SELECT THE RIGHT PLAYERS

Without the right people on your team, no customer service intervention will be effective. That’s why the critical next step is to conduct a straightforward assessment of each team member. You must assess them in terms of their capacity and inclination to participate in the customer service mission with enthusiasm and diligence.
You have to be prepared to remove low-level performers, work on improving mediocre ones, and build your team, step by step, into one filled by only high-level performers.

Assessment Formula: Ability, Skill, Will

How do you assess the performance capacity of individual team members? At Rainmaker Thinking, we have developed a simple performance-evaluation formula that focuses on three categories:


1. Ability. Does the employee have the natural talent and inclination to perform the necessary tasks and responsibilities? If someone lacks the ability to perform, you must either change some of that person’s assignments or remove him or her from the team.
2. Skill. Has the employee learned the information and techniques to perform the necessary tasks and meet the necessary responsibilities? If someone lacks the skill to perform, you must either provide additional training or remove the person from the team.
3. Will. Does the employee have the necessary internal motivation and external incentive to perform the required tasks and meet the required responsibilities?

If someone lacks the will to perform, you must do one of three things: (1) ask that person to generate the motivation, (2) provide additional incentives, or (3) remove that person from the team.

This formula—ability, skill, will—is immensely useful in evaluating an individual’s performance, working with an individual on broad self-evaluation, and developing individual
performance improvement plans.

Selecting the Right Players: Key Steps
All together, there are seven important steps to this part of the intervention:
• Step 1. Conduct the assessment as explained above, evaluating each team member in terms of his or her ability, skill, and will to perform great customer service. Be honest with yourself. Prepare to be honest with your employees. Identify potential peer leaders, high-level performers, those whose performance needs improvement, and those whom you deem hopelessly low-level performers.
• Step 2. Remove hopelessly low-level performers.
• Step 3. Focus on team members whose performance needs improvement. Prepare to have a one-on-one meeting with each of them based on the initial, “ability, skill, will” assessment. Focus on concrete opportunities for improvement, set specific performance-improvement goals, and ask each member to commit to improving performance. Be
sure to hold follow-up sessions on a regular basis.
• Step 4. Based on your initial assessment, your one-on-one meetings, and your follow-up sessions, make a second round of decisions on removing individuals from the team. Once you have made a substantial effort to help them, remove those who are not meeting their specific performance improvement goals.
• Step 5. Review and revise your hiring process and your hiring-selection criteria based on what you’ve learned from your rigorous assessments of individual team members. Are you testing prospective hires for customer service ability, skill, and will? Are you gearing interviews toward these priorities? Are you gathering concrete proof that the prospect has the personal characteristics and attitude required to interact effectively with customers?

Are you making it clear to prospective hires that high performance with respect to customer service is the only option on your team?

• Step 6. Identify potential peer leaders among your high-level performers. Prepare to recruit and train them so they can help you train and coach other employees in customer service skills and behaviors.
• Step 7. Now you are ready to pull the team together and really get them engaged in, and committed to, your new customer service mission. This step initiates the second stage of the intervention, laid out in greater detail in Part 2. In essence, you will call a series of special team meetings—on- or offsite, depending on your resources, schedule, and preference. In the initial meeting (or first series of meetings), you will introduce your new customer service mission and engage your front-liners in team and individual assessments. You’ll begin training on the fundamental principles and skills of customer service, and gear them up for the creative activities and ongoing training that will be part of your ongoing intervention.