4 questions that will allow you to check how much your company likes customers

To compete in the market, a superior product is no longer enough. People expect positive emotions from visiting the store, communicating with sellers, and logistics. The brand must be liked. And to achieve this is real, according to Evgeny Lobanov and Alexei Tsysar. Their book “In the name of Service. Tools and Recommendations on How to Become a Customer-Oriented Company” was published by the Alpina PRO publishing house. Lifehacker publishes an excerpt from the first section.

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Which companies can call themselves service-oriented? What features should a company have to be called such?

I like the theory that a company can call itself a service-oriented company if it can answer four questions about itself:

1. What do employees think of the service?
2. What do employees know about the service?
3. What are employees doing?
4. What does the consumer think about what is being done for him?

These questions are not only about employees who work directly with the client, but about all employees of the company. Thus, when I go to a meeting and the company claims to be service-oriented, all I have to do is ask these four questions. For example, if I ask if the company knows what their employees think or know about the service, and they answer me that they pass every six months certification - and nothing more, for me it means that the company and the central office do not know about the real awareness of employees about service. If you ask how the company controls each of the stages of creating a service for the client, and it turns out that they have only surveys for regular customers, which means that they do not cover the entire client core - potential as well as former consumers. I can immediately see, as soon as the client answers these questions, where the bottlenecks are in the company. These four questions are service diagnostics: how “healthy” the company is and how it has established service building processes inside. Therefore, these four questions are extremely important. Next, we will consider each question separately.

The first question is: what do employees think of the service?

Why is this question even necessary? Why does a company need to know the answer to it? The fact is that the service is provided not by the central office and not by the top manager – the service is provided by the employee who produces it! Let's take a salesperson as an example. Until the seller is motivated to smile sincerely, until he really wants to help the consumer in choosing or solving a problem, until then there will be no service. And no matter what the central office comes up with, no matter what it fantasizes, no matter how cool ideas are, nothing will work! It is extremely important for a company to understand what its employees think about the service. This should be systematic: you can’t do it once and forget, you need to constantly monitor it. In fact, the first question is the question of motivation. As I wrote earlier, you will have to constantly face this problem - to involve your employees in the philosophy of service. Without the personal motivation of each employee, there is little you can do. As the saying goes, there is no warrior alone in the field.

Always in communication with the client should be a cold calculation. For example, a client says that an employee of the company behaved well, but according to the results of the mystery shopper, he was rude and rude, so he should be fired. No, no layoffs! Maybe something happened to the employee in the family that day, for example, he quarreled with his wife, and it was difficult for him to stay in a good mood. You need to give him a chance to improve, especially if he is a good employee. It is important to understand that it is difficult to build motivation, but it can be destroyed in one action.

Important advice: do not draw conclusions based on one indicator or event. That is why the best companies measure the service and motivation of employees regularly.

You can not focus only on what was measured once or motivated staff. You need to work with employees, you need to discuss it. The company must have tools in place to set up staff in a positive way and help them cope with some kind of stress. These indicators are not accurately measured in order to make any cardinal decisions based on a single event.

Above, I gave an example of a staff satisfaction survey. According to the results of the survey, it turned out that some employee is not very satisfied, but this is not a reason to fire him. The company should conduct such events in order to answer all four questions about the service and understand the current picture as a whole, and not to make management decisions if we are talking about the service. Management decisions can be made by the HR department based on the HR policy.

Based on the best experience, motivation is built with the help of gamification - various game systems. These methods are at the height of fashion. Now, to motivate employees, they are developing entire gaming platforms so that they accumulate points for certain actions.

Let's summarize.

1. The company must constantly and systematically measure the satisfaction and level of motivation of the staff.
2. Measurements can be taken with several tools.

For example, an employee satisfaction survey: once a month we offer to take a short survey using the link, we process it and transfer it to the HR service, which works directly with employees comments.

There may also be various communication campaigns: we place boxes for feedback, where you can anonymously leave some information or feedback, just express any point of view without thinking that you will be punished or condemn.

How, in practice, to organize such an internal study? We would like to share with you some tips on how to write a staff satisfaction survey.

Practice 1. Basic rules for compiling a questionnaire for a staff survey

1. Determine the topic of the survey. The survey may concern both objective criteria (work schedule, salary level, social package), as well as and subjective (general atmosphere in the team, communication between departments, communication of subordinates with leaders).
2. In the introductory part of the questionnaire, explain to employees the nature and purpose of the survey. Explain why you are conducting a survey, how employees will see its results, what the results of the survey may affect (improvement of working conditions, communication).
3. Set clear evaluation criteria. For example, a convenient office location, an employee's workplace, a flexible work schedule, the availability of all necessary materials for work. Several criteria can be combined into groups (questionnaire blocks).
4. Avoid vague wording and terms that employees may not understand. For example, “Does your manager micromanage?”
5. The questionnaire should be small (up to 25 questions).
6. If you use a rating scale (rate from 0 to 10 or from 1 to 5, etc.), invite the employee to comment on their rating. Your question should be worded like this: "rate on a scale from... to... and comment on your rating." Employees can interpret the same rating in different ways: for one person, 7 is a low rating, and for the other - high enough, so it is important to understand what the employee means by the exposed evaluation.
7. Announce the results of the survey and describe what actions the company has taken in response to the results of the survey so that employees feel heard.

The second question is: what do employees know?

Obviously, the larger the company, the more difficult it is to build a system in which what is thought up in the central office will be exactly assimilated by the staff. Let me give you an example of a small company. Suppose there is an owner of a hairdressing salon and her employees are hairdressers. The owner came up with a concept for customer service, for example, each client of the hairdresser should be offered coffee, but she forgot to tell about it. As a result, no one adheres to the service system, coffee is not delivered and nothing works. Here the solution is very simple: tell employees what to offer coffee, and the problem will be solved. Everything is very simple, a short chain.

But when it comes to "brilliant" bureaucratic structures, it fails. Let me give you a living example of one of the leaders in the banking industry. A very progressive top manager, who always follows innovations, came up with a certain concept of service in the branches. He had a clear “picture” of how to serve customers so that they were satisfied and brought more profit to the bank, so he developed service standards and described them. Now imagine this bureaucratic “hell”: a top manager asks the relevant department to clearly describe the service (the information is skewed); the responsible department releases information to the divisions, which study it and send it to the regions; regions send information to clusters of several banks in one region; clusters transmit information to cities, cities to departments, departments to specific employees.

I still remember the story from which this bank once suffered. Top management came up with the idea that everyone who came to the branch needed to offer an additional product - a credit card. They described the benefits of the service and indeed the product looked very attractive to the customers. But in the end, the innovation turned into an “anti-service”: a client came and told the bank employee about his needs - to talk about the deposit, but the employee replied that he would start the consultation only after design credit card. Thus, a gap was formed between how the service was originally created, and how this information reached the bank employee.

You cannot know exactly what and how was transformed during the transfer of information, so it is important for companies to always keep abreast and track the knowledge of employees. An important point: you need to understand how employees pronounce knowledge about the service, and not just check their availability. Let me explain with an example. When you walk into a hardware store as a customer, you expect an employee to be able to find the best product for your needs. Already at this stage, there is often a gap between what the client wants and how the central office sees it. According to many managers, the main thing is to train the employee how to understand the technical characteristics of the product. Of course, this is important, but much more important is how these characteristics will be presented to the client. After all, your need is not to know the characteristics of the product, but to make you realize: this is the best product that you need. There are a number of progressive companies that have generally abandoned the training of employees in technical characteristics. Instead, they invest time in learning how to quickly find information about product specifications and how to properly present them to the client to help him make the final choice.

findings

It is necessary to constantly invest in the development of staff and monitor what exactly the staff knows, in what form they know it and how they will offer it. Let me remind you that there are many tools and types of testing: testing at locations, testing by reference, testing by phone. The instruments are very varied. For example, there are self-assessment sheets: once a week employee a certain questionnaire is issued, according to which he evaluates himself and submits it to the HR department. This testing should be done systematically, but not to punish employees, but to understand what is really happening in the company.

Let me give you an example of a service-oriented company. The company motivated employees, came up with training systems and intends to provide a service. This means that the company told the employees what to do, they are trained and can provide the service.

So, the motivation and knowledge of the employee is the key to the success of a service-oriented company.

It is important that the position of the company is a supportive role: to offer the employee enough tools to gaining knowledge, as well as sufficient communication so that the employee feels responsible for providing good service. That is why it is important for companies to track their contribution and know the answers to the two questions above: what employees think about the service and what they know about the service. When a company invests in employees and understands exactly what employees motivated and everyone knows, in this case the company can be sure that the service will be provided.

For a more complete immersion in the organization of training and testing of employees, we offer you a practical example.

Practice 2. Recommendations for organizing training and testing knowledge

The main task in compiling tests is to formulate questions and answers in such a way that a person who is not familiar with the standards of the service cannot answer correctly, relying only on common sense.

Tests for knowledge of standards must be passed by certain employees in such cases:

• when updating standards - all categories of employees affected by the changes;
• upon entry to work - new employees who have been trained in the standards.

It is necessary to conduct repeated scheduled testing of employees, the recommended frequency is once every six months.

For each category of personnel, "Documents for study" must be created, according to which testing is carried out.

Define the conditions for passing the test, for example:

• the number of possible attempts (it is recommended to give two attempts);
• passing score (number or % of correct answers), for example, "the test is passed if you scored 90% of correct answers and above";
• motivation / demotivation (when introducing new standards and during the first testing, it is not recommended to use material motivation or demotivation);
• target audience (tests for each category of employees);
• time to pass the test, for example, "time limit - 30 minutes";
• the optimal testing method (written, online, through special systems - Google forms, etc.);
• physical conditions for passing the test: for example, allocate a separate room and temporarily assign the functions of the test to other employees.

After preparing the tests, they should be tested - test one or two people or a group of people who are not familiar with the standards. During testing, you need to measure how long it took to complete the test and how many correct answers were received in total. If in three minutes a person correctly answered 80–90% of the questions (with an average number of 30–50 questions), then the test does not pass the approbation and other questions or answers must be selected. Approbation will also help to estimate the real time required to pass the test. In this case, you should give no more than 30 seconds to answer the question. A knowledgeable person does not think for a long time, but if there is a lot of time, “unhealthy doubts” arise or it becomes possible to find answers in other sources.

You can see below a brief example of testing.

Dear colleague!

In front of you is a test task for knowledge of the “Customer Service Standard”.

You have ___ minutes to complete the test. The test consists of ___ questions, where for each question there are several possible answers. For the allotted time, you need to choose one option from the proposed answers for each question. Read the questions carefully, because sometimes the correct answer sounds like “all options are correct” or “there is no correct answer option”. Be guided solely by your knowledge of the service standard and do not try to guess the correct answer. If you don't know the answer to a question, move on to the next one.

Your score will be judged on the following scale:

• 90% correct answers - the test is passed, the result is counted.
• 89% or less correct answers require a retake of the test.

Each employee has the right to retake the test.

Third question: what does the employee do?

Undoubtedly, the company must understand how everything works on the ground. It is extremely important to keep your finger on the pulse and be aware of the reasons for each result of the work. I'm not talking about the fact that launching tracking projects requires big budgets, but that the art of service analytics is a complex thing in itself. You need to look at the numbers from a different angle than just “service level up or down” (trust me, 90% of the time this is a waste of time). You need to understand the nature of the emergence of these trends - the growth or decline in the level of service, which is much more difficult.

Let's imagine that you, as a manager, receive the results of a study, for example, with the help of a "mystery shopper" or video monitoring, which says that "the service has decreased by five points out of a hundred." The following shows the main standards that fell off the mark, which led to this result. However, this information is critically insufficient for making correct management decisions. Many managers often stop there and make a big mailing around the company with the theme “please pull up the following standards…”. From experience, the temporary effect of such management depends on the strength of the motivation of those in charge: "what will I lose if I do not fix it." The long-term effect is more deplorable: at best, this will lead to an artificial fulfillment of standards, and in the worst - the negative in relation to the central office, which is scary to contradict, will be broadcast on clients.

How to correctly interpret the results of research? A separate section will be devoted to this, but in order not to leave the story unsaid, I will give one of the correct options for solving and developing events. So, having received the result of the study, the manager asks to show him the results for each location / region, etc. He considers the indicators from the angle of the "typical" problem, in other words, he tries to find out: the problem in the implementation of the standard occurs for everyone or for a specific region / location. The manager discovers the following variants of the problem:

• The standard is poorly implemented everywhere - this is a system error (the standard is incorrectly reported from the central office). Then the manager sets the task of finalizing and retranslating the standard to employees.
• The standard is poorly implemented in only one region - the problem with the service is localized. Then the manager works with the head of this region and shares the experience of other successful regions.

Let's return to the third question. Consider what tools you can regularly control level of service at locations. In 2020, the most common tools and methods of service control are:

1. "Mystery shopper";
2. automatic and manual video validation (analysis of video recordings from locations), automatic and manual audio validation (analysis of audio recordings from locations);
3. internal and external audit.

Each tool has its pros and cons, which is why market leaders often use several tools at the same time. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of each service research method.

1.1. The Mystery Shopper program, disadvantages:

• relatively high cost;
• multiple repetitions are required;
• resistance of staff and managers to the program (staff perceive this as “surveillance” of them);
• the difficulty of selecting "mystery shoppers" (few people who match the required profile);
• the parameters in the questionnaire should correspond to industry trends;
• evaluation parameters should be important for clients - sometimes additional qualitative and quantitative research is required;
• a small number of parameters for evaluation, since the verifier can remember and evaluate up to 30 items.

1.2. Mystery Shopper program, advantages:

• the company's management can see the work of employees from the outside, through the eyes of potential buyers;
• the ability to get specific results, "digitize the service" - to see the performance of the service in numerical and percentage terms;
• you can build a company development strategy based on these indicators;
• the ability to compare service indicators in your own company and in competing organizations;
• the opportunity to get the subjective opinion of the client and include in the assessment the parameters that are important for real clients.

2.1. Automatic and manual audio and video validation, disadvantages:

• relatively high cost of the method;
• long time spent on validation;
• receiving obsolete data (for example, if audio and video materials are provided in bulk at the end of the month);
• it is impossible to determine the subjective impression client from service (can be approximately understood by indirect signs).

2.2. Automatic and manual audio and video validation, advantages:

• reliability and reliability of the data received - the absence of falsified data, the ability to check the data (review the video, listen to the audio);
• the accuracy of the data received, the ability to transcribe the main phrases of employees (useful for finding best practices in customer service);
• the opportunity to see the staff in real conditions;
• there is no resistance from the staff, as in the Mystery Shopper method.

3.1. External and internal audit, disadvantages:

• possible falsification of data, the likelihood of collusion between the inspector and the verifier, since the verification is carried out openly;
• personnel resistance (as in the Mystery Shopper method), a possible obstacle to checks.

3.2. External and internal audit, advantages:

• it is easy to find an auditor, which can be either an employee of an outsourcing company or a “mystery shopper”, or an employee of the audited company if the audit is carried out on its own;
• simplicity of the method: as a rule, the audit does not require complex preparation (an exception is a complex audit in the restaurant industry, for example, an audit of kitchen equipment);
• may contain a large number of parameters, since the verifier most often has a checklist or a tablet that he can use openly.

Separately, consider the program "Mystery Shopper". This is an instrument that originated over fifty years ago in America, in the 1970s. This method, better than others, shows the entire chain and technology of the service that the company has conceived. This tool turned out to be very successful for all the shortcomings, because it allows you to track from beginning to end the chain of service delivery that the company originally intended. For example, certain service standards were invented: first you need to say hello to the client, then offer him something, then work on his objections, and finally serve at the checkout. At the same time, the “mystery shopper” allows you to track the entire business process of the service and the entire path of the client in order to see what is really happening. From this point of view, the tool is very successful.

At the same time, it is important to consider what internal customers expect from the received data. As a service manager, you must understand that, in addition to you, you need to satisfy three more customers. Believe me, there will definitely be three of them - no more and no less. One employee can represent several customers, but also a whole group of colleagues representing the interests of the same customer can come to the meeting. However, there will always be three of them.

These "three customers" are the marketing department, the HR department, and the operations department.

As a service manager, it is very important for you to understand who is requesting a project estimate, because communication with each of these departments will be built differently.

1. The tasks of the HR department are the motivation of employees and their training, the inclusion of indicators in payrolls.
2. Tasks marketing — brand representation, the presence of the necessary merchandising at locations, visualization (let me remind you, we are only talking about the control function).
3. The tasks of the operations department are to control the implementation of procedures, to receive a “control panel” for processes in order to always understand what is happening on the ground.

How are the reports for these three customers different? There is an employee who was motivated, trained, tested his knowledge, and he does everything as it should. To understand that the company is service-oriented, it remains to understand whether the client likes it. So, for this you need to know the answer to the fourth question: what does the client think about what the company came up with?

The fourth question: what does the client think?

Knowing what the customer thinks is now a trend in the market. It is believed that this is the most important question for a service-oriented company or one that aspires to such a title. However, this is misleading. Among the four issues listed above, there is no one that is more or less important - they are all equal, and each issue needs to be given enough attention and time. Otherwise, you are not a service-oriented company.

If we talk about the variety of research tools, then there are even more of them:

• quantitative customer surveys (personal, telephone,
  on the Internet, using IVR);
• qualitative research - in-depth interviews and focus groups;
• Mystery Shopping "Mystery shopper").

Along with the variety of tools, there are many methods for digitizing them: the NPS index (Net Promoter Score), the satisfaction index, the effort index, etc.

Along with such young technologies as the NPS index, the satisfaction index, we also see such well-known methods as Mystery Shopping, which has undergone many changes over a hundred years. This tool is interesting because in competent hands it allows you to get answers to all four questions about the service. It is a symbiosis of quantitative and qualitative research, so a variety of business objectives can be introduced into the Mystery Shopper program. However, this is only effective if you use the tool correctly. For example, there is an Association of Providers for the Mystery Shopper program - MSPA, where a code is developed for all method providers.

Criteria to consider when selecting a provider for the Mystery Shopper project:

1. The provider works in a rotational model. This means that each visit is performed by a different person. When we send new people to research, they are more likely to be real clients. So, based on the results of the questionnaire, we can ask them what they think about what they saw. Accordingly, in addition to measuring service standards, we will also get an answer to the fourth question: what does the client think about the service? That is why the questionnaires for "mystery shoppers" consist of several blocks: a block for measuring service standards, a block for satisfaction, and sometimes an NPS block is also added. This is necessary to get customer feedback and understand what the consumer thinks about the service. The data is used in analytical reports, and by combining them with each other, you can identify patterns and draw many conclusions about the service.
2. It is possible to build an open system. Many providers on the market work on professional software (software). For a hundred years, specialized software has appeared for the Mystery Shopper project. Thus, each customer can view the online results using their own access level. Additionally, such systems and programs can conduct employee training and various surveys about their satisfaction.

Also, the system can after some time, for example, in a day, generate a thematic test for employee and send him a link to the test, which must be completed within a certain time. The employee answers questions, and in this way the company controls how much he has mastered the material on which he was trained.

With the help of the questionnaire, the company can learn about the satisfaction of employees. If there is negative feedback from the “mystery shopper”, for example, the seller was in a bad mood, then the system immediately offers him a link, on which he can take a satisfaction survey in order to understand and figure out why he was in a bad mood and what can be done about it do. Perhaps the head of the department has changed, so all the staff are in bad shape. mood. So, we need to work on it, that is, find the problem and solve it.

If a company has the tools to answer each of the four questions on a regular basis, it can call itself service-oriented.

[…] It is important to understand that at the moment a company can have terrible service and can only get on the path to service. But at the same time, the company may already be service-oriented, because it immediately built its path on determining the answers to four questions about service. However, I cannot accept that a company that fails in any of the four areas is no longer service-oriented. The company may not be successful in one of the questions, but the main thing is that it is working on it and starting to get answers, which means that it knows how to proceed.

Let me remind you that it is important to always ask yourself these four questions. If a company has systematic answers to these four questions, it can build a service. Such a company is focused on building a service, it is service-oriented.

The competition for attracting customers is getting fiercer, so the quality of service today is the most important advantage in business. The authors of the book share their experience gained over the years of work in the service sector and practical tools. The book will be useful to the business community, top management of companies, all managers responsible for building customer experience, employees who want to improve customer service.

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