Daily Crew Briefs

[Les Hyde]

I’m mad. Let me tell you why. I just got off the phone again with a company whose marketing department had a great pitch about a killer product. They sold me, and I wanted the product right now because they also told me it was a “limited time offer, and operators are standing by.”

I called their toll-free number and told the CSR who answered the phone that I was calling to order their wonderful new product. I even went on and on about the special offer because the ad had sold me.

My enthusiasm melted quickly when the CSR on the other end of the phone treated me like I was in serious need of either counseling or rehab. The CSR finally told me, “I’m sorry, sir. I checked all my systems and spoke with my supervisor, but no one here has any information on this. Here’s what I can do for you. I can take your name and someone from sales/marketing will get back to you.”

What a blow, but I’m an optimist, so I expectantly provide my contact information. Then I cross my fingers and hope I’ll hear from them.

Unfortunately, this isn’t just a story. This kind of thing happens on a daily basis in service centers around the globe, and interactions like these erode customer confidence and significantly impact client retention. If your organization measures client satisfaction, you can see the devastating results of these interactions in decreased numbers in the “Likely to recommend to friends or family” category.

This episode also erodes CSR trust and drives employee dissatisfaction, which leads to turnover. This happens because the CSRs feel the company just played “stump the dummy” with them by withholding information from them.

By now you’re saying “Tell me something I don’t know.” All right. Here’s a solution that takes a page right out of the famous Ritz-Carlton approach to a fantastic customer experience.

Conduct a daily huddle/morning meeting/mini-motivational meeting that lasts no more than 15 minutes. Do it as the start of each shift to discuss all relevant issues of the day. You can use this forum to talk about new and exciting products, great techniques to close the sale, new or expanded services, fixes for a problem, or to discuss team performance.

This is also a great way to develop leadership, public speaking and presentations skills in your supervisors and managers. You can even have your best phone agents lead the huddle. In my experience, these meetings not only drive improved performance; they also improve employee morale and reduce absenteeism and attrition.

I recommend that you use this forum as a quick communication focused on your unique, relevant issues and solutions. It can also be a great vehicle for receiving feedback from CSRs on what customers are saying about a particular product or service.

Here are a few guidelines I’ve found to help keep this time productive and effective.

- Start and stop on time
- Always be prepared
- Don’t use this time to criticize – remember praise in public, chastise in private
- Point the CSRs to the source of information in your knowledge base or other tools
- Have fun
- Recognize people’s important milestones, such as birthdays and corporate anniversaries
- Provide donuts
- Build rapport
- Get business leaders involved, even those from outside of your department

I can hear you now.

- “We run too lean of an organization, and we just can’t afford that much unproductive time.”
- “We schedule down to the minute.”

And my favorite excuse is “We can’t afford to.” While I would never minimize the financial impact of a decision, I would encourage you to do your homework and build a business case to pilot the concept.

Most company’s know the cost of doing business for marketing, sales and service down to the individual level. We also know the cost of a lost client. Check with your financial team as most companies have this information. You can use this information to build an initial business case and then track incremental performance improvements in your sales, service and customer retention metrics.

Do you wonder why I’m so knowledgeable and passionate about this? The call that I told you about in the beginning was one I made to my own company’s service center several years ago, and I realized then that something had to change. We’ve been doing the daily huddle for some time, and here’s what I hear now when I call.

“I can help you with that.”

Do you conduct daily crew briefs in your workplace?