Expanding your influence

- One of the first personal development books I ever read was Stephen Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." It contains a number of lessons that can be used in customer service, in business, or even in life. One of the lessons that's always stuck with me is to focus on what you can control and stop worrying about what you can't control. There might be times when you are asked to solve a problem that's beyond your control. For example, a staffing shortage might cause longer wait times than normal making customers impatient as they wait for service. A supply chain issue might cause a popular product to be back ordered, making customers frustrated that they can't get what they wanted right away or a new law might require your company to change a policy that annoys customers who like the old way of doing things. I've adapted a technique from Covey's book to help you overcome these types of obstacles. I'll use an example from a software company to explain how the expand your influence exercise can help you identify solutions to solve customer's problems. The software company just released an update to its most popular program. Unfortunately, the update caused two issues. First, it had several bugs that caused the software to stop working properly. Second, the new version of the software was much different than the old version so customers didn't know how to use it. This caused an unexpected avalanche of customer service phone calls. At one point, customers were waiting on hold for an hour. The technical support reps who answered these calls didn't cause these issues, but they were still able to use the expand your influence exercise to find a way to provide their customers with better service. The reps started by drawing a circle on a piece of paper. Outside the circle, they made a list of factors they cannot control such as the new update has bugs, the update is hard to use, and the team did not have enough staff to handle the call volume. Next, the team made a list of things they can control inside of the circle. Empathize with customers to try to make them feel better, show customers how to use the new software and demonstrate new features that customers might not be aware of. After doing this exercise, the support reps realized there was a lot more they could do to help customers feel better and solve issues on the first call. Within days, call volumes started declining and the average wait time was cut in half. There was still some upset customers but the support team was doing more than they originally thought possible. You can try the expand your influence exercise anytime you face a challenging problem that seems like it's outside of your control. You can download the Expand Your Influence Worksheet to help you with this exercise or just use a piece of paper. The problems you'll face are sometimes outside of your control but you can still provide outstanding customer service when you find a way to leave each customer better off at the end than they were at the beginning.