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Article by Ryan Fyfe

Good customer service is the base of any business. Customers are responsible for the recognition and reputation of you company in the market. Satisfying them is the very first priority of any business. The entire setup we have, the business that we undertake, everything is ultimately for the benefit of the customers. A company produces and manufactures products and services by offering promotions, slashing prices, improving quality in order to bring in many customers and making the business profitable.

Good customer service is all about attracting the customers towards your services and bringing them back to you. Making them happy and satisfied is the only aim for the businessmen. Every feedback of the customer is counted; unless and until you do not get maximum positive feedbacks your need to understand that there are areas where your company lack behind and need to be considered. If you are a good salesman, you might confidently sell any product to anyone. But eventually everything depends upon your approach to the customer service, which will determine whether or not you will be able to sell something to that person. The essence of good service to the customers is forming long-term relations with the customers, which the customers himself would like to pursue. Remember, you will be judged by what you do and provide, not what you say. Good customer service training is truly beneficial for a business to be successful. So let’s know what are the steps involved in customer service training:

Answer the phone calls: Customer services usually depend upon phone. Do not ignore the calls made by the customer, instead try to solve the queries and make them feel happy. Hire staff that has good communication skills and the capacity to mould a negative feedback or a cribbing customer into a satisfied one. Make sure every call is attended with courtesy.

Don’t make fake promises to satisfy the customers: Be sure about what you speak, keep your commitments. Fake promises can create a negative reputation of your company. It can put you in trouble and you may suffer losses. Reliability is one of the essential factors taught in a good customer service training program. Be firm on what you say, and say that can be done. Don’t disappoint the customers.

Listen to your customers: It gives a negative feeling and a very bad impression if you are exasperating on certain things and you are not giving attention and ignored. The right thing is to better listen to customer’s grievances attentively and solve their problems, rather than engaging yourself in other work while your customer is talking to you. It’s very important to let the customer speak and listening should be a part of customer service training.

Dealing with the customers complains: You need to be smart and talented enough to handle the customers complain. Learn to please the customers as this will be a great benefit for your business. Pleasing the customers is another skill that should be a part of customer service training.

Train your staff to have a low pitch, and a helpful courteous and polite approach. As part of your customer service training program, practically, make your staff member a customer and show him how to greet and treat the customer yourself. You can also hire a professional trainer to train them.

All these tips should be included to give better customer service training to the employees.

Article by Terrell Guy

I have used the word perception in the first paragraph and it really is one of the most important words to remember, as good or bad customer service really is down to perception.

I recall shortly after 9/11 I was travelling to Florida, we were supposed to change flights in Newark, but what happened was the flight was late landing in Newark and we missed the connection flight to Florida.

The reason given for the delay was that the flight had to change its flight path due to the recent tragedy at the World Trade Centre. Although this was understandable it was still amazing to watch the reactions of the customers like us, who were affected by missing connecting flights.

From a customer view point, it was obvious to see that the airline staff had been through some level of service training. They apologized, showed empathy offered options and tried their utmost to calm some of the more difficult customers, just the type of key skills one would learn on a customer service course.

Just as we are always taught about service to customer, put yourself in the customers shoes, and offer options, the airline staff offered free accommodation and meals for those who had to wait overnight etc. The customer service training had really paid off, or so I thought.

Unfortunately when we were being transported by coach to the nearby hotels many of the customers were not happy with the service. At least 50% of customers felt the service was poor as it should not have happened in the first place. Although they did feel the people dealing with the problem did help they felt they would be reluctant to travel with the airline again.

The other 50% understood the problem and although were not happy about missing the connecting flights felt the skills the staff had show were excellent and they had done their utmost to resolve a situation they had no control over.

That evening I learned 2 crucial lessons; I learned that approximately 40 customers had received the very same service but their perceptions of the service they received were very different.

I also learned that training in this area should really concentrate on 2 key areas the first being the personal service the client receives from an individual or a company. The second being training should also concentrate on the performance or standards of service.

Both sets of customers were right the personal service was excellent; however the standards of performance were poor. With this in mind all service training courses should concentrate on the 2 Ps of customer service training.

Personal and Performance

Service industry depends almost solely on the strength of customer service provided; customers are hard to please one must note. While a natural aptitude in those desirous of joining this industry does help, training is necessary for them to be able to understand priorities of their profession better and develop them into efficient customer care executives.

The training largely makes communication skills better. Higher the level of skills the customer service staffs of a company possess, better the company’s image they create. It is by giving customers efficient service with regard to whatever their queries that the base of loyal customers can be enlarged. Customer service courses are available at most centers and those desirous of pursuing a career in this line will be well advised to take up such a course.

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Article by Ajax

In today’s competitive environment, organizations cannot compete on product and price alone; they also must deliver an ideal service experience.  With so much of competition in the product category and easy access to information about brands, products, and easy access to information about the vendor has made customer service experience a critical element of your company’s success or failure.

Organizations are including pre-sales and post sales interactions that allows your business to deliver a customer-focused and ideal service experience that successfully balances customer interests with business goals. SEM is the closed loop process of controlling and adjusting customer interactions while improving company performance.   With SEM,

* Your company can control every step within each customer interaction to provide the ideal customer experience.  
* You have the ability to provide this ideal service experience in accordance with a balanced set of key performance indicator

Today customer service processes have to be flexible and cannot be one size-fits all. Customers are looking at enterprises to resolve their issues and look for individual treatment.  In enterprise customer service, four key performance indicators (KPIs) govern service operations — the customer satisfaction with each interaction; the revenue produced through the interaction; the cost of the interaction; and the level of compliance with company and governmental policies. A poor service experience can impact a customer’s future buying decisions in as little as three months. Responding to issues not only improves your support performance scores, but drives customer loyalty and business profitability.

It is important to provide a cross-channel customer experience via email, speaking or chatting with an agent, usingweb self service The information needs to be up-to-date and consistent across every channel.   

When a customer is routed to an agent, the transition must be smooth. The call should be routed to the agent that can best help, and the agent needs to know what happened before the transfer so the customer doesn’t have to repeat information.  The agent should also be aware of the customer’s interactions across all other channels, but should only be presented with the information they need to solve the issue at hand.  

With the right contact center software in place, your customers get consistently great treatment every time they interact–regardless of the channel they choose. This results in a superior customer experience that keeps customers coming back for more.

Today customer service processes have to be flexible and cannot be one size-fits all. Customers are looking at enterprises to resolve their issues and look for individual treatment. In enterprise customer service, four key performance indicators (KPIs) govern service operations — the customer satisfaction with each interaction; the revenue produced through the interaction; the cost of the interaction; and the level of compliance with company and governmental policies. A poor service experience can impact a customer’s future buying decisions in as little as three months. Responding to issues not only improves your support performance scores, but drives customer loyalty and business profitability.

Article by Darrel Chang

We have used the same handyman, Leon, for many years. He can be described as being able to adequately meet our needs but may not the best handyman in the Yellow Pages. We opted not to switch to another better equipped and knowledgeable handyman because Leon knows the names of our children, offers home remedy advice when we are sick and will happily hang a painting on his way out. We are emotionally satisfied with his services.

A satisfied customer does not a loyal customer make

In a recent Gallup study, results showed that emotionally satisfied customers, (how they perceive and feel about their experience) contribute far more to the bottom line than rationally satisfied customers (satisfied with a company’s goods or services, whether a customer thought they received good value), even though they are equally “satisfied.”

Gallup’s research further suggests that for all kinds of companies, fully engaged customers deliver a 23% premium over the average customer in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth.

Training Focus Misdirected

Customer service training typically focuses on developing employee skills to satisfy, meet or exceed customer needs rather than how to create loyal customers. If your customer satisfaction centric training is successful, customers will leave feeling satisfied with your company’s services, but if given a choice, will return to the business to which they are emotionally satisfied and connected.

Contemporary training must go beyond the traditional “smile and be nice to the customer” to teaching employees how to develop meaningful conversations and relationship building skills with customers. Generations Y & Z which constitute a large percentage of customer service givers, communicate in IM’s and Text Messaging languages and approach and define relationship building very differently than preceding generations. The reverse is also true of older customer service givers who sometimes struggle to connect with their younger customers.

Rewards & Incentives

Rewards and incentives motivate employees and direct behavior. The formula, ability + motivation = behavior still applies in today’s environment. This can be clearly seen recently in the performance of Wall Street firms that rewarded and gave incentives to financial managers based on short term profit rather than longer term yield and stability.

How do customer service givers get rewarded or incentivized? Is it by financial performance (sales), customer satisfaction or customer loyalty scores (assuming customer loyalty is measured)? If building customer loyalty is not part of the reward and incentive strategy, customer service givers will focus on practicing those behaviors for which they are rewarded.

Today’s challenging economic environment demands that companies must place a high premium on retaining existing engaged customers and find ways to build long term loyal relationships to keep them returning.

Someone once said…

“In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice they are not.”

During a cold winter season, smart organizations get busy preparing for spring. One way to prepare is to create (or confirm) a clear and motivating vision of what you want to become. Back this vision up with customer service training and other measures and you can transform your business for the better. Your engaging service vision is one of the “12 Building Blocks for a Superior Service Culture” we teach at UP Your Service! College. This vision can serve as a guiding light for customer service training and to focus your efforts now and in the future.

Article by Ajax

Master the Customer Service Experience by delivering consistent, knowledgeable conversations with customers across every channel –email response,customer service chat, phone, and the Web self service.

For any business to succeed creating a loyal customer is important. In today’s highly competitive world having good product and price is important but, customer service is now the proven differentiator. One way that you can make the difference when interacting with a customer is, to make sure that you address their need or request correctly the first time.

Customer service solutions help organization manage customer interactions across verticals. These set of processes can cost-effectively improve both the quality and efficiency of every customer interaction and has to be managed keeping in mind the needs of not only the customers but the business as well.

If a businesses does not have a well defined and regularized system for carrying out these processes it can result in inaccurate and disparate responses affecting the quality of service delivered. Documenting the processes is not enough it has to be executed in reality.  

Organizations today are waking up to this fact and are including pre-sales and post sales interactions that allows your business to deliver a customer-focused and ideal  customer service experience that successfully balances customer interests with business goals. With SEM,
1. Your company can control every step within each customer interaction to provide the ideal customer experience.
2. You have the ability to provide this ideal service experience in accordance with a balanced set of key performance indicator.

It is important to provide a cross-channel customer experience via email, speaking or chatting with an agent, using web self service or by browsing. The information needs to be up-to-date and consistent across every channel. These business tools provide a comprehensive process that facilitates high visibility and has the capability to keep the documents updated so that consistency is maintained resulting in improved customer service experience.

Speed, agility, and intelligence add up to great customer service experience and with the right tools your customers gain highly responsive, consistent service delivered across multiple channels. Your company benefits with improved resolution rates, better resource use, personalized interactions, compliance with regulations, and the ability to turn service centers into profit centers.

Customer service solutions help organization manage customer interactions across verticals. These set of processes can cost-effectively improve both the quality and efficiency of every customer interaction and has to be managed keeping in mind the needs of not only the customers but the business as well.

Ross Shafer is the writer/producer of (14) HR training films on Customer service, Leadership, and Motivation. He is the author of the business books, TheCustomer Shouts Back, Customer Empathy, Nobody Moved Your Cheese, Are You Relevant? and his newest 2011 book, Grab More Market Share (how to wrangle business away from lazy competitors). Ross is also the founder of the Customer Empathy Institute in conjunction with Calif. State Univ. at Monterey Bay…which helps coach leaders to understand the changing mindsets of evolving customers. A 6-Time Emmy winner for his work in network televison for FOX, ABC, NBC, USA, and COMEDY CENTRAL, in 1994, Ross Shafer shifted his energies to start making films and writing books on the business successes he observed in great companies. His focus was on who dominates market share…and why. Here he talks about Who Will Win During The Recovery. youtu.be Watch this short clip as Ross Shafer explains why customer service is so dreadful these days: youtu.be Today, Ross Shafer is one of America’s most sought after conference Keynote business speakers. What makes Ross Shafer so valuable is his abiltity to cross-pollinate fresh practices from one industry to another. Ross Shafer’s newest book GRAB MORE MARKET SHARE (Wiley and Sons) teaches leaders and companies to realize the only way to grow in a soft ( or flat) economy is to take market share from their lazy competitiors. In this new book Ross will show you how to: 1. Legally Spy on Competitors …
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Article by Ajax

Despite numerous technological innovations, managing customer relationships is a challenging endeavor. Exceptional service promotes customer satisfaction and loyalty, and provides an avenue for marketing new products and services. The challenge lies in satisfy customers who expect, real-time service across channels that include the Web, e-mail, fax and telephone 24/7. Web-based innovations have given rise to online self-service and this is a definitive solution to improving service delivery while reducing costs. It is undoubtedly good business sense to helping customers to help themselves, especially when reallocating costly support personnel to service the most profitable business sector.

Most consumers are increasingly preferring to “help themselves” while demanding instant access to information, product data and online support. Although self-service is a part of transforming the customer experience, customer self-service initiative must integrate the right technology, business processes, and user adoption strategies, to be successful. Like a web self services that can effectively help you balance customer demands for high quality service, to easily find the information they need anywhere, anytime, without the need for knowledge management assistance. The following steps can help enhance the customer service experience.

Recognizing the User Preference
It is only by recognizing the needs of the users that the customer experience can be transformed. It may not be viable to provide a unique service experience tailored to each customer. It therefore makes more sense to have a practical and cost-effective approach by defining the various segments of customers. With this information, customers can be given information regarding the new products and services along the channel.

Evaluate Effectiveness of Channels
Evaluating the efficiency of the infrastructure that is already in place will offer a baseline for process and technology transformation. This is irrespective of whether an existing CRM solution is extended, or a web-based support portal is enhanced or a direct response campaign is being prepared. When preparing for self-service initiatives, it is vital to map the structured and unstructured data sources, and then decide where a knowledge base and/or search solution is needed to access and deliver this information directly to users.

Coordinate the Processes
There are several exercises that can provide the foundation for an optimized customer experience with an understanding of user segments and needs. One activity is to map common tasks to the preferred channel and related environments for each user type. This can focus on filling gaps such as service levels on certain channel and create incentives for one segment of users to move from an inefficient performing channel to another. With channel-specific marketing there can be incentives for change.

Design a Transition Plan
It is with a change in the management strategy that the customer experience can be optimized. Users can be moved from one channel to another for enhancing the customer experience. Organizations need to reduce escalations by optimizing self-service channels to reduce channel abandonment, using other online tools like email response or Web forms to capture problem descriptions. Providing effective Web self-service is more than just deploying a search engine.

Plan for Improvement
With a series of steps the customer support experience can be transformed. By taking one step further and merging product and user activity data with built-in business intelligence, organizations can optimize service delivery, improve the customer experience and generate better products.

Customers find Web self service easy and convenient, and Gartner reports that customers can complete 60 to 80 percent of a simple service interaction without the assistance of a service agent. It is therefore important for the knowledge base needs to be updated regularly so that every time a customer interacts with a website or asks a question the information is readily available.

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Article by Business Training Media

Customer service is the end-all to any company’s success or failure. The customer is what provides the income that a company needs to thrive and determines whether or not a company can continue to stay in business. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that a high level of customer service always be something to strive for. Without continued excellence in customer service, a company’s success is over before it starts.

GET TO KNOW EM

So many times we see a company provide what the customer is looking for and then send them on their way. In a bicycle shop, for example, a customer walks in and is obviously searching for something related to a bicycle. He or she mentions that a desire to purchase a new bicycle is what has brought them into the store that day. The shop owner has plenty of bicycles for sale, lets the customer find one they like, receives payment, and lets the transaction end there.

One thing to remember is that, often, the businessman or woman knows more about the product or service they are providing than even the most informed customer. Suppose that the customer in the bicycle shop picked out a street racing, ten-speed bicycle and the shop owner, neglecting to develop a personal relationship with the customer, let the customer’s choice be the beginning of the transaction and the payment for said bicycle be the end of it.

Now, suppose that the same customer with a new street racing ten-speed bicycle was planning on taking that bicycle on a mountain trip through rugged and desolate trails. Obviously, the street racing ten-speed is not the best of choices for doing so. If the shop owner had taken the time to talk to the customer and asked questions such as, So, planning on doing some riding? Where at? the shop owner would have been able to suggest a better product for the customer and, hence, developed an appreciative bond between the business and the customer, causing the customer to, more-than-likely, make a return visit.

MAKE IT SPECIAL

Sometimes, excellent customer service calls for the unusual. Make an effort to go the extra mile and provide what is known as customer-led services. Some customers might work until 5:00 p.m., which is just when your store closes. Offering to let the customer shop after the store closes is catering to a customer’s special needs and goes a LONG way in the relationship department. This sort of action also goes hand-in-hand with developing a personal relationship with the customer, as mentioned earlier. This example of customer service is something that can be used anywhere, from a small storefront business to a large corporation. The point is, pay attention to special needs of your customers, whether a customer is a casual shopper or a corporate client, and you will be rewarded with continued business from that customer again and again.

CUSTOMER SERVICE STARTS AT HOME

It is important to remember that good customer service starts with employees that are happy to serve the customer. Take care of your employees and they will take care of you. Make sure their needs are met and do what you can to create a workplace free from negativity and full of motivation and recognition for creativity. Happy employees love their job and it shows when they provide a service or product to your customers.

TIME’S UP!

If an idea, plan, or strategy is not working, bring it to an end. So often, managers are faced with the realization that perhaps the system which was put in place to increase customer service is not going to produce positive results after all. Still, they are reluctant to drop the curtain due to pride or hoping that with just a little more time the plan could still be effective. Forget it. If it’s not working, move on to something else. Shut it down and start something else. There is no use in wasting customers time and business in the hope that whatever method is being used will eventually work out. Out with the old, in with the new is good advice.

Above all, remember that customer service is the single most important thing to consider in your business, second only to taking care of your employees. Be willing to be flexible and get involved in the process of customer service in any way possible, no matter how high on the food chain you are. Not only will this serve as a good example to your employees but it will increase the level of service that your customers receive

Article by Ajax

In a world of huge competition and similarity in the products, customer service makes all the difference. Businesses are struggling to remain at the top. Customer has finally become the king maker. A customer service experience is not easy to tackle as each customer have their unique priorities and problems. But for any business to succeed you need to understand and resolve those issues if you want a satisfied customer who will happily give you a repeat order. The cruxes of customer experience lies in making the right judgment about what your customerservice experience priorities are and then design the processes.

There’s no real secret or rocket science involved to getting your customers to come back. All you need to do is provide customerservice that exceeds your customers’ expectations and surpasses your competitors’ customerservice.

The art of good customerservice is “Listen to your customers”; half your battle is won.  More than anything else, customers care about how they are treated as the reliability, speed, and simplicity of service drive customer retention and profitability. It’s time for customerservice to deliver the experience customers want — while balancing the cost, compliance and revenue objectives to benefit your business.

CustomerService Experience should deliver consistent, knowledgeable conversations with customers across every channel — email response, customerservice chat, phone, and the Web self service.The simplest thing that can be done is make the Agents Desktop more adaptive, interactive and powerful. The Adaptive Agent Desktop offers service manager’s full control over the experience in customerservice experience and the agent has a clear view of the customer – including their history, contact information, resources, and relevant applications. Each of these factors can dynamically adjust and change the information that is displayed to the agent, whether it is transactional information about purchases, customer profile data, product details, company policies, scripts, or the agent’s to-do list.
To improve your customerservices follow these simple rules:
1. Create a Single Dashboard – Clarifying questions, dynamic interviews, topic search, search-term highlighting, and document summaries help agents quickly pinpoint the most relevant answer. This speeds access to key customer data, shortens call handling time, streamlines agent training processes and ultimately improves customer satisfaction.

2. Share a Single Knowledgebase – Information on web self service and on agent desktop should be in sync with each other. Same knowledge management system software should be used. Agents and self-service customers should use the same information and guidance techniques so that there is no confusion. Moreover a complete history of customer’s self-service session accompanies escalated inquiries should be there on agent desktop to eliminate redundant problem discovery.

3. Automate compliance – Complying with company, customers or government legislation etc is a big challenge for agents and organizations alike. To track the activity of every agent to know that they following compliance requirements can be difficult. By automating agent workflows to meet the compliance requirements, streamline agent productivity, improve adherence to key compliance processes and track and report on compliance performance.

Make your customerservice experience that can WOW the customer. I would rather do business with organizations that is fast in resolving my problem and has a good attitude.

Learn more about :- customerservice consulting & Managed services

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Article by Bob A Andrews

The average consumer spends less than three seconds on a sales-oriented website, and for business owners, this means that there’s a very small window for making a sale. One of the best ways to improve sales and customer help as a whole is to use live chat software.

Chat software can allow a customer to consult directly with a customer service representative through a web browser. It delivers a more personalized experience and instantly gets a potential customer’s attention. A chat software can also be useful for delivering better service to existing clients.

However, there are dozens of chat programs available, so if you’re considering this type of service for your business, you’ll need to find software with the appropriate features and do some planning before implementing it into your website.

Features To Consider In a Customer help Chat Application

Chat software are far more than a simple box for typing text. There are a number of features which can make them easier to use and more valuable and reliable for businesses and their customers.

Some common features include automatic logging, which creates a log of each chat that can be reviewed by a customer service manager. Chat logging is extremely useful and should be considered an essential feature. Many chat also feature automated or logged responses, which the customer representative can select to quickly answer common questions. Logged responses should be used sparingly, but they can be a great time-saver, especially in overloaded customer service centers.

Chat programs can also automatically take down a customer’s name and other basic information such as order numbers and feedback ratings. Security is always important, but it’s especially important when a chat program is taking this type of sensitive customer information. You should look for a highly secure customer chat program that uses encryption.

A good program also needs to be fast and compatible with as many different web browsers as possible. The best programs are designed to provide efficient, seamless service and integrate well into various websites, incorporating the websites’ color schemes and logos so that customers don’t realize that a third-party provider developed the application.

You’ll need to evaluate different chat yourself to decide what’s important to your business and what features you’ll get the most use from. Remember that above all else, a program needs to look great and it needs to be secure for efficient, dependable use with your business.

Implementing a Customer Service Chat Program

It’s easy to stumble when implementing a customer help chat system into an existing website, but some planning should take care of all of the most common problems. The first thing to do is to decide when the chat service will be available; if it will be available 24/7, there will obviously need to be a customer representative available at all times. Most businesses will restrict a live chat feature to business hours, especially for the first few months.

Most customer service live chat software can be set to automatically turn off and on during certain hours. You should use this type of automatic scheduling if possible. Otherwise, a late-night or early-morning customer might assume that a lack of chat response means poor customer service in general.

You’ll also need to decide on procedures for customer service representatives that will be operating the chat software. A customer service department should dedicate one or more representatives to the chat at first and chat logs should be monitored to ensure the best quality service.

A chat program can make a major difference in a company’s day-to-day business and can greatly improve the capabilities of a customer service department. With some simple planning, chat software is an affordable, effective feature that can be implemented in only a few days for a much better customer experience.

Article by Jeremiah Wilson

No doubt you feel the the stress.

The world is staggering out of a recession. The markets drastically yo-yo on an almost daily basis.

And your employees feel the stress too. A recent study found that 40% of American workers are indifferent about their jobs. Workplace morale is lower than at any point in modern American history. Employees have had benefits slashed, wages cut, and 401ks unmatched. They’re doing the work of at least one or two former colleagues who were either not replaced during the recession or just plain laid off.

And yet, in the midst of all this drama, managers are trying to further differentiate themselves from the competition. They have to slice through the low morale, terrified customers and drab economic climate and still manage to do two things: 1) get more business, 2) retain current business.

How do you do it? You have to control the only thing you can control: customer service.

The Truth

Customer service will differentiate you from the competition in any economic climate. However, right now, that difference is more obvious. The recession—it’s horror and aftermath—has exposed the companies that have poor customer service and spotlighted those that have legendary customer service.

The difference between the customer service haves and have-nots is greater than ever.

An article in a 2009 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek points this out: “If anything, the tough economy has made starker the difference between companies that put customers first and those that sacrifice loyalty for short-term gain. In this year’s ranking…from J.D. Power….more than half of the top 25 brands [ranked by customer service] showed improved customer service scores from last year. Among the bottom 25…scores mostly fell.”

Further research show that companies with high levels of customer service during the recession lost less revenue (or actually gained more revenue), than the companies that have traditionally low customer service reputations or rankings.

The recession has made the customer service rich, richer; and the customer service poor, poorer. It has made customer service more important than ever.

The Specifics

Customer service is the ‘big thing’ that can make you different. How do you begin to improve your customer relations right now?

1) Attitude – This is the most important element of excellent customer service. Every executive, manager, and front-line employee must have an attitude of ‘owning’ every problem. Every problem. You must personally follow the problem through to the end. You must realize that helping your member is your first job (even if your official title is teller, customer service manager or janitor). Your job is to help your member. Period.

2) It Is Your Job – If you’re a front-line employee or a manager and somehow you get a call about an IT or a technical issue, your first reaction is, ‘this isn’t my job.’ After all, you don’t know anything about the question they’re asking. Heck, you don’t even know what half the words mean in the question they’re asking. This isn’t your job.

Wrong.

Helping them is your job! So help them. If you can’t fix the problem, find someone who can as quickly and efficiently as possible.

3) Focus On the ‘Can’ Not the ‘Can’t’ – Never ever, ever say ‘I can’t,’ or ‘I’m not allowed.’ Who cares if it’s against policy to waive a fee or process the transaction the way they want it processed? Focus on how you can help the customer. Get creative; go talk to a manager, make an exception if possible, make phone calls to business partners to help them, even to competitors if you have to—whoever! Help them no matter what!

4) Warm Transfer v. Cold Transfer -Here’s what we mean. Have you ever called a business to explain a situation/problem, you explain it once, and they transfer you? ‘I’m gonna transfer you to Frank.’ Frank picks up the phone and you have to explain who you are and why you’re calling all over again. And if that person still can’t help you…they transfer you; and the process of repetition and explanation and frustration repeats itself.

That is a cold transfer. And it’s a major problem.

A warm transfer goes like this: you call to explain a situation/problem. You explain it and the employee says ‘I’m going to transfer you to Frank, she’ll be able to help you.’ But instead of pushing transfer and forgetting you, this rep calls Frank herself, with you on the line, and explains to Frank what you’ve just told her. She does the work for you, so you don’t have to explain everything 47 times.

That is customer service.

5) Dealing with a Frustrated or Upset Customer – If a member gets upset, diffuse the anger. Listen to them. Don’t argue. Resist the urge to justify and defend your business, colleagues or employees.

Avoid using words and phrases like ‘but’ and ‘no’ and ‘I can’t.’

Show empathy by using phrases like ‘I understand how you feel, I’d be frustrated too if…’ or ‘I’m really sorry this happened, I can fix it…’ Above all, show them that you care. They need to see that you are sincerely on your side and you are trying to help them.

6) Employee Accountability and Learning – We talked earlier about low morale among American workers. Most workplaces in America have at least one or two indifferent employees. What can you do to fix that problem? We’ve written about this before at length, but here’s the gist: create a workplace culture of learning and growing.

Sure, you can try gimmicks like parties and gift cards. That will work temporarily. But any morale boost that comes from a fun party won’t last. You must create a culture of learning (or pay everybody a boatload more money).

You must provide opportunities for your employees to learn and grow. Provide training and opportunities to practice customer service and sales skills; and hold them accountable for what they learn.

Manage What You Can Control

It costs 4 to 5 times as much to bring in a new customer then it does to keep an existing one. What’s the best way to retain your members? You guessed it! Customer service! You can’t merely ‘hope’ for loyalty. You have to ensure loyalty. You simply cannot afford to go out and replace members you have lost. You need to keep the ones you have.

And the only way to generate customer loyalty is through customer service.

Related Customer Service Articles