The Gist
- Change is challenging. Acknowledging the difficulty of altering habitual behaviors is crucial for effective organizational transformation.
- Listen, then engage. Training employees in active listening and questioning improves customer satisfaction and complaint management.
- Incentives matter. Incorporating rewards for desired behaviors in customer interactions fosters change among frontline staff.
More often than not the biggest barrier to the adoption of a new behavior is not our lack of intention, rather it is our nature that readily succumbs to our habits. An initial attempt to do something new almost always competes with the urge of doing something else we’re used to doing. We are creatures of habit. We are hardwired to avoid the hardship of changing our ways and venturing into doing something new, especially when the associated reward is distant, ambiguous and uncertain. Let’s take a look at organizational change when it comes to sculpting a new customer service experience.
Active Listening: Organizational Change for Better Customer Service
So how can a CX leader who wants to change how things get done in their organization take on this challenge of organizational change?
For example, you want your frontline employees to listen and ask questions before trying to offer a solution to a complaining customer. Doing so is against our very urges, especially if one is brought up in a stand-your-ground-culture like the United States. We do not sit back and listen to someone dump their anger on us, right? However, decades of research in complaint management tells the CX leader to establish a behavioral policy dictating frontline employees to listen first, engage later. Research shows that this active listening approach softens the blow when the company cannot offer the solution the customer was looking for. How is this change going to be possible?
Related Article: Building a Culture of Organizational Change Acceptance
Training Frontline Staff for New Engagement
Obviously, we start with letting the frontline employees know about the new order of customer engagement. The most common approach is to couple this instruction with training about the hows and whys of this change. It helps, but training alone seldom establishes enough willpower to carry out the new thing in the heat of the moment.
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Incentivizing Change in Customer Interactions
Then comes facilitating change via using employee incentives. Let’s insert a new question about the extent to which the customer felt like he/she was able to fully express himself/herself to the representative in the follow-up survey. This would allow for the CX team to track and incentivize the instances in which the sought after effect was observed. Definitely helps, but it does not really assist the employees who cannot take the first step by themselves. Only those who somehow change their behavior would reap the rewards, others will be stuck in their old ways and complain that the new incentive system is unfair.
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3 Tips for Successful Organizational Change Initiatives
Changing a habitual behavior is hard. Acknowledging this fact requires a employee behavioral intervention that goes beyond instructing to change, providing training about how to do it and incentivizing it. Here are the three pillars of a successful behavioral intervention:
Tip No. 1: Use a Reminder Until a New Behavioral Pattern Is Established
Reminders work best when they are delivered at the right time and at the right place. In our example, when an employee gets to the screen for service recovery, a simple pop-up reminding the new engagement rule would make a huge difference. The trick with reminders is that they should be vivid and brief. A rule of thumb may be to have a text less than 10 words, preferably coupled with a colored visual aid. The effectiveness of such reminders can be enhanced significantly by using insights from the literature on behavioral priming.
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Tip No. 2: Reconfigure the Journey to Make the New Behavior the Default One
The design of a decision environment has a tremendous impact on how people perceive what the natural course of action is. The problem is that we underestimate how powerful even a trivial change in the environment can be. In our example, making the textbox to enter the complaint bigger in size, changing its location on the screen, dividing it into three boxes, adding a visual effect after a certain amount of information is added, requiring a scroll down to view the available solution are amongst an endless array of available actions that could nudge an employee toward naturally behaving in line with the new engagement rule without even pondering it. Reconfiguring the journey to make the new behavior the default one not only reduces resistance to change, but also fosters task satisfaction of employees.
Related Article: Related Article: Digital Transformation in Customer Experience and the Butterfly Effect
Tip No. 3: Provide Immediate Feedback
The most difficult step is always the first one. We don’t know what to expect. Hence, after trying the new behavior we often cannot be sure if we had effectively pulled it off. Did it make a difference? If yes, in what magnitude? Has anyone noticed it? This uncertain and ambiguous nature of the aftermath of the first attempt to adopt a new behavior might well be the foremost cause for reverting to old habits. Therefore, providing immediate feedback is crucial for fostering clarity, making the effort spent to carry out the new behavior meaningful, and building momentum within an organization.
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Final Thoughts
In essence, organizational change requires a multifaceted approach that goes beyond mere instruction and training. By implementing targeted reminders, reconfiguring the decision environment, and providing immediate feedback, CX leaders can effectively guide their teams toward new, desired behaviors. This strategy not only facilitates a smoother transition but also enhances the overall satisfaction and performance of employees, ultimately leading to a more responsive and customer-centric culture with better customer interactions.
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