Monday, March 19, 2012

Customer Service Reality Check

Have you ever noticed that some things seem so clear from the outside, yet from within, things become cloudy and confused? We often see this in politics, when we accuse—often with good reason—elected officials for being “out of touch with reality”. What seems like common sense to us just doesn't seem to filter into that bubble.

Bad customer service is almost ALWAYS a result of being out of touch with customer reality. It's really quite simple; and perhaps even too simple to grasp, since we're often in search of complicated answers to complicated problems.  Here's the insight to memorize:

Customers like to be treated
like they matter to you!

Do have an automated recording telling customers that their call is important to you—so important that you keep telling them this over and over that by the time they reach 10 minutes on hold, it actually becomes insulting for them to be told that they're important—when they obviously aren't?

Is your team trained to actually listen and find out what the problem is and what solution the customer would like, before they try and “resolve the situation”?  Learn how to provide training that will make a difference with my Training That Sticks workshop that is now available on CD-ROM.

Do you have a checklist of all of the things that you personally loathe about customer service?  Become committed to behaviors that ensure you excel at customer service and become very focused on the behaviors you want to eradicate from the workplace.  Send me your list of each one!

Still learning,


Honey


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