You can teach people how to perform tasks, whether it’s stocking shelves or doing the books. And you can teach them enough about your products and services to be able to help your customers. But if they’re people who don’t want to help customers, you’re not going to teach them to be different people.

Are there really that many people out there who just don’t want to help customers? Yes. That’s a lesson Kevin Peters, the president of Office Depot North America, learned several years ago.

Kevin asked all 22,500 store associates to take a personality assessment test designed to evaluate employees‘ skills, behaviors, and aptitudes as they related to serving customers. To his surprise and disappointment, a significant percentage agreed with statements like “If the job requires me to interface with customers, I‘d rather not do the job.”

How do you avoid falling into the trap of hiring people who not only won’t help you deliver a great customer experience, they might even prevent you from delivering one? The advice we hear over and over from customer-centric companies is to “hire the will, train the skill.” That starts with creating profiles of ideal candidates, profiles that emphasize customer-centric behavior and character traits. Then during the interview process, asking candidates to describe a time when they helped a customer. If they can’t come up with an example, or if their example sounds contrived, they’re probably not someone you want.

Excerpted from  Forrester blog by Harley Manning

New research from customer service company Genesys finds that when it comes to reaching out to their customers online, over half of consumer-facing Fortune 500 companies are “socially shy.” On the contact pages of their website, more than half of these companies don’t provide their Twitter handle or a link to their Facebook pages. And 27 percent don’t provide links to their Twitter or Facebook profiles anywhere on their websites at all.  Via Forbes

• The average person using social media for customer services is willing to spend 21% extra on a brand if the service is “excellent” 
• The average person NOT using social media for customer service is willing to spend only 11% extra on a brand if the service is “excellent.”

An analysis in Forbes of a Southwest Airlines social media campaign gone sour due to a technical glitch centers on the new role of customer service:

+ Set expectations — while working to identify  and scope out the situation use social media to listen actively, acknowledge the issue, and let customers know what they can expect and when

+ Be sensitive — regularly scheduled Facebook updates that don’t address the crisis may be innocuous, but may further alienate customers who want a resolution 

+ Keep on communicating — don’t make customers call you for an update. Better to err on the side of too much than not enough communication 

+ Find a good way to compensate —  Southwest offered $150 vouchers to those affected by the mistakes. 

In another airline glitch this month, El Al promoted round-trip tickets from New York to Israel at one-quarter of the normal price, selling over 5,000 tickets before the mistake was discovered. They honored those orders and asked the lucky travelers to share their stories on their web site. 
 

Companies need to look at what conversations get the most comments, what gets people talking, and do more of it. A Facebook page or Twitter account with no conversations going on makes a company look like [it doesn’t] know what [it’s] doing with social media. — Deborah Smith, social media consultant. Via E-Commerce Times 

Social media is increasingly becoming the go-to place for consumers to make complaints or seek out customer service, but A T Kearney’s Annual Social Media Survey reveals that many companies are ignoring this fact. 

via Biz Report