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Companies have always tried to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Whether it is by providing amazing customer service like Nordstrom, or being eco-friendly like Johnson & Johnson, their ultimate goal is to be known for their behavior along with their products. The concept of organizational culture is what defines companies such as these. Although culture in an organization has always existed, it seems that now more than ever companies are at work trying to define and cultivate it. Unfortunately for many of these companies, their understanding of organizational culture has limited their progress. I, like many of these companies, have the daunting task to define my department’s culture.

My first question was obvious, “How do I create and define our department culture?”

Since I had no understanding of the concept, some research was definitely needed. John M. Invacevich, Robert Konopaske and Michael T. Matteson wrote a book titled Organizational Behavior and Management which helped grasp the concept of organizational culture. The text explains that, “Organizational Culture is what the employees perceive and how this perception creates a pattern of beliefs, values, and expectations”.

In order to create our department culture, I went to Edgar Schein’s “Three Layers of Organizational Model” for structural help. The first layer is visible artifacts and creations. These may often be difficult to interpret, but include things like a company’s office set up such as cubicles, technology, art, and even company newsletters. The second layer is the organizational value, or what is important to the leadership of a company. And the third layer is the basic assumptions made by employees in a corporation that guide their behavior.

There are three types of organizational culture: Customer-Service culture, Ethical culture, and Diversity culture.  In Customer-Service culture the main focus is obviously customer satisfaction. An example of this is Nordstrom, who rewards employees for going out of their way to provide exceptional service. Ethical culture focuses on the well being of the environment and the improvement of people as a whole – of which Johnson & Johnson is a prime example. Diversity culture encompasses and promotes diversity in employees, customers and business relationships. Zappos, the internet retailer, has applied the diversity culture, striving for diversity in each department of their company.

Though a company can have all three types of organizational cultures it is really important to focus on one culture and branch out. Since I am merely trying to define my customer service department culture, my focus has mainly been in the Customer-Service culture. I have yet to fully define it, and though it is a long process, I hope to include my employees in the creation and definition of our culture. In the end it is all about what employees believe it is.

In what ways, has your company defined and implemented its company culture? How has that worked out for you?

Winning over angry customers has to be the single hardest problem customer service team’s face every day. Thankfully, in our field we do not deal with face to face interactions, so it can often be easier to handle angry customers then in person.  By far the best thing you can do to win over angry customers is to give your “5-star” attitude: Sit up straight, breathe, give your full attention, be extremely patient, and be efficient. When you need some extra tips though, here are a couple great ideas that should help you provide excellent service to rude customers.

Create a Personal Connection
Remember to make a personal connection with angry customers.  When you begin to connect with the customer, they start realizing that you are also a human. Customers tend to calm down once they start to understand that you care about whom they are or what their issue is, rather than just being another call they had to take.

Find the Real Issue
 It is also really important for customer service representatives to dig deeper and find the real issues behind the ranting and raving. If giving the customer their options, apologizing for the inconvenience and trying to resolve the customer's issues are not good enough for the customer and they start using foul language,  it is okay for representatives to say, “Customer, there is nothing more I would  rather do than resolve your issue. With the language you are using right now though, it is making it difficult for me to assist you. Can we bring down the tone please?” If they continue to scream and yell then finally say, “I’m sorry you feel this way…I can see you are really upset and so I recommend that we continue this conversation at another time. I will give you a call tomorrow at a designated time to continue our conversation then. Thank you.”

Connect and Motivate your Customer Service Team
Trying to provide a “5-star” attitude, making sure we connect with the customers and also protecting our feelings, can help you stay positive with angry customers, while maybe even getting the customers to calm down a bit as well. But regardless of how much you try to stay positive, the feeling that you are left with after dealing with rude and angry customers is hard to explain. With all of my focus being on handling angry customers I decided to give each team member a goody bag. Each bag contained a pack of Q-tips, a mirror, a smile file, LaffyTaffys and thank you cards. Each item had a specific meaning.

The Q-tips were to remind each representative to Quit Taking It Personal – when an angry customer starts attacking their self-esteem they need to take a Q-tip out of the box and once the phone call is over throw away the Q-tip; hopefully the box still has some Q-tips at the end of the month. The mirror was so that the representatives can look at their attitudes while talking to angry customers. A customer can always sense a smile over the phone and it is important that we try to kill anger with kindness, and having a mirror in front of them can force them to smile. The smile file was so that at the end of the call, the representatives can go through and read the emails of other customers that were glad they talked to them and had a great experience. The LaffyTaffys, were so that in the end they can just laugh it off and move on. Lastly, the thank you cards were so that our representatives could send their individual customers personal thank you cards for ordering with our company.

The team loved the bags and the representatives have been using all of the items. I have seen a great impact in our overall attitudes and we have learned to love those angry customers that can make our job difficult!

What are some of the tips you and your team use to win over anger callers?

As customer service supervisor, I am always focusing on my experiences with other company’s customer service and comparing them to how my team treats our customers. For the most part my experiences provide examples of how we can improve; however, the other day I went to a large shoe store to buy some shoes and my experience was less then stellar.  I had not been to this store in about four months, and unbeknownst to me, the stores sales representatives are now commission based. When I walked into the store, it took forever to try and find a representative to assist me in getting the size shoe I needed. When I finally was able to flag down a representative he brought me the shoes and then walked out of the shoe department. I later found out this was because he was going on his lunch. After trying on the shoes and finding a couple of outfits to wear them with, I decided to purchase them.

I went up to the counter and there was no one around. I waited patiently, might I add, but 5-10 minutes waiting was a bit long for me. As another representative came up to the counter to check on a price for her customer, I asked her if she could help me with purchasing the shoes. Now what I am about to say is verbatim – word for word her response was, “I am helping my customer and they are my priority right now, I’m sorry.” That was it. She continued checking stock and I was left speechless. No 'I'll get somone to help you", no “I’ll be with you in a moment”, nothing.  She could have showed me she was at least considering helping me, but she didn’t.  The words she used showed how unimportant my purchase was to her. The customer in line behind me, also needing help, immediately asked the young lady for a manager.

The manager came down and said that we needed to understand that they are commission based and so they need to help the customers they are currently working with. She did apologize for the way the representative explained it, but the deed was done.  I left the store without the pair of shoes and strolled right into the one next to it in the mall, also a commission based job. I can’t even tell you how much more I enjoyed the experience, but know this: I would rather pay more money to be treated as a worthy customer then pay less and have to force someone to help me.

Now, my experience may not be the norm for that shoe store and their employees, but I tell it so that I can provide employees with some advice. These are the three things I got out of the experience.

•      Treat your customers exactly how you would like to be treated

•      Remember that you have a job because of your customers – no customers = no job

•      Every customer can become a loyal customer, so do you best to make a good impression

I also found this article on tips for commission based salespeople and the first tip on the list was: “to make a customer feel special and important [you need] to greet them as soon as you see them. They need to know that you are there, that you are willing to help and that you are available for them to ask questions.” The shoe store failed to do just that.  From the famous words of Aretha Franklin, “all I’m asking is for a little respect, just a little bit” and so do our customers.

I was never a fan of problem solving in school. I would always question when I was going to actually use it in real life. Well, I may not be solving math problems all day, but I do have to do a lot of problem solving in business that can be tied back to what I learned in school. So, here are the three basic steps that I walk through when a problem arises in the workplace.

Step Back and Gather All the Information 

I often find that many problems happen because the person that has the problem is overwhelmed / stressed, and unable to see the big picture. What I find helpful is to take a deep breath and start from the beginning by answering three simple questions. What am I trying to accomplish? How did it get to this point? and How can I resolve the situation and still achieve my goal? In asking these questions it helps me step back and see what I may have missed before. Gathering this information can be vital to a successful resolution to the problem.

Make the Call

What I have learned during my time at Gordian Project is that every vendor, customer or team member has a different personality. Some need to be white gloved and others just chug along without much stress. It is important for me to understand that when there is a problem, sometimes the best thing I can do is get on the phone and talk to the person directly. What I usually find out is that there is information that was not given to me in the first place, or one or both of us misunderstood the other.  The computer revolution has given us many amazing pieces of technology; however, we still do not have a device to help interpret the tone an email is sent in. Calling that person allows you to directly diffuse any tension and remind both parties that you’re only human.

Follow Up

Following up after a problem is solved is a great way to build confidence with your customer’s, vendors or team members. It lets them know that you took their issue seriously and that you are going to be available to them if another one comes up. I personally find the follow up to be one of the least used aspects of problem solving. Following up is essential to making sure all parties involved were happy with the outcome, while at the same time building up trust in the relationship between those involved. Make sure you always follow up.

Of course in problem solving every situation is different, so all problems may not fall into these tips. However, these basic steps always help me to get straight to the critical thinking and leave the stress and frustration behind, allowing me to better answer and address problems when they start.

What about you? How do you tackle problems when they arise? Any tips we left out? Make sure to leave them in the comments.

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Have you ever made a giant mess of a situation at work? I have. I remember the first time I started working for Gordian Project, my boss asked me to complete a task by the end of the day, and I completely forgot. I felt so bad and didn’t even know what to say; I didn’t want my error to ruin the trust in our work relationship. I could have given an excuse, gotten offended because of how he reacted to my mistake, or apologized, but I took the coward way out, and provided an excuse. Come to think of it, our relationship as boss and employee could have been nurtured if only I had apologized and moved on. We often want to be forgiven without having to ask for it. The fact of the matter is that we did screw up and in order to make everything right an apology is necessary. But no ordinary apology will do, as I see it a good apology has three parts – “I’m sorry; it was my fault; and how do I make it right?”

Saying I’m sorry has more to do with attitude than with words. William James, and American philosopher, once said “Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.” The attitude you have when saying I’m sorry will display your sincerity.  Sincerity is the first step to rebuilding the trust that may have been lost.

Taking full responsibility for your mistakes is the hardest part of apologizing, especially in the business environment. However, putting yourself in the other party’s shoes will help you say the words: “It was my fault.” When we are wronged we expect someone to fess up and or need to know who to blame.  Though not taking responsibility can seem more appealing, doing so gives up your power to change. In order to learn from your mistakes, you must first acknowledge your mistakes.  Note, there is a big difference between admitting your mistake and beating yourself up about it. Once you have taken responsibility for your mistake, remember that you are doing the right thing by providing a good apology, no self pity will make your apology any better.

Fixing your mistakes is a step that many of us subconsciously chose to skip. Some mistakes are easy to fix while others have bad consequences. Saying sorry and even accepting fault are easy words to say, but as we all know, actions speak louder than words. Ask the person you have let down what they would like you to do in order to rebuild trust and be worthy of their forgiveness. In the business environment, making sure you complete this step will also help others to be lenient the next time you make a mistake, as they know you are not one to simply sweep it under the rug.

A good apology goes along way - Do it right and do it fast. Remember that a good apology is essential in any relationships. When you make a mistake at work and you apply the three parts of a good apology, your boss and coworkers will respect you for how you handle your mistakes.

We all can use a little help with dealing with apologies and mistakes, if you have any recommendations make sure you leave them in the comments.

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When I took the team lead position in customer service, I had no idea what I was going to deal with, or how to even manage a team. Over the last couple of months our employee retention rate had decreased, and the new team in place was now looking to me for guidance.  To be honest, that was pretty scary, considering I had no idea what I was doing. One thing I know is that a good manager is one that knows how to get the best out of his/her employees while keeping them happy. Though I am still in the learning process, including taking self assessment quizzes every so often to see how I am doing and where I can improve, the below phrases have helped me to more successfully manage my team.

One of the best tips I received from my husband while venting to him my frustrations was: Don’t take it personal. If employees call out, if they are unreliable, inefficient and/or always have a bad attitude, there may be other personal issues at hand that are affecting their work. If you stop taking everything as a personal attack, you can start showing compassion, and your hurt or anger can turn into motivation for these types of employees. While demonstrating an open and understanding attitude toward your employees, you will see their attitudes and employee investment change for the better.

When working as a team or managing a team, you meet different types of people. There are those that respond to what is being asked of them and those that regardless of how understanding you try to be, will still be difficult employees. Teamwork is an important key to employee productivity, if one person starts excelling than others will want to do the same; but if that one difficult employee does not carry their own weight, others will start questioning their productivity. When not taking it personal and being understanding does not work, you must nip it in the bud. Sit down with the employee; explain to them how you have been trying to be understanding, but they have not changed the way they work.  Give them new guidelines and draw a line. They can continue being that way elsewhere, but the company and the team needs their full investment. Doing this, will not only stop the problem before it escalates but will show other employee’s that such attitudes will not be tolerated.

During the day we as team leads or managers have to deal with the pressures of the day, not only of managing a team but also of tasks that we have to accomplish. If your day is getting so overwhelming and you just want to give up, don’t give up…instead take a walk. The ability to walk out of the office/building and just be alone with your thoughts can rejuvenate you. Don’t take a cell phone; don’t take a friend, just you… well and maybe your iPod if it helps you relax.

With all the days frustrations the most important thing you can do at the end of your day, is to check your drama at the door. Don’t take it home, and don’t bring it back to work the next day. Each day will have another frustration and if you keep bringing them back you will start piling the drama not only on yourself but on your employees. Their simple questions will turn into annoyances; their error’s will turn into mountains of problems, turning you into a difficult manager - the manager that no one can go to, the quick to anger manager who people keep away from. Your family and employees will thank you for keeping the day’s frustrations outside of your home, and letting each day be a new day.

Though applying these few phrases throughout your day will not single handedly make you a good manager, they are stepping stones that can lead you to becoming a manager that can manage, and can get the best out of his/her employees, while still keeping them happy.

What do you think, are their other tips that you use when managing employees? Make sure to leave them in the comments!

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We all have heard the phrase “would you like fries with that?” which in its most basic form is upselling. For internet retailers upselling must be approached tactfully and create an E-experience that provides avenues as well as encouragement to add value to a final purchase through incentives, bundles, add-ons, or complementary items. The online retailer must not be quick to copy and paste the “would you like fries with that” upselling technique as it is often not effective in e-commerce, even turning your customer away from your entire domain by creating uncertainty. E-commerce upselling requires more planning, more programing, and more stylistic and unique soft selling.

A sample from the top ten internet retailers support this theory:

• Amazon offers a soft sell incentive through Amazon Prime.
• Apple offers over 26 possible add-on’s before checkout.
• Staples offers easy reordering options that encourage customer loyalty.
• Walmart offers a range of complementary items in more than 4 places before checkout.

                                                        
For those skeptical or unwilling to practice upselling, the greatest opposition I have come to find is that they fear pushing customers into buying something they do not want. I must clearly state that this is not effective upselling. Effective upselling is quite the opposite, it is capturing value from something the customer does want, but simply needed to be reminded of. An example of this would be when I went to the car wash last week. I have always selected the basic wash and interior clean, but this time I upgraded! The salesman informed me that the difference between the basic and the deluxe (which was one level up) was that it included exterior wax, more detailed interior cleaning, and tire conditioner for about $2 more. He had no way of knowing that I actually would be driving some friends to an event and the extra care was valuable to me, and I was stuck in my routine and did not think to ask for additional treatment. The salesman did not push me into anything I did not want, he offered me an upgrade, and if valued I could accept.

Upselling is one of the best uses of a sales person’s time, it takes seconds to a couple of minutes and historically adds a significant margin increase. You can simply calculate the seconds in dollars that it costs a customer service representative to offer an upsell and discuss benefits, to the dollars it adds to each order that grew in value. This transforms a customer service representative from an order processor to an active sales person. Making upselling a natural part of the conversation will show that your company wants to fill all the needs of the customer and that you have the resources to do so. See my next blog for best practices for upselling!

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The holiday season seems to add extra stress to any eCommerce company. I know for us in customer service, we have a higher volume of calls and emails gearing up for the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. For the most part, customers will call us in a holiday rush to grab that last minute item they need for a renovation or a Christmas gift. Whether you are remodeling, giving a gift or in customer service yourself, the holiday season seems to be the best and busiest time of year for all of us.

In preparing for the weather delays and stress the holidays bring, I like to pick out some of the "stories" that helped me remember how great this time of year is. Here is my favorite.

I recieved a call from a sweet elderly lady asking about a chalk board. As we continued talking, she told me it was a Christmas present for her granddaughter and I could not help but tell her how excited she was. I told her a story of a little girl that wanted a chalk board for Christmas and her parents got one with colored chalk and she was so excited. Fifteen years later and I still love chalk boards so I told her if I was that little girl again I would want some colored chalk to go along with it. She thought it was a great idea and confessed she did not think to buy anything but the chalk board. I was able to find her colored and white chalk to go along with the board. Allowing me to relive a favorite childhood memory, and hopefully, allowing her to create one for her granddaughter.

Customer service can be hard, and some days it is so easy to forget there are people with stories waiting to be told. It is such a joy to assist these customers with the type of customer service that goes beyond what is required, when you realize Christmas morning there will be a young girl opening up her Christmas presents to play with that chalk board. Having moments like these remind me of the holiday season, while showing me that even during times of stress we can still make a difference.

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon Kitchen faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.

Competition breeds excellence and we all enjoy the fruits of the fight. It brings us better phones and better food and better experiences at (usually) better prices. Without competition we might not have Android smartphone software or the Macbook or the commoditized coffee chain from which I write this blog.

There are two groups of winners in any competitive arena, first and most obvious - the winner of the event, whether it’s a sports team who won the series or start-up who secured the most VC interest. The second group of winners is us - the market, those for whom the gadget was designed, for whom the game was played. If the winning team is at the receiving end of millions (or billions?) of dollars, we’re at the receiving end of a product polished, edited and refined by the competitive process; and for us, the more brutal the competition, the better.

In his post-mortem essay, “Why Wesabe Lost to Mint” Wesabe co-creator, Marc Hedlund responds to speculations surrounding the Wesabe vs. Mint competition, and debunks several misunderstandings associated with Wesabe’s eventual acquiescence.

If you haven’t used or heard of either, both Wesabe and Mint were/are personal finance web-applications. In his essay, Hedlund makes his intentions clear. “I prioritized trying to build tools that would eventually help people change their financial behavior for the better, which I believed required people to more closely work with and understand their data” he says.  A noble pursuit, to be sure, but in the end, not enough.

It wasn’t the name.  Hedlund mentions several examples of screwy-names-turned-profitable, listing Google, Yahoo and Amazon (I might also submit Hulu). While the term “mint” helps conjure images of fortresses full of gold bars or the literal creation of money, Wesabe supplements bland sushi. No matter, he says, it wasn’t the name that held them back.

And it wasn’t the timing, either. According to Hedlund, Wesabe had nearly a 10 month head-start on Mint. In the world of all-night programming binges and instant market feedback, 10 months is an eternity. While he admits that there are some advantages in not being first (learning from competition missteps, free market research etc.) it is generally valuable to be the first to market. Wesabe was first and they still failed.

“Most people simply won't care enough or get enough benefit from long-term features if a shorter-term alternative is available” Hedlund concedes. As someone deeply interested in personal finance (and well-versed in the usefulness of web-apps) I’ve tried both services and found Hedlund’s hypothesis true, without question. While Wesabe might have yielded the most permanent results (Long-term personal finance improvement) I never got past the myriad of fields and required data-entry. Simply put, Wesabe was too hard to use.

Mint, at the other end of the spectrum, might be too simplistic to effect real change. Yes, it gives me a nice macroscopic view of my finances. It sends me emails when I am approaching my determined budget-limit in certain financial categories. It’s effective in that regard, but I believe long-term, sustainable personal finance goals are met when the user develops responsibility and discipline - qualities likely to come through a series of repeated micro decisions. The sad irony is that while Hedlund and I are simpatico in this regard, he is the co-founder of an out-of-business personal finance enterprise and I am the user of a semi-ineffective personal finance web application.

In my experience, most of us slave over branding issues and domain name ideas and spend too much time doubled-over and panting with exhaustion trying to beat the competition to market. Mint wasn’t first, and yet they won because they gave us what we wanted.  Maybe it’s time to consider what the user actually wants, rather than what we want them to want.

For now, I’ll just check my email and make sure it’s okay to buy another cup of coffee.

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Here at PlumberSurplus.com – we love customers. No, seriously – we love our customers. Working in Customer Service gives us the opportunity - nay, privilege to interact with literally thousands of personalities each month.

It’s awesome.

From time to time, we get together to discuss the “gems” we’ve accumulated throughout our months of helping customers. We gather in the conference room and swap stories like baseball cards. Here’s a few we’ve collected from our recent “gem-jam.”

1) Customer responded to his account update email with the Taco Bell nutritional value menu.

Our customer was either hungry or set on proselytizing the nutritional values (or lack thereof) of delicious and convenient Mexican fare.

2) On St. Patrick’s day – a wonderful Irish customer bid Hannah adieu by sending her off with a traditional Irish blessing.

 “May those who love us, love us,
  And those who don't love us,
  May God turn their hearts
  And if he can't turn their hearts,
  May he turn their ankles
  So we will know them by their limping!”

3) A valued customer used "A as in abstinence." To better clarify the spelling of his name.

    I think we’ll leave it at that.

4) A customer once asked if we delivered to the moon. We informed him that we shipped primarily with UPS and sadly, the moon was outside of their delivery area.


5) "Thank you for calling PlumberSurplus.com this is Joelle"..."what’s your name?"..."Joelle"...."What?"....'My name is Joelle"...."Your name is Jello?"...."No, Joelle"....."Oh whatever I don’t even care, YOU SENT ME A BROKEN TUB..."

Personally – I think Jello makes every situation better.

Little Giant has been hard at work engineering pumps that their most loyal customers have been waiting for. PlumberSurplus.com is your destination for the new Little Giant TSW Sump Pump System and their NXTGen Condensate Pumps.