I had a tremendous opportunity to speak with, interview style, Lynn Costlow*, vice president of customer service for U.S. Cellular®. The conversation can be read in its entirety, but I wanted to highlight a couple of the questions and answers, as they really drive home some points worth noting. I want to again thank Lynn for her time.
Question: Some companies are using social media to get closer to their customers but they’re not succeeding because they don’t already have a strong connection with those customers. U.S. Cellular® has a strong personal interaction with its customers based on your high level of customer service. How do you transfer that personal interaction to an online forum?
Our customers are the reason we’re in business. It’s amazing to be part of a culture in which the customer is discussed in every conference room and in every meeting and in every conversation. I haven’t seen anything like it until I came here. As we embark on this journey into social media and online support, we would never take action to try to minimize the shouting that happens online in a way that would shut down our customers. Every word about our company on social media outlets offers us an opportunity to try to figure out how to help a customer feel differently about us. Obviously, we can’t be in every forum, but we respond to as much as we can. We want to help people and so we ask if we can call them. We invite them to be on our earnings call; we try to help them through social media.
My commentary: Really successful companies put the customer at the center of every conversation. From Amazon.com to USAA conversations about customer experience, customer satisfaction and value to customer are the center of the conversation. U.S. Cellular is in great company with an approach like this. What the text does not highlight is the passion in Lynn’s voice when she was answering these questions. This was not PR spin or an angle, this was genuine ‘ this is how we do things around here ‘
How do you share your passion for customer service internally? What impact does that passion have on your customers and their experience when they talk to a call center representative?
You can apply the customer experience to anything in your business or personal life. I don’t believe you have to have a passion for what you do to get your job done. But when you do have passion for your job and you show it and articulate it and live it, it’s a catalyst for high performance. I have people who would literally follow me off a cliff even if they saw that it was a cliff. That makes things easier when we have really tough challenges because people know that I am in it with them and I support them. When they know that I have them in mind, they trust the decisions I’m making at the corporate level. It creates momentum and energy that helps me be more fluid in making business decisions.
My commentary: Again, with a question about passion, Lynn’s voice lit up and it was easy to hear. I found it interesting to hear Lynn mention that you do not need to have passion to get your job done. The ‘but’ is that high performers do have passion. I would also add that leadership with passion is contagious. Leading by example (a few members of her team were on the call, and the “off a cliff” comment was confirmed). The team also knows that Lynn ‘has their back’ another critical internal trust issue. Lynn talks about creating energy. There are two types, this is the good type!
Again, the full text can be read here. I will be adding more commentary in the next few days.
(Lynn oversees customer interactions in the company’s retail, telesales, and care center environments. And she leads more than 2,100 associates who handle more than one million customer interactions every month.)