After every training programme, I hear some version of the same question from managers: “They enjoyed the session, but how do I get them to actually change?” Leading change in customer service is rarely about knowing what to do. It is about what happens inside people when they are asked to do something different. On Navigating the Customer Experience, executive coach Terez Rijkenberg shared two practical frameworks she uses with C suite leaders around the world. Both translate beautifully to service teams.
The RAFT Formula: Results, Actions, Feelings, Thoughts
RAFT is rooted in cognitive behavioural psychology, and it explains why the same instruction can land so differently depending on who delivers it and how.
- Results are the outcomes you are getting, and they come from your actions.
- Actions are what you do, and they are driven by how you feel.
- Feelings are your emotional state, and they are driven by what you think.
- Thoughts are what you believe about the situation, yourself and other people.
To change a result, work backwards through the chain. The same words spoken from motivation land very differently from the same words spoken from frustration. Customers feel that difference too. A service recovery script delivered by a frustrated agent rarely recovers anything.
The real power of RAFT is focus. It points you to the only three things you can control: your thoughts, your feelings and your actions.
Radical Adaptability: Why People Get Stuck
Terez’s second framework explains why change stalls, whether you are changing yourself or leading a team. It has five steps, three about mindset and two about action:
- Safety. The brain reads anything unfamiliar as unsafe, so people need to feel safe before they can move.
- Clarity. Once someone is clear on what to do and why, very little can stop them.
- Belief. Belief is a dial, not a yes or no. Ask people to rate it from 1 to 10, then ask what would move it up one notch.
- Experiment. Frame the next step as a test, not a must succeed, to take the pressure off.
- Integrate. Look at what is already working and do more of it.
Clarity is underrated and confidence is overrated.
The Frameworks in Action: A Frustrated Leader
Terez shared the story of a client who could not get his team to engage. His recurring thought was “this is taking too long.” That made him feel frustrated and pressured, so he stopped coaching, asked fewer questions and simply told people what to do. The result was a team that waited for instructions and never learned to think for itself, which made his leadership even slower.
Once he saw that coaching was actually the faster path, everything shifted. He became more patient, asked better questions and released the pressure his team could feel. They grew more creative, came back with their own solutions, and engagement changed dramatically.
What This Means for Service Culture
I see this pattern in organizations across the Caribbean and the United States. Leaders invest in customer service training, then return to an environment where frontline staff feel unsafe trying something new, unclear on what great looks like, or unconvinced it will make a difference. Before you blame the team for not changing, check the five steps:
- Is it safe for an agent to try a new approach with a customer and get it slightly wrong?
- Have you described exactly what the new standard looks and sounds like?
- Do your people believe the change will help customers, and them?
- Can you frame the change as a short pilot rather than a permanent rule?
- Are you building on the good service habits your team already has?
Terez also builds AI systems that hand executives back more than 10 hours a week by removing repetitive preparation work. That matters for service leaders too. Every hour you win back from manual reporting is an hour you can spend coaching your people.
Key Takeaways
- You can only control three things: your thoughts, your feelings and your actions.
- Results flow backwards from thoughts, so change the thinking to change the outcome.
- People need to feel safe before they can change.
- Clarity matters more than confidence.
- Treat belief as a dial and frame change as an experiment.
- Coaching your team is slower today and much faster tomorrow.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This article is drawn from the full podcast episode and show notes. You can also listen to Navigating the Customer Experience on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.
Want Help Applying This to Your Team?
I help service teams in South Florida, Jamaica and across the Caribbean turn insights like these into everyday behaviour through customer service training, mystery shopping and CSAT research. Book a free 30 minute CX strategy conversation and we will map out the right next step for your team.
About the Author
Yanique Grant is a customer experience expert, trainer and researcher with more than 17 years of experience and over 50,000 professionals trained across Jamaica, the Caribbean and Africa. She is a Service Quality Institute certified Customer Service Trainer, certified in Training Design by Training Magazine, author of The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience, and host of the Navigating the Customer Experience podcast, now in its 280th episode. Through ElevateCX and PTOS she helps organizations turn service into retention, reputation and revenue.
