195: The Perfect Support Email with Leslie O’Flahavan

Charlotte Ward: 0:12

Hello and welcome to episode one hundred and ninety-five of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. This week we're talking about the perfect support email. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I would like to welcome to the podcast today for the first time, Leslie O'Flahaven. Leslie, it is lovely to have you. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm so pleased to get such an expert on language in on this week's conversations about the perfect support email. But before we get there, um would you like to, for the benefit of our listeners, introduce yourself?

Leslie O'Flahavan: 0:58

Yes, sure. That would be great. Leslie O'Flahaven, my company is called eWrite. That's ephen W-R-I-T-E. So you know I've been in business a while because we don't use the hyphen anymore in e-words. I'm based in the Washington, DC area. And in a nutshell, my company's mission is to help people learn to write well at work. And I spend a lot of time helping frontline customer service agents learn to write better email, chat, social media, and text because I honor the work they do. I think their work is difficult and uh they do it really well, and I want to support them.

Charlotte Ward: 1:37

That's amazing. Um, and and you know, writing is such an integral part of most frontline support agent roles now, isn't it? I think I read a uh a survey um just this week, which is something like 89% of all customer service organizations offer email support um specifically. And I guess that's kind of an umbrella term. We say email, we can sometimes mean like through a portal or something, but it's this longer form written communication, whatever the actual platform, um, whether we're actually typing it into an email client more realistically, just into Zendesk or something equivalent, right? So um so written skills are really important. Um, we we don't do much pure phone support or pure face-to-face support anymore. Um so, and I think it's something that actually is quite difficult to assess as well. Um, and I think it's also that's it's something that's quite difficult to coach for. So I'm kind of interested to hear um over the like maybe we can explore both of those angles, you know, the like the assessment, like how we check for those skills and maybe also how we help people develop the skills in the way we need them to develop and and communicate in the way they we need them to communicate in in the role that they're in at that time. Um what's your what are your thoughts first of all on just um understanding people's skills in this area, particularly when we're hiring, perhaps? Have you um you know a great deal of experience in kind of getting involved in the hiring process or at least assessment of one way or another of those skills?

Leslie O'Flahavan: 3:24

Yes, indeed. I I don't think it's impossible to assess people's writing skills before we hire them. But for an authentic assessment, it may be more time-consuming than many organizations realize, or uh than they want to invest in someone they haven't hired yet, you know. But uh we can measure some writing skills in um mechanized, automated, or superficial assessment methods. Some we can. For example, you know, does the person know how to use capitalization correctly? Do they know how to end a sentence with a period correctly? This we can test quite easily, but the more decision making any writing skill involves, the more we need to use authentic and open-ended assessment methods. And if you go back to your days in school, that's the difference between closed-ended assessments, a true-false quiz or a multiple choice quiz. An open-ended assessment is the short essay. And and these open-ended assessments uh see demonstrate how a prospective hire makes decisions in writing. And that's what we really want them to do is make decisions in writing. So, here I am, I'm I'm being considered for a job at your company. You give me an incoming email from one of your actual customers. You give me enough information in a fact sheet, in a knowledge base article, or in even a set of bullet points so that I have the information necessary, the facts to answer. Can I compose an answer? Can I decide? Do I explain the solution to the problem or the reason for the problem first? If the knowledge base article includes more information than the customer needs, can I omit information I have access to, or am I compelled to just kind of barf it all into the response? So, we what we shouldn't do is cheap out when we're assessing writing skills. If we really want to know whether the person has the writing skills, or whether we will have to coach them and train them to develop those skills, we have to invest the effort that it takes to find out. It is absolutely doable, but it is not an automatic process.

Charlotte Ward: 5:49

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I I I actually um I think that you touched on a few things there that are really interesting and I and I hadn't really thought about in terms of assessing writing skills when I'm hiring. You know, I I do check. I I for you know basic grammar and things like that. And but there there is there's a softer aspect to this. You know, I'm checking for clarity, I'm checking for whether someone is able to pitch the conversation where I ask them to pitch it. So for instance, I'm going to give you some technical information, I'd like you to explain it to a non-technical audience, something like that, and just kind of get a sense for like that kind of translation is something that I'm often after. But I love the idea of like also extending that into making decisions in the writing process, as you said, like deciding what you should put in and what is okay to leave out. And um that's really interesting.

Leslie O'Flahavan: 6:48

In my curriculum, in my approach to helping people develop writing skills, I've put uh writing skills, there are so many of them, I put them in two big buckets. One I nicknamed small picture writing skills, and they require knowledge of and obedience to a rule. And the other big, big bucket is what I call big picture writing skills, and they require decision making. So, you know, can you interpret technical information and explain it to someone who lacks technical knowledge? Can you uh read analytically and carefully enough to figure out what your the tone of your response should be? These are all big picture writing skills. And we we all know people who have small picture writing skills, their writing is clean, the spelling is accurate, the punctuation is accurate, the grammar is correct, and they lack decision-making skills, the big picture skills. And there are other people who have the flip, and they're quite interesting, aren't they? They have wonderful big picture writing skills and they lack the small. Their writing is incredibly untidy, untidy to the extreme. And it's embarrassing sometimes because their spelling is so poor. But when you think about the overall effect, the impact that uh poor small picture skills have on customer experience, it's rather low. We get ourselves in a twist when we see spelling mistakes. We get offended and sweaty, and you know, how could you possibly be intelligent if you chose the wrong spelling of the word there? But if the overall quality of the response is extremely high in all the decision-making skills, uh, in general, customers will forgive a spelling error, as they'll certainly forgive a keyboarding error. So when when you want to know if someone's ready to do the job, you have to know do they have both kinds of skills or do they lack one or the other?

Charlotte Ward: 8:51

And I think I I think that's um, as you said, I think customers are very, very willing to forgive, particularly keyboarding error and the occasional spelling error. But I think there is a there's kind of a threshold, isn't there, at which, and maybe it's difficult to measure what that threshold is. Um, I don't know if like somewhere a computer out there is probably able to say, yes, a percentage error uh across this many thousand words, like margin of error is acceptable to a human being. But um, so I I would love to, if anyone out there is listening, I'd love to know what that percentage is and like where I fall on that skill, because I feel like I'm I'm quite I'm quite at the anal end of judging the judging the small picture skills in some ways. Um but so I think there is a threshold that customers are are kind of willing to trust you and go along with you in um on the small picture skills. Um but the big picture ones are so important when it comes to communicating and and everything you just said about assessing them, getting those people in the door. I think I think maybe they're harder to coach as well than the small picture skills.

Leslie O'Flahavan: 9:58

Would you say no, I wouldn't. Oh, oh yes, the big picture skills. I thought you meant the people who have them. No, you are. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big picture skills are much harder to coach, but it is possible to uh foster growth. It is absolutely possible. In my work, I am a hopeful, future-focused writing teacher. I do not think we should give up on anyone unless that person has some kind of neurological difference that is profound enough that they simply cannot express themselves in writing to the professional degree they can when they speak. That does happen. And you and I have both know them, known to people like that, and it's actually quite stunning because you hear the person on the phone and they're kind and they're eloquent and they're prepared and they they have these wonderful phone calls, and they simply can't reproduce that performance in writing. That's usually because of a language-related learning disability, and no amount of conventional coaching is going to change that. There, there's some extraordinary and professionally specific coaching that can change it, but just run of the mill, my QA lead, no.

Charlotte Ward: 11:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So, so let's think about then once once we have someone in the door who we have, you know, um assessed to possess moderately adequate levels of both of these skill sets. Um and and we want them there to produce the work. So we we need them to talk to customers. Um I'm interested then in how we um how we build an environment in which those people that we've put that trust in can flourish. Um, and how we build an environment that I I guess I guess my first my first thought immediately is like to consistency. Um I want somebody who's going to fit in with what the rest, assuming I have another the rest of the team and I'm not starting from scratch. Um how how do I strive for consistency and what else should I be striving for in emails to my customers?

Leslie O'Flahavan: 12:14

Well, what a great question, because we could we sometimes see consistency that's also poor, you know, we see poor performance uh across the board. So the if you if consistency is important, if you want the team members to give the same answer and to sound alike, if that's what you're asking, then of course you need a well-maintained library of stored knowledge in some form. Is it is it full email responses that require some customization in the template library? Is it portable modular paragraphs or even sentences that the frontline agent can combine? So consistency comes from uh consistent training practices as well as useful, well-written, and easy-to-find stored knowledge. Uh, I I'm not sure we always want consistent, correct answers, and we want agents to respond in the company's brand voice. You we want that. And I think that outside of the uh uh stored knowledge that's well maintained, we want lots and lots of coaching and reflection on how writing works well. And I I have a model for coaching, especially full teams, that's not time expensive, but it is quite productive. And that's simply to set aside ample time, twice a week if you can manage it, and once a week if you can't, to simply reflect on good samples, real samples. You know, it's it for for the trainer's effort, that's rather low effort for the trainer, because we can find one or two good examples of a response to a customer each week. And for the amount of time you have to put aside to coach a team, it's not too time expensive. You might provide 30 minutes or 20 minutes even, and that would be enough. And then the conversation is really why is this a good answer? Why or how? And I would share this distinction uh between small picture writing skills and big picture writing skills with agents, with agents, because this is not rocket science. They can talk about their writing this way. So we would say, what small picture skills do we see in play here? And they would say, Well, the person used short paragraphs, correct punctuation, and they I can see in the template they broke a long sentence into two shorter ones. So that's small picture writing skills. Well, what big picture writing skills do we see in play? What did this writer do well? And there's a the the, you know, the fear of the reluctance to be embarrassed in front of your colleagues goes way down if we're featuring good work. And the what happens is the trainers develop a collection of good responses. And now if you bring someone new in, they're not getting the responses only one at a time. They could look at the collected responses we trained with for the last two or three months. It's really, it's you you end up with a training artifact that that uh would be really useful. So, you know, I'm thinking of the trainers and the coaches and not wanting them to expend effort, they don't get a good yield from. This is a good yield.

Charlotte Ward: 15:35

I really, I really love what you were saying there as well, actually, about taking positive samples because I like I think so many service organizations out there have a QA program. And my QA program has a set of ratings, and some of them are language and grammar and tone and everything else. Um, and in the individual assessment points um on that rating system, I'm checking for some of the things you're talking about. What we pull out of that is effectively the failures to discuss. Um, we discuss how things could have been better on all of those examples, and luckily at the moment there aren't too many with my team, but I don't know how how long we can maintain that. But it's pretty new to us at the moment. But um I think that, you know, as we're we're already having not had this QA program in place for very long. We're already pulling strands at the things that could be improved, and we're not actively holding up the great examples. So I think I'm gonna take that back and implement that. I love that example.

Leslie O'Flahavan: 16:42

It's an appropriate thing to do with adults because um we of course, if someone is doing something that's wrong, you need to help them fix that behavior. Of course, of course. But when you're training adults in a group and helping to build their writing skills, it's really practical to show them repeated examples of what's been done right because some of them, some people are like, Yes, I want to be a better customer service writer. I long for this. And other people are like, just tell me what to do. Tell me what to do, show me what to do, and I'm gonna repeat that. So you better like it when you show it to me. You know, choose what you want me to do. And both of them can do their work well. Just show me what to do. If you have time in a training session, a brief, brief training session where you're showing your team an example of a great chat transcript or an example of a great series of social media responses for a very angry customer. You could you could put the great example forth as follows. You say, This is a great example, and here's why. Also, could we have changed this in any way and it would have also been great? That's another really positive way to teach this. Because uh lots of times um there's another way that people can see when they're seeing a good example, you know. So, for example, you're looking at an email where the agent had to quote the policy to the customer. This is a very difficult thing to do without alienating the customer, but they pulled it off. And then we all clap and celebrate that was really a great response. And then you ask, could they have reversed paragraph two and three in order? Could they have put paragraph three ahead of paragraph two? You you know, these are real but also planted questions. And if we say yes, then you think, oh, now I can talk about paragraph sequence. Now I can talk about this because in fact we could have put paragraph three ahead of paragraph two.

Charlotte Ward: 18:46

That makes sense. And and you know, again, like just going back to that QA program, I'm also thinking um how in putting together that set of ratings, everything that I'm assessing is reduced to a single sentence description of what I expect that to look but look like. And what you're describing is like a really in-depth, extended assessment of a positive example, nonetheless, but but it's kind of hard, I think, potentially, for someone to look at my sentence that says, Did you make good use of screenshots and blah blah blah blah blah? But when you present them with the whole thing, it it falls into place, doesn't it?

Leslie O'Flahavan: 19:29

Right. It's an or uh an look at a full response is kind of an organic way, yes.

Charlotte Ward: 19:35

Yeah, it absolutely absolutely starts to make sense. Um I uh I I think there's one final thing by way of signing off, um, which I would like to talk about, and that is sign offs. I I know that you I I I I have had some very, very strongly worded conversations around sign offs over the years. Um, and um I have my favorites which are well publicized, and my Not so favourites, which are also well publicized. But I'm kind of interested in what your experience is with closing out emails. Is there a right way to do it? Is there a wrong way to do it?

Leslie O'Flahavan: 20:16

Yes, and no, there is a right and a wrong way to do it. Some companies want that closing to be branded. And so I'll give you an example. One of my clients is Hawaiian Airlines, and they close their all their emails to customers, and I believe their chats, Mahalo, and then the agent's name. And that is deeply branded because it's in the Hawaiian language, and some customers won't know what it means. And they've and Hawaiian Airlines has decided it's a gracious word, it's part of our brand. And if some few customers don't know what it means, that's okay because this is a place where we can reiterate our brand without losing any uh clarity for the response we've given. So that's one end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, we want agents to make choices about what to say at the end. So we want them to make choices throughout their responses. So we, it's kind of, I don't know, hypocritical if we pull the responsibility to make choices just on the last three words of the email or last two words of the email when we've said all along you need to make choices. So do I care if it says thanks, thank you, regards, all the best, or sincerely? I don't care very much about that. I don't I personally don't care if I don't care for the closing that says, please let us know if you have any other questions, because that belongs, that sincere invitation to further contact, it needs to be more detailed and it belongs before the very end of the email. I really think it's poor choice to say, please let us know if the this didn't answer your question, because you should have handled your business before the closing of the email. Um so I if we want people to make good choices about writing, I hope we'll include that uh permission and responsibility for the closing of the email. Um I believe that an email can't fail on an individual word choice unless that's a swear word or an insulting word of some type. So if you write thanks and you learn that the customer really prefers thank you, in fact, they reply to say, you don't know me like that. How dare you write thanks? Well, that's a bit of a random reaction on the customer's part. And I don't think we should, I think we need to apologize to that individual customer. I don't think we should accommodate that type of thinking in across our service responses, because that's an unusual and really super stuffy thing to say. So I want to trust the agents. If there's a brand voice choice that I want them to make, I need to tell them that. But otherwise, I want to trust the agents. I think they'll probably close the email in an appropriate way.

Charlotte Ward: 23:20

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today, Leslie. That's been super insightful. I'm gonna go away and and just talk about positive examples more. Um, and uh yeah, I I've got some thinking to do on sign-offs as well, I'm sure. Um, so that signs us off for this conversation. But thanks so much for joining me again. And do come back.

Leslie O'Flahavan: 23:42

I will be glad to, and thank you so much for inviting me, Charlotte. It's been fun.

Charlotte Ward: 23:49

That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash one nine five for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.