Keep customers 14 of 19 in this group
SOP 161
Give customer service reps an empowerment wheel
What this page is for. Use it once your customer service team answers from templates and you want reps to put things right for a customer without going to a manager each time. It gives the reason for the wheel, what sits on each side of it, a limit on what a rep decides alone, and the options one business gave its reps.
SOP-161-Give-customer-service-reps-an-empowerment-wheel.md
1. Why reps need one
You want people to be able to act without asking their manager about every single thing that happens. The aim given is to create four actions a rep can take to over-deliver and delight a customer, and so create raving fans. The picture used for this is an employee empowerment wheel. Once you have one, this is where you can create those actions from.
Templates on their own are not the end of it. The customer service playbook of templated answers comes first (section 6 of SOP 152 — Sell a second product at ten to nineteen people). At this point you do not want only that playbook: you also want to empower the people on the team to over-deliver and delight a customer. For that, you have to tell them which things they are allowed to do.
2. What needs approval and what a rep may do alone
The wheel sorts a rep's decisions by whether they need approval: its dark part holds what does, and its other side holds what a rep may act on alone.
| Part of the wheel | Examples given | How it is handled |
|---|---|---|
| The dark part: needs approval | A contract or a legal issue; a major operational decision; regulatory issues | The rep has to get approval |
| The other side: a rep may act alone | Minor things: a public communication issue; a direct customer communication; a minor operational decision; a credit; a refund issue; discounting somebody or giving them a bonus | You empower reps to solve these in their own way, and you write templates for how to solve them |
Every item on that other side is something you can give a rep the power to act on, to delight the customer.
3. Set a limit on what a rep decides alone
If somebody asks for a $20,000 refund, that is something you probably want the manager to decide. The question put next is: what if you said reps can make any decision up to $2,000 for the customer?
The example offered: a luxury hotel chain is said to give every employee up to $2,000 per guest per day to over-deliver if they mess up. The employees then have options: five ways they can spend that $2,000 to delight a customer.
4. Offer to make it right, not only to refund
In one business described, when the business made a mistake with a customer, a rep could of course refund an upset customer up to a certain amount, with no approval from the manager at all.
However, most people do not want a refund. They want it made right. They want what they wanted in the first place, which is your product or service: they just want the result.
So the reps there were given three options:
- They could offer an upgrade, for free.
- They could offer time with one of the business's senior coaches, for free.
- They could send a personal custom gift, up to a limit, without having to ask. This page gives no figure for the gift limit.
Those three were the options given to the reps inside their empowerment wheel: actions they could take to delight the customer.
5. What this page does not decide for you
- Which four actions. The aim is four actions a rep can take; no list of four is given. The hotel chain's example has five ways and the one business has three options. Not established on this page.
- What the hotel chain's five ways are. Not established on this page.
- Where your own limit sits. The $2,000 is put as a what-if, beside a $20,000 refund you probably want the manager to decide. Not established on this page.
- How far a refund may go without approval in the one business. This page gives no figure for the refund limit.
- What the templates for the act-alone side say. Not established on this page.
6. The checklist
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| Playbook first | The templated answers come first |
| Needs approval | A contract or a legal issue, a major operational decision, regulatory issues |
| A rep may act alone | Minor issues, solved in the rep's own way, with templates for how |
| A limit | Decide what a rep may do for a customer without a manager; one what-if is up to $2,000 |
| Options | Ways to make it right besides a refund: in one business, a free upgrade, free time with a senior coach, a gift up to a limit |
7. What this page does not cover
Asking a customer to buy the next thing, and when, is SOP 162 — Build an ascension path with five points to ask. Grading reps against service standards, where the customer is the one educated and empowered, is SOP 144 — Hold support to five service standards and grade each rep.
Terms defined on this page
- Customer service playbook
- Ready-made replies to the most common questions in the three to five categories that make up most support requests, so a given question always gets the same answer. It comes before the empowerment wheel.
- Employee empowerment wheel
- A diagram that splits a rep's decisions between ones needing sign-off, such as contracts, legal, regulatory or major operational matters, and ones a rep may make alone, such as credits, refunds, discounts or bonuses.