Customer Service Tips

Customer Service Training:
Customer Relations: The Value of Not-So-Common Courtesy

What I have noted about some of these builders is a characteristic - considered "good customer relations" - to get friendly with the client and then treat them like friends at a bar. This seems to accomplish a few temporary moments of humor and a few laughs, but the larger result is a lack of respect from the builder, and eventually a lack of trust from the client.

Case in point: one builder I knew had a client who wanted to pay by credit card. There was difficulty using the card processing machine, and both the client and the builder had to call the card company together and verify the client's information. By this stage the client/builder relationship was very “chummy” and involved frequent jokes about all sort of irrelevant things and the dialogue between them had become rather crude.

The credit company asked for the client's age, which was given as 24 years old, and the builder thought that his client and new-found friend was telling a whopper of a lie. This client had greying hair, wrinkles at the edge of his eyes, and his facial features were already starting to sag a little. He could not have passed for less than 50 years old.

The builder, certain the customer was pulling his leg and operating under the established customer relations precedent, proceeded to laugh at the client and make derogatory jokes. The client took offense, and it escalated till both were arguing and insulting each other. The end result was that the building contract between them no longer existed.

The truth of the matter was that the client had advanced-maturing syndrome, due to an accident when he was younger, and he was rather sensitive about it. The builder’s lack of respect and insistence on “chummy” customer relations led him to joke about a subject that lost him his professional relationship with the client.

So from this we learn several customer relations lessons:

1. Always keep a professional and courteous relationship with a client.
2. When things get too "friendly" they have a larger chance to explode.
3. Dialogues between customers and service providers should stay service related, barring a few instances where brief discussions about personal matters may arise with the customer. In this case they should be short and the original subject (the service) should be returned to promptly.