Category: Client –

When you think about mobile devices and their impact on the in-person customer experience, have you considered that nearly 2 billion people will have Smartphones by 2017? If not, you should!

You should also consider how your employees serve these distracted customers.

• Do your new accounts personnel approach waiting customers, only to find them with their heads down, texting away?
• Do your servers wait for diners to look up from their cell phones?
• Do your retail associates stand awkwardly while a distracted cell phone talker holds up the line?

From restaurants to banks to retail stores and beyond, busy associates encounter the same challenge – customers who multi -task with cell phone conversations, texting or using an Ipad. In response to this growing phenomenon, we wanted to take a closer look at the ways that distracted customers impact customer experience in these industries.

Mobile-crazed Diners

Rather than embracing mobile trends, some restaurants simply ask customers not to use their cell phones inside their locations. For example,

CARY, N.C. – Confero, Inc. (https://www.conferoinc.com), a national customer experience measurement firm, has announced that president and CEO Elaine Buxton was a preliminary judge for the 2012 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Buxton was one of 93 business professionals worldwide selected as a judge for the world's premier customer service awards, contact center awards and sales awards. The 2012 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service were presented on Monday, Feb. 27 in a ceremony at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

“Our entire team was so proud to receive the Stevie Award for Customer Service Consulting Practice of the Year last year,” said Buxton. “This year, I thoroughly enjoyed serving as a judge. There are so many firms executing on well-planned customer service strategies. The nominees were indeed

People tend to do those things for which they are rewarded. To encourage employees to provide the customer service promised to our customers, employee incentive and recognition programs are put into place to reward employees who engage in desired behaviors or who achieve specific outcomes.Â

Desired behaviors can be measured by mystery shopping programs, manager reports, audits, customer feedback measures and performance reviews. Specific outcomes can be measured by sales amounts, referral numbers and the like.

No incentive program is perfect and, over time, sometimes employees figure out a way around the system to “earn” the incentive. In other words, sometimes employees “game the system”.

Here are some common games we see. We hope they help you in planning to avoid them.

The Game: Trick the Technology

If an organization uses technology alone to measure key service metrics and reward performance with incentives, the system is usually an easy target for gaming the system.

The modify the order trick. A mystery shopper overheard a training conversation at the first of two drive through windows at a quick service restaurant. When the mystery shopper attempted to hand the employee payment, the mystery shopper heard the trainer saying “No, never just accept the payment. Always be sure to click on Modify Order then click Ok before you accept the customer’s payment. This will restart the timer on our transactions so our service times will look good.”

The ring up single items as multiples trick. At a grocery store checkout, the cashier entered a fresh bagel purchase as

Are QR codes confusing to you? They were confusing to us at first, too. Mostly, we found them confusing because, at Confero, we use the term Quality Review (QR) to refer to our detailed process of quality assurance for each mystery shopping or audit report. We are now getting used to seeing “QR” (Quick Response) codes everywhere. If you have customers who have Smartphones, “QR Code” is a good term to understand.

QR codes are those odd looking square patterns that seem to be cropping up everywhere. If you have not noticed one, look at most any print magazine ad and you’ll find one easily.

 Here’s how they work:

Steady customer traffic is what every retail company wants in its stores, but do companies perform as well during the unexpected busy times as they do for the expected high-volume periods?

Companies benefit from an increased number of customer visits only if associates meet customer demands during the rush.  To do this, companies need to prepare an approach and strategy to adapt for larger crowds.  Companies anticipate busy times, such as the holidays, by stocking up with the right items, carrying items within the appropriate price ranges and learning from past holiday trends about which items to carry and how many.   As Inc.com points out, some companies prepare well for the fast-paced holiday selling time by instructing employees to be honest about possible wait times.