If you want your organization or your business to be responsive to your customer’s needs, then make sure your employees attend a customer service training program that will teach them the skills they need!
How To Give Your Customers A Royal Service Through Customer Care
If there is anything that is vitally important in any business, it’s customer service. The way you treat your customer’s will determine how long you last in business.
You must understand something, and drill it into your head for the rest of your customer service life. A customer doesn’t like to buy from an organization; they like to buy from people. It is the friendliness of the service reps that attract a consumer to either go back to the same company for more business, or go somewhere else where they will be treated with royalty.
There are so many stories and reviews about certain companies not doing the right thing, lying to their customers, hiding behind company policy, speaking or communicating inappropriately, or simply not making the customer feel important. Being honest, educating, and helpful is what your objective must be.
Customers call the customer service line usually when there is a problem with the order, an item is damaged or non-working, the item didn’t show up to it’s location, and numerous other reasons as to why they would need their problem rectified.
A friendly and welcoming customer care is severely critical, and cannot be stressed enough. The way you are with people is how people will be with your business. And if one thing travels fast, it’s word of mouth. You want to avoid doing the wrong thing by your customer’s. It will only haunt you later on in your business career, that’s if you last long enough to experience the drought.
And this can all be easily avoided if you take customer care seriously, and give the necessary attention to your clients and helping them when a situation is need to be addressed. The more you care for your customers, the better reputation you will have. This form of action will reflect both the owner, the people within the company, and the organization itself.
It seems as if one of the major reasons why companies fail is because business owners fall into one of the biggest traps of all time. The trap is getting married to the business and not to the customer.
The more of a rapport you have with your customers, the more business will be driven your way. When you help you sell, you don’t need to sell in order to help or be helped. You must be about the people in your market. You can achieve this by finding out exactly what they want.
You can accomplish this by having your customers take a survey. Ask them questions that pin-point their emotions and find out what they need and then providing based on that need.
Get to know your customers; don’t always make it about business. When there is a customer issue, make sure your customer service department and representatives are following the same criteria you have as business owner within the mind-set.
If you have to provide training courses to help service reps engage the process properly then this may be the right answer for you as a business owner. It can only help benefit communicating better on a different level.
Simply by practicing in groups on how to deal with customer’s who are hostile, role playing. You will naturally experience people who give the representative a hard time, or just want it their way. There is more than one right way on how you can handle customers.
You cannot please every customer, but you can handle the manner in a professional manner using a diplomatic approach. Remember, you always get more with honey then you do with vinegar. Avoid using foul language, and keep your negative thoughts to yourself and your tonality down to a proper volume.
Customers are automatically right once you step of the stage of being professional. You may encounter customers wanting an item yesterday and who act very impatiently. It’s normal to come in contact with people like that since not everyone has the discipline and understanding to be calm and patient, although it would be nice if they did.
You’re best method is to be a solution provider at all time and at all costs otherwise it will cost you, your company, and possibly your job if you don’t do the right thing.
It was once written in article that people continue buying from the same company because they like the customer service rep, not particularly the company itself or the product, but the friendliness and helpfulness of the person who made the purchase smooth and pleasurable.
When you feel like you’re having fun and in a comfortable place while shopping or solving a problem due to a mishap, it makes the customer happy and satisfied and becomes the talk of the day for the customer and the people he or she may know.
So, on that note, do the right things by the customer, and be honest. If you don’t have the answer to something, be straightforward, tell them you don’t know the answer, but you will get the right answer within 24-48 hours and take down their contact information in case you don’t already have it. The customer will respect you for your integrity.
The key principle is to develop friendships, and that’s how you maintain customers. Go above and beyond for your clients and you will be well respected and people on or off the Internet will have great things to say about the customer care and your company.
Customer service training program allows your employees to take refresher courses on services they know how to do well, and also training on new areas critical to your business.
Why You Should Under Promise and Over Deliver to the Customer
Have you ever watched a high jumper fail? Bringing the bar down with him? This is what high promises does for your business. I have seen this company slogan: “We offer world class service.” I do not need world class service but if I need their services I will expect something special. This is what it’s all about – expectations.
What Will Under Promise do?
You will lower the customers’ expectations. You’ll lay the bar at a few feet, you look unfit, and you might end up passing the bar with several feet clearance. Customer Service is all about expectations and how you meet them. Remember going to the movie theater with high expectations? The movie might have been good, but you would still be a little disappointed. An unknown foreign movie might knock your socks off, and you did not see it coming.
Don’t Confuse Lowering Expectations with Lowering Ambitions!
There is a huge difference between wanting to be the best and make customer expect you to be the best. The trick is to get the customers to expect above average or even good and still deliver first class. You should have high ambitions in customer satisfaction.
You can rate a luxury hotel nine out of ten because they forgot chocolate on your pillow and at the same time rate a forest cabin ten out of ten because they had running water. I want to quote a friend and former co-worker, as he once said: “it is not about jumping to the customers flute, it is all about exceeding expectations, so start by lowering them” – he worked as tech support at a call center.
When customers called he started complaining about this difficult solution and talked about sending people out to fix stuff, it might take days; before he pushed the “magic button” and restarted the equipment and it all worked. The customers were thrilled when they realized the internet was working again. Why? Because they got an image of days offline! This method should not be used unless you are very confident and have the right personality, but it works as a point.
How do You Over Deliver?
I buy books online. Since I live in Norway and buy from all over the world standard shipping might be 18-20 days. One company has 18-20 days and I always get the books in about two weeks and I am a happy customer. About ten years ago I was selling household articles like washers, refrigerators and so on.
We used to deliver for free, excellent service but exploited. We decided to charge for delivery and made a price list depending on distance. I bought boxes of chocolate and left it at the top of the product or in the fridge with a handwritten note saying thank you.
This was never expected until they became returning customers. But one delivery paid for five boxes, and it made them jump in joy. So the little irritation for paying for delivery was forgotten and we jumped the bar.
But Why do we Over Promise?
We don’t want to disappoint the customer face to face. It is easier to apologize afterward. In larger companies there might be others that need to do the apologizing. If your customer needs what you got by tomorrow and YOU KNOW that you will fail, walk away from the deal.
Say that you are sorry but that is not possible. Most customers don’t have a database of competing providers that can meet their expectations. And if competition over promise… you will be the honest one. It is better to disappoint the customer right away instead of producing a crisis tomorrow.
Don’t be afraid of losing business, in the long run you will be the one that promise and over deliver. The customer will adjust to your delivery time and plan ahead. It is allowed to say: If I promise you this, I know I will fail.
How to Avoid the Negative
Sample 1:
Customer: Can you deliver tomorrow?
You: No, I am sorry, that is not possible.
Sample 2:
Customer: Can you deliver tomorrow?
You: I can deliver by Tuesday next week guaranteed.
The first one ends the discussion; the second example keeps it going. You can follow up with, if all goes well; it might be here on Monday. And you will deliver by Friday.
Customer service is not about being the fastest, the best or the cheapest. Customer service is about exceeding expectations and keeping promises.
Difficult Customers and How to Handle Angry Customers
Customer, “What makes me angry?”
Difficult customers are like Baskin Robbins Ice Cream only with a much wider variety of flavors. There are customers that you just don’t like.
Something about this specific customer just gets on your nerves but someone else seems to have no problem with this customer.
Other customers are just plain difficult and irritating for everyone. We have the perfectionist, whiner, complainer, fault-finder, and on and on and on.
But for most of us, the one who is most difficult is the customer who is angry with us, the product, the service and possibly the world in general. Angry customers, for the most part, feel that they have been wronged, taken advantage of or made to feel foolish and therefore are very upset and emotional about the situation.
Customer, “I am angry and I want you to do something about it!”
Now as the company representative facing this customer, I personally didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t even around or involved when the problem or perceived problem occurred! So why do I have to be the one to handle this situation?
Company Representative, “I will go get my manager and then take a break as far away from this angry customer as I can get.”
As an organization there are some sound business reasons to make sure that our employees become adept at both assessing the situation and understanding the best, most appropriate action to take when they are faced with an angry customer. Did you know that:
1. Customers who actually complain, if they are satisfied are more likely to continue doing business with you?
2. Approximately 90% of the customers who feel they have been wronged never complain to you or anyone in your organization? They just tell everyone else they know in the whole world! Well that would really be helpful to you and your organization. (In case you wondered, that was a bit of sarcasm.)
Customer, “Your employees are the people I talk to, the people I see and the only people who can help me. So why don’t they have the basic skills?”
Dealing with difficult, angry customers is not pleasant, regardless of what position you hold. But when employees feel that they are trained and know what to do, handling angry, difficult customers correctly can really build their individual levels of self-confidence and pride in doing the job well.
Because we all know that if you can handle angry and difficult customers, give them satisfaction in knowing that their complaints and problems are a priority, you can do anything.
But, if you don’t handle these customers well, you will see lost business, upset customers and the ‘word of mouth’ advertising you get won’t be what you want.
Now the question becomes: What basic steps can we follow to diffuse the problematic situations before we lose customers and business?
1. Empathy – we have all had bad experiences as customers. How many times have you purchased something, just to be disappointed? How many times have you felt that you were ripped off, taken advantage of and that you had wasted your time and money?
So Empathy means being able to put yourself in that customers place. Being empathic does not mean you agree with the customer’s perspective of the situation, only that you too understand how it feels to be disappointed, upset and frustrated.
So how does empathy help you to diffuse the problem situation?
Well, first your job is just to listen attentively to the customer. Let that customer get everything out so that you really understand what the problem (from the customer’s point of view) really is.
When we listen to another person, we are sending a powerful message that we do care about that customer as an individual and that we are interested in assisting that person in finding a solution that will satisfy both the customer and your company.
2. Respect – if we want respect, we have to give respect. You don’t have to accept poor behavior on the part of the customer, but you do need to respect the person, the individual who is upset, angry and maybe even yelling at you.
Remember, most of the time the angry customer is not angry with you. He/she is just angry at the problem, the situation, and you are the one person they can vent their frustrations on at the moment. So it really isn’t personal.
One big mistake, we as humans make, is to take things personally, to feel that the angry customer is upset with us and we therefore, react accordingly by becoming defensive or by making excuses to show why this situation is not our fault.
Customers want to do business with people and companies who make it easy for them to get what they want, when they want it and for a price they are willing to pay.
This is Basic Sales Techniques and therefore, becomes basic Customer Service Techniques that better guarantee success.
Giving your customers more than what is expected is always a treat to them. Customer service training program that caters to the hospitality, retail and service industries always emphasize that the customer gets to request, and the associates gets to serve. This will always be good for your business.
