Protect Your Reputation In The Workplace

It is so easy to ruin your reputation in the workplace with one simple mistake or misjudgement. 

It could be something as simple as taking extra time for lunch thinking nobody is looking, or coming in late just a few minutes each day or something that borders on theft such as taking home notepads, pens or pencils.  While the value of these items may be minor, the thought that will cross anyones mind is “if they are taking home a notepad/pen/pencil – what else are they taking?”. 

You want your reputation to be like sterling silver, gold or platinum where you work.  The people you work with are like an extension of your family.  Consider that you’re probably spending in excess of 8-hours per day with them.

Two things that can damage your reputation easily are workplace e-mails and voice mails that are replied to, or forwarded without thought.

E-Mail in the Workplace

You’ve just been lambasted about not doing something, in a fit of anger you decide to reply and in doing so pour your guts into the e-mail message.  Oh you didn’t have any intention of sending the e-mail, but accidentally you hit SEND and the message is gone.

Problem one – you’ve said some rather nasty things in the e-mail.  This person won’t be happy, but you can deal with one person – right?

Problem two – as you take a closer look at the e-mail, it’s sent to the ENTIRE TEAM!  Now, how do you fix that?

Solution for Workplace Email

First thing – NEVER, EVER send an e-mail when you’re angry or in a strong emotional state.  It just isn’t worth it.  You will say things you don’t mean and words written down are very difficult to recant.  Microsoft Outlook has a feature that allows you to recall messages – but normally it will only work if the receiver hasn’t already read the message and if they allow it.  It doesn’t happen magically without anyone knowing.

Next – set a delay on your e-mail to something like 15 minutes, so that it checks the server every 15 minutes and  only then will it send or receive any new mail items.  This gives you some grace time.

Here is how to do this.

From Microsoft Outlook go to TOOLS, then OPTIONS and select MAIL SETUP from the tab.

Next, click on SEND/Receive… BUTTON:

Set the “Schedule an automatic send/receive every” setting to any number that you like.  I’ve set mine to 15 minutes but I can still force send by pressing the Send/Receive button on the Outlook toolbar.

Note that I am using Outlook 2007.

Third – REMOVE the names in the “TO” field.

Remember (and I tell this to my team all the time) – what you say in an e-mail is there forever.  Over the last few years, we’ve seen what happens when companies delete e-mails, so many companies will archive e-mails and keep them for an indefinate period of time.

I keep all my e-mails, with the exception of SPAM or other automated reports.  I can go back to when I first started at my present employer and pull out e-mails.

Voice Mail Problems

I hate to admit to this one, but I made this mistake – ONCE.  It will never happen again.

I get a voice mail from one of my developers, saying that they are having problems getting a hold of the Business Analyst for the project and that they have some questions.  Rather than listen to the entire message, I happily forward it to the analyst.  Bad move.  The first part of the message was nice.  The last half was very critical of the analyst.

Now while there might have been truth to the message, it wasn’t the best move on my part.

The simple solution – listen to the ENTIRE message before you decide to send it to anyone.

What happened in this case?  I met with the analyst, and the developer and we talked it out.  All ended well, but was it ever embaressing for everyone involved!

The developer learned – NEVER, EVER leave nasty voice messages.

The analyst learned – REPLY to your e-mails and voice messages in a timely manner.

I learned – Listen to the ENTIRE message before it’s forwarded to anyone.

In todays business environment, e-mail and voice mail and even instant messaging play an important part in communications and as such we need to be even more diligent in what we are sending out.  A message spoken may have more or less impact that an e-mail – however an e-mail is a permanent record of what was said, and you can’t try and explain the meaning of the message to anyone – the message is black and white (unless of course you try to be coy in your message).

Protect your reputation in the workplace - don’t send an e-mail when you are in a charged emotional state, clear the TO field or better yet – leave the e-mail and respond when you’ve had a chance to cool off.  Voice mails – listen, listen, and listen.

I’ve not even touched on the dozens of ways you can ruin your reputation through the use of social media like Facebook, MySpace or the dozens of other social networks out there — including image hosting services like Flickr. 

We’ll leave social media and Web 2.0 for another post but let me leave you with something I found while looking for an appropriate image to add as part of this post:

Everything that you post on any site can effect your online reputation for better or worse. People may become more attracted to you and be willing to listen to anything you have to say or may ignore your from there on out, regardless of the quality of the content you add to the community. It is for that reason, that in this Web 2.0 world where interaction and user input is key, that you never let your reputation come under fire. This can only be accomplished by being critical of any material you choose to add to the web. Otherwise, the reputation of 1000 days could be tarnished by a single post.

image & source of the quote - http://beyondtheonewayweb.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/a-final-note/

Customer Service Definition

What is the definition of Customer Service? Is it simply helping a customer? Is it giving the customer a positive experience? Is it answering their questions?

How is this:

• Customer service is an organization’s ability to supply their customers’ wants and needs

How about this one:

• According to the ACA Group customer service is the ability of an organization to constantly and consistently give the customer what they want and need.

I think that that definition, from the ACA Group is accurate.

You want to be able to give consistent service to your customers.

On my team, I have a few individuals that shine all the time. They consistently deliver high quality service to our merchants. They also consistently recieve letters, and e-mails from those same customers about the quality and level of service that they have been able to deliver.

Maybe they get a commendation one for outstanding customer service – fluke. A second time – they got lucky. But how about the third, fourth, fifth… well, you get the idea. These people are good. They ensure every i is dotted and every t crossed. They don’t leave anything to chance. They check everything.

Why don’t the others?

Tough question to answer. Some perhaps were, and are now tired of the constant level of effort required day-in and day-out over the last few years. Some became agents because of the flexibility it provided, others because they didn’t further their education and possibly others because they no longer enjoy the work. Regardless of the reason you will always have people that shine and others that may glimmer every now and then.

Shine VS Glimmer – this is not just in Customer Service, but in any business area. When I was actively involved in Information Technology (IT) there were colleagues that always went above and beyond what they had to do. Their code was always “perfect” – they ran through their test cases in an efficient manner. They would find shortcuts and tips to help make their jobs easier. They would spend time looking at the best practices. They were excited about their work, and they enjoyed what they did.

Then you had the programmers, systems analysts, and even project managers and business managers that didn’t really care. They did just enough to keep themselves above the bar. You know – they are coasters.

I’ve seen this in Accounting and even in more technical areas of IT. I know someone that spends thousands of dollars (of his own money) to stay on top of the latest hardware and technology so that he can tackle anything anyone throws at him. He’s good. He’s very good. But he lacks people skills, that gets him. When something doesn’t work, and he knows its the clients fault, he lets them know. Not good.

How can you develop Customer Service agents of that calibre? It’s difficult. Lets face it, Customer Service isn’t for everyone. You’re asking someone to spend at least 7 hours per day on the phone (the other time is spent for breaks and personal development or other activities that are required). If you are in a high volume call center, your agent could be taking 10-20 calls per hour. If you’re in a low volume call center, perhaps 20-40 calls per shift. Or you could be providing complex support, which requires you to handle 1-2 callers per day but each call could take days to resolve.

Good customer service needs to happen consistently.

The ability to consistently deliver high quality customer service is what will set your company apart.

In my case we provide support to merchants that operate point of sale activation terminals. The paper has jammed. The terminal will not connect. They don’t have pricing set-up. Their IP connection doesn’t work. While the problems sound easy, it can take up to 30 minutes to resolve some issues. Our call center also provides support for financial products and gift cards – that adds a lot more complexity to what the team does, though I’ve approached support differently for these products.

In order to provide positive consistent customer service you need several things in place:

• Solid training
• Efficient distribution of product knowledge
• Knowledge base to track “random” bits of information
• Methods to keep the team in the loop with product launches
• Sufficient technology in place to ensure that processes are being followed

When you look at the list above – and by no means is this a complete list – you can clearly see that there is a cost associated with running a customer service center. When you look at companies like ICBC (Insurance Corporation of British Columbia) whose Customer Service group wins awards and scores high on exit polls from their customers you know that the company and its executives have decided to stand behind what they do. ICBC isn’t the only company – there are others out there that score high on the providing good service; I mention ICBC because I had a chance to visit their call center and speak with their employees.

Some companies opt to farm out their customer service — I can think of a Canadian telecommunications provider that did and speaking from personal experience, it was the wrong thing to do. I no longer make use of their services due to the total lack of professionalism that farmed out company had and the manner in which they treated their customers. I wasn’t the only one. When you keyed in the company name you would find many complaints about their service.

Many companies in the telecommunications field are farming out (the right term is outsourcing) their customer service. Provided the put in place proper processes, then service will succeed, and customers will be happy. But as soon as those processes fail, service also fails.

Good service doesn’t just happen, you and your organization need to make it happen by putting the resources in place to ensure that you can provide quality consistent service.

Upcoming posts on Customer Service:

• Good customer service
• Customer service tips
• Customer service skills

Pay Raises Are the Worst in 33 Years

Not a title of my own choosing, but an article I just recently read in Time magazine.

Yes, it’s true, we’re in a recession, and nearly 1 in 10 workers is unemployed. There are plenty of people willing to work for less money. But in other recent recessions salary growth hasn’t slowed this much. Going back to the early 1990s, base salaries never increased by less than 3.4% a year, according to Hewitt, which polled 1,156 large companies to get its latest data. Companies desperate to slash costs are turning to worker salaries more deliberately than they have in the past. Some 48% of companies have frozen salaries this year, compared to just 2% last year.

Here is the link to the article – Pay Raises Are the Worst in 33 Years.

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