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Want your Technicians More Proactive in Promoting your Services? Your Perspective May be Getting in the Way

service tech training expertMany service managers I speak to see value in encouraging technicians to be more proactive in business development. Although many of those are taking steps to implement a formal plan for their service teams, many fail to achieve the results that they seek. If you want your technicians to be more proactive in promoting your services, check out your perspective. It might be getting in the way.

When it comes to engaging technicians in promoting services, many service managers see the role of selling as different from the role of service. They often describe selling and service as distinct and almost unrelated activities. With this view, when someone is selling they are not serving and when someone is serving they are not selling. The chart below illustrates this view of the relationship between selling and service activities.

The Distinct Activities of Selling and Serving

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Technician Sales Training – Inverse Relationship Between Trust and Technique

technican sales training expertIn my last blog I talked about the 4 questions to ask when evaluating “sales” training for technicians.  In this blog, I would like to look more closely at the inverse relationship between trust and technique when it comes to promoting services to customers.

I feel that the technician is in a unique position to identify opportunities that the customer can act on to help them operate their facilities and/or processes more effectively. In fact, I believe that technicians have an obligation to reach out to the customer to discuss these opportunities to help and to assist them in making informed decisions. To me, this really isn’t selling at all, but rather an important part of the service.  And, this approach has a significant benefit. My experience indicates that service firms that engage their technicians in this way will create a sustainable competitive advantage and be rewarded with more business, higher customer satisfaction and unprecedented levels of retention.

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4 Questions to Ask When Evaluating Technician “Sales” Training Programs

service tech training

Are you thinking of providing “sales” training for your technicians on how to promote your services? Before making a decision, consider what you want the training to achieve. Below are 4 questions that are key when evaluating training programs that can help you ensure you get a higher ROI.

Those of you who have read my book and subscribe to this blog know that I feel that the technician is in a unique position to identify opportunities that the customer can act on to help them operate their facilities and/or processes more effectively. In fact, I believe that technicians have an obligation to reach out to the customer to discuss these opportunities to help and to assist them in making informed decisions. To me, this really isn’t selling at all, but rather an important part of the service.  And, this approach has a significant benefit. My experience indicates that service firms that engage their technicians in this way will create a sustainable competitive advantage and be rewarded with more business, higher customer satisfaction and unprecedented levels of retention.

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5 Questions to Help you Evaluate How Proactive your Service Team Is

customer technician service checklistIf you are actively engaging your technicians in promoting your services, here are 5 questions to help you evaluate how proactive your service team is. These questions are part of our ‘How Proactive is Your Service Team’ Checklist.

Do you:

1. Position business development as an important service activity to be performed by your service technicians? When technicians recognize the valuable service they perform when making recommendations that will help the customer, they will be more likely to engage them in conversation rather than thinking that it is the salesperson’s job.

2. Have a fail-safe mechanism for handling leads from the field? When our office team does not follow up opportunities, we are in effect telling the technicians that we were “only kidding” when we asked them to explore ways to help the customer. Read more

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5 Mistakes Service Companies Make Asking Technicians to Promote Services

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click image to enlarge

Through the years working with Service providers across several industries, I have found that there are 5 common mistakes that service companies make when asking technicians to promote their services. These mistakes can cost the service company in lost revenues, reduced customer retention and higher technician turnover.

Engaging technicians in promoting services is a focus of many service organizations today – and for good reason. A program of this nature can be a significant differentiator in a highly competitive environment. Technicians who use their expertise and knowledge to recommend products and services that help their customers achieve their goals provide tremendous value. They help their customers recognize that they are better off for having known them. And, a customer who recognizes this value in the relationship is very unlikely to take their business elsewhere. Read more

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How is Your Business Really Doing? – Part 2

How to rate Customer ServiceHow is your business really doing was the subject of my last blog. In the article, I discussed the challenge of determining if your service technicians are really delivering a Proactive Service® experience by bringing ideas to your customers that will help them be better off. If you recall, I suggested that you consider two questions to ask your customers:

1. “Do our technicians bring you ideas that help you operate more effectively?”
2. “Do you feel that you are better off for having known us?”

If you are interested in tracking your progress over time or compare branch operations for these questions, for example, I would like to suggest a scoring key that will help you. In his article in the Harvard Business Review, “The One Number You Need to Grow”¹ , Frederick Reichheld introduces us to his research into the one question that he found was a good predictor of customer loyalty and growth. The question was “How likely would you recommend [company X] to a friend or colleague?”  He introduces a scoring key that provides a “net promoter” score.   The “net promoter” component comes from the fact that Reichheld’s scoring key considers not only the percentage of responders who rated the company highly (promoters) and who would likely promote the company (i.e. recommend to friends and colleagues), but also the percentage of responders who would rate the company poorly and likely speak negatively about their experience (detractors). By subtracting the percentage of “detractors” from the percentage of “promoters”, Reichheld ends up with a “net promoter score” that can be compared from branch to branch, period to period, etc. Read more

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How is Your Business Really Doing? Ask these 2 Questions

technican training expertWhenever I speak on the subject of Proactive Service® , invariably someone will ask me how do we really know how we are doing? I mention that there are several measures to consider. Higher sales and revenues, increased customer satisfaction and improved levels of customer retention are just a few to consider. However, if you really want to know how you are doing, here are 2 questions to ask your customers through your surveys and during face-to-face visits:

  1. Do our technicians bring you ideas that will help you operate more effectively?
  2. Do you feel that you are better off for having known us?

The first question, “Do our technicians bring you ideas that will help you operate more effectively?”, goes to the heart of Proactive Service® – engaging our technicians in proactive business development. The idea is to ensure our technicians recognize that service is more than simply fixing things. Service also includes ensuring that our technicians use their experience and expertise to look for opportunities to help their customers and take the initiative to discuss their ideas with them. The response to this question will give you insight into what is really happening in the field. Read more

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Taking the Stress out of Challenging Situations

Customer service expertIn our programs, we dedicate a portion of our time to presenting an effective technique for taking the stress out of challenging situations.  We discuss the impact of stress in emotional situations and the important role that we play as technicians to reduce it.  The power of this technique was brought home to me last week.

On a trip to western Canada, I had the dubious pleasure of having my email hacked by someone who gets their kicks out of making the lives of others miserable.  It started about 6 AM with a couple of “Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender…” email messages and suddenly it turned into a torrent.  My smart phone would not stop vibrating as message after messaged jammed my inbox.  And then, after about 10 minutes, it stopped.  Phew, I thought.  That must have been a glitch somewhere.  Just as my blood pressure was returning to normal, it started again and this time it did not stop.

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How Service Providers Can Stand out from the Crowd

customer service expertI was reminded this morning that it doesn’t take much for a service provider to stand out from the crowd.  There is a lot of focus on enhancing the customer experience and creating strong relationships that clearly differentiate you from your competition.  My experience with my mobile service provider was a perfect case in point.

I woke up this morning to a problem.  I could not send or receive emails from my smart phone.  It seems that they were wiped out over the weekend when I was dealing with a completely unrelated problem.  To set them up, I needed to know my user name and password.  The ones I thought were correct turned out to be incorrect.  Each time I tried it, the counter on my smartphone told me that I had only 6 tries left, then 5 tries, then 4.

On a normal day, this would be an inconvenience but this morning it was catastrophic (at least for me).  It was 4:45 am and I was rushing to get to the airport for an early morning flight.  We had a snowstorm overnight leaving the roads a mess and easily doubling the travel time.  I would be away for a few days and my cell phone was my only link to my business during the day.  I had to get this problem fixed quickly.  I could feel the stress.

I called the carrier without much hope of getting anyone live at that time in the morning and, to my relief, I got through to a customer service representative.  I explained the problem I was experiencing and he pointed out that I did not have an account and I would need to set one up.  He explained how to go about it, gave me some helpful advice on selecting a User I.D., and waited on the phone while I completed the instructions. He then happily continued to stay on the line while I set up my emails, although he certainly did not have to.  When I told him I appreciated his support he replied that he knew I was anxious about the situation and he wanted to ensure that everything went smoothly and should there be a glitch, he would be there to help me out.

Now, in the scheme of things, I guess you could say that the customer service representative was just doing his job.  And maybe, he had nothing better to do at that time in the morning – I don’t suppose he would have been run off his feet.  However, the willingness to stay on the line and guide me through the steps until everything was working the way I needed it was the best thing he could have done for me this morning.  It showed that he was sensitive to my situation (please read this prior blog post on empathy) and he provided the level of support he felt would suit my needs in the circumstances.

It seems to me that this is something exceptional field service technicians do as a matter of course.  They stay around a few extra minutes to ensure that the problem that was repaired was done so correctly.  They follow-up on recent work to make certain the customer is happy.  They understand and show empathy for the customer’s situation by acting in a way that best suits the customer’s needs given the circumstances.  This isn’t much, but technicians who practice these small extra steps, certainly stand out from their peers.  And, so do the companies they represent.

I’d love your feedback. And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim

“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”

– Muhammad Ali

 

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Money isn’t Everything … for Service Companies

customer service expert“Money isn’t everything, … but it’s way ahead of whatever is in second place!” is a quote that is connected to some of the happiest times of my life.  Little did I know at the time that, with a slight modification of a single word, it could hold an important message for service companies.

As a kid growing up in southern Ontario, we used to spend a week each summer at my Uncle’s cottage on a lake a couple of hours north east of our home in Toronto.  My cousin and I would spend the days swimming, fishing, canoeing or just aimlessly lazing around.  Evenings were campfires and mosquitos.

On the shore was a boathouse and above it a living quarters that was used mainly for storage during those days.  It was the perfect place for kids to just hang out.  The walls were dotted with little plaques with witty sayings.  I do not know who originally penned this particular one, but it seems to have stuck with me.

There is a lot of talk these days about the customer experience and how it is critical to creating today’s competitive advantage.  In the service industry, the customer experience is largely created by the interaction of our customer-facing personnel with the customer.  In most cases our “customer-facing personnel” are our technicians and the customer experience comes from the relationships they are able to form.  It is these relationships, built on both personal and professional credibility that are critical for our success.

In the service business there are two components – one is the actual work that was completed (the repair, maintenance, troubleshooting, etc. – why the customer called us in the first place) and how that work was performed and described (the technician’s appearance, how they act and interact with employees, what they write to describe the work, etc.).  This fact is described in more detail in a previous blog “They don’t Pay Me to Look Good in Service Delivery”. It is the second component – the how the work was performed – that customers used to judge the quality of the work and the quality of the relationship.  And it is that relationship that creates the customer experience.  This means that, regardless of how technically skilled our technicians may be and no matter how good the work itself has been performed, the customer will not appreciate this quality nor the value that the technician brings to them unless the technician has a relationship with them that communicates that value.  Without the relationship and the corresponding value they perceive, the customer will look elsewhere to find better value.  Or, would it be better to say that in the service business:   “Relationship isn’t everything, … but it is way ahead of whatever is in second place!”

I’d love your feedback on this. And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim

“If you want to feel rich, just count the things you have that money can’t buy.”

– Proverb