Category: Training & Development

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Customer service Engagement Training & Development

5 Tips to Keep Employees Engaged During the Holidays

The last few weeks of the calendar year can be stressful in the workplace as people become distracted preparing for the holidays. Employees can be overwhelmed with year-end reporting and planning deadlines just as everyone else seems to be using up the last of their vacation days. And those at work may be so into the holiday frenzy that they’ve mentally checked out.

Here are five ways managers can help employees stay on-task and engaged during the holiday season.

  • Keep employees mission-focused, customer-focused, and connected.
    Respectfully remind employees how year-end projects and planning are critical to your company’s mission and goals. Make time to recognize employees’ individual and collective efforts in taking care of customers and each other as the year winds down.
  • Acknowledge and alleviate seasonal stresses.
    Consider what you can do ahead of time to minimize year-end pressures such as starting your business planning cycle earlier (if feasible) to avoid a planning crunch when fewer people are at work. Or schedule the employee holiday lunch or dinner party in January when there are fewer social activities; this also gives employees something to look forward to after the holidays.
  • Ask employees to share their ideas.
    Go to the source and solicit suggestions from your employees as to what might be done to improve productivity during this time of year — whether in a special discussion at staff meetings or as a project for a designated employee task force.
  • Inspire and de-stress.
    • Invite employees to share with each other how they cope with seasonal work stress … the funniest holiday situation they’ve encountered at work … how they successfully defused a difficult situation with a customer, etc.
    • Give-back to the community by volunteering time as a group to work in a food bank or collect gifts for needy families. To keep such an activity from creating more stress, however, employee involvement must be voluntary with no management or peer pressure regarding time and financial contributions.
    • While bringing holiday sweets to the office is welcome by many, also consider healthy ways to reduce stress. For example, a licensed massage therapist can be hired on-site to provide 10-15 minute back massages for employees or a yoga instructor can lead mini-meditation sessions.
  • Patience, patience, patience.
    Keep in mind the end of the year can be a challenging time for everyone: you, your customers, employees, colleagues, and business partners.

Try one or more of these ideas to help get through the season. When you find what works, you can apply it next year when you go through this all over again. Happy Holidays!

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Engagement Training & Development

Please Pay Attention If You Really Want to Learn: Guidelines for Respectful Engagement

The multi-tasking attendee is a challenge for professional speakers and trainers. So whenever I give a training workshop or conference presentation, I respectfully request my audiences’ complete attention so they can fully engage in discussion and applied learning.

Attendees who are focused during the session benefit from new and/or reinforced knowledge, insight, and ideas – individually as well as collectively. As the presenter, I benefit from an attentive audience that actively participates by asking questions for clarification or elaboration and sharing their ideas and experiences – all contributing to a dynamic session. I bring my professional skills and dedication to help my audiences get the most they can from my sessions so their time is well-spent. Recognizing that learning is a dual responsibility between a speaker/trainer and attendee, here’s what I ask of my audiences in return.

Attendee Guidelines for Respectful Engagement

  • Please bring your complete attention so you can fully engage in discussion and be able to apply the information and ideas to your organization.
  • Out of professional and personal courtesy to everyone in the audience, please silence your cell phone.
  • If you know in advance that you might be contacted during the session – for example, you’re waiting for an important message from your boss or key customer – then please keep your phone on vibrate and attend to it quietly; leave the room, if necessary.
  • If  you’re alerted by an emergency call or text from a family member or someone at work, please excuse yourself quietly and leave the room to do what you need to do. If you’re unable to return to the session, consider getting in touch with me afterwards (via email or phone call) to let me you had to leave for this reason.
  • Please refrain from sharing session content during the session. If you want to tweet an idea or learning takeaway, please wait until a break or after the session. In the meantime, you’ll be able to better digest the ideas discussed, including how you might actually apply them to your business/situation. (Note: This guideline will vary depending on session-content. Many of my colleagues who speak on social media topics encourage in-session tweeting.)
  • If you find you’re not interested in the topic and are inclined to email, text, or check your social media networks, I prefer you leave the session to avoid wasting your time.

Pay attention if you really want to learn, and avoid multitasking that distracts you and those around you.

“If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.”  – Sir Isaac Newton

 

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Customer service Engagement Training & Development

Great Customer Service Quotes for Training

“It’s risky to underestimate the benefit of exceptional [customer] service; it’s equally risky to overestimate the level of customer service that you are currently providing.” Unknown

I often use this quote in the beginning of my customer-focus workshops to engage attendees on the impact of customer service in their organizations. Discussion is based on addressing these questions: Who defines quality customer service? How is it measured? To what degree is your company truly customer-centric? etc. learn_and_share

Another approach to foster discussion and idea-exchange is to add the words “How do you …?” at the beginning of each of these customer-centric guidelines from Diana LaSalle:

  • See who you are and what you offer through the customer’s eyes.
  • Consider the well-being of the customer in all decisions.
  • Train and trust employees to care for customers in the moment.
  • Anticipate customers’ needs by continually striving to improve their experiences.

You can also use the following quotes as a springboard to talk about the importance of taking care of customers:

  • “The easiest way to turn a service into an experience is to provide poor service – thus creating an memorable encounter of the unpleasant kind.” B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy
  • “Customers care about the degree to which you respect and value their business … If you provide customers with clues that you don’t value their business, then all the customer satisfaction in the world won’t help you.”  David C. Lineweber
  • “Technology has evened quality; hardware is all the same. The difference is how you treat customers. If you treat them well, they’ll love your product. If you treat them poorly, they’ll find 100 things wrong.” Lee Iacocca

I welcome your favorite quotes and suggestions for using them in staff development.

 

 

 

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Customer service Training & Development

A Customer Never Forgets–3 Customer Stories and What They Mean

Impressions of customer service — good and bad — can be long lasting as these three stories illustrate. In this post my marketing colleagues and I share special situations we experienced as customers more than 20 years ago.

“A legendary service experience that touched my heart”
From Toby Bloomberg: “I walked into an Eckerd Drug Store to buy a sympathy card. Before the clerk even rang up the purchase, he took a silk rose from a display at the counter, presented it to me, and said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss. I hope this will cheer you up a little.'”

Toby’s takeaway: There were no dramatic gestures, no casts of thousands, no high cost involved. Simply an elegant approach to ‘service’ between two people. And when you get right down to basics, isn’t that what “legendary service” is all about — people who go the extra mile to connect to the customer?

Take care of the customer and worry about the details later
From Chris Bonney: “It was a Saturday around noon at the Hyatt Woodfield in Chicago for an AMA (American Marketing Association) chapter leadership meeting. Just as our people were sitting down to lunch, the first alarm went off. We were quickly hustled outside by the staff and stayed outdoors for the better part of an hour due to a water emergency.

“A couple of weddings were scheduled to take place at the hotel later that day. One of the brides arrived that morning and, not finding a closet hook high enough to hold her wedding gown off the floor, she hung it on a fire system water sprinkler. The weight eventually broke the sprinkler head, spewing rusty water all over the gown in her room and other rooms on the floor that were linked on that sprinkler water line. The water also leaked through to rooms below the bride’s floor. The hotel could have easily blamed the bride for her misfortune and the inconvenience caused to everyone else in the hotel. But instead they summoned a limousine, took the bride and her mother across to the Nordstrom’s at Woodfield Mall to buy a new dress.”

Chris’s takeaway: I don’t know if the hotel was insured for this kind of thing or not. But they knew that it was cheaper for the bride to get a new dress so that her wedding could proceed and worry about the details later. They recovered the situation without embarrassing the bride and her family. (Perhaps as a result, hotels posted warning signs to not use sprinkler heads as hangers.)
Helping a customer in a difficult situation

This is my story: My husband and I were traveling to Boston to attend a conference for his work when I had a medical emergency on the plane. Upon landing at the airport, I was immediately taken off the plane in a special ambulance gurney and we were whisked away to the hospital. While filling out our medical forms in the ER, my husband and I suddenly looked at each other to ask, “What happened to our luggage?!” given we left the plane in a hurry.

My husband took a taxi to the conference hotel while I was in surgery and explained our situation. The Marriott Copley Hotel staff called Logan airport to find and place a hold on our luggage. They also arranged for a hotel courtesy car driver to take my husband back to the airport to collect the luggage, drop him off at the hospital to be with me after surgery, and then place our luggage in the hotel room for when my husband returned.

My takeaway: In our situation, we were guests who arrived at the hotel with a problem that had nothing to do with the hotel itself. Yet the front desk staff showed their compassion and concern by going the extra step take care of us.

My colleagues and I had different customer experiences that share a common theme: a favorable impression made by customer service providers who were empathetic to their customers’ situation.

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Marketing Training & Development

Marketing Animal Rescues & Shelters – BlogPaws 2014

One of the reasons I love my work is that I get to meet dedicated nonprofit professionals and volunteers eager to share their stories. They’re also eager to learn how to further their respective organization’s mission in the marketing workshops I teach.

The volunteers and employees from a variety animal rescues and shelters who attended my recent BlogPaws 2014 Conference session, Fundamentals of Nonprofit Marketing: Building Share of Mind & Heart for Your Rescue/Shelter were no exception. These people involved in animal welfare are most passionate and inspiring. While rescues/shelters benefit from showcasing cute and appealing animal images in their marketing and social media outreach (i.e., the “aww … ” factor), they face intense competition from other rescue/shelter groups doing the same. They also run the risk of “wearing out people’s compassion.”

Animal Rescue/Shelter Marketing Challenges

In their efforts to save animals and find them “furever” homes, animal welfare volunteers and employees are challenged with service demands that often exceed their resources. Yet they manage to do what they can to:

  • educate the public about animal welfare, including raising awareness of animal abuse
  • advocate for spay and neutering
  • obtain the necessary support of volunteers, pet foster parents, donors, veterinary assistance, community sponsors and partners
  • communicate via social media to support their special events and the important work they do.

Intentional Marketing

Like many nonprofit organizations, animal rescues/shelters strive to maximize their mission with minimal resources. With this mode of operation, marketing is often a casualty — ” Marketing? Who’s got time to do marketing?!” But being a well-kept secret won’t sustain an organization. That’s why building and maintaining brand awareness through marketing needs to be intentional, and it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It starts with understanding that each point of personal and/or media contact between the shelter, its stakeholders, and the market-at-large (e.g., every phone call, shelter visit, special event, email, letter, press release, Tweet, Facebook post, etc.) impacts the public’s perception of that shelter’s brand. Recognizing people’s individual and collective impact on the brand, intentional marketing then focuses on how best to ensure its brand contacts are as positive as possible.

Employees and volunteers who run animal rescues/shelters are already intentional in their commitment to help animals. By marketing intentionally as well, they’ll be able to continue their valuable work.

“Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.” —  John Muir

 

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Marketing Training & Development

Is Your Recruiting Hurting Your Brand?

Talk about first impressions! Managers responsible for recruiting new employees have a significant impact on both the employer brand and their organization’s overall brand.

Here are two examples of how an ineffective recruiting experience – described by a potential candidate looking for work in the nonprofit sector – resulted in a negative brand impression. [Note: I’ve heard similar job applicant horror stories in the for-profit sector as well. ]

Example #1. “I had a telephone interview for a grant writer position in an arts-related organization. It was clear during the interview that the supervisor had no interviewing skills — she did not seem to know what she wanted to ask, nor could she process my responses. She was very busy concentrating on what to say next rather than evaluating my answers. Mid-way through the interview she sighed with exasperation and said she had no idea how to talk with me because I was not ‘part of the art world.’  At the conclusion of the interview the HR person asked if I would be available for an onsite interview, and I said yes. I never heard from them again.”

Example #2. “In my experience with another organization, the telephone interview was a fiasco. Three people on a speaker phone interviewed me; I could barely hear one of them and was never quite sure who was speaking.  The first question asked why I had applied for the position. My response addressed the unique combination of duties, appeal of the variety of work involved, etc. When I finished my response they told me they were no longer certain that the position would be structured as posted. They then asked a series of narrowly focused questions that indicated very clearly that they had not read my resume or that they were incapable of shaping the questions to elicit additional information. At the conclusion of the interview, the convener told me that additional interviews were being scheduled the following week and that he would be in touch ‘either way.’ Two months passed and I received an email from him saying they had decided to put the position on hold while they reviewed and possibly revised the position’s responsibilities.”

Bottom line brand impact

The job candidate had previously worked in HR. Here’s what she had to say about her experiences with the two organizations that interviewed her:

“As a former HR and management professional, I am appalled at the ridiculous turn the interview process has apparently taken. I am struck dumb by how little regard or understanding these folks have of their role as brand slayers. They seem completely unaware of the fact that an interview is not a one-way street.  While they are asking questions and making some attempt to assess the applicant, the applicant is gaining a great deal of insight into the nature of the organization and the people who inhabit it!  My respect for these organizations is diminished, my interest in supporting them in any way is erased, and my new and distinctly negative view of their capacity is going to be a topic of conversation for some time to come.”

Do the people who recruit and interview potential employees for your organization understand how their actions affect perceptions of your employer and external brand?

 

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Engagement Training & Development

When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Facilitator

Trust me, I never said that to my parents and teachers. But that’s what’s happened as my career evolved, and I’ve spent most of my 25 years with Quality Service Marketing developing and refining my skills as a facilitator.

What is facilitation?
“It’s a powerful way of working that gives everyone a chance to be an active part of the decision making process,” according to the International Association of Facilitators (IAF). It’s used in planning, problem-solving, creative thinking, input/feedback sessions, and other types of collaborative meetings. In my experience, facilitation involves establishing a base of mutual understanding … exploring possibilities and opportunities … communicating concerns … sharing and building ideas … setting clear direction and goals … and agreeing on next steps and responsibilities, including actions and follow up measures.

It’s about discovery
My role as facilitator is to guide the process of discovery that enables participants to determine where they want/need to go and what they need/want to do to get there. I start by learning as much about the group’s situation and culture as possible so I can develop the key questions and activities needed to effectively engage all participants in a comfortable, non-threatening environment. Then I get to serve in a dual, somewhat contradictory role: guiding the group in its discussions to keep on track and maintain focus, while also stepping back for those times when the group goes off in a different direction that’s critical to the discussion at hand.

The process is fascinating as I never quite know what the outcome will be, and I tell clients this upfront. For example, at one organization’s strategic planning retreat, board member discussion raised more issues than answers that needed to be explored further. With the group’s consensus, we suspended the strategic planning portion of the retreat, and the board then focused on identifying the critical topics that needed to be addressed before continuing strategic planning.

As a facilitator, I’ve also discovered many insights into group behavior, communication, and collaboration.

It’s about asking the right questions
Although they may not realize it, most of my clients intuitively know what they need to do in planning, problem-solving, idea-gathering or ideation. So my primary role as facilitator is to objectively ask the questions that enable them to discover and articulate the answers they need. The type of facilitation I prefer to use is Solutions-Focus, a positive approach to generating change that builds on what is possible rather than trying to fix what is problematic. (Special thanks to my colleague and solutions-focus mentor, Alan Kay, for introducing me to this approach many years ago.)

It’s International Facilitation Week
I’m proud to be an IAF member and celebrate International Facilitation Week the third week in October. I’ll share some of my favorite resources for facilitators in my next post.

IAF_Logo_IFW2015_RGB

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Engagement Featured Post Training & Development

Overcoming the Responsibility vs. Authority Conflict: Lessons in Collaboration

How do you manage working with others when you’re responsible for a project they’re involved with, yet you’re given limited or no authority to get the work done?

While I do not recommend this approach, I’ve observed it in many organizations due to reasons that involve internal politics, lack of role clarity, and unshared commitment to goals, to name a few. I’ve also seen people without management authority effectively hurdle the challenge of working with others. Here are examples and lessons learned from two former clients I had the privilege of serving.

  • The “consortium” included representatives of federal statistical agencies from different countries that voluntarily came together to share their work and improve the comparability of their data. What was fascinating was this group worked cooperatively together in addition to their regular job responsibilities and without any extra staff support and resources. They developed and agreed on a mission statement, strategic plan, and working groups to complete a special joint project. They also walked a fine line to work informally–without bureaucratic interference from their respective agencies–while maintaining the necessary formal communication with their respective senior managers to assure continued institutional support for their activities.
  • The “coordinator” was set up to implement a federally-funded initiative for social change that called for integrating the efforts of existing community partners. The coordinating organization in this case had no authority over the partners and no grant-making ability to fund their involvement; i.e., partner participation was purely voluntary. While the overarching mission for social change was closely aligned with the partners’ respective missions, the nonprofits involved were already stressed with more demands than resources. So to engage its partners, the coordinator applied the WIIFM (“what’s in it for me?”) principle by offering them the opportunity to:
    • maximize their respective organizations’ impact in support of the initiative’s overarching goals
    • have a voice in making a difference
    • network with other partners
    • enhance their community visibility.

Lessons Learned
The purpose, structure, and goals of the “consortium” and “coordinator” were vastly different. However, they shared one thing in common: they had to rely on collaboration, rather than authority, to operate effectively. Here are the common elements of how they made it happen:

  • Mutual respect for all the participants/partners involved
  • Aligning and reinforcing a shared mission, vision, and goals among the various players
  • Clarifying and communicating role expectations
  • Frequently sharing progress updates with those involved
  • Recognizing and celebrating individual and collective achievements.

These lessons are applicable in almost all situations, not just those with responsibility vs. authority issues. As communications consultant Kare Anderson says:

“For most of our lives we’ve been advised to lead and manage others. We’ve been taught to resolve conflict, influence, negotiate and otherwise attempt to get what we want from people … But what about the concept of us? More people would rather enjoy the camaraderie of smart collaboration than be lead, persuaded or managed.”

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Musings Training & Development

Nonprofit Start Ups: Why Passion for the Mission Isn’t Enough

A corporate community relations professional lamented about a recent request she received from someone who wants to start a nonprofit. The passion is there, she told me, but little consideration for the scope of resources, structure, and process needed to sustain a successful organization.

A few days later I spoke with a woman who runs an all-volunteer operation; she is also unpaid. She acknowledged her expertise and time are heavily invested in running the nonprofit’s mission-based programs, more so than the critical activities of strategic marketing, volunteer management and fundraising. She enjoys the work – which is her passion – and wonders about continuity if something happens to her: who will carry on the mission?

These two examples illustrate that passion for the mission or cause by itself is not enough to sustain a nonprofit organization. What’s necessary, according to nonprofit professional Jan Masaoka, is “passion for the success of the organization and the work it does.”

Mission & More

A nonprofit’s success is two-fold: having an impact through its work AND a sustainable business model that allows it to continue to make an impact. This dual bottom line is characteristic of nonprofits that need: 1) a focused mission to inspire and engage people to do something worthwhile, and 2) the resources that will support the mission. In simplified terms, no mission = no money … no money = no mission.

Passion for the mission is a given when considering starting a nonprofit. However, founders and organizers also need to address hard questions that include:

  • “Are we looking past the myths [and our passion] to the realities?”
  • “Where will we get not only the start-up funding, but also operational funding to continue thereafter?”
  • “Who [will] help fine-tune our business plan?”
  • “Do we really know what we are getting ourselves into?”

These questions are adapted from the National Council of Nonprofits that offers a wonderful resource on how to start a nonprofit with key steps to follow and additional questions for consideration.

I also recommend The Five Life Stages of Nonprofit Organizations: Where You Are, Where You’re Going, and What to Expect When You Get There, by Judith Sharken Simon, to better understand the strategies and resources needed for nonprofit growth and development.

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Marketing Training & Development

Helping Animal Rescues & Shelters at BlogPaws

Dog adoptionI’m excited about the opportunity to speak at this year’s annual BlogPaws Conference, the largest pet-blogging and social media conference, on “Strengthening Your Brand: Relationship Marketing for Rescues & Shelters.” (More on this session topic later.)

Since this is a new nonprofit audience for me, I’ve spent the past several weeks learning about animal rescue and shelter organizations, including visiting their facilities. It’s been a fascinating experience listening to heart-warming stories of pet rescue and adoptions; sadly, there were also disturbing  stories of animal abuse and neglect. Here’s what I discovered:

  • Many shelters are mostly volunteer run, with few or no paid staff.  The people involved are exceptionally compassionate and passionate about their work with animals. (While it’s easy to be captivated by a healthy kitten or puppy, the volunteers are just as committed to helping animals with medical and psychological issues.)
  • Running a shelter or rescue operation is a 24/7, 365 day commitment. There is no time off.
  • Volunteers & staff wear multiple hats as: administrators … animal behaviorists … matchmakers (matching pets with people) … social workers … pet therapists … fundraisers … cleaners … vet techs & assistants (as allowed by law & training) … advocates and educators for animal spay/neutering, to name a few.

Silver girl PB071406While rescues & shelters have challenges that are unique to their respective missions and operations, they also share a common marketing challenge – competition.  There are many animal shelters within the same geographic region that compete for volunteers, prospective adopters, veterinary support, donors and sponsors. These organizations also compete with every other nonprofit in their communities for volunteers, funding, and consumer attention.

That’s why I was asked to speak about relationship marketing at BlogPaws, along with Kristin Elliott. I’ll provide critical insight on nonprofit branding and marketing engagement, and Kristin will share her experience as a pet-product entrepreneur who has helped animal shelter & rescue organizations.

I look forward to co-presenting with Kristin and being part of the BlogPaws Community.