Grammar Goofs?A Call Center Training Checklist for Monitoring Your Calls and Emails for the Most Common Grammar Mistakes
As you listen and monitor customer service phone calls or review written call center email correspondence, you're probably looking for the standard components such as proper opening, accurate information, proper tone/style, etc. However, one element that is often missed, both in phone call monitoring as well as email reviews, is the use of proper language and grammar. It's perhaps more noticeable and observable in a written document, but it certainly matters in voice conversations too.
Here are some of the most common customer service grammar problems and mistakes. Most of these grammar rules you and your staff learned back in high school, but it never hurts to have a quick review of these rules and common mistakes as a refresher every six months or so.
Mistake #1: Preposition Placement
One of the biggest written and spoken grammar mistakes in the contact center is putting a preposition at the end of a sentence. Here are some common examples:
- Where is your office located at?
- What address should we ship to?
- I can look up the site it shipped from.
Just make sure those prepositions are removed from the end of the sentences or questions. You might want to rephrase the above to read:
- Where is your office?
- What is your shipping address?
- I can look up the site that shipped it.
Mistake #2: Noun and Pronoun Disagreement
It's important that the pronouns you use in your sentences agree with their corresponding noun in gender and plurality. Here is a common mistake where a plural pronoun (their) refers back to a singular noun(customer):
- Every customer will receive their package in the mail.
This mistake could be adjusted in several ways, all of which are correct.
- Every customer will receive his or her package in the mail.
- All customers will receive their packages in the mail.
- As a customer, you will receive your package in the mail.
Mistake #3: Double Negatives
Another common mistake evident in customer service communications is to have a double negative in a sentence. This is not a case where two wrongs make a right! Here are a couple of examples of double negatives:
- They won't do nothing about that.
- We can't hardly believe our good luck.
These sentences don't just sound awkward, but also actually lose their meaning with the double negative. Better alternatives would be:
- They won't do anything about that.
- We can hardly believe our good luck.
While the first three items here can be observed in both verbal and written communications, there are some common problems that will be found in written communications only. The primary written communications problem is the misuse of certain elements of punctuation, and the most common problem is probably the use of the apostrophe.
When using an apostrophe, keep in mind these rules:
- Use to replace missing letters in a contraction. For example, an apostrophe would be used to replace the "a" when "they are" gets shortened to "they're".
- Use to show possession, putting the apostrophe before the "s" in a single noun and after the "s" in a plural noun, as seen in: Please supply your spouse's phone number so we can include it in our employees' in-house directory.
The most common mistake made with the apostrophe is the use of it with the word "it". An apostrophe is used in the contraction for "it is" but not in the possessive form of "it" as seen in: It's amazing to experience its ease of use.
Another potential area for problems has to do with the misuse of words such as "their" versus "there" versus "they're" or "affect" versus "effect". We'll explore these words and the proper use of them in the customer loyalty and customer service focused White Paper entitled Foolproof Emails.
Situation:
Customer service clerks misunderstanding customers and failing to "live the brand promise" through the consistent use of clear, concise communication skills in the call center environment.
The Classified Advertising department of a regional daily newspaper took ads from many non-native speakers of English. Because the clerks could not understand the non-native speakers very well, the ads frequently contained errors, resulting in refunds to the customer.
Solution:
• Discern the accents most difficult for the clerks to understand.
• Provide a 3-hour workshop explaining the most common errors made by non-native speakers, practice in interpreting common accents and communicating more accurately with limited English speakers.
Results:
Reduction in errors made by customer service service personnel and clerks; implementation of a call center coaching program to ensure the skills transfer to long-term on the job performance.
The Client
AMP is a leading wealth management company with 3,800 employees in Australia and New Zealand. It is Australia’s largest retail and corporate superannuation provider, and one of the region’s most significant investment managers with more than A$92 billion in assets under management (as of 31 December 2008). Our focus was on the Customer Service side of the business, in particular the call centers.
The Situation
The Director of Customer Service Strategy was asked to:
- Reduce head count
- Increase service levels
- Increase efficiency
The Approach
We used the following:
- Senior Leader performance education and cultural implementation
- Wider leadership development and High Performance Environmental Structure (HPES) education over 12 months
The Results
In the words of Helen Wells, Director of Customer Service Coaching:
“When I joined AMP, I inherited a branch that I thought was particularly soft. We are now generating revenue figures in this population that are greater than any other channel. This, of course, is additionally impressive as it is within a financial service firm amongst a worldwide financial crisis. I absolutely see this as a result of implementation of the HPES.
When I first joined, each individual had a target of $1,500/week. I reevaluated that target and set it at $10,000/week. There was a lot of resistance at the start, but I maintained and enacted the principles of HPES. Since inception (less than one year), the average revenue generated per person is $6,000-$8,000/week. I am now in the process of enhancing the rewards mechanism so that I close the gap and achieve an average revenue generation of $10,000/week.
After adopting HPES, I have seen consistent hitting of targets in my business. The HPES has had a performance-based effect.”
Need"We launched an organization-wide strategy coined 'Right for My Business.' No longer is it acceptable to sell for the sake of selling."
Solution
Our CallMentor® Learning and Performance Improvement System with SalesMentor® and CoachingMentor® for Sales Revenue Growth.
Results
- Increased customer revenue per household by 18%
- Increased customer loyalty rating by 10 basis points through customer-focused selling
- Improved overall customer service satisfaction rating
- Sold 1.5 more products per call
Factors Contributing to Success
- Senior leadership engaged from the beginning
- Master call center coaching best practices were onsite at all four sites and worked one-on-one with team leaders weekly
- Team leaders and Master Coaches were able to describe the dynamic nature of the sales model and call center coaching by experiencing, firsthand, its use by monitoring customer calls and call center cross-selling training execution
- Reps included in bi-weekly calibration sessions to further reinforce the nuances of the business sales training model
- Measurements and incentives were aligned to support the consultative selling training process
- Reps were reinforced to use the sales model and related skills by the leadership team worked one-on-one with team leaders weekly
Today’s financial services firms are aggressively investing in approaches to grow their customer base while looking for ways to lower the cost of implementing an effective customer service strategy and increasing customer loyalty. As such, many industry leaders are seeing call center operations as an integral part of its total sales, marketing, and service delivery strategy.
This case study profiles one of our clients, Harris Bank, and their approach to developing their call center training and best practices--moving from a service orientation into a proactive team focused on deepening relationships with their customers through ongoing investments in customer care training and coaching programs.
About Harris
Chicago-based Harris is an integrated financial services organization that provides more than one million personal and business customers with a variety of services including: banking, lending, investing, financial planning, trust administration, portfolio management, family office, and wealth transfer. Harris is part of BMO Financial Group, a highly diversified North American financial services organization with total assets of $357 billion and more than 35,000 employees.
Business SituationHarris’ call center operational strategy has gone through a dramatic evolution over the last several years. Historically established as a service unit designed to support a network of more than 200 branches, the Direct Bank group now provides clients with a full range of products and services. The shift is yielding dramatic results.
In 2006, all the call center’s measurement goals were exceeded by a wide margin. In addition, the Harris call center team was named the 2006 Center of Excellence, an award based on their performance in 2005 when they were rated No. 1 against 17 other large, U.S. financial services companies.
Strategic Approach
To learn what drives their success; we talked with Hilde Betts, Senior Vice President in charge of the Harris call center operation and our longtime client. What follows are excerpts from our interview along with our own perspectives on what made this service to sales transformation particularly successful.
Interview with Hilde Betts, Senior Vice President, Harris Bank
Q. First, tell us about your philosophy for your call center. What role does it play in your organization?
A. I view our contact center as a gold mine because we have the most frequent call with our company’s clients, and as such, I believe we have a tremendous responsibility to deliver the organization’s brand promise. I also believe we have great opportunities to build relationships because we interact with clients so frequently. Now, as we all know, relationships can be deepened in a number of ways. Taking care of whatever the client’s needs are at the moment is always first and foremost. I believe another important part of providing good service to our clients is to take another step and ask, “Is Harris doing everything we can to help you achieve your financial goals?” I don’t see this as a sales component or call center cross-selling effort, per se, or being something separate from service. I see this as being part of the relationship-building interaction. It isn’t high-pressure sales. Our “guiding vision” is to be helpful, to discover what the client needs and to ensure that we are taking care of those needs.
Key takeaway: Define your sales philosophy. Share it with your contact center workforce as well as the entire organization.
Q. Looking back at your transition from service to sales, which elements had the greatest impact?
A. There were a number of factors. We had a multi-layered approach mapped out to help us achieve our business objectives, which included customer service training and coaching, proven customer service best practices, and performance improvement initiatives. But before we could do any of that, we needed to focus on something very intangible: we needed to help bring about a “mind set shift” for our entire staff. We called these activities “will-building” activities to differentiate them from the training or “skill-building” activities. First, we asked the question, “Do we have people who are fitting the role?” We designed a “fit to role” customer service diagnostic and training assessment, which everyone took. It helped us get a better view of how closely each team member fit their role. And, of course, it helped us identify gaps in terms of behaviors and skills that needed to be developed.
Running parallel to this initiative was a body of work that focused on understanding what made the high performers in our organization successful. We ended up creating a “high performer template,” which was very helpful in identifying what performance gaps needed to be closed for those team members who had poor “fit to role” assessments.
If someone’s skill set was not a good match with their current job, and they weren’t willing or able to develop themselves to close the gap, we connected them with other opportunities within the company.
Key takeaway: Create a team with a common vision and a mindset for sales success. Identify and replicate the behaviors of your high performers.
Improving customer loyalty is a strategic imperative for many insurance company executives. Intense competition, commodity-driven product offerings and rising acquisition costs are driving new ways of thinking about—and executing against—a customer-centric business strategy. This case study profiles one of our clients, 21st Century Insurance, and their approach to building a culture that is relentlessly focused on one thing: the customer experience.
Business Situation
With a strong base of operations on the West Coast, 21st Century Insurance Group is focused on growth through geographic expansion. The company entered the Midwest in 2004, Texas in 2005 and three Eastern states during 2006. With a core philosophy built around customer service, they have carved out a market niche by offering insurance directly to consumers, providing a wide array of insurance products and 24-hour telephone access to licensed insurance professionals.
As the company began to enter new areas of the country, they were quick to realize the game had changed. Accustomed to having strong name recognition and a good reputation, they were now faced with being the “new kid on the block” in the highly competitive services industry. Also, their research showed that consumers were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with insurance providers in general. It was in these market conditions that they saw opportunity. By leveraging their customer service operational strengths, they could win over customers and build market share.
Strategic Approach
21st Century’s vision was to build something unique. They set out to build a truly superior customer experience—one that was good enough to differentiate themselves from the competition, drive company growth, and create a loyal base of customers.
Their approach was a delicate blend of art and science. The management team knew that, to achieve the results they were looking for, a customer-focused mindset needed to be built into the cultural fabric of the company. This could not—and would not—be a one-time event. They were in this business for the long haul and needed to build the cultural foundation and customer service best practices that could support and sustain a focus on delighting customers.
We asked Suzanne Agrios, Customer Care Manager at 21st Century, to speak with us about what made their customer service training and coaching initiative successful. What emerged were six critical success factors and a number of lessons learned, which are shared below.
Six Critical Success Factors from Suzanne Agrios, Customer Care Manager, 21st Century
#1 Create a crystal clear vision.
To build a performance culture focused on customer care, your people first have to “see it.” Everyone must share the same vision and buy in to what success looks like for your company. 21st Century’s philosophy was to treat every customer interaction as an opportunity to beat out the competition. “We set out to make the customer experience not good, but great,” explains Ms. Agrios.
Call center agents get this message from the moment they enter the 21st Century organization. Even the new hire onboarding program, which is aligned with aspects of their customer service training program, is customer-centric. Immediately after they become licensed agents, call center representatives are introduced to the company’s customer-driven business model. This is done early on so that they see how every aspect of their job ties back to the customer. Even as they learn company policies and procedures, they see it from the customers’ viewpoint. New hires come to understand that the quality of their interactions with customers is what drives the company’s success.
#2 Adopt a measurement system everyone can embrace.
It’s an old adage, but you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Further, people need to understand that the customer’s view is the central focus that drives your business priorities and investment decisions. The importance of the customer service measurement system can’t be underestimated. It becomes the rallying point for your efforts and helps you understand if you are “moving the needle” on improving customer experience.
While there are many approaches, 21st Century chose the Net Promoter® score as the metric to gauge their overall customer effectiveness. The score is calculated by taking the percentage of customers who are promoters (those who are highly likely to recommend your company or products) and subtracting the percentage who are detractors (those who are less likely to recommend your company or products).
“For 21st Century, the measurement approach felt right, since it got to the heart of our overall philosophy of what drives customer loyalty—the interaction of the customer and the call center agent,” Agrios says. This measurement approach was incorporated into the company’s management routines, customer service leadership development programs and people were held accountable for the results. Over time, it became clear to managers and agents that focusing on the customer experience was non-negotiable.
#3 Align your processes to succeed.
Process alignment is the backbone of any strategic initiative. The 21st Century management team took a hard look at their processes to be sure they aligned with their vision for an exceptional customer experience. They adopted our Learning’s Call Strategy™, which is part of the ServiceMentor® training system, and reinforced key tenets through targeted executive coaching sessions. The service model applies behavioral psychology to help representatives develop the skills to effectively navigate through customer conversations. The discrete steps in The Call Strategy are based on meeting the customer’s emotional needs throughout the interaction, thereby getting predictable responses that enable the agent to lead the conversation to a successful conclusion.
“The Call Strategy aligned beautifully with our goals and our measurement approach,” explains Ms. Agrios. “When we review the Net Promoter scores each month, we dig into what drove the score by listening to recordings of the actual customer call. We consistently see that calls with high Net Promoter scores follow the steps of The Call Strategy we put in place.
Business Need
As a global provider of Internet services, having experienced rapid growth, vast market and organizational change, VeriSign recognized in late 2005 that innovation and operations were suffering from reduced collaboration due to growth and the need to have teams work virtually. With major functions in India, Washington D.C., San Jose, and many individual acquisitions in other areas, sales revenue growth increased but service suffered.
Goals
- Bring a fragmented, global team together.
- Assist in transitioning a highly technical workforce into a more consultative, collaborative high performance organization.
- Change in how the technical, global teams functioned and work together—from silos to teams.
- Improve customer loyalty and satisfaction for the IT Infrastructure and Product Development Groups
Solution
We were engaged initially in early 2006 to help build consensus within the leadership team (including the CTO and CEO) for what came to be known as the Customer Focus Program. We developed a mechanism to communicate the change, why it was important, and how it would impact each discipline. We created education, leadership development workshops and coaching prior to rolling out a series of Consultative Partnering workshops. Approximately 1,200 people in the Infrastructure and Product Development Groups attended these workshops over a two-year period using real life scenarios and business cases to examine different approaches and attitudes. We advised VeriSign on changing organizational and operational elements that presented obstacles to customer service strategy execution and focus, and provided coaching to existing and new managers in how to work with staff to reinforce skills and drive the needed behavioral changes.
Results
At the completion of our engagement at the end of 2007 the teams were working more collaboratively and the organization was more unified and focused on building customer loyalty.
Some specific examples included:
- The Network Operations Center utilized three of our Consultative Partnering tools to understand common systemic issues and build alignment around their solutions. These call center best practices contributed to a reduction in call center volume on systemic issues by 50%.
- After attending the customized virtual teaming workshop the leadership team realized that the primary issue was not an inability to be strategic, as they had thought, but was an inability to execute well. This changed their management training and strategy significantly.
- Several teams reported significant reductions in rework after using the Consultative Partnering tools to establish greater rapport with their internal customers, understand their needs better, and build responsive technology solutions.
Which KPIs from the Contact Center Support the Strategic Enterprise Goals?
We often find that the metrics and measures used in the call center are those that are readily available from the systems and tools such as the Automatic Call Distributor (ACD). These include such things as speed of answer (service level or ASA or both), average handle time (AHT), and abandon percentage. Executives often ask us if these metrics are the most relevant ones or if there are better options. On the other hand, we hear complaints from contact center managers that executives are micro-managing their contact center operations and focused entirely on cost controls. This disparity is often driven by lack of alignment of the goals and call center metrics. Let’s take a look at the contact center and determine what we should be measuring.
There are three major stakeholders in the success of the contact center - customers, staff, and owners (represented by executive management). Metrics should be in place that ensure that the organization is meeting the needs of those three groups. Generally speaking, we see the long-term health of the organization dependent upon the following concerns:
- Customer acquisition, retention, and growth
- Employee engagement, retention and development
- Profitability
- Brand image and market position
To set the stage, the mission and vision of the organization need to be understood so that the contact center can align with them. If the enterprise mission is to be the “low cost provider in our market,” then the tactics employed in the contact center will be quite different than if the mission is to “provide customized customer services to each client developing unique solutions as required.” In the first, the center might well concentrate on automation and customer self-service. In this setting, the call center metrics and KPIs should include tracking customer utilization of self-service options such as IVR and web tools, along with the effective utilization of every resource in the center. In the second center, automation may stand in the way of communication with the customers and concentration on minimizing time on the calls may be counter-productive. This center might track the thoroughness of the information gathered from customers/prospects to customize their products, and their satisfaction with the ultimate solutions provided.
With the mission and vision of the contact center strategy defined in a way that aligns it with the customer loyalty aspects of the enterprise strategic plan, the next step is to develop a performance management strategy by asking the following questions:
- What does the customer care about most and how can it be measured?
- What does the employee care about most and how can it be measured?
- What performance measures will demonstrate contribution to enterprise business objectives?
In many discussions with contact centers around the world, the concerns of customers seem to center around the following issues and the metrics that would measure our success in meeting their expectations:
1. I want my problem/question resolved quickly and easily.
- Error and rework rates
- Quality call center call monitoring scores
- First call resolution rates and contact center customer conflict management
- Transfer rates
- Self-service utilization rates
- Customer satisfaction scores (for both self-service and agent-handled transactions)
2. I want to be able to contact the company whenever I need/want to.
- Hours of operation match to customer contact patterns
- Network blockage – busy signals
- Speed of answer – service level or ASA and abandon rates
Employee retention and development issues center around what it takes to hire the best people, keep them happy, and continuously develop them to be more effective in their careers with the company (some within the contact center and others moving to other departments). The following issues and metrics focus on the employees:
1. I need to balance my work life and my personal life.
- Employee satisfaction (including compensation plan, schedule options, opportunities for career development, management processes and recognition)
- Agent occupancy and fairness of work distribution
- Call center absentee rate and attendance (often an early warning sign of dissatisfaction)
- Turnover rate (by work type, schedule, supervisory team, and length of employment) including movement to other departments and out of the company separately
2. I want to have the tools and support to do a good job.
- System availability and functionality to meet contact handling needs
- Orientation and ongoing training and call center coaching plans
- Reward and recognition programs
- Employee satisfaction (including supervisor support, training and tools)
Owners, executives and stockholders are concerned about the profitability of the company and how well it is positioned for the future. Even considering strategic differences, we typically see the following issues and metrics applying universally:
1. We need to acquire and retain customers to grow the company.
- Sales results (whether new orders, cross-selling, in-bound selling, or outbound selling or referrals to other sales agents). Even service centers and help desks can at least acquaint customers with options and companion products
- Customer satisfaction (including the product, services, resolution of problems, and willingness to recommend the company to others)
- Effectiveness of marketing efforts (contact volumes that were driven by various campaigns and the sales rates associated with each)
- Contact center intelligence gathered and shared with the enterprise on customer satisfaction, product desires, competitive position, etc. (as measured by the receiving departments)
2. We need to utilize company resources as efficiently as possible to maximize profitability.
- Cost per contact
- Revenue per contact
- Revenue cost ratio per contact
- Up-sell, cross-sell percentages
Take a look at your call center and see if you are measuring the things that matter. When we concentrate the bulk of our efforts and resources on just one or two of these metrics, we can lose sight of the fact that the contact center needs a balanced scorecard. For many companies, this is the place where the bulk of customer interactions take place. It is the key to long-term customer service and growth, company profitability and the a positive customer service impact on brand image. We have to keep all of the stakeholders happy.
By Anne Ivey-Slough
In a recent research report, I read that 92% of consumers form their image of a company based upon their experience using that company’s contact center. That same report stated that 91% of dissatisfied customers never purchase goods or services from that company again and interestingly, that 80% of call center executives’ first concern is customer satisfaction and retention.
While these percentages may seem high at first blush, they accurately represent the importance and impact of customer loyalty.
As more and more consumers choose to do business via phone, chat, and websites, it seems the days of “seeing” your customer, in order to get to know them, are waning. With more companies competing for limited dollars with decreased margins, how your customers perceive you and your relationship with them is even more critical to your call center's value and your company’s bottom line.
We believe that these economic times will prove to be a pivotal point in the contact center’s evolution and value. More and more, we hear about how the call center is crucial to an organization’s overall go-to-market customer service strategy. More and more, we observe how the contact center is becoming the hub of marketing intelligence. More and more, we know that the contact center touches incrementally more customers than traditional face-to-face outlets.
Historically, the contact center has been used to drive down the cost of sale and to aggressively gain operational efficiencies. While these goals still remain today, we must understand that the actions that we take today will greatly impact customer loyalty, revenue, and margins. So while efficiencies and cost containment is important, smart contact center leaders also ensure that efficiencies do not negatively impact customer service, retention or loyalty.
Today, contact centers have a golden opportunity to retain and delight those customers who may be at risk of defecting while further cementing the bonds between your company and your loyal customer base. Your actions today greatly impact where future discretionary dollars will be spent. This is true in a tough economy and it will be more applicable once the economy rebounds.
Customers, through their contact center interactions, are taking note. Customers notice which companies “know who they are.” Customers form different bonds with companies who can express valuable knowledge and information through each interaction, be it voice, chat, or email. Each experience determines a customer’s current AND future value to the organization.
At any given time, there are 3 types of customers:
- Dissatisfied Customers - Looking for another company to provide the service or product
- Satisfied Customers - Open to the next better opportunity
- Loyal Customers - Returns despite offers by the competition and gives you first “dibs” on their wallet.
Your goal is to have a proven game plan to:
- Retain and expand the loyal customers
- Bridge the gap between the satisfied customers and the loyal customers
- Mitigate the fallout from the dissatisfied customers (especially with social networks, which have broadened the disgruntled voice)
