CHAPTER SIX
HELP THEM TO CARE ABOUT GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE
I get that they really want us to kiss every customer’s ass and swallow my pride and pretend I really care. Rest assured, if this were my business, I’d feel the same way. I’d want my employees to kiss my customer’s ass. I can try really hard to pretend, but it’s not my business. If you care so much about your customer’s ass, why don’t you kiss it? It’s your business.
—Millennial
The general manager of a restaurant from a well-known chain recently shared this story with me: “When he first came in for his interview, this kid, let’s call him Frank, told me, ‘Oh yeah, I eat here with my parents all the time.’ Usually that’s a good thing. If you know what it’s like to eat a meal here, you might have an idea of what it’s going to be like to work here. As soon as he started working here, Frank’s parents started coming in a lot more often, and would often order something for Frank, too, even though he was working. They would come in, Frank would take their order, and when his parents’ order was up, he’d bring it to their table and sit down to eat with them, sometimes for ten or fifteen minutes. I’d walk by the table, and they’d all smile at me like there was nothing weird about it at all. A few times Frank’s mom invited me to sit down with them. She actually said to me, ‘Isn’t Frank just the greatest employee you’ve ever had? He’s so busy with school and everything else. This is the only time we get to catch up with him. We have to pay to see our own son.’ She actually said all that to me with a straight face,” the manager continued.
“I explained to Frank that he couldn’t just take a break in the middle of a shift to have dinner with his parents.” What did Frank say to that? “He asked me why I spend so much time sitting with customers at their tables. So I explained that, as the manager, I check on customers and sometimes sit down with my regular customers to make a personal connection. Frank says, ‘Well, I’m bringing in customers here, too. My parents are my number one customers. I’m just doing the same thing you do, making a personal connection with my regular customers.’ Then he says, ‘You know, I’m a regular customer of this place, too. Maybe you should keep that in mind.’”
The restaurant manager explained that Frank wasn’t just being difficult: “I think Frank was much more comfortable in the customer role. It’s just that we don’t pay our customers. They pay us. Frank really had a hard time transitioning out of that customer frame of mind and realizing he was in a different position when he was working here as an employee.”
Millennials’ Customer Mentality
Frank’s story may be a little out of the ordinary, but the example is instructive because it highlights something our research points to over and over again, which is the strong customer mind-set of Millennials. Millennials think like customers. Why? The marketplace has extended its reach beyond malls and into their homes through the web. At the same time, because Millennials have had more buying power at a younger age than any other young generation in history, marketers have targeted them more aggressively than any new consumer market in history.
Once they reach school, don’t Millennials think of themselves as students as opposed to customers? Yes and no. As the so-called customer service revolution has reached across the private and public sectors, institutions ranging from hospitals to universities have sought to incorporate the logic and practices of customer service into their standard operating procedures. Indeed, one professor at a small liberal arts college told me recently that the entire faculty of his institution was required to attend a customer service seminar led by an alumnus who is a retail entrepreneur. The goal of the seminar was to teach professors to treat everyone, students included, more like valued customers. Said the professor, “They want us to figure out the customers’ needs and expectations, say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ more often, and ‘go the extra mile for our customers.’ If I know my students, that means giving them very little homework and lots of A’s. But that couldn’t possibly be what the administration has in mind, could it?”
This may seem like the exception, but our research shows that this sort of thing is increasingly common, and apparently it’s working. Here’s what a Millennial had to say about his college experience: “I had one professor who missed three classes in the fall semester of my senior year. I figured out the lost value: three out of twenty-eight class sessions out of five classes I was taking. It was almost 3 percent of my semester tuition. I made up a bill and gave it to her and told her I wanted a refund for that much. She was pretty surprised and kind of laughed, I guess. I used to skip classes, of course. But I’m paying tuition, not the other way around.”
Playing the customer or consumer role is usually Millennials’ primary experience in the public sphere prior to arriving for their first day of work as employees. Many have little or no experience on the other side of the marketplace transaction, as vendors. “It carries over into their entire way of being,” said a senior loan officer in a large financial services firm. “They come in the door with this expectant look on their face, like, ‘Are you ready to give me a good job experience now? What’s going to happen to me first? What is going to be done for me?’”
For their part, Millennials tell us they are ready to do their part, work hard, and do whatever is asked of them, within reason. They look at their own time, dedication, and best efforts as a kind of currency. They bring to the table their ability and willingness to work hard, and they want to know what they can buy with it. What kinds of success and rewards can they buy from your organization? What kinds of interesting experiences and conditions can they earn with their currency? They are on the edge of their seats, expectant indeed.
When You Are at Work, Everyone But You Is the Customer
What’s a manager to do? In our seminars, we teach managers to embrace and use Millennials’ customer mind-set to give Millennials the basic context of the employment relationship. Explain: Employment is a transactional relationship, just like a customer relationship. This is the ultimate source of your employer’s authority, plain and simple. This is the source of your obligations at work to everyone: your co-workers, your boss, your subordinates, and actual customers.
The senior loan officer whose story I mentioned earlier takes this approach: “I tell them, ‘You’re not paying us. We’re paying you. You are not the customer here. The company is. I am. You are on the other side of the transaction. When you are here at work, everyone else is the customer. Not you. Get it? Think about how you want to be treated, and treat everyone else that way. When you are at work, everyone is your customer.’”
“This is supposed to be the most entrepreneurial generation in history, right?” said one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. “They all think they want to be in business for themselves. The funny thing is, they are already in business for themselves, whether they know it or not. They may be working for me, but how they present themselves, what kind of work they do—all that is going to have a bigger impact on their lives and careers than on me or my company. Who do they think they are representing when they come to work? Me? My company? Perhaps—if I let them anywhere near my customers. But mostly, they are representing themselves. What they need to understand is you’ve got to sell yourself, sell your services. What makes you valuable? What value are you adding right now? Why should someone pay you?”
Trumpet this message to your Millennials: Every person you deal with is your customer—co-workers, employees, managers, suppliers, service people, and actual customers. What makes you valuable to each customer? Every unmet need is an opportunity to add value. Deliver and go the extra mile; get it done early; add the bells and whistles, and tie a bow on it.
Millennials Spend a Lot of Time with Actual Customers
One of the best reasons to teach Millennials the basics of customer service is that they spend a lot of time dealing with actual customers. That’s not just a Millennial thing. That’s a young worker thing. Young workers are disproportionately represented in frontline service roles because these roles are often the lower-tier positions. This is often the case in retail settings, but it’s also true in many nonretail organizations, too. In fact, most organizations seeking to scale their operations in any significant way will tend to put a young (and therefore relatively inexpensive) workforce out front.
“How do you know us?” asks the manager of a video store in a large chain. “You know us by the people behind the counter. The labor pool available for those jobs is usually pretty darned young. I can only hire who I can hire. But we get a lot of complaints about the younger counter help. Sometimes they are just unhelpful, distracted, doing their own thing, especially if the store is not too busy.” We see this often in our research. I call the social dynamic that develops among frontline Millennials in a customer service environment the “cash register culture” of that workplace. Because they spend hour after hour with their co-workers, Millennials often care much more about attending to their relationships with their co-workers than their relationships with customers. Instead of the customer service mission, their relationships with each other become the context of the job for some Millennials.
One Millennial offered his perspective on this issue: “You have to understand. I’m here all day. We are here all day. This is my job. My co-workers are my friends, and we are hanging together all day. Customers are just passing through. They come in here, probably don’t buy anything, or maybe they buy something. But they are just passing through. That’s how I look at it. In a way, to be honest, it feels like they are interrupting my day.”
Teach Millennials the Basics of Customer Service
In our customer service seminars, we teach six customer service best practices. Teach Millennials these six best practices.
1. Make Yourself Available
Being available doesn’t necessarily require approaching customers, making eye contact, smiling, or extending verbal greetings, although this is the method many organizations favor. “Anybody who eats in restaurants has had the experience of trying to get their server’s attention, and the server just won’t look at you,” said a senior executive in a large restaurant chain. He continued: “Avoiding that is what we’re focused on. I don’t need my servers to look guests in the eye, smile, introduce themselves, and spit out some corny line. That’s what a lot of the competition is doing. I think some guests find that creepy. But if a guest is trying to catch your eye, you had better notice. If a guest is gesturing to you or trying to get your attention somehow, you had better notice. It’s more about being visible, unobtrusive, and paying very close attention to your tables, even while you are running around.”
2. Say as Little as Possible
The less you say, the less chance there is of saying something distracting, confusing, annoying, wrong, or even offensive. Saying less also saves time in any discussion and gives more air space to the customer. It’s worth reminding Millennials that most people prefer to talk than to listen. So let the customer do most of the talking. Said the restaurant executive, “If you are going to listen carefully, that means you don’t let your mind wander. You concentrate. You don’t interrupt.” One technique to let customers know you are really listening without saying very much is to take notes while they talk. But be prepared to show the customer those notes.
3. When You Do Talk, Choose Your Words Very Carefully
The safest words to say to a customer usually end in a question mark. Open-ended questions are a good place to start, such as, “Please will you tell me more about that?” Only when you think you really understand what the other person is saying, ask specific clarifying questions, such as, “Do you mean X?” or “Do I understand correctly that you are saying X?” Sometimes the most important words are the most basic. Always say “please” and “thank you.” Never say, “I can’t help you” or “no.” Perhaps the best way to help Millennials to choose their words carefully is to help them choose their words in advance. Provide them with prepared materials, and encourage them to learn their lines and rehearse. “Our customers consistently rate our team members off the charts on customer service. That’s our market differentiator,” said the chief executive officer of a very successful high-end retail chain. How do they accomplish that? “Scripts. We treat customer service like a performance.” The beauty of prepared materials is that they almost always provide a more thorough, precise, and attractive response than most frontline service personnel would otherwise offer on their own. These prepared materials also function as a training tool because Millennials usually learn some basic communication tactics that will serve them well anywhere they go.
4. Never Wing It
When it comes to saying words out loud to customers, don’t guess, don’t hope, and don’t exaggerate. That means if it’s going to be ten minutes, don’t say, “That will be a couple of minutes.” Rather, say, “That will be at least ten minutes.” And sometimes the best thing to say is, “I don’t know. Let me find out for you.”
5. Request Feedback
Always confirm that the customer is happy and has no unsatisfied expectation or need at the moment. That can be accomplished by asking, “Is that acceptable?” or “Are you happy with everything?” or “Is there anything else you need?”
6. Problem-Solve
After identifying a problem, decide, “Do I have the knowledge, authority, and resources to solve this right here and now? Or do I need to find someone who does?” Once you learn what types of problems you should not try to solve on your own, you are much less likely to go beyond your discretion and exacerbate big problems that come to your attention. Once you’ve identified that a problem is outside your purview, gather basic information quickly and pass it to the right person as soon as possible. Then stay in the loop on these problems: How was the situation handled? What procedures were used? What information was needed to resolve it? Is that information readily available for future reference? That’s how you turn this problem into one you can now handle on your own after all.
Convincing Millennials to Care About Customer Care
Of course, plenty of Millennials deliver acceptable, and even outstanding, customer service. But even in the best-case scenario, inevitably Millennials, just like any other employees, will make mistakes and fail to provide excellent customer service. Never squander the teaching opportunities presented by customer service failures. When these problems occur, it is your responsibility as the manager to intervene immediately and forcefully. Take time with all employees involved in a customer service failure and treat the instance as a crisis: Debrief those involved, identify the learning opportunities within, and review the steps that should have been taken.
Our research has identified the ten most common complaints about Millennials’ delivery of customer service:
- Millennial service people are sometimes nowhere to be found.
- They are sometimes present but they are not working; they are talking with each other or on the phone or otherwise unavailable.
- They are sometimes available but are rude, rushed, or indifferent.
- They are sometimes engaged and polite but unknowledgeable.
- They sometimes provide customers with misinformation or conflicting information.
- They are sometimes too slow.
- They sometimes make mistakes.
- They sometimes unnecessarily complicate transactions.
- They are sometimes unable to solve small problems.
- When customers do complain, they are sometimes unable to deal effectively with customer complaints.
Why do these complaints arise? Sometimes the front line is overstaffed—leading to a lack of urgency—or understaffed—leading to a lack of coverage. But usually the cause is that nobody has taught Millennial employees the basics or convinced them to care about great customer service.
Sometimes Millennials don’t realize that customer service is an extremely valuable skill that will make them more valuable in any role in any organization. “When I’m hiring, I always look for employees with real customer service experience,” said a manager of underwriters in a large insurance company. “My people are highly analytical in their training, and their work requires them to be highly analytical. But they also have to deal with people. So finding someone who knows how to deal with people in a customer service job is a real plus to me.” Customer service is a skill that does not become obsolete. Teach Millennials that every single customer service interaction is an opportunity to practice and fine-tune this valuable skill.
In our seminars, we teach managers to remind Millennials that providing good customer service has a huge impact on their ability to enjoy work—a huge concern for Millennials. Customers who feel ignored, underserved, or rebuffed by frontline service personnel tend to become frustrated and annoyed. These customers seek redress and create an uncomfortable atmosphere for all employees. “If a member has a miserable experience in the club, comes looking for me, and gives me a hard time, I’m going to look for the employee who’s responsible and give that person a hard time,” said the manager of a fitness club. “Keep the members happy, and we’re all going to have a better day.” In contrast, customers who feel well served tend to reflect their satisfaction, behave in a more relaxed manner, buy more, and express gratitude to service personnel.
We also teach managers to remind Millennials that investing effort in good service ultimately saves every employee a lot of time and energy, whereas bad customer service creates a downward spiral that makes everybody’s job harder. “Unhappy customers cause a lot of problems that you don’t see right away,” said one assistant manager in a big box chain store. “They mess up store displays, move stuff around, spoil merchandise, buy less stuff.” Unsatisfied customers are less respectful to employees and to the organization. When this downward spiral takes hold, employees spend a tremendous amount of time and energy soothing bad feelings, solving problems, and cleaning up the mess. If every frontline employee is focused on great service, unnecessary waste is kept to a minimum, and employees can use their valuable time and energy to build an upward spiral of success.
When it comes to selling your more ambitious Millennials on the importance of mastering customer service skills, emphasize that delivering great service is a valuable opportunity to network with customers. You don’t want your employees handing out résumés to impressive-looking customers, but you should remind Millennials that every customer is a potential contact. Teach them not to make assumptions based on outward appearance, and make sure they know that every customer has the potential to help them in some way down the road.
“I was buying a home entertainment system and this young man was so good, so sharp, I was blown away. We walked out without buying, but this young man gave me his mobile and told me to phone with any questions. Later on when we went back to buy, he remembered us by name. When my wife was nervous about the installation, he offered to come to our home and supervise the installation. We took him up on that. In the end, I offered this young man a job working for me. That was years ago. Oh, he’s made millions working for me.”
We teach Millennials, regardless of age, size, shape, and attire, every customer has his or her own sphere of influence and authority. Every customer is worth impressing. Impressive people are impressed by those who are themselves positive, motivated, polite, focused on the task at hand, and go the extra mile. They will notice you. They will remember you. Learn their names, and they might learn yours.
Finally, you need to make sure that Millennials know that one way to get financial and nonfinancial rewards on your team is to deliver great service to customers. “You take care of our customers, and I take care of you. That’s how it works,” said one manager. This means the best assignments, the best shifts, the best learning opportunities, exposure to decision-makers, days off, cash, gift certificates, promotional giveaways, and everything else you have to offer should be reserved and allocated as rewards for customer service excellence. Reward those who succeed and, just as important, withhold rewards from those who fail. Use small rewards and use them frequently, and make sure you tie every reward directly to specific instances of performance.