency in creating positive memorable customer service experiences
· Increased customer retention
· Expanded business relationships
· Increased customer referrals

How They Do It

American Family Insurance recently turned to its education division to revamp internal training to provide a better customer experience. Agents are now required to attend a thorough training program that prepares them to help customers achieve financial security. The new training focused on performance-based learning, multiple learning styles, interactive hands-on learning and measurement. This has brought positive outcomes, including increased efficiencies and cross-divisional work.

The Walt Disney Company is well known for its superb customer advocacy and service recovery principles. "Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends," said Walt Disney. One of Disney's methods is to solicit knowledge of mistakes and rectify them so the situation becomes better than if no mistake occurred.

Aside from a focus on good merchandise at a reasonable profit, L.L.Bean, Inc., focuses on customer expectations, treating customers like neighbors and, thereby, changing the dynamic of the interaction. L.L. Bean said, "Self practical, tested merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat your customers like human beings and they will always come back."

Put Strategy Into Motion With Training

Giving customers what they want isn't enough; you must anticipate their needs, resolve their complaints and provide service that electrifies them. Preference for products and services goes beyond selection of the product. You want to rid your organization of poor service and become a company of preference by winning customer loyalty. Permanence in the personal relationships that your service employees create brings long-term commitment from your customers. At this point, customers recognize your value proposition.

Creating this sustainable differentiation involves training employees and communicating with them. Your employees must understand that customers are the center of your business.

Vital Learning provides training tools to assist organizations with their resolution to eliminate poor customer service. Winning Through Customer Service is a program designed to help employees to understand their role as a professional within the organization and promotes a problem-solving culture. Employees will learn essential communication skills and behavioral styles that will help them adapt their personal style. In addition, they will identify and utilize a structured process/model for conducting customer service transactions while at the same time mastering strategies for dealing with difficult customers.

Vital Learning's STAR Service is another program designed to improve customer care. It presents four key areas of learning:
S: Sync-up with the customer
T: Target to determine customer needs
A: Assist to meet the customer's needs
R: Reaffirm assistance and the relationship

Vital Learning and its team of affiliate training professionals offer classroom, online and blended learning options that are easily customizable to fit your training strategies. When your employees understand their role in the customer value proposition, your customers will come back.

Thought for the Day

" A sale is not something you pursue, it is something that happens to you while you are immersed in serving the customer."
---Author Unknown

Sources:

McCauley, L. (Dec. 2007). How May I Help You? Fast Company.com
Hartley, D. (Feb. 2009). Customer Satisfaction Through Training. Chief Learning Officer Media.com.
University of Iowa News Release. UI Business Professor Studies Lousy Customer Service (Nov. 2006).
Winning Through Customer Service (2010). Vital Learning Corporation
STAR Service (2010). Vital Learning Corporation
Preliminary Survey Results 2010 Major Issues. Institute for Corporate Productivity.

Retaining Top Talent in 2010 and Beyond

If retaining talent is not high on your list of concerns in 2010, then it should be. We're half way through year, and to remain competitive, your organization must retain its truly talented people.
Some executives might think that with the current economy and high unemployment rate there's no need to worry about employee retention. This line of thinking brings a false sense of security.

The U.S. Labor Department recently reported that the unemployment rate dropped to 10 percent in November and December from 10.2 percent in October. Momentum to pass a new spending package for jobs may offer a fresh view of whether the 15.4 million unemployed people in the United States will start to land the jobs they have so desperately been seeking.

As the nation's job outlook improves, a 2009 Monster.com study of 1,600 workers reveals how the recession affects employee loyalty. Forty-three percent of those surveyed indicated some or significant decrease in loyalty toward their employers. This is a sign that employees may leave their current organizations.

The trend toward the decline in job satisfaction has been occurring for decades, and it may be accelerating. According to Monster.com, employers may be experiencing the "early warning signs of the pain to come" should they fail to manage talent effectively during the current recession. As workplace trends from the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) indicate, no aspect of the economy looks more precarious than the job market.

Two Sides to the Issue

Now is a difficult time for businesses, what with the economically driven burn of layoffs and downsizing along with the need to retain the most talented. Most team leaders are unaware of the total disruptive and financial impact the loss of a valued team member can cause. A key team member may be considering leaving three to six months before actually resigning. In the meantime, the employee's productivity and morale often decline. Some employers may have had to lay off employees and discover that they let go of too many. In this case, productivity and customer service also decline.

Cases in Point

One technical organization in California's Silicon Valley estimates that when just one team member leaves, it costs the company an average of $95,000.

Consider a national sales organization that must make up for millions of dollars in lost revenue due to losing a talented rep.

In health care, retaining talent is paramount. Over the next five years, hospital boards and senior executives face new and different workforce challenges, resulting in dramatic shifts in technology, demographics and economics. These organizations will need to allocate more resources to retain existing employees. The alternative is spending more on recruiting costs to replace employees who have already developed highly valued skills.

Facing an aging workforce, a skill labor shortage and changing demographics, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, a national federation of 39 independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance companies, began offering a variety of training and professional development opportunities to older workers to extend their engagement. The goal was retain the most skilled and valuable workers and to better equip them to supervise a changing workforce. The result is that many employees now plan to work for the association well past their retirement years.

Washington, D.C., is a marketplace ripe with talent but one drawing on the same talent pool, offering a variety of high-paying public- and private-sector jobs. George Mason University recreated its culture to retain its talented by appealing to workers of all ages, to keep the educational institution's employee satisfaction high and turnover low. Among the strategies implemented were knowledge transfer programs to help with on-boarding employees.

A Time for Creative Culture

According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author, economist and founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York City, in a tough economy, business leaders have greater opportunities to attract, retain, support and engage top talent.

Aside from a huge paycheck, leadership can improve employee satisfaction through flexible work arrangements and re-creation of pride and purpose through volunteerism. However, the most important reason talented people love their jobs, Hewlett said, is because of career development and important assignments that expand their skills and networks.

Retention Strategies Tailored to Your Organization
The factors influencing your talent retention may be similar to those at other organizations, b ut you must tailor your retention program to your organization and industry. The keys to this are creating retention strategies and ensuring that your leaders are responsible for tracking turnover. Companies must continue to invest in leaders; their skills can directly affect the bottom line and employee retention.

Can your organization's leaders identify the visible and hidden costs of losing its top talent, including productivity, missed deadlines, waning morale and poor customer service?

Vital Learning offers Retaining Winning Talent, an eight-hour workshop focusing on team leaders and their effect on the retention of key team members. The workshop teaches leaders to implement a retention action plan designed to increase retention for the entire team.

This program teaches leaders the following:

• Understand the scope, severity and cost of attrition
• Determine the risk of attrition for each team member
• Identify which retention factors motivate each team member
• Increase each team member's engagement and commitment

Don't wait to find out if you are facing a serious staffing shortage when the economy recovers. Develop strategies now to improve your organization's ability to retain its most important asset: top talent.

Thought for the Day

"It's absolutely clear that the reason people stay in jobs are the relationships that they have --- primarily with their supervisors."
---Irving Stackpole, President, Health Care Consulting Firm

Sources:
Retaining Winning Talent (2009). Vital Learning Corporation
AARP Outreach & Service (Feb. 2009). Age Friendly Work Culture Best Practice George Mason University, AARP.org
AARP Outreach & Service (Feb. 2009). Training and Development Best Practice Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. AARP.org
Bauer, J. C. and Flannery, T.P. (Dec. 2009). Strategies for the Hospital Workforce of 2010, Trustee Magazine.com.
CNN Money.com (Dec. 2009). Market Snapshot: U.S. Stocks to Get Another Run At Jobs and Retail.
Hewlett, S. (Dec. 2009). Creative, Recessionary Rewards, HR Magazine.
Kursmaker, L. (2009). What Do Good Employees Leave? Monster
Monster.com (2009). How Loyal Are your Employees?
Stinson, J. (Dec. 2009). Nation's jobs outlook improves. Democrat and Chronicle.com
Ware, L. (2009). The Challenge of Retaining Winning Talent: The Workforce Attrition Crisis,Integral Talent Systems, Inc.

Essential Communication Leads to Employee Engagement

If you were to create a formula for productivity it might look something like this:

ESC + EE = P

Or in more elaborate terms:

Essential Skills of Communicating + Employee Engagement = Productivity

A new study from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) on the subject of corporate productivity and engagement indicates that higher-performing companies are more likely to involve employees in the process of cost-cutting measures. In these uncertain economic times, it is more important than ever to keep employees involved in critical company issues. Communication plus talent management programs supports forward focus and engagement for the future.

The same study showed that 91 percent of higher-performing companies point to communication at the top as a way to reduce turnover.

One way to define employee engagement is to consider an employee's connection to the work, the organization, the leaders, the customers, performance and results. Engaged employees stay with their employers, have higher levels of job satisfaction and make significant contributions. Employee engagement is not a "nice-to-have"; it's an essential requirement to achieve organizational results.

A Glimpse at the Disengaged

Roger is a midlevel manager at a software sales organization. He heads up a team of salespeople and spends his day communicating with his staff by e-mail, even though they are only a few steps outside his door. Roger's main focus is sales, which are down. In addition, the company is suffering financially. Roger has been told that budget cuts, including staff, are likely. He is worried about his own job and is wholly focused on crunching the numbers and figuring out who he might let go to make his numbers look better.

Roger's team spends the day wondering why he isn't telling them what is going on. They've talked among themselves and have some ideas about customer focus groups to help re-energize their sales territories. Two people have scheduled time with Roger this week to share their ideas, but, for the second week in a row, Roger has cancelled because he doesn't have enough time. The team is deflated. They are worried, too, but at this point, they are not sure that talking to Roger will do any good.

What Could Have Been

If Roger had only come out of his office to talk to his team, he might have prevented the members from becoming disengaged. The fact is, employees are better able to deal with company downturns if they know what is going on.

Poor managers fail to communicate. They fail to involve employees in solutions. And because they aren't communicating well, they aren't listening to employees' needs, concerns or ideas.

Good managers share clear strategy and vision. They engage their team in discovering solutions, so employees feel as though they have a stake in making things better. Good managers have a relationship with their bosses, and they want to go the extra mile. They care about their bosses and the organization, and they are armed with the belief that they can make a difference.

Numerous studies indicate that engaged employees work harder to achieve within the organization, and they speak positively about their companies. In the process, they also please customers and are more productive.

One of the Most Important Steps You Can Take

If you are considering where and how to focus your training programs, you should know that choosing to develop managers and supervisors in the area of communication is one of the most crucial steps you can take.

Many managers have never developed skills to deliver clear, concise messages focused on the needs and interests of the listener. These are skills that improve their relationships with individual team members.

In addition to constructing clear messages, Vital Learning's Essential Skills of Communicating teaches managers and team leaders to the following essential skills:

• Communicate with a two-way process.
• Manage nonverbal behaviors to reinforce the intent of the messages.
• Listen actively.
• Create a climate of open communication, which increases team members' motivation and commitment.

The foundation of good communication in organizations rests in managers and supervisors who are open and support an environment that encourages the free exchange of transparent, honest communication. Such managers are able to reflect, probe, support and advise their employees. In return, your employees will respond and become more engaged, happy and productive. Get your managers involved in the essential skills.