Years ago, I sat next to an executive on a flight home to Denver. When he learned that I worked for Marriott, he mentioned that he had achieved Marriott Rewards Platinum Elite status after spending more than 75 nights in Marriott hotels around the world the previous year.

He began to praise the company and, specifically, the consistency of the product and service quality from location to location. While positive feedback is always welcome, I questioned him about problems he may have experienced or any areas in which we could improve.

He thought about it for a moment and replied, “Now that you mention it, there is one thing you can improve.”

He went on to rail against the inconsistency of Marriott’s package delivery process at its hotels. I can still recall the frustration in his voice as he recounted arriving late at night ahead of a morning presentation at the hotel and the staff being unable to account for the packages containing materials for his meeting that had been shipped in advance.

Invariably, after researching and providing tracking numbers and an hour’s worth of phone calls, denials, and finger pointing, the packages would surface in some corner of the hotel. Most of the time, they were being stored in the Shipping and Receiving holding cage and other times they were being held in the bell closet, behind the front desk, or in a sales manager’s office.

“Why can’t your hotels figure this out?” he asked. “It’s not rocket science.”

Fortunately, this conversation coincided with Marriott’s implementation of the GuestWare customer relationship management system and At Your Service® pre-arrival planning and “virtual concierge” program. These initiatives, among other benefits, improved the tracing of guests’ packages and prompted personalized, reassuring, and timely communication with hotel guests.

But this is not a post about process improvement. This post is about the importance of listening—REALLY listening—to your customers. If your goal is to differentiate your company based on customer service quality, consider these takeaways:

1. Solicit feedback from your customers. Most companies solicit feedback from their customers in ways that are more formal and less frequent (e.g., intercept surveys, focus groups, satisfaction surveys, etc.). I’ve found that there’s more integrity to customer feedback that is less contrived and more spontaneous. Look for opportunities to engage your customers that are less formal and more frequent.

2. Seek contrary evidence. While we all appreciate positive feedback, it’s difficult to elevate our performance without realizing the inevitable (and, in some cases, prodigious) opportunities we have for improvement.

3. Listen to your customers. This is not the same as soliciting feedback. It’s one thing to request feedback. It’s another to listen to the feedback in a non-defensive, non-prejudicial way with the intent to truly understand your customer’s perspective.

Here’s a memorable illustration of this lesson:

Part 1: Stew Leonard, Sr., of the renowned supermarket chain bearing his name, once received a written customer suggestion that his store should sell fresh fish. At the time, he was sending a van to Boston each morning to buy fresh fish. As soon as the van returned to the store, the fresh fish was prepared, sealed in plastic wrap on Styrofoam trays, and displayed in the seafood case for shoppers’ perusal.

He could have easily dismissed the suggestion but instead called the customer to inquire further. During that call, he learned that the customer defined fresh fish as being laid loose on ice (rather than sealed in plastic wrap on a Styrofoam tray). He thanked the customer for her feedback and decided to conduct a little experiment at the store.

4. Act on the feedback you receive from customers.

Part 2: The next day, he instructed his seafood department to display half the fresh fish wrapped in plastic as usual. The other half was to be laid loose on ice. One week into the experiment, he found that the fresh fish that had been laid loose on ice outsold the fish wrapped in plastic by a margin of 3:1 and that his gross sales of fresh fish had doubled!

In summary, be intentional about gathering feedback from your customers. Look for untraditional opportunities to engage them in conversations about their experiences (both positive and challenging) with your company’s products and services.

When you really listen to customers, you are expressing genuine interest in them. And by acting on their feedback, you are validating their perspective, reinforcing the relationship, and acknowledging their contribution to the success of your business.

The statistician W. Edwards Deming once said, “In God we trust; all others must bring data.”

When I begin a project, the first thing I do is gather data to assess the current state of service quality. I do so by interviewing stakeholders such as managers, hourly employees, and, when possible, actual customers.

I also pour through customer feedback on review websites like TripAdvisor, Priceline, and Yelp. And, when available, review proprietary data such as customer satisfaction survey results, customer verbatims, and mystery shop reports.

The purpose of this analysis is to gather data that will objectively point to advantages that are contributing to customer satisfaction as well as obstacles that are hindering satisfaction.

For the next 10 weeks on my blog, I’m going highlight 10 different obstacles that have emerged from the data. Maybe you will have encountered one or more of these obstacles in your own business?

In addition to identifying obstacles, each post will contain one or more ways to mitigate these obstacles—with the goal of improving the experience of your customers.

Is it me or do you find that merchants are constantly asking you to “take five minutes” and “tell us how we’re doing” by responding to a customer satisfaction survey?

Sometimes these surveys appear in your email box following a purchase. Other times, hard copy surveys arrive in your mailbox or you’re encouraged to access a website and enter a code that’s printed at the bottom of your receipt.

In large part due to the deluge of surveys, response rates are typically abysmal—oftentimes not generating a sufficient number of responses to enable the results to be statistically valid.

It baffles me that companies continue to pour resources into these satisfaction surveys while consistently forfeiting opportunities to engage customers via social media channels.

Case in point: Last weekend, my family and I dined at On The Border. With one exception, we had a terrific experience. On the bottom of my receipt was the message: “YOUR OPINION MATTERS. We invite you to complete our GUEST SATISFACTION SURVEY. YOU COULD WIN $1,000. A WINNER EVERY DAY!”

The receipt also provided a personal code that I was instructed to enter at the survey website: www.onthebordersurvey.com

Instead of following the script laid out by On The Border to share my feedback, I took to my blog and to Twitter—although I could have just as easily taken to Yelp, Facebook, or another social media channel.

That was three days ago and, as of today, I have yet to hear back. You might be saying, “C’mon Steve. It’s only been three days. Cut them some slack.”

Immediacy in addressing problems experienced by customers is paramount. The more time that separates the issue and its resolution, the less likely it is that the problem will be resolved to the customer’s satisfaction. Even On The Border’s receipt instructs guests to respond to its survey within four days.

Frankly, based on previous experiences I’ve had with other organizations, I would be surprised to receive a meaningful response from On The Border. It’s not impossible. It’s just unlikely.

And when a customer’s posted feedback is ignored, that’s a missed opportunity to engage, address any issues raised, and, potentially, cement his ongoing loyalty towards the company or brand.

Why don’t these companies redirect some of their spending on overused “push” strategies to obtain customer feedback and invest in “pulling” this feedback from social media channels? It’s as easy as searching for relevant keywords on Twitter or establishing a Google Alert to notify organizations whenever they have been mentioned by name in cyberspace.

Many customers, like me, may not conform to a company’s standard customer feedback mechanisms but that doesn’t make our feedback any less relevant or valuable.

Companies that recognize this and adjust their feedback gathering and engagement practices accordingly will benefit from candid, real-time customer feedback. Those that don’t will continue to push their rigid feedback systems onto customers and wonder why response rates are so low.

Your opinion matters. Take five minutes and tell me what you think.

Last week I spent some time on the phone with Alyson from Assistly, Inc. During our call, she provided me with some background information about the company, its purpose, its clientele (which includes Twitter), and what’s coming next…

Here’s a quick summary:

Assistly is a hosted customer support platform for businesses that operates in real time. Its help desk software collects and organizes all customer conversations into a system that makes customer support efficient, fast, and effective. Assistly delivers the most current and relevant information about customer requests. This comprehensive, real-time view captures not only what customers are saying to a business but also about a business so it can intervene to manage its reputation and capitalize on “good buzz.”

Today, even small and medium sized businesses might have millions of customers all over the world. Being able to service those customers requires a quantum leap in efficiency through automated tools. Assistly integrates traditional support channels (self service, phone, email, chat) with social media channels like Twitter and Facebook (coming soon) to give companies a complete overview of all customer conversations. This enables a business to prioritize all of its inquiries and ensure that the right people in the organization are responding to the right customer requests.

Assistly recognizes that customer support is not one person or one department’s function. Everyone should touch support. To that end, Assistly has developed a flexible, innovative pricing model that allows companies to have as many agents as they wish. Users simply pay by the hour of usage for part-time users of the system, for complete flexibility in the support environment. No costly licensing—enabling more employees to be involved in crucial support and service.

What really impressed me about Assistly is its focus on delivering a great product AND exceptional support to its partners. Assistly accomplishes this with a corporate culture of genuine service and support, transparency around its product and business model, and a core belief that its customers are its greatest asset.

If you’re interested in learning more about what Assistly can do for you, email them at sales (at) assistly (dot) com or call: 877.226.9212 And stay abreast of developments by following them on Twitter: @Assistly

Earlier this year I stayed in a New York City hotel where I was scheduled to deliver a presentation on customer service.

Shortly before my talk, I met the hotel’s beverage director who asked if I had any feedback for him pertaining to the hotel’s food and beverage outlets.

I shared a couple of pieces of feedback and then added that I was surprised that, with a selection of a dozen different beers on tap in the bar, there was not a pale ale option.

He responded, “Have you tried the Brooklyn Lager?”

I said, “Scott, I’ve tried Brooklyn Lager but I’m interested in an ale, not a lager.”

Unswayed, he said, “I’d stock a pale ale but the kegs are $169 each—which is a lot more than the others.”

“Scott,” I said, “I’ve never once stopped a bartender from pouring a beer in order to confirm the price beforehand. Neither will your customers.”

As our conversation ended, I made my way to the front of the room to deliver my remarks and noticed that he remained in the meeting room to hear my talk.

Later, when I returned to my hotel room following the presentation, I found an amenity from Scott containing a single bottle of ice cold Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The accompanying note included a quote from the presentation: “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.”

That was in February. Just now, out of curiosity, I phoned the hotel bar in New York City to see if a pale ale was now being offered. Sure enough, this spring they added a tap for Captain Lawrence Pale Ale.

According to the bartender I spoke with, “It’s a good seller.”

The next time you go out to eat, pay attention to the question you receive from your server or the hostess as you leave the restaurant. Most of the time, the question you will hear is this: “How was everything?” And I can even anticipate the likely response: “Fine.”

A close-ended question evokes a close-ended answer. It is efficient but cannot provide the sort of feedback required to improve upon the current product and service quality. This type of question is also unlikely to uncover any dissatisfaction the customer may have experienced. It’s worth noting that, according to consumer research, 96 percent of customers who experience a problem do not complain. Ironically, while customers tend to withhold their criticism from service providers, they have no problem sharing their negative experiences with anyone else who will listen.

“Fine” is an incomplete answer to an insufficient question. “F.I.N.E.” is simply an acronym for “feelings inside not expressed.” This is why it becomes imperative for service providers to ask better questions. The next time you hear a customer say “Fine” in response to a well-intentioned but insufficient question, sirens should go off! You should hear, “Wrrrrrr, wrrrrrr, wrrrrrr!!!” This is your cue to ask a better, focused open-ended question!

The conversation will go something like this:

You: “How was everything with your meal?”

Customer: “Fine.”

(sirens) Wrrrrrr, wrrrrrr, wrrrrrr!!!

You: “Thank you. Tell me, if there was just one thing we could do to improve your dining experience next time, what would that one thing be?”

Pause.

Customer: “Well, now that you mention it, there was just one thing…”

From there, it’s up to you to capture the feedback and share it with others who can respond to it. If practical to do so, let the customer know that her feedback was shared as well as the changes and results that followed. In this way, the customer becomes a very real stakeholder in the success of your business.

Besides, who wouldn’t want to return as a customer to see her feedback reflected in the menu, atmosphere, service—or whatever aspect of the experience pertained to the feedback?

My family and I recently dined out at a quick service Mexican grill. While I was providing my order to the prep person behind the counter, I observed the sales transaction of the customer who was ahead of me. At no point during the transaction did the cashier smile or even make eye contact with the customer. In fact, the irony was that the customer said “thank you” as he accepted his receipt. Even so, she still did not acknowledge him.

We have all experienced this level of apathy from “service providers” at restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, etc. In fact, we may have just become accustomed to it. Our expectations, in some cases, may have been dulled by the frequency of mediocre service that we encounter as we dine, travel, and shop.

This was a reminder to me that it would have cost nothing more for the cashier to make eye contact with her customer, to smile, and (with “life” in her voice) say, “We appreciate your business. Thank you for coming in.” Or, a bit more daring, “Thank you for coming in. If those burritos don’t fill you up, come on back. We’ll make more!”

You see, that would have been interesting. That would have been unique. That would have brought a smile to the customer’s face and the experience would have been memorable. But, instead, the cashier just went through the motions, touched each transactional base (e.g., input order, process payment, provide receipt), and robotically, dispassionately moved on to the next functional sequence to satisfactorily process the next transaction.

It brings to mind what I would expect on an assembly line. Imagine an assembly line worker producing a children’s doll. Let’s say the final step in the process is to attach the doll’s head. The worker lifts a doll’s head from a large box, pops the head on the doll’s torso, and twists it firmly until it locks into place. One by one, the assembler “lifts, pops, and twists” the dolls’ heads until his quota is met or his shift ends. Tomorrow he will return and repeat the process over and over again (i.e., “Lift, pop, twist…Lift, pop, twist…) until the end of another workday.

The restaurant cashier may not have been working on a doll assembly line but the behavior was the same (i.e., Order, payment, receipt…Order, payment, receipt, etc.). Expressionless, robotic behavior devoid of any personality may be permissible in a factory environment or warehouse where there are no signs of real, live customers—as long as certain production quotas and delivery schedules are met.

In a customer-facing position, however, the behavior must be different.

In the current economy, while costs are increasing, pricing pressure is forcing businesses to reexamine their pricing strategies. In the case of restaurants, that may mean reducing portions, prices, or both. In the case of hotels, it may mean lowering their rates to increase market share, reducing amenities, trimming labor hours, and other “profit protection” strategies.

These are tough decisions that are indicative of difficult economic times.

Most operators seem to accept that the answers to navigating a recession are found in budgets, productivity reports, and P&L statements. While fiscal responsibility is necessary regardless of the economic landscape, the real key to sustained rapid improvement is to focus your people on focusing on customers. It costs nothing but a little proactive thinking and your time—which, especially in this economy, is time well spent.

Here are some examples:

Create awareness at pre-shift meetings:

“Who would like to describe for the group, in your own words, the difference between the role of an assembly line worker and your role as customer service providers?”

Reinforce standards through positive feedback:

“Emily, I noticed the way that customer responded to you after you thanked him personally by name. That’s just the sort of reaction we’re hoping to get with every customer. Great job!”

Reinforce standards through corrective feedback:

“Oscar, your eye contact and smile are great and your use of guests’ names is coming along. How can I help you to get better?”

Model desired behavior at all times:

As managers and supervisors, your decisions and behaviors (verbal and non-verbal) are constantly being scrutinized by others. As author Bob Farrell says in his training video, Leadership Pickles, “What they see is what you’ll get.” If employees detect management’s skepticism about a corporate initiative, then they too will be skeptical. If management acts with indifference toward customers, then employees will feel justified in doing so as well. What they see is what you’ll get.

Superior service doesn’t cost anymore to provide than mediocre service. Oh sure, it may require a few minutes of dialogue here and there as well as a concerted effort on the part of managers and supervisors to model the behaviors that are expected from their employees, but that’s no more than is already expected from a competent leader. I recall reading a Gallup statistic that revealed 65% of US employees surveyed claimed to have received no praise or recognition for their job performance in the previous year. Consistent, informal feedback from a credible source (i.e., one who practices what he or she preaches) will address this.

By applying these informal suggestions frequently, a service-based business will create more goodwill with its customers that will translate into enhanced loyalty, referrals, and repeat business. And here’s the best part: there are no buttons or banners or expensive, large-scale rollouts required. The only requirement is for managers to consistently apply the basic principles of communication, feedback, and recognition that embody leadership.

I recall a Gallup statistic from a few years ago that 65% of American workers claim to have received no recognition in the workplace in the previous 12 months. If that’s true—as it apparently is for those workers—then ask yourself, “How might I be contributing to this perception by employees that they are receiving no recognition?”

To illustrate, here’s an example of how my 6 yr. old son, Coleton, felt slighted—even though he had been affirmed by his first grade school teacher:

I had been preparing for a training course involving statistics and offhandedly mentioned to Cole that there was a mathematical “pi” in addition to the dessert “pie.” He seemed puzzled (as would most 6 yr. olds) so I explained to him that the “pi” used in advanced mathematics is of great importance in connection to continued fractions, logarithms of imaginary numbers, and periodic functions. After my explanation, he looked at me with wide eyes, then squinted, and said, “Can you do this (as he moved his eyebrows up and down)?”

Okay, so maybe he was a little young for an explanation of “pi.” I did soften it a bit by calling it “a secret fudge factor” and told him that, if his teacher asked, pi was equivalent to (approx.) 3.14—which he seemed to grasp. He brought it up to me a couple more times to let me know that he remembered the value of pi was 3.14 and I told him that if he shared that with his teacher, then she would probably move him up to the fifth grade!

Of course I was kidding but Cole was determined to impress his teacher. So the very next day at school, he mentioned his new found fact to her.

As he recalled the conversation, he walked up to his teacher as she was preparing for story time and said, “I know that pi is equal to 3.14.” She responded, “That’s correct” and resumed her preparations. Cole said that, as he sat down on the carpet with the other kids, he thought to himself, “I should have got more encouragement than that.”

The moral of this story is that, while you may be thinking that you recognize co-workers all the time by saying things like, “Good job!” and “Thank you,” the reality for your co-workers may be that these canned responses to their workplace performance are meaningless.

What they may be longing for (and consider to be true recognition) is something more specific such as, “Good job acknowledging Mr. Larson as a repeat guest. I bet that made him feel welcomed” or “Thank you for staying late and covering my section while I dealt with that billing issue.”

Cole’s story was a great reminder to me that in order for recognition to be effective, it has to be meaningful to the recipient. It was also yet another example of how my kids teach me things everyday.

What about you? Have you benefited from this post? Will you be a bit more specific in the recognition you share with others today?

As a trainer or presenter, you are likely accustomed to receiving feedback from your audiences. There are always a couple of pieces of conflicting feedback I can count on: temperature of room (too hot for some, too cold for others); and length of session (too long for some, too short for others).

Other times, there are constructive pieces of feedback that make a lot of sense (e.g., “the discussion following the simulation seemed to drag,” or “I couldn’t see the screen clearly from where I was seated”). The idea is to use this constructive feedback to improve. For instance, during my next presentation I’ll make sure to watch the time and group’s body language during the discussion following the simulation. I’ll also be more attuned to the room set-up to ensure that everyone can clearly see the screen.

So far, so good but have you ever received – from multiple sources – feedback that truly left you perplexed? I recently received feedback from a training session that “more examples” would have been helpful. While I agree that examples are vital to assist participants in transferring theory to application, I was surprised to receive the feedback because (by my count) I had included 62 separate examples over the course of a two hour presentation – that’s an example every two minutes!

I later met with the group contact and shared my confusion with this particular piece of feedback. He reassured me by saying that it only represented the views of a couple attendees out of an auditorium full of people. Still, it’s important to recognize the legitimacy of every single perspective in the room.

That got me thinking about individual and unique learning styles. They’re referred to differently depending on the source you’re citing but generally they distinguish between a learner’s preference for theory or practice, fast or slow, people or things, etc. We all have our own set of highly-evolved, nuanced preferences and tend to operate out of these preferences by default – especially when stressed (as in speaking before a large group…).

My take away: This was a great reminder to me that, while I had prepared 62 examples in advance, every participant would filter these examples differently based on his or her own unique background and set of preferences (e.g., job role, learning style preference, etc.).

Many of the examples were contained in the PowerPoint presentation or workbook. Perhaps I could share more of them orally in the future? Most of the examples were prepared in advance. Maybe I could be more spontaneous next time? The great majority of examples were my own. It might be more effective to solicit the majority of examples from the group during my next presentation.

How about you? Do you have any examples (no pun intended) of perplexing feedback from your own presentations?