Customer Service 101

I came across this information from "The Best of Inc.com" and wanted to share it with you. Good selling! 

Three Phrases You Should Never Say To a Customer

"That's our policy."
It's a destructive phrase with a primary purpose to shut down a conversation.

"There's nothing I can do."
There's always at least one thing you can do - return the customer's money.

"That's the manufacturer's responsibility."
Your customer doesn't have the relationship with your partners, suppliers or manufacturers. You took their money, so it's your responsibility to fix the problem.

Your Sacred Responsibility

Something to think about....

Every time you touch the client it is your sacred responsibility to build a stronger perception of value. To do that, every phone call, email and meeting must focus on the most important person on earth - the buyer - and how you can help them.

Loyalty

There is an enormous payoff for companies who move customers from satisfied to loyal on the spectrum because you'll get more business with higher markups. Identify a list of ten satisfied customers with big potential and talk to them. Find out what you would have to do differently in order to qualify for the gift of loyalty.

Reward loyal customers for their continued support.

• Have an event to thank them
• Send a thank you card signed by everyone in your company
• Send out a small appreciation gift
• Mark significant anniversaries like the tenth year of a partnership

KeFactors Friday (Rewind): Right, Wrong, or Customer Service

One of the first mistakes most people make when responding to customer complaints is to get overly mired in determining right or wrong.

“Of course,” you say, “that’s a no-brainer. The customer’s always right. Everybody knows that.”

Unfortunately, not everyone does, because a great many customer grievances are not so cut and dry. How do you address a customer’s ire over your late delivery of a project when he himself was late getting essential information to you? How do you explain to her that her abrasive behaviors have been upsetting your staff?

Here’s the key: Don’t think in terms of right or wrong. First, get inside the customer’s head to comprehend how they’re perceiving the problem. Usually you’ll find it has less to do with right or wrong, more to do with other issues that have cropped up to ruin their day—the customer may be feeling new stressors at work or need help doing some incidental face-saving.

But don’t get into the trap of determining right or wrong: you’ll only earn your customer’s resentment. After all, who died and made you judge and jury?

Take the time to fully understand how your customer’s experiencing the stated problem, and you’ll be more than halfway there to solving it. Along the way, you may also gain crucial insights on your customer’s work environment.

KeFactors Friday: The Customer Is Always Right?!

Top 3 Mistakes of Complaint Handling That Will Guarantee Your Customer’s Wrath

Yes, yes, yes, you’ve worked too hard and come too far in your career to deal with some whiny customer with nothing better to do than blister your ear with complaints about your products and/or services! You’re a busy [insert your job title], and that customer is probably some ill-tempered old coot filling a bleak and empty life by picking on busy people with real jobs. Nonetheless, here are three mistakes you ought to avoid:

You apologize—in fact, you cut off the customer’s words in your haste to do so—and you never get around to thanking the customer for making the complaint.
What the customer hears: “If I say sorry ASAP, this customer will go away.”
Since the customer’s the injured party, you don’t get to set the terms of the discussion. Your job is to listen fully, suspend reactions, and thank the customer for even bothering to complain directly to you at all. Why? Because thanking them for the complaint means you take it seriously. You regard the customer as a partner in your organization’s hopes for improvement and customer satisfaction. Customers who are frequently cut off and interrupted become increasingly “glued to the problem.”

One of your first reactions to the complaint is along the lines of, “That’s funny, no one’s ever complained about that before.” (If you really want to drive this customer away, smile or chuckle when you say that).
What the customer hears: “Your complaint is unprecedented and therefore ridiculous.”
Again, a grateful attitude helps here, because so what if this customer’s the first? How many other customers have walked away mad, without saying anything to you about it?

Explaining/justifying your company’s internal protocols doesn’t work if the result still means a problem for the customer.
What the customer hears: “This is the way we operate and we’re not going to change it just because you’ve complained.”
If someone’s voicing dissatisfaction over a negative experience, characterizing the customer as a freakish crank means you’re willfully blinding yourself to process flaws that may need to change anyway—sooner rather than later. Again, how many other customers have reacted the same way but simply chosen not to share their grievance with you? because if a customer’s unhappy with you, they’ll talk—maybe not to you, but they’ll talk.

A big thank you to Lucy Ke for providing us with wonderful content as part of KeFactor Fridays. Lucy will be taking a hiatus to work on her business, but we wish her all the best and hope she will return as our guest blogger in the future. Over the coming weeks, we will be posting "The Best of KeFactor Friday." For more information on Lucy, visit her website www.kefactors.com or follow her on Twitter @KeFactors.

KeFactors Friday: The Four Ways You May Be Stabbing Yourself in the Back

The first is in customer service—the self-sabotage that involves a chronic lack of skill in responding to customer concerns, especially when clients are unhappy and complaining.

Bear in mind, every sector has its customers, whether we call them clients, patients, stakeholders, volunteers, trustees, donors, or constituents.

This also has to be expanded to include suppliers and colleagues. Why? because for many sectors, their suppliers and colleagues are also “paying customers” or internal clients who depend heavily on others within the same organization.

Too many organizations make the mistake of “making nice” with people outside their organization while totally abusing the ones adopted within; or turning supplier relationships into “master-servant” power plays rather than collaborations.

The second way in which we damage ourselves is in the area of confidentiality. Howwell can you be trusted with proprietary info belonging to your organization…your internal and external clients…and the private info belonging to your colleagues?

The third is conformity, by which I mean how well you adjust and adhere to the norms of your workplace, which also includes when and how you choose to disobey or challenge such norms for the good of the organization.

And the fourth is civility. Civility is to success and upward mobility what learning is that knowledge. It’s the social nugget in social justice, and the social underpinning to your social media plan. Nothing about your workplace — your service mottos, your strategic initiatives, your bottom line — will come to life without foundation in civility.

And it seems that we as a society are increasingly short on civility. Over the next couple weeks I’ll be discussing workplace incivility—its nature, its cost to American employers, and the socio-professional cost to you.

KeFactors Friday: The Dignity Domino

Security expert Gavin De Becker first introduced this term in his 1997 book, The Gift of Fear, urging employers to “prop up with courtesy and understanding” that bit of personal dignity in each employee, especially ones facing termination.

Young, broke, and eager to master his writing, John Steinbeck considered his options with a teacher’s advice to live in Europe: “Over there poverty is considered a misfortune. Here in America it’s considered shameful.”

Through no fault of our own, this recession has put a great many of us into a valley of shame—lengthy unemployment, debt, collections, notice of insufficient funds, foreclosure—all the scary harbingers of personal ruin.

As this economy slowly turns around, more and more I get called to speak on matters involving workplace civility and dealing effectively with difficult customers. No surprise. As pressures mount, people are finding it harder to maintain calm, patience, and understanding; they’re knotted up with fear—fear of foreclosure, fear of collections, fear of losing their jobs.

There’s nothing revolutionary about providing superior customer service during a slow economic recovery. It’s simple.

• Protect your customer’s dignity domino.
• Don’t embarrass the customer in front of others.
• No matter how sacred your policies are, don’t embarrass the customer in front of their own children (or employees). Recall the grocery scene from the old movie, “Terms of Endearment,” when a rude checkout clerk yells across the store, “She doesn’t have enough money!” — much to a young mother’s humiliation and to her children’s mortification.
• Emphasize that you’re aiming for a long-term relationship. How would you feel about remaining loyal to someone who throws you overboard at the first sign of trouble?
• Don’t let your competitors beat you to it, in simply being kinder and more understanding to your customers. As a recent car commercial said, “This isn’t over for any of us until it’s over for all of us.” Until it ends, we’ll need to help each other, especially if we want to count on customer loyalties when households start to experience “disposable income.” They may condemn ruined buildings but the human spirit is strong, and people always, always, always remember how they were treated.

KeFactors Friday: Adventures in the World of Fast

The End of This Story isn’t Really a Nail-Biter.

This week I had a large document that needed to be printed out, then copied. I want to stress this was not a complex document—no fancy graphics, no color photos— just straight black type on white letter paper.

So I sailed forth, plucky as the Pinta, the Niña, and the Santa María, believing a woman with a crowded schedule could get three sets of copies done inexpensively, in 20 minutes, without having to first notify her next of kin.

Things looked promising too: there was a manager and a management trainee on the floor, thoughtfully taking questions from new incoming like myself.

One of my questions meant the difference between a $20 versus a $100 copy run, and the manager, being management, said, “I don’t know. Patty! Can you help this lady, please?”

His employee Patty was already busy fielding the three other customers he’d helped over there, and—like a fish anxious to stay live—kept moving through a variety of tasks as she took my original. I posed my questions but unless that odd twitching under her eyes was a response, I wasn’t sure she had heard me, and meanwhile she was on the other side of the room, reaching for the wrong paper….

Armed with a spiffy padfolio and lacking only a cub-hero cape, the management trainee stepped up to ask if help was needed. I whispered, “Do you think Patty heard me?” The management trainee couldn’t be sure. But then training kicked in and she decided to ask Patty if she’d heard me. This took the next 5-10 minutes.

Finally I stuck two fingers into my mouth and whistled like Ben Cartwright ordering everyone back to the Ponderosa.

“We heard you,” said Patty, a little indignant at my need for coddling.

My document was copied in the nick of time, but then I needed a bold marker to address an envelope. Another employee found one for me, hovering near to ensure I didn’t try to make off with a Sharpie that predated the Clinton administration. Then, exit stage left, only to encounter the company truck blocking in my car, so their delivery guy could unload boxes. While waiting, new incoming—in the form of a little old lady asking the manager if he had change for a fiver. (What do you think?)

KeFactors Friday: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Customer John, a business owner, is trying to lower his premiums by changing from Plan A to Plan B, but he’s opted to stay with the same insurance company. Here’s how a call center professional can either delight him or drown him in regret about his decision to stay faithful.

By refusing to “get” the real point of the customer’s call. John calls up, somewhat stressed that his change of policy application won’t get in on time.

Ugly: “Sir, I get it that your mail was held up by a snowstorm, but we can’t move the deadline on account of that. We can’t do anything about acts of God.”

Bad: [defensive] “Want to talk to my supervisor?”

Good: “I’m sorry you had some trouble with that, sir. Let me go over your account and get this done today so you won’t have to worry about it any more. We appreciate you’re keeping your policy with us.”

By focusing so much on policy readings, you actually demonstrate to the customer that you’re inflexible and somewhat shady.

Ugly: “Before we take your new application, sir, did anyone tell you that if you change your mind later, you can’t go back to Plan A? No, sir, it’s being eliminated. Gone.”

Bad: [loud eye rolling] “My supervisor can explain why it’s set up like that.”

Good: “Before we finalize this new plan, sir, I need to point out that as of April 1, we’ll be eliminating Plan A, the plan you just left. If you later find you’re unhappy with Plan B, just give us a call back and we’ll arrange other options for you to consider. Some of the new plans are pretty popular and inexpensive.”

Resolving the customer’s business is a big relief — and a chance to sell more of what the customer doesn’t want, need, or would even consider!

Ugly: [perfunctory] “Is there anything else we can do for you?”

Bad: [uninspired drone] “Have I told you about our Plan B Extra Plus?”

Good: “Before we wrap up, sir, have we taken care of everything you needed to get done today? Have we answered your questions? Well, if you think of any later, please call us back. We’ve got some wonderful enhancements like the Plan B Extra Plus which is pretty popular with printing companies like yours. You may not have time to consider it today but the details are on our Web site, which also lists other printing companies in your region who’ve endorsed the Extra Plus. And once again, thank you for keeping your policy with us. Have a great day.”

KeFactors Friday: Try a Little Seltzer for the Road Ahead

Recently I posted this on Facebook: “Today my local grocery had customers cracking up in the aisles when an employee on the PA system said: Welcome Publix shoppers to the best Friday deals ever (ever ever ever)...our deli just pulled rotisserie chicken from the oven and we got homemade bisque (bisque bisque)...As always, thank you for being with us today, where shopping is a pleasure (pleasure pleasure)....Gotta love a store with its own PA echo.”

To me that's great customer service. It was such a small, silly thing, but the smiles lingered on everyone's face, the employees were clapping and laughing, and they just proved their tagline.

In the same week, one of my clients said something very profound: “It’s not just that we should keep doing things better, but we need to do the same things differently. What’s more, we need to try and do different things.”

So what does that mean? I’ve put together a general list:

• Give your customers, your constituents, a different experience of you. To say you want to “re-engage” them means that some organizations will do what they’ve always done, only with greater frequency and intensity, but is that necessarily the best strategy? One client plans to go beyond sending thank-you form letters to their donors and instead start inviting them to pick-your-brain meals with national luminaries closely tied to their organization.

• Don’t just invest in transparency but aim for constant, porous dialog. New programming frequently fails because the targeted audience was never asked in the first place if such programs were even relevant, much less appealing or convenient. The best way to escape formulaic tactics is to ask your customer what they need most.

• Don’t forget to delight. One of the classic episodes of 1970s’ “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was when the TV station crew struggled to maintain gravitas at the funeral of a clown whose credo was “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.”