New hires were struggling in the contact center.
The reason was a mystery to the customer service leader. Her company had a comprehensive training program, a dedicated trainer, and supportive supervisors. Yet it was taking new employees too long to get up to speed.
The leader and her team had been working on the issue for months. She finally asked for my advice, and was surprised when I helped her find the solution in just a few minutes.
Is it because I'm a wizard?
No, not really. I simply used a problem-solving technique called the Five Whys. You can use it to quickly get to the heart of many customer service challenges.
Here's what it is, and how you can use it too.
How does the Five Whys technique work?
Many customer service challenges aren't clearly defined, which makes them hard to solve. Here are a few examples:
We're getting too many complaints.
Employee turnover is too high.
We need to get everyone on the same page.
You need something much more specific if you want to solve the problem.
For example, why are we getting too many complaints? The solution will be completely different if the root cause is a defective product versus surly employees.
The Five Whys technique works by asking the question "Why," until you get to the real root of the issue. The average is thought to be five times, hence the name "Five Whys."
Here's how I used this technique to help the customer service leader diagnose why new hires were struggling to do their jobs:
Me: Why do you think new hires are struggling?
Leader: New hires are making a lot of mistakes.
Me: Why are they making mistakes?
Leader: They don't remember basic procedures.
Me: Why don't they remember basic procedures?
Leader: We don't spend enough time reinforcing basic procedures in training.
Me: Why don't you spend enough time reinforcing basic procedures in training?
Leader: Because we spend a lot of time covering exceptions and special processes.
Me: Why do you spend so much time covering exceptions and special processes?
Leader: Because we want agents to be aware of them.
The third question was the lightbulb moment. It was an insight that was only obvious in hindsight: new hires weren’t getting adequate training on the skills they needed most.
The fourth question brought a little more clarity and then the last question was the show stopper.
The current training program inundated new hires with procedures they might use once every three months. By the leader’s own admission, this was more for awareness since customer service agents were likely to forget them.
The heart of the issue was these procedures were given equal time with more common procedures that were used on a daily basis. The result was new hires weren't getting a chance to master the basics.
Armed with this insight, the customer service leader completely transformed the training program.
The new focus emphasized the basics so employees could master skills they would use every day. New hires were then taught to identify exceptions and ask for help, which is what they had been doing any way. Agents didn’t need to know what the specific exception was, only that it didn’t fit in with standard procedures.
The result was fewer mistakes, shorter training time, and better productivity.
Take Action
Try using the Five Whys technique to solve one of your own customer service challenges. Ask the question, "Why?" until you get to the heart of the problem.
Learn how to quickly diagnose and solve more customer service issues with my LinkedIn Learning courses, Quick Fixes to Attain Excellent Customer Service. Here’s a preview: