customer service | Customer Service Solutions, Inc. - Page 126

Home  /  The Servant Mindset  /  customer service

Talk About Yourself to Build Customer Confidence - 4/16/24


When you’re dealing with somebody who is anxious or nervous about a situation, a customer who feels like they don’t have much control, an individual who is unsure and uncertain, it’s important to put the customer at ease.  It’s important to build their comfort level.  It’s important to help Read more

The Proven Value in What You Do - 4/9/24


Forbes wrote an article last year based on a compilation of the results of research on customer service and the customer experience; it was titled:  100 Customer Experience Stats For 2023. In reading the article, you’ll note that many of these key research findings are about you – the value Read more

A Tale of Two Texts - 4/2/24


Having to get allergy shots once a week is never fun, and for Janet, it became an even bigger frustration. She had the shots typically scheduled on Tuesday around 10:30 in the morning, figuring she would avoid the morning rush as well as the lunch rush by going mid-morning.  However, Read more

The Secret Sauce for Great Customer Service - 3/26/24


I was working with the League Office for a major American sport several years back, and one of the executives asked me to describe our Secret Sauce that helped our clients improve the fan experience and customer retention.  I gave him a sense of what makes us unique and Read more

The Miracle of an Apology - 3/19/24


Unfortunate but true story… The manager basically lost his mind.  He terminated his employee on the spot.  She had told the customer that there was going to be a delay in the shipment.  The employee called up the customer ahead of time to let the customer know what was about Read more

It’s Not About the 5-Minute Wait - 3/12/24


Robert went into his supervisor’s office to update her on a situation at the payment desk.  Robert said that a customer was about fourth or fifth in line, waiting to be served, and the customer was complaining loudly about the wait.  He was there to make a property tax Read more

Lessons from the Greats - 3/5/24


I was recently facilitating a workshop on the customer experience, and I made the point that it’s usually beneficial to look at your personal life for great experiences; identify what really resonates with you in a positive way in order to uncover ideas to improve your own customer service. So, Read more

The Empathy Roadmap - 2/27/24


For some people, empathy comes naturally.  There’s an innate desire to learn about the other person and to sincerely convey that sense of interest and caring.  But for many of us, sometimes it helps to have a communication plan.  It helps to know what to do in order to Read more

“You’re the Boss” - 2/20/24


Terrence is excellent at what he does.  From a technical standpoint, he knows how to keep the facility clean.  He’s the lead custodian, and he knows that keeping things straight does not necessarily mean keeping things sanitary.  He knows what chemicals to use and not to use, how to Read more

Customer Understanding Leads to Relationship Growth - 2/13/24


We’ve worked with educational organizations at all grade levels over the years.  One special and unique characteristic about the staff who work in these organizations is that there’s a clear intent to know about the students as individuals, to focus on them rather than purely focusing on what’s delivered Read more

•••••

The Servant Mindset

Posted on December 16, 2009 in Business Advice, Government 1 Comment

A county manager talks about staff needing to have a “Servant Mindset” with the community. He is talking about government workers on the local level in tax collections, parks, social services, and the health department being servants of the residents of the community.

That’s his way of describing customer service. That’s his way of sharing his mental image of what it means to provide customer service.

To many people, this conjures up the image of someone subservient to the other, someone who defers to the other, someone dressing fancy, saying “Yes, Sir” and “Yes, Ma’am” and catering to the other person’s every whim. Could that possibly be the image he is referencing?

Well…yes.

We know that many government workers have a bad reputation for being slow or inconsiderate or even rude at times. And that reputation – fair or not – has to be turned around; changing that perception is not going to happen purely from some slick marketing or branding campaign. It has to happen through the thousands and thousands of interactions that occur on a weekly basis. That perception has to be changed through the reality that residents experience on a daily basis. It has to be based on each call, or e-mail, or face-to-face interaction which the community experiences. At some point, for government entities (and most businesses), reality is the ultimate determinant of perception.

So the manager strives to impact those interactions by impacting the mindset of each employee. If the employee takes the attitude that “I need to defer to the other” and “I need to dress professionally” and “I need to be respectful in what I say and how I say it,” then how that employee is perceived by the customer will improve. This mindset creates an underlying feeling in the conversation that the customer is important, they are being served, and they are being respected.

The next time your company is coming up with the next big thing to impact your perception and your brand, start first by impacting the mindset that each employee has toward their relationship with their customer.

Interested in improving your company’s customer service? See more information at: http://www.cssamerica.com/


The Truth(s) About Customer Service

Posted on December 15, 2009 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

Here are a few (nearly) undeniable truths about customer service.

· Customers that you truly have a relationship with are more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong.

· If customers feel like you listen, they’re more willing to talk.

· It’s easier to keep a customer that will provide feedback (good or bad) than one that never responds to communications.

· For most customers, what keeps them with you is not what got them for you.

· You can’t develop a relationship with a customer if you don’t know much about the customer.

· You can’t find out about customers if you don’t ask them about themselves.

· Companies which want to be great at customer service try to be fair and consistent with customers. In other words, they treat everyone special.

· It’s virtually impossible for any high-level executive to keep a customer. The employees keep the customers.

· Words set expectations, but actions deliver results.

· Don’t buy into the philosophy that “we need to treat our customers as family.” We need to show customers more appreciation than that.

· 50% of great customer service is doing what it takes to satisfy the customer. The other 50% is wanting to do it.

· If an executive doesn’t think customer service is important to the organization’s success, have him sit in a room with a competitor and a key customer and make that statement.

· You can’t control your customer’s opinion of you, but you can control the experiences they base that opinion on.

· If you decide you want to have a great day, you have a much better chance of having one.

Decide to Have a Great Week!

Interested in improving your company’s customer service? See more information at: http://www.cssamerica.com/


Service and Sales Need to Talk

Posted on December 14, 2009 in Business Advice, Sports Please leave a comment

We are fortunate to have a lot of professional sports clients. Typically when working with these organizations, the dual focus is season-ticket holder retention and sales growth. Many teams focus on creating synergies between their services area and their sales area. It is not just important for pro sports teams; it is also important for any organization. Let’s stick with the pro sports analogy to illustrate the point.

One key term used in the business side of pro sports is the need to create “synergies” between departments. In particular, one of the biggest potential areas of synergy is the service area creating sales leads for the sales division. This is a situation where service personnel identify potential group sales, event sales, or ticket sales through the relationship they have with their existing season-ticket holders. The service areas then send these leads to the sales departments to close. The synergies not only help the organization to perform better financially, but they help your organization to quickly generate sales by having the sales be created through leads generated from the greatest referral source there is – your current clients.

But thinking a little out of the box in terms of the relationships between these two areas, one great way where service and sales need to talk is where the education of one group by the other will pay dividends to the company. For example, salespeople know how to sell. They know the strategies, the mental decision trees, and the techniques to utilize. While many customer service people may detest selling, they must also realize that to do the best job possible in serving their clients, they need to periodically make offers on products and services to help address client needs. You’re actually doing a disservice if you don’t sell to some of your clients because they’re not getting their needs met. The sales personnel need to train service on key selling techniques.

Similarly, service needs to train sales. Sales people often think in a very transactional manner. While some are very process or relationship oriented, many more don’t understand how to think long-term and how to develop relationships using a long-term strategy. Service people in pro sports teams understand the concept of Touch Point Planning. They understand how to develop a relationship over time, viewing your customers as suppliers of information that will help you to retain them and sell to them in the future. Service personnel can teach sales folks how to be very disciplined and how to structure communication points with their clients, realizing that they need to get information from the customers in order to best sell to the customers.

While there are many organizations that experience friction between service and sales, the organizations that are most effective are those where service and sales talk with and teach each other.

Interested in improving your company’s customer service? See more information at: http://www.cssamerica.com/


« Previous   1 2 ... 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 ... 134 135   Next »