I crafted and presented my session with these goals: To inspire organizations to make customer service their number one priority (not just talk about it, but be about it) and to create the very best customer experience by positioning people, policies and processes to give customers the level of service they expect and deserve…and to even surpass customer expectations.

The best example of an outstanding customer experience that I’m aware of is Zappos. In my presentation, I took my audience inside the Zappos Contact Center to meet some of the amazing people behind the Zappos Customer Experience. We looked at the Zappos’ core values, fun culture, and the company’s commitment to WOWing customers at every touch point.

I promised my attendees I’d post the videos from my “Inside the Zappos Contact Center” the original presentation.  Below you will find those videos.

Holiday Helpers

This video shows the fierce commitment to giving customers the very best experience and the spirit of cooperation of employees that makes the amazing customer experience possible.

What WOW Means to Zappos Employees

I stressed to my audience that WOW couldn’t be just a buzz word or flavor of the month, it had to be a real and consistent commitment. This video shows what WOW means to Zappos employees.

Core Value of the Month Award

Zappos takes very good care of its employees. This award “ceremony” is the perfect example of that.

For help with creating the very best customer experience within your organization, check out my customer service keynote speaking and consulting offerings at http://www.MyraGolden.com.

Last week I presented a keynote for Progressive Business Conferences on Time Management. The presentation was aimed at helping customer service directors and managers learn to better manage their schedules and tasks so that they experience less stress and pressure at work. My presentation was very well received and I had a ball sharing some of my own strategies for managing my schedule. Today I am sharing with you some of the highlights from my presentation. My hope is that you will walk away from this blog post feeling more empowered to take control of your schedule and as a result you will experience less stress and pressure at work.

1. Take 10-15 Minutes to Plan Your Day

The first thing I do when I get to my office (most days) is make a task-list of the most important things I want to accomplish. These are all things outside of my scheduled presentations, meetings, etc. Today’s task list includes write a blog post, register for NSA meeting, create first draft of client training objectives, map out 4-week webinar marketing plan. Identifying your top tasks for the day helps keep you focused and you’re more likely to accomplish tasks when you write them down and think through them.

2. Return Calls in Batches

Don’t procrastinate on returning calls and don’t let calls take over your entire day. Unless the mater is urgent, hold off on calls and return several calls back-to-back during a block of time that works for you. I learned this technique when I worked from home with 2 small children. I had to return calls during naptime or when my kids were watching something entertaining on television. I still maintain the habit of returning calls in batches because it makes my day flow so much smoother. I answer calls as they come in if I’m available, but missed calls that aren’t urgent are returned during my drive to pick up my son from school and while I wait in the pick up line for my son. This is a great use of my short commute and it always feels so good to return calls quickly in batches and get that task out of the way.

3. Check Emails On A Schedule

It’s easy to let emails consume your day, especially when you’re getting work emails on a smartphone. I turned off the email alert on my iPhone. I don’t need to be alerted and distracted every time I get an email. Even at my desk, I have learned to close Outlook except for times when I am intentionally checking and responding to emails. Find an email schedule that makes sense for you and stick to it. I check emails at the top of the morning on my iPhone and I don’t usually open Outlook on my computer until 11am and then again around 1:30ish. I don’t check emails again until I’m in the pick up line at my son’s school. After that, I’ll periodically check my emails on my phone.

4. Know When You Work Best

Are you hyper-productive in the morning, but lose steam in the afternoon? If that’s the case, do your most creative or most pressing tasks in the mornings. If you’re more productive in the afternoon or midmornings, schedule your most important tasks during your most productive hours.

5. Find a “To-Do” App That Works for You

Chances are, you have a smartphone. If you do, find a good app to help you be more productive. I use 2 cool apps to help me stay on top of my day: “Siri” and “Reminders.” Siri lets me use my voice to schedule or reschedule meetings, dictate emails and texts and place phone calls. It’s hard to imagine getting through my work day without my “Reminders” app. Using Reminders I can tell my phone to “Remind me to email Jeff my portfolio.” Or “Remind me to book conference room for Client Experience Meeting.” I rarely forget things these days thanks to this app. Find some great apps that work for your needs and your style. Getting things done easily is a tremendous stress reliever.

6. Try the “Straight to Voicemail” App

Straight to Voicemail is a really cool app that lets me dial right into the cellphone voicemail of my friends, customers, and family. This comes in handy when I just want to “touch base,” don’t want to get into a long conversation and when I just need to leave a quick message. I find that I’m able to keep in touch with friends and clients really well because I can knock out 3 or 4 calls in just a few minutes by going straight to voicemail. The app is free and makes returning calls a cinch. Explore Straight to Voicemail.

Thanks for taking the time to read through my ideas for better managing your workload. Our work should be enjoyable and fulfilling and we should leave work at work when we go home. I sincerely hope some of the ideas here help you relieve stress and pressure with your work. A special thank you to Progressive Business for asking me to design and present this talk.

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So I’m sitting in my office preparing marketing copy for my How to Respond to Customer Emails web training event when my Assistant walks in, takes over my computer and Googles something about an email thread gone wrong. She eagerly tells me about a company’s email thread with a customer that is so shocking that my jaw dropped several times and I found myself saying, ‘wow’ and ‘whoa’ over and over as I read the email thread. My Assistant tells me, “You have to include this example in your webinar!”

The customer in this story emailed the company to get an update on the shipment of his order. The customer service representative replied to the customer’s email simply with a date. No sentence. No explanation. No “thank you for your email.” The reply to the customer read, “December 17^th.” Totally unacceptable, in my opinion.  Not only is the email cold and unprofessional, but it lacks clarity. Does the order ship on December 17^th? Will it arrive on December 17^th? Who knows? As bad as that email was, it gets worse. Much worse.

When the customer emails with a follow-up question, here’s what he got from the company:

“Things happen in manufacturing if your unhappy you have 7 days from the day your item ships for a refund. You placed a pre order just like any software title the gets a date moved due to the tweaks and bugs not being worked out and GameStop or any other place holds your cash and im sure you don’t complain to activision or epic games so put on your big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else. The benefit is a token of our appreaciation for everyone no one is special including you or any first time buyer . Feel free to cancel we need the units were back ordered 11,000 units so your 2 will be gone fast. Maybe I’ll put them on eBay for 150.00 myself. Have a good day Dan.”

This response is filled with grammatical and spelling errors and I’m sure the tone of the communication is not what the company intends to convey. But it seems the representative simply took matters into his own hands.

The email thread goes on to be even more appalling with comments from the rep like this:

“We do value our customers but sometimes we get children like you we just have to put you in the corner with your im stupid hat on. See you at CES , E3 , Pax East ….? Oh wait you have to ask mom and pa dukes your not an industry professional and you have no money on snap you just got told.”

(If you are interested, you can read the full transcript of this utterly unprofessional conversation right here.)

Don’t let an email from an untrained employee ruin your credibility and threaten your company’s reputation. Give employees training on how to communicate with customers over email. Responses must be professional. That means we write in complete sentences and we focus on being crystal clear. It means we carefully check our emails for spelling and grammatical errors. It means we are careful never to insult a customer, a vendor, or our own company. It means we treat customers like they sign our paychecks. It means we never put anything in writing that we wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing blasted in social media. Because, believe me, a bad email will end up on Twitter, blogs and FaceBook.

Don’t let a bad email happen to your company! Join me for my famous “How to Respond to Customer Emails” webinar so I can help you avoid nightmares like this one.

How to Respond to Customer Emails

The emails you send say a lot about your company.

Are you sure yours send the right message?

February 16th, 1:00 – 2:30pm ET

Read the full “How to Respond to Customer Emails” web training outline right here.

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This afternoon a friend on FaceBook shared her experience with Chick-fil-A.

So I drove to Chick-fil-A for lunch and the line was wrapped around the corner but two managers were outside greeting people, taking orders and creating a pleasant experience. Next door was Carl’s Jr. with NO WAIT. I drove up to CJ since it appeared faster but after 1.30 of waiting without being greeted, FINALLY some unhappy person took my order. Now I see why the line at Chick-fil-A was around the corner. #servicematters #customersremember #creategoodexperiences

I commented on my friend’s status and asked if I could share her experience on my blog. Here’s her response:

Hi Myra – Happy New Year! Yes, I’m totally open to that. What was crazy was that the line at CFA moved quicker and seemed more responsive even in it’s busy time. It’s clear that being unproductive breeds among your staff and onto your customers. In the future, I’d rather experience the jovial on-going service of CFA than take the short cut of frustration with CJ for sure!

Based on my friend’s disappointing experience with a competitor, it’s no surprise that Chick-fil-A customers were willing to wait in a line that wrapped around the corner. Chick-fil-A managers proactively and eagerly served waiting customers and the efficient staff kept the line moving quickly. The instinctive action on the part of Chick-fil-A left an unforgettable impression on my friend and resulted in positive word-of-mouth advertising on FaceBook and now Twitter and a blog via my posting.  As for the competition, I like the way my friend put it: “Being unproductive breeds among your staff and onto your customers.”

Take a tip from Chick-fil-A: Take care of your customers. Customers remember. Service matters.

Companies with a defined and strong culture outperform their competitors by as much as 200%. Culture is what positions companies to innovate, deliver an exceptional customer experience and become an employer of choice. Company culture can make or break a company and one of the biggest threats to company culture is employees who are not a cultural fit for the company. Not only can wrong-fit employees threaten company culture, but research has shown that hiring the wrong employee can cost as much as three times the employee’s annual salary in replacement costs. It is imperative that companies defend culture by screening, hiring and retaining the right people. Here are 3 bold ideas to help you protect your culture by finding and keeping the right people.

1. Hire for motivational fit

Most companies screen applicants based on a skill set, experience and core competencies. Screening and hiring in this manner can lead to competent employees who are not a motivational fit. The result could be early burnout for the employee, negative impact on company culture and morale and frustration for managers who may have to deal with negative attitudes. A better way to screen and hire is to seek not only skill competency, but a motivational fit.

In order to excel and be happy, employees must be intrinsically motivated for the position. If you’re hiring a customer service representative, good motivational fit questions might include:

• What do you like most about being in a customer contact position?
• What do you want from your next job that you’re not getting from your current job?
• What part of your current job do you enjoy the most? The least?
• What are some of the things in a job that motivate you?

Strive to hire not just for skills, but also for motivational fit.

 2. Keep your star employees. Ask everyone else to leave.

When Jack Welch was the head of GE, the bottom 10% of organizational performers were routinely asked to leave. Welch noted that in many cases, the bottom 10% went on to successful careers at companies where they truly belonged and could excel. An on-demand Internet media streaming company sees management’s job as hiring, developing, and cutting smartly so they have star employees at every level. The Keeper Test managers at this company use is: “Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving in two months for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep?” Consider keeping and developing your star talent and helping everyone else find better fitting opportunities.

3. Pay employees to quit.

An online retailer famous for its customer culture pays employees to quit. All new hires of the company must attend 4-weeks of Customer Service Culture training. This training is mandatory, not only for customer service employees, but every position in the company. After the first 2-weeks of new hire training, employees are made an unbelievable offer. If they feel that the company is not a good fit for them, they can walk away with their salary for 2-weeks plus get a check for $1,000. Two weeks later, after 4 weeks of training, new hires are offered $2,000 to walk if they don’t feel the job is the best fit for them. A third and final payout if offered 3 weeks after new hire training and employees who don’t think they are in the right place can take a check for $4,000. The company pays employees to quit because they are fiercely protecting their culture. Weeding out employees who don’t fit the culture early on helps maintain the culture. The offer is so high because the company wants to provide an amount that enables the employee to make the right decision and not feel they have to stay in a culture that doesn’t fit just to avert a lengthy period of unemployment.

Paying employees to quit is certainly a bold idea. But can you envision this strategy (at a payout level that makes sense for your organization) saving you frustration and money down the road?

The right employees will support and strengthen your culture, while the wrong employees threaten the culture and cost you money. Defending company culture through rigorous screening, hiring and retention practices takes great effort and the rewards are performance and profits.

Sources cited

Golden, Myra, “Keep the Star Employees. Everyone Else Needs a Generous Severance Package Now.”  2010 Retrieved from: http://myragolden.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/keep-the-stars-the-others-need-a-generous-severance-package-now/

Michelli, Jospeh, A. “The Zappos Experience” McGraw Hill, NY, 2011.

Ren, John, F. Company Culture: What it is and how to get it. Retrieved from: http://management.about.com/cs/generalmanagement/a/companyculture.htm

So, I went to my bank today to make a routine business deposit. I was surprised to not recognize a single Teller in the branch, as I’m a regular there and know many of the staff. My Teller was clearly in training. She typed away on her keyboard for at least 2 minutes without making eye contact with me or even explaining what she was doing. It was taking so long that I thought something was wrong. After another 3 minutes had passed and no interaction had taken place, I asked if something was wrong. “No.” she replied. “I’m new and I just have to get some overrides.” With that, she disappeared into the back.

After a good 4 minutes had passed, I got the attention of a Teller walking by and asked if he could check with my Teller. I was in a bit of a hurry to pick my son up from school. Never imagined I’d be in the bank this long. The Teller came back to tell me my Teller was on the phone with another bank and she’d be out shortly. Ok. Weird.

Several minutes passed and finally my Teller walked out and explained, “Your check is good. I just called the issuing bank and verified funds. But since I’m new I have to have a manager’s initials. I can’t locate a manager after calling 4 branches.” And she handed me my check and deposit slip. I was seriously confused and I said, “So, you’re giving me back my check when I came to deposit it?”  “Yes,” she said, “Because I can’t find a manager to initial this.” I asked what I was supposed to do and she literally told me to try another branch.

What went wrong here? This bank needed to have a mentor to shadow the new-hire to show her how to communicate with customers while waiting on the computer and on-hold on the phone. When several new employees are working at a branch/location/area, a veteran employee needs to be on stand-by to offer assistance. If management approval is needed for anything at all, managers must be standing at the ready to help employees help customers. It is absolutely absurd that an employee would not be able to reach a manager and that a customer would be sent to another branch across town.

The bottom line: Management must be onsite and immediately available to help employees help customers. When management is not available, employees need to be empowered to make decisions to help customers.

All webinars are recorded and you can purchase the digital recording of past webinars. Access to webinar recordings never expires and you can share the video freely within your organization. Pretty sweet deal, huh?

View our 2012 Customer Service webinar series

“I really do love your webinars, Myra. They are very well done and extremely beneficial. I always find little helpful hints in your information.”

Kristy L. Bolen 
Project Manager 
Carlson Hotels Worldwide

“I just viewed the replay of the webinar you did not long ago with citrix online and I was so enlighten and amazed to hear such outstanding information. I am a marketer and I knew surface level some of the information you shared but you went deep and took it to another level of understanding for me, the light bulbs of ideas and solutions have been bombarding my mind ever since. I simply desired to say thank you.”

 James Stuart

 View our 2012 Customer Service webinar series

The online customer experience MATTERS. Make sure you monitor, survey and constantly improve your company’s online customer experience.

See the full story on the Netflix and Gap Customer Satisfaction standings.

Looks like a position just opened up at UPS.