Customer service is providing a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that requires that the service provider has the ability to properly identify expectations and provide the customer with the feeling that a product or service has met those expectations before, during and after a purchase.
Customer Service can be provided with simple gestures…
How can you provide excellent Customer Service?
- Get to know who your customers is
- Know what your customer wants.
- Be sincere
- Smile
- Answer promptly to customers’ requests.
- Make quality and service your top priorities
- Be proactive
- help customers without bothering them
- Listen to understand, not to argue.
- keep your customers informed
- turn complaints into satisfaction
- Be reliable.
- Put yourself in the customer’s shoes.
- Do ordinary things extraordinarily well.
- Go beyond what’s expected.
- Add value and integrity to every interaction.
- Be at your best with every customer.
- Talk in a reassuring tone.
- Discover new ways to delight those you serve.
- Surprise yourself with how much you can do.
- Take care of every "internal" and "external" customer.
- Don’t make promises unless you WILL keep them.
- Listen to your customers.
- Acknowledge your mistakes and apologize.
- Manage yourself and your emotions
- Make sure that you are available and reachable.
- Listen more than you are talking.
- Let customers complete their own sentences.
- Deal with complaints.
- Pay attention – Understand – Listen to what the customer has to say.
- Find a fair solution that will answer the customer’s requests while respecting the needs of the organization.
- Do what you say you will, when you say you will, how you say you will,
- Show that you care about the customers needs by confirming or demonstrating empathy
- Listen actively to the words, tone of voice and body language your
As a trainer in business relations skills, I have met thousands of people who attend my sessions, lectures, and workshops. They want to learn customer service techniques, how to manage difficult clients, how to manage their time and priorities, how to work as a team, how to analyze issues – all the skills they need to face the daily workplace reality without loosing their marbles.
Some of these people come voluntarily. For others, their presence has been made mandatory by their supervisor. Sometimes they are training because of a company-wide strategic decision, sometimes the training is part of a professional development program prepared by an HR counselor.
Most of the time, however, I find myself facing individuals in disarray or in a state of physical and mental exhaustion, people who feverishly wish to change their inefficient behaviour and find the magic recipe that will make their job fulfilling. These people are looking for tools to help them reach “relation efficiency.” They may even be people excelling in their work, experts in their field, who still have more to learn about the know-how and self-management skills.
What good does it make to know your products inside and out if you can’t deliver an efficient presentation to sell them? What good does it make to have a customer service counter if the individual behind the counter cannot communicate, understand your customers, and manage complaints? And, believe me, those are not caricatural examples! Situations like that are seen every day.
And every time I ask myself the same question: Why do people wait so long ...
