emilymanahan

Today, a patient repeatedly called into the clinic asking to speak with a specific nurse. Each time, the nurse told her the same information. Late in the afternoon, this patient was transferred to me, again asking to speak with a particular nurse. 

I asked her to hold while I checked to see if this nurse was available.

I talked with the nurse who gave me the information and I assured her that I could handle the call.  When I picked the phone back up, I said “I was able to catch the nurse as she was walking into a meeting.  She asked me to tell you to follow up with your primary care doctor to confirm they’ve received the information.”

“Well, before I got disconnected with her last time, she told me she was checking on something for me.”

“My apologies.  What she told me was to have you follow up with your primary care doctor to confirm they’ve received the information.  It sounds like that is probably the next best step.”

She sighed.  “Well, I’ll call them right now.”

“Perfect. Do you need anything else?”

“No.”

“Have a wonderful day!”

An important task of being a customer service staff member is to serve as the “first line of defense” for these types of calls.  Many of these can be handled by the customer service staff member directly without escalating them to another staff.  The easiest way to intervene in these situations is to say, “Well [insert name here] is on break right now. Is there something I can help you with?” 

This forces the person to articulate their concerns.  Knowing what someone is looking for is the first step to being able to adequately help them.

I was listening to the “Your Life, Your Relationships” podcast recently and I learned a really interesting fact.

Psychological studies have shown that random reinforcement in relationships work better than regular reinforcement.  Basically, this means that randomly complimenting someone on something they do well will be better received than regularly complimenting them on everything.

Take a moment to ponder how you can apply this to your relationships.  Do you think this will help or hinder your working relationships?

It is also possible to spend too much of your time focusing on “fixing” your weaknesses so that no one can notice them.

I don’t believe that this is helpful.  Your time would be better utilized if you spent it figuring out what you do well and how you can do it better. 

Knowing your strengths does not negate your weaknesses.  But utilizing your strengths first and improving (instead of 100% fixing) your weaknesses will make you an incredible team member.

So, a couple of questions as we close this post

• What are your strengths? 
• How do you currently use them?
• Could you use them differently? (Perhaps to bring improvements to your current ways of doing things?)

Being aware of your weaknesses is one of the steps toward success.

Several years ago, I was told in an annual review that I needed to work on my “gray areas.”  Specifically, my boss told me that she saw me as a black and white person who wanted to have rules and guidelines to stick to.  In the next 10 minutes, she explained that my position was filled with “gray area” problems.  Basically the solution was, learn to be more flexible. 

Walking out of that evaluation, I began to consider what I needed to do to “be more flexible.” It was important to me to improve in this area because improvement was necessary for success in my job.

Over the following months, I began asking questions as I was handling these “gray area” situations.  Increasingly, I found myself working with people and tailoring my solutions to fit their realities. When they’d explain why they didn’t pay their monthly membership bill, I would explain that we would need to receive the membership payment.  Rather than demanding full payment in that moment, I asked what was realistic for them.  In some cases, I found that they could pay 50% of the debt this month and the rest the following.  In other cases, I found out that they could start paying the debt 2 months later after they’d gotten things straightened out.

Every situation was different, and every solution was different and unique.  As my boss had predicted, flexibility was a prerequisite for success.  By being aware of my weakness, I was able to recognize where I could make improvements to increase my ability for success.

In the past, I’ve worked with people who ignore their weaknesses.

These people are easy to spot because they are perpetually defensive. They seem convinced that someone is going to challenge them and are eternally prepared to fend off those challengers.

Example A

I recently gave a compliment to one of my coworkers.  When I mentioned that I noticed she was becoming more confident on the phones, she turned to me and said “Um, yeah. I’m not concerned. I know I’m doing a good job.”

I considered this to be an odd response to a compliment.

Example B

Later, she spelled someone’s name incorrectly while they were watching her type.  He remarked on the mistake and she said, “Well, sorry, I can’t type correctly with someone looking over my shoulder.”

Do you know anyone who is perpetually defensive?

If so, how does that affect your relationship with them?

Areas of improvement, weaknesses, things I’d rather ignore.

Regardless of what you call it, we all know that everyone has weaknesses.  That is a reality as much as the law of gravity is.

Just like you can’t fight gravity, you can’t always fight your weaknesses.  They will always be there, it is what you do with them that matters.

There are 3 options.

• You could ignore them.
• You could recognize them.
• You could work to “fix” them.

I’ll cover these different options in a series of three upcoming blog posts.  Stay tuned!

Complaining, especially in the workplace, is usually unproductive and makes you sound petty.  Last week, I heard someone complaining about one of the office’s processes.  Her counterpart agreed and suddenly they were caught in a cycle of, “You’re right, that does suck.”

Complaining brings the energy of the working environment down.  While it is perfectly valid to have concerns, it is all about how you frame those concerns. Instead of focusing on the negative, articulate why you don’t like a particular process.  What is it specifically?

Once you’ve figured out what the flaw is, propose a different way to handle it. Come up with your own solution.

Then, when you present it to your colleagues, you can say “It bothers me the way we currently do this.  Do you think it would be more successful if we tried doing it this way?”

Good customer service is not personal.

Today, I witnessed a staff member eject a volunteer coach from a basketball game.  The coach was not being outrageous, aggressive, or a disturbance.

However, he was asking for clarification about several calls that the refs had made.  He was challenging them because he’d disagreed with the calls.  Most simply, he wanted to understand.

Seeing the situation, the league staff member came over to intervene.  After a few moments, he ejected the coach from the gym.  When I spoke with the coach later, he told me that he was ejected because he had stood up in his conversation with this league staff member.

Later I found out that the coach was not surprised that he’d been ejected.  He explained that this staff member had gotten frustrated with him in years past for challenging the “status quo” and challenging some of the questionable calls that the refs made.

A lot of things bothered me about this situation.  The strangest thing was that the league staff member went to the coach after the ejection and spent significant time justifying his choice. If the ejection was truly supported by the rules, it seems like no justification would be necessary.

As someone experienced in customer service, I recognize that sometimes you must eject rowdy outrageous people to control the situation.  However, if you use your power to eject someone who is relatively calm in an already controlled situation, it isn’t needed. And you’re abusing your power. 

A better way to handle this would have been to step in and ask what he could do to help.  If the situation escalated from there, he could have explained that the rules were x, y, z and offered options to resolve the situation.  If it continued to escalate, then ejection would have been more appropriate.

All staff are involved in the customer’s experience.  If a staff member comes out heavy handed (i.e. “you’re out of here”) it doesn’t make a positive impression on anyone. Additionally, if a staff member comes down heavy-handed on someone he’s had challenges with before, it’s personal.

Lesson here: When you’re at work, be professional.  Give people second chances.  If they truly create problems, then take the needed steps to remove them.  But if you take the needed steps to remove or punish them WITHOUT them creating problems, you’re not creating a good experience.