Take a look around you and you just might see some essential customer service skills missing. Keep your customer service skills sharp by recalling the following:
Don’t Raise Your Voice
Interactions with customers can often become very heated. Think of it as: he who yells first, loses. Don’t give in to frustration. Keep your calm and don’t raise your voice to the customer.
Look for a Solution
Think of how you can solve the customer’s problem. They may be requesting a certain thing that can’t be done. Why do they want it? What do they really want to accomplish? How can you make that happen even if it isn’t what they initially asked for?
Don’t Hide Behind Policies
It is very easy to hide behind corporate policies and rules. You can simply defer to those organizational restrictions and give up. Don’t do this.
Find a solution that fits within your company’s policies.
Smile
A smile is catching, or so they say. If you are happy, it will diffuse tense situations. Smiling forces you to keep a positive attitude and look for ways to better help the customer.
Not Everyone is Equal
Don’t follow the same script with every customer. Long-time customers deserve to be treated well and show they are appreciated. New customers will need extra help and support so that they become long-time, return customers.
Fix the Problem
Customer service issues usually arise because of some type of problem. Instead of just addressing that problem every time, get to the root cause of the issue and fix that problem. Don’t just put band-aids on the symptoms, solve the underlying disease. This may require that you document and hand-off the issue to another group or person in your company.
Customer for Life
What if you had to treat every customer like they were a customer for life? What if you couldn’t lose any customers? Think about how you’d treat each person differently.
These 7 customer service skills don’t have to be lost in your business. Rethink how you interact with your customers and change your mindset and actions to better serve them. Your customers will thank you and the repeat business will follow.
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From what I have seen, after sales service seems to be almost dead to most companies. Once the sale is made, companies think that their responsibility s over.
Sure, they would have overhead when dealing with customer support, but that must have been factored into the cost of your product or service. If not, it’s a good time to raise price.
Rather than focusing on getting the deal closed somehow, businesses should focus on building a long term relationship with the customer.
@Adarsh – long term relationships with customers are built on the foundation of solid post-sales support. Customers won’t return to do business with you unless they know that your product is sound and that you’ll support them long-term.
Very interesting to be reminded about the simple side of service. These things are often forgotten. I shared these tips with colleagues across Europe and received some interesting feedback from Croatia which is quoted below. It helps to remind us that even in the simple tools one size does not fit all…
Quote:
I would like to share my experience (I first started as CS agent) regarding point 1 (Don’t Raise Your Voice). In Croatia, in the region called Dalmatia it is quite normal to raise your voice in everyday communication – for them it is not yelling, that’s the way they communicate. At first, I would communicate with people from Dalmatia in a polite, calm manner, but these customers would usually get the feeling that I’m “pulling their leg”. This wasn’t always the case, as people shouldn’t generally be “boxed” in such a way. Anyway, it took me some time to realize that it’s a must to sometimes raise your voice when communicating with them, not to prove your point, but to achieve for them to take me seriously
@Steve – you bring up a great point that customer service must adapt to the cultural norms and expectations of the customers being served. Thanks for sharing that example from Croatia.
Not only is the lost art of customer service a pet peeve, it also a continual growing edge. These are straightforward, doable tips that I can keep before me. Thank you, Joe. Spot on!
@Donna – you’re welcome! If every business took action on these tips, there would definitely be more happy customers.
Great set of skills, simple and everything would run in a much smoother way if they were applied. Would just like to suggest a number eight around deliver on promises/manage expectations – just as an illustration, a bank “promised” me they would call within three business hours….that was three weeks ago
@VGS – setting and delivering on expectations is so critical to quality customer service. Your bank example is a good one of what NOT to do!
Great Article, but I would like to suggest another important skill that we use and typically would be our #1 step especially in critical situations. Fix The Customer!
@Mike – what do you mean by “fix the customer”? Change their perspective, mind, etc?