Listening to the Service Experience

Creating a great sales effort begins by hiring people that have the raw ability to learn and to:

* fully understand products or services

* effectively deliver presentations fearlessly and consistently

* care about their customer's experience by listening and learning.

How? Here are a few ways to listen and learn:

Live Chat

Eliminate phone tag and offer service on demand. Even if you run a small businesses you can provide real-time support for visitors to your website. Organizations like LivePerson.com, BoldChat and Live2Support.com provide outsourced support services at competitive rates.

On-Demand Consumer University

Learning isn't limited to employees. In fact, consumers can benefit (and appreciate) the same information you provide your team.

Video FAQ and How-to's

You Tube offers a video plug-in for your site, that gives you the chance to quickly and affordably post content, like how-to videos that can make life easier for your customers.

Social Media

Services such as Facebook help you connect to multiple communities. Tools like Visibility and Radian 6 allow you to measure the effectiveness of your outreach to those groups.

Staff profiles and Blogs

Customers want to follow the team members they talk to everyday, not necessarily the CFO or COO. Get over your need for control and let your people blog. Employees may pleasantly surprise you by attracting even more customers.

Independent Reviews

Customer reviews and feedback are part of a richer online experience. Some companies, like customerreviews.com, offer widgets that can enable a review function within your own site. Others, like tripadvisor.com offer 3rd party reviews for specific services, in this case, hotels and travel services.

The Unvarnished Truth?

Now there are sites where you can rate the people you know, rather than organizations, products or corporate brands.

The concept is not new (ikarma.com, unvarnished.com, Jerk.com) but Unvarnished has integrated tightly with Facebook to attract the largest pool of reviewers possible. This lets people who, supposedly, have worked with someone, post reviews about that individual.

From the site:

“Unvarnished lets reviewers share their true, nuanced opinions without fear of repercussions… Profile owners can manage and build their reputation, by receiving notifications of new reviews, requesting reviews from trusted colleagues, adding resume details, and responding to reviews.”

What do you think?

• Does this type of site encourage leadership or popularity?
• Will it require people to constantly manage their reputation? (or hire people to do so...)
  
• Could it evolve into a useful professional adjunct like LinkedIn?
• Or, will it devolve into a schoolyard filled with bullies and cynical reviews?

The end of publishing?
( learning?... or other concern for next generation here:_____ )




Thanks for sharing this nifty palindrome, Will.

More tips on social learning through collaboration

...from a white paper released today. Although written at an enterprise level, the tips can be extrapolated for learning and talent development.

Here are some highlights and factoids I took away (and will begin to digest) and some you may find useful:

• Roughly 53% of the 79 million adult women in the United States who use the Internet participate in social media

• According to Forrester Research, social media ad spending will grow from $716 million this year to more than $3.1 billion in 2014

• Organizations should view social media activity as a powerful enabler that provides opportunities for developing new relationships and gaining competitive advantage

• Get all stakeholders (SMEs, customers, not just trainers) involved in blogging or participating on the corporate social networks, according to their specific passions

• Partner with highly active customers to create and contribute to better learning and services (Microsoft has similar forums where the most active participants who help the most people become “MVPs” and earn trips to Redmond for recognition and rewards)

• Use ad hoc conferences to connect directly and immediately on an issue of mutual interest (best practices, etc.) or share any "positive deviance" that might help the group.

• Tie Webinars to real-time research, seeking answers from participants that address meaningful challenges, “Eight Successful Strategies for Retaining Business Travel Clients"

• Get customers involved in the online discussion through a special event (one that is educational, motivational, and entertaining)

The Learning Moment

Who hasn't taken a few hundred of classes, workshops, or training courses throughout their life? Comeon... make sure you include kindergarten!

Besides knowing that the wheels on the bus do indeed go 'round and 'round, you probably remember a thimble full of what your teachers actually taught in class. I feel lucky if I get through a day remembering the basics (the alphabet, up versus down, addition & subtraction…).

What do you remember from your four years in high school? Tick tock, tick tock… Hurts, doesn't it? Now try it again, this time thinking about the things you learned outside the curriculum… Meetings in the parking lots, dances, sports...the soul-bending sport of navigating teen angst. Makes a difference, right?

Unfortunately, many of us don't retain much more in the industry workshops or corporate courses we attend as adults. Sometimes, attendees don’t even remember what the course was about! So there is a big gap between what we learn in our seats and what we practice on the streets.

Think about your last corporate workshop or class. How much do you remember? Did you even want to take it? Would you take it again, just for fun? Did it change your life?

Life's short. Training is boring, learning is fun. With a creative approach we can make learning part of every job - removing the boredom and inserting opportunities for challenging, yet engaging learning moments. Let's take this whole education thing up a notch. I'd like to start by recommending three basic ideas:

The Voice of the Customer in every course.
Why not? Social media has opened the door. Learning that includes the customer allows employees to measure their success at innovation and delivery. And, by visibly including the customer you create an open space that encourages more effective dialog and actions...

Experiential Learning over Firehose Learning
I bet flying a space shuttle is a heck of a lot more exciting than reading about it. Ditto healthcare, pest control, auto sales... Make sure your courses include student application–opportunities to practice, fail and succeed–even if learning is delivered over the web.

Moment-based Learning Design should include emotional content
Users make major purchase decisions based on their gut instinct. Your learning needs to generate a range of emotional responses like: nervous, anxious, concerned, happy, delighted, ecstatic and more. "Real" learning means allowing employees to feel the same emotional reactions a customer might experience during the very same interaction.

I think these are three good steps to make sure you content is memorable, meaningful and measurable when it comes to improving individual performance.

Why The Moments Matter

I primarily teach and present workshops to corporate audiences. A lot of people immediately understand why great interactions matter, especially in an era when customers can share their experience almost as it happens. Your customers make decisions based on their emotional responses to your brand, your service, your team. Period.

Regardless, I still get the pinstripe suit reaction that goes something like this:

"Great story, Russ, but why should I care about the moment? Worrying about how customers feel takes our eyes off important work or distracts us from business at hand."

True... it might distract people briefly from a mountain of to-do's on a desk, but it helps them re-focus on the real reasons customers arrive, leave and do or don't come back (or post nasty comments online). When I spend time with an organization, I try to listen to what others are saying about their people. I try to find specific ways a better experience (training, new-hire orientation, leadership development, sales process, etc) can benefit their organization.

For those who remain unconvinced, here are three top reasons why great experiences or "moments" are valuable for any organization:

Reason 1: Return on Investment

People like to go places, buy things and participate in activities based on great experiences. Like most ROI calculations, three primary measures of a user experience are made in quantifiable measures: productivity per employee, costs, and sales (revenue). You can reap a major benefit from the right training, better leadership and enhancing sales and service experiences.

Reason 2: Active Community Development

Online communities and social media tools are changing the way we learn, share and measure our experiences. A store manager tells of being negatively reviewed on Yelp when he asked a college student dressed only in pajamas and no shoes to return with shoes on. Even though she wasn't a customer, she posted a review complaining of rudeness. His real customers jumped online and contradicted her statements. Their better experiences give them better material to share with others.

Reason #3: A More Highly Engaged Workforce

The wall between work and life is dissolving. As it does, people don’t just want a job, they want a more satisfying work+life experience that makes a difference for them, their families and their customers. By focusing employees on how they can create better customer experiences, you offer them a way to engage their personality in daily activities. It's a more fulfilling and fun way to work. Are you that kind of employer or organization? If not, watch out. You may lose some critical high-potential talent.