On Sunday, February 10, Carnival Triumph, a cruise ship became stranded in the Gulf of Mexico as it was on its way back to port. The engine had caught on fire, resulting in a loss of electricity throughout the ship. It made nationwide news, if not worldwide, and it was covered through a variety of mediums, including print and online newspapers. The ship had to eventually be tugged to Mobile, Alabama–its original destination was Galveston, Texas–and it Mobile late on the night of Thursday, February 14. Originally, Triumph was supposed to reach back to Galveston on Monday, February 11.

 Unforeseen Circumstances

Imagine about 4,000 customers becoming angry, impatient, anxious, and scared. Imagine about 4000 customers having to wait for three hours for a hamburger, and imagine about 4000 customers without electricity, and broken sewage. And of course, all of this is happening in the middle of the ocean, on a ship.

Two of my close friends were on Triumph. I was very curious to hear about their experiences on the ship, and I was able to catch up with one of them on Friday, which was the same day he had gotten back to Lafayette after what must have seemed like a 20 hour car ride, I imagine.

When I asked him about the trip, the first statement he made was that they had a great time. When I asked him if the media was reliable in its coverage, his answer was threefold. He said some of the information was exaggerated, some of the information was true, and some of the information was somewhat true. He again said that they had a wonderful time. Then, without asking about the crew members and staff, my friend brought them up, saying that they were great throughout the whole experience. He said that they were still nice, and that they were trying their best, with what they had, or didn’t have, to make them feel as comfortable as possible.

I actually didn’t think about it until my friend mentioned it–when I thought about the Triumph situation, I was just really thinking about the customers or passengers, and my friends; however, just like the customers, the staff  and crew members were in the exact same scenario. Not only were they in the exact same situation, but they also had to cater to 4000 or so customers. That’s a lot of pressure and stress to deal with while being stranded out in the middle of the ocean, and according to my friend, they handled it with great diligence and kindness–reacting to unforeseen circumstances, out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

What does a healthy organizational culture look like?

The Institute for Business, Technology, and Ethics (IBTE) has developed Eight Traits Of A Healthy Organizational Culture (Fostering A Sharp Customer Focus). The IBTE believes that any good organization must have an inspiring, shared mission at its core–and it must have capable leadership in place and in development. Assuming these two factors are present, the following eight traits define a healthy organizational culture:

1. Openness and humility from top to bottom of the organization. Organizations whose executive management team does not mind getting their hands a little dirty succeed more than those who don’t. These organizations learn what works and what doesn’t work from the doers in order to build more effective processes, etc.
2. An environment of accountability and personal responsibility. Denial, blame, and excuses harden relationships and intensify conflict. Successful teams hold each other accountable and willingly accept personal responsibility.
3. Freedom for risk-taking within appropriate limits. Both extremes–an excessive, reckless risk-taking and a stifling, fearful control–threaten any organization. Freedom to risk new ideas flourishes best within appropriate limits.
4. A fierce commitment to “do it right”. Mediocrity is easy; excellence is hard work, and there are many temptations for shortcuts. A search for excellence always inspires both inside and outside an organization.
5. A willingness to tolerate and learn from mistakes. Punishing honest mistakes stifles creativity. Learning from mistakes encourages healthy experimentation and converts negatives into positives.
6. Unquestioned integrity and consistency. Dishonesty and inconsistency undermine trust. Organizations and relationships thrive on clarity, transparency, honesty, and reliable follow-through.
7. A pursuit of collaboration, integration, and holistic thinking. Turf wars and narrow thinking are deadly. Drawing together the best ideas and practices, integrating the best people into collaborative teams, multiplies organizational strength.
8. Courage and persistence in the face of difficulty. The playing field is not always level, or fair, but healthy cultures remain both realistic about the challenges they face undeterred by difficulty.

On the contrary

Julie Rains of Wise Bread gives some telltale signs of an unhealthy organizational culture. She says that if you are observing these signs in your organization, chances are your ailing culture will need work.

If you find your organization exhibiting any of the following behaviors, it may be a sign you may have an unhealthy culture.

1. Playing favorites. Some employees have frequent contact with you, resulting in a strong bond. He or she pleased with you and your company. But others don’t get much support—coaching, mentoring or encouragement—from their managers and colleagues.
2. Bending the rules too much. As a caring boss, you make sure that employees have the time off and extra resources to tend to urgent personal needs. But many of your team members may be frustrated by the low productivity of these high-maintenance employees.
3. Employees fear taking risks. Your team members seem reluctant to introduce innovation, despite your encouragement to adopt new approaches. If you’ve blamed your employees for missteps when they made good-faith efforts to execute new initiatives, you haven’t adopted the right approach to employee growth.
4. Employees are defensive. Whenever you rightly point out an area that needs improvement or a problem that needs a remedy, employees react defensively. If honest dialogue is rare, then employees don’t feel supported enough to function effectively.
5. Employees give only positive feedback. People may not complain because they sense that negative comments are unwelcome. Or they may fear repercussions.
6. Talented people giving average performance. Talented people want to deliver great results, not only for your business but also for their resumes. If your star employees are delivering average sales, productivity and profitability, they are not getting what they need from you.
7. Customers complain often. Customer responses to your company reflect their treatment by employees, particularly your front-line staff. Lots of complaints means the culture you’ve tried to create has either not reached everyone or seems so contrived that customers are dissatisfied rather than delighted.
8. Hearing bad news too late. You are unable to salvage relationships because customers abandon your company without fair warning. The complaints that seemed like isolated minor concerns turn out to be really serious ones. Customers are frustrated with your company’s failure to provide them with fresh, relevant solutions to their problems. And your employees are discouraged about the company’s ineffectiveness.
9. Issues are repeated in meetings. If you hear about the same problems over and over, it’s likely that there is little or no effective action being taken to deal with them.

 For more on organizational culture

I received an interesting follow on twitter from a company featuring an intriguing customer service application recently. Talk to the Manager gives businesses an outlet for their customers to anonymously contact a manager to communicate compliments and concerns about service via text message.

People have several reasons for not voicing dissatisfaction with the companies they do business with. Companies that are great at customer service are constantly and actively seeking feedback about their products, their people, and the customer experience. One tough barrier to crack is that giving negative feedback to a business can sometimes be time consuming. Many dissatisfied customers would rather leave unhappy than wait ten minutes while someone at a counter goes to retrieve a manager to discuss a problem. Another is that some people simply are not comfortable expressing dissatisfaction.

The obvious risk is that if you don’t provide an outlet for your customers to give you feedback they could take to the Internet and share their concerns with the general public. Then things can really get out of control.

An anonymous text message can breech both barriers at once. It’s an interesting concept and seems like it might make a great tool to people who deal with a lot of customer foot traffic at their physical locations. It might make a great tool for a practice manager at a doctor’s office as well who is interested in feedback from patients about their waiting room experience. I’d love to know if anyone out there has any experience with the product.

When you think of the word “coach” what may come to mind is your childhood soccer coach, the coach of your favorite team or even your role on your child’s basketball team. Bringing the word “coach” into the workplace or a business environment can take on a completely different energy around the word “coach”. But is it really that different?

Coaching, by definition, is the process in which one individual takes on the role of teacher while the other individual takes on a learning role in which to achieve a specific goal. Coaching in a business environment can be formal or informal and can happen on many different levels including executive coaching to team-based coaching.

Individuals who assume the role as coach have a very specific set of core competencies that make them successful. Among them are the ability to practice high ethical and professional standards, to build trust and intimacy with a client, to actively listen, and to create awareness. It is important to note that great players are not always great coaches just as great coaches are not always great players. To read more about core competencies as coaches, click here.

What Coaching is Not:

In recent years, there has been some confusion over the word “coach” as it has been brought into the business setting. Some may refer to it as the discipline conversation or performance review that happens between a supervisor and employee (commonly human resources related). Others have associated coaching with the term, mentor, which is geared more towards listening to problems, finding solutions and complementing it with some “mentoring” on how to get the desired results.

However, a true coach is one who asks questions that lead to a better understanding of whom you are, rather than tell you what to do. The assumption that exists is that individuals have the answers within and that all that is needed is a fresh pair of eyes.  They key word here is “empowerment”, which “refers to increasing the spiritual, political, social, educational, gender, or economic strength of individuals and communities.”

To read more about what coaching is “not”, click here.

Dexcomm’s Return on Investment

The return on investment for business coaching can be exponential. Here at Dexcomm, we’ve found that our investment has helped us to increase our bottom line, re-engage our employees, work smarter and reclaim individual rights as a part of work-life. In turn, the level of service that we have been able to bring to our clients since our commitment to coaching has experienced significant growth. Our ability to provide real-time feedback to our staff using various coaching methods has benefited us greatly, and the added empowerment to our staff helps them to serve our clients better in each moment of service. To learn more about Dexcomm, visit us at http://www.dexcomm.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

Over at prweb.com, there’s this article called, “ShinyReputation.com Reveals Tips That Will Keep Customers Happy and Coming Back.” It talks about interacting with customers, and it provides some helpful tips. These are tips that companies should adhere to, already, but it’s nice to be reminded of our goals when helping customers. Here is the first tip from the article:

“It is important to treat the customer with the utmost respect at all times even when the customer may not always be right. Most patrons will recognize when they have been difficult and may comment on sites such as Yelp on how the business and its employees reacted to a particular situation.”

Notice that it states…”even when the customer may not always be right.” This can be tough some times, or perhaps, most of the times; however, to establish a solid reputation, companies should strive to go beyond the natural inclinations of dealing with a tough customer and provide excellent customer service no matter the situation. By building a good reputation, the word will spread around, especially with the Internet, recommendations or gripes can be easily communicated to the world. The tip above also refers to online venues that serve as a rating and review system for various service industries. One such site, as stated above, is Yelp. There’s even one for teachers.

Keeping track of what customers are saying about your business, whether it’s good or bad, can provide great insight with what is or is not working for your company. Perhaps, the customer’s review will help one to make changes to better serve its clients. Or perhaps, the customer’s review will let the company know that they’re on the right track. Sometimes the reviews can be bitter; however, take it all into consideration, and of course, if you were to respond, respond with grace and compassion. Building a positive reputation can be hard work, but it’s worth it as the companies mentioned in the linked article are now getting great exposure for their excellent customer service practices.

Dexcomm – Baton Rouge, LA

Dexcomm – Corporate Office

“If you look at companies lauded for their superior customer service, you almost always find that those companies create a culture that supports excellence in customer service. It’s not that they simply train their employees in customer service skills” (Robert Bacal)

What is Organizational Culture?

Every business has a culture that exists within the structure of the organization. Organizational culture can be seen in values, customs and traditions within organizations as well as the professional atmosphere that is reflected in how their employees’ dress, conduct and ways of communicating internally and externally. The objective is to have an organizational culture that supports the goals of the organization. Business experts call this having a healthy organizational culture.

How Can a Healthy Organizational Culture Influence Customer Service?

“A healthy company culture that focuses on providing excellent customer service, regardless of their products and services, will have a much easier time teaching, coaching and reinforcing employees on the significance of providing excellent service.” (Sweeney, 2011)

There are many other benefits of having a healthy organizational culture. Kevin Eikenberry, the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, says that there are seven reasons organizational culture matters, “These seven benefits can help to reinforce existing customer service strategies and can contribute to greater results.” (Eikenberry, 2006)

1. A strong culture is a talent-attractor. Your organizational culture is part of the package that prospective employees look at when assessing your organization. Gone are the days of selecting the person you want from a large eager pool. The talent market is tighter and those looking for a new organization are more selective than ever. The best people want more than a salary and good benefits. They want an environment they can enjoy and succeed in.
2. A strong culture is talent-retainer. How likely are people to stay if they have other options and don’t love where they are? Your organizational culture is a key component of a person’s desire to stay.
3. A strong culture engages people. People want to be engaged in their work. According to a Gallup survey at least 22 million American workers are extremely negative or “actively disengaged” – this loss of productivity is estimated to be worth $250-$300 billion annually. Your culture can engage people. Engagement creates greater productivity, which can impact profitability. Need I say more?
4. A strong culture creates energy and momentum. Build a culture that is vibrant and allows people to be valued and express themselves and you will create a very real energy. That positive energy will permeate the organization and create a new momentum for success. Energy is contagious and will build on itself, reinforcing the culture and the attractiveness of the organization.
5. A strong culture changes the view of “work.” Most people have a negative connotation of the word work. Work equals drudgery, 9-5, “the salt mine.” When you create a culture that is attractive, people’s view of “going to work” will change. Would you rather see work as drudgery or a joy? Which do you think your employees would prefer? Which will lead to the best results?
6. A strong culture creates greater synergy. A strong culture brings people together. When people have the opportunity to (and are expected to) communicate and get to know each other better, they will find new connections. These connections will lead to new ideas and greater productivity – in other words, you will be creating synergy. Literally, 1 + 1 + right culture = more than 10. How is that for leverage?
7. A strong culture makes everyone more successful. Any one of the other six reasons should be reason enough to focus on organizational culture. But the bottom line is that an investment of time, talent and focus on organizational culture will give you all of the above benefits. Not only is creating a better culture a good thing to do for the human capital in the business, it makes good business sense too.

For more information regarding return on investment and statistics of a health organizational culture, click here to learn about the Denison Model Statistics.

Works Cited

Eikenberry, K. (2006, March 19). Seven Reasons Organizational Culture Matters. Retrieved March 4, 2013, from Ezine Articles: http://ezinearticles.com/?Seven-Reasons-Organizational-Culture-Matters&id=164337

Robert Bacal, B. &. (n.d.). What is a customer service culture? Retrieved March 4, 2013, from Customer Service Zone: http://customerservicezone.com/faq/culturewhat.htm

Sweeney, M. (2011, July 14). The Impact of a Healthy Organizational Culture on Customer Service. Retrieved March 4, 2013, from Bright Hub: http://www.brighthub.com/office/human-resources/articles/121405.aspx

Dexcomm presented Dr. Charles Dugal, MD with an award of professional excellence. The Adaptability Award honors an individual or organization that provides a distinguished level of service to patients by maintaining a sense of order and focus of care without pause.

Dr. Dugal, a member of the Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center Primary Care Physician Network, provides Acadiana patients with exceptional care and focus. Dr. John Charles Dugal is a graduate of the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans.

“Recognizing Dr. Charles Dugal’s commitment to patient care, patience, and good humor with Dexcomm’s Core Value Award is an honor,” expressed Dexcomm’s Customer Service Manager Karl Schott. “He exemplifies professional excellence with his adaptability in the face of challenging circumstances to attend to his patients. Our staff has enjoyed serving Dr. Dugal for several years and values his dedication to care excellence.”

Dexcomm is a Louisiana-based corporation that provides communications and answering services to businesses and service agencies across the United States. Our company recognizes those individuals or organizations which share its core values of excellent customer service and commitment to serving others.

Dexcomm has been providing telephone answering service since 1954. In that time we have used many different methods to determine customer billing. Consistently throughout that time our largest expense has been our operator salaries. Beginning in 1996, we began using operator time to determine our billing to customers. This allows us to match our revenue with our expenses. Reducing the operator time required to service an account allows us to control our costs and allows us to pass our cost savings along to our customers.

Account Management

• Review the information that you ask our operators to obtain for you to see if anything is redundant. 
  • For example, is asking for your caller’s address necessary?
  • We can revise the amount of information we give out to your callers, and the amount of information we take on your messages.
• Regularly update the information that we have about your company.  If we have outdated employee information, it may take longer to deliver your messages.
• Create an automated announcement of office hours prior to an operator answering.
• Moderate or eliminate intra-company calls.  Make sure your employees have phone lists handy so that they don’t have to always call us to reach a co-worker.
• Give your family members your private office number or back line so they can call you directly without using operator and patch time.

Dexcomm Answers

For more ways to learn how to lower your answering service invoice with Dexcomm:

Let us know when you are available to schedule an invoice analysis. Our Customer Service Department and Business Office will listen to your goals and suggest options to reduce your monthly invoice.

Find out how using our Web Portal and Web OnCall can help you. Contact us and we would be happy to give you a demonstration.

Tour Dexcomm and receive $100 off your next invoice.

Creating a Healthy Culture

Dexcomm‘s  Steffy Ritter, has a few tips when it comes to best practices on creating a healthier organizational culture. Organizational culture wasn’t always a priority here at Dexcomm but when our president, Jamey Hooper, focused on long-term growth for the company, he quickly realized that in order for Dexcomm to grow, it needed a sound foundation.

With Jamey’s long term growth plan in hand, Dexcomm’s Culture Committee was born. The Culture Committee consisted of employees from various functions of the company and started out by defining Dexcomm’s Core Values.

Dexcomm’s Culture Committee

The Culture Committee gave Dexcomm the momentum to work on other culture programs like:

• Introduce a more competitive benefit package
• Invent new games for employees to play while they are working
• Serve potluck lunches
• Have Secret Santa during the holidays
• Present fun instructional videos
• Encourage feedback from employee surveys
• Create a fun family-oriented atmosphere that includes special support during weather events like hurricanes and floods

The Culture Committee was also instrumental in creating teams to address the Dexcomm Strategic Implementation Plan.

Teams included:

Palace and Gardens

Mission – To insure the building and grounds at Dexcomm are safe and in top condition to help us achieve our goal of appealing to customers and employees.

Goal – To create a safety checklist for Dexcomm, and to ensure that all items on the checklist are in proper order initially.

Watson Come Here

Mission – To insure excellent communication with all customers and employees.

Goal – To develop and implement a customer communication system.

Hello World

Mission – To insure that we reach our goal of 5,000 employees by achieving at least 20% annual growth in revenue.

Goal – To develop and implement a marketing plan allowing us to achieve 20% growth.

Give Back

Mission – To facilitate Dexcomm and its employees enhance our community with philanthropy and volunteerism.

Goal – Implement a plan for Dexcomm to participate in charitable activities each year.

Service Excellence

Mission – Insure that Dexcomm remains in the very highest tier of answering service providers in the nation.

Goal – Develop a strategy to achieve and maintain statistical superiority in appropriate categories such as QA, time to answer, calls no message %, hold time and long rings.

Focus on Us & Fun

Mission – Insure that Dexcomm has a superior work force allowing us to achieve all goals.

Goal – To recruit outstanding applicants meeting our core value and skills needs while maintaining an employee turnover of less than 15% annually.

Toys

Mission – Insure that Dexcomm always has outstanding technical capability allowing for achievement of all goals.

Goal – Complete construction and maintenance of Dexcomm website.

Dexcomm’s Return on Investment

Immediately following the implementation of the new culture-focused programs at Dexcomm in 2009-2010, the company started to see a return on investment:

• Decreased turnover
• A shift in employee morale and a general change in the work environment
• Decreased absenteeism
• Increased applicant pool
• Improvement to the  quality of customer service

Managing multiple phone lines in your business can be very challenging at times. Mismanaged phone lines can lead to angry customers and frustrated employees. Dexcomm wants to help small businesses learn effective ways of achieving successful customer service results while handling multiple phone lines. Here are a few useful customer service tips for handling multiple phone lines to think about when getting your space set up.

Workstations:

Great managers and supervisors know that in order for their employees to be successful, they must provide them with the proper tools and techniques they need to succeed. For phone operators who are handling multiple phone lines, this means having the appropriate workstation available.

If your small business has only one person answering phones and greeting visitors, the front desk may be the most optimal space. But if your business has multiple phone operators, an area away from visitors may be more appropriate because of the noise associated with multiple operators. In addition, if your business does have multiple operators, it will be important to ensure that they can hear over each other. You may consider using cubicle walls or spacing the workstations out enough so that they can properly hear their callers.

Quick Tip: Workstations should be ergonomically set up to avoid safety concerns with repetitive motions. Click here to assess the ergonomics of your operator workstations.

Headsets or earpieces are another important tool in helping your operators to achieve success. The latest technology includes options like wireless and blue tooth. Hands-free devices allow operators to take better notes, decrease the repetitive motion of using a traditional phone and increase the amount of movement and flexibility for multitasking. Multitasking activities can include things like greeting visitors and taking deliveries while continuing to manage the phone lines.

If your phone operator is responsible for managing the front desk, consider having a window for privacy during phone calls or another way for the operator to notify a visitor that he/she is on the phone. One important consideration is the Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPAA) and legalities around what visitors overhear when they are waiting to be greeted by your front desk person.

Phone system capabilities are another important part of having the right tools in place for achieving successful customer service results. Features like call recording, logging, caller id, voice mail, ease of use, ringing options, hold music or service listings and voice over IP are all features that should be considered when assessing phone systems. 

Having a computer or standardized forms for your operators’ availability can help with message taking, note taking, form completion, customer resolution issues, etc. Assess what is unique to your business and set up systems for effective client management for your operators. Also consider having a system to allow operators to notify a supervisor or backup when in need. Consider a chat feature, a help button or other form of notification.