Customer
Service Training:
The Art of Customer Service - Ten Simple Rules
1. Start at the top. The CEO's attitude towards customer
service is the primary determinant of the quality of service
that a company delivers. If the CEO thinks that customers
are a pain in the ass who always want something for nothing,
that attitude will permeate the company, and service will be
lousy. So if you are the CEO, get your act together. If
you're not the CEO, either convince her to change her mind,
quit, or learn to live with mediocrity--in that order.
2. Put the customer in control. The best kind of customer
service happens when management enables employees to put the
customer in control. This require two leaps of faith: first,
that management trusts customers not take advantage of the
situation; second, that management trust employees with this
empowerment. If you can make these leaps, then the quality
of your customer service will zoom; if not, there is nothing
more frustrating than companies copping the attitude that
something is "against company policy."
3. Take responsibility for your shortcomings. A company
that takes responsibility for its shortcomings is likely to
provide great customer service for two reasons: first, it's
acknowledged that it's the company's fault and the company's
responsibility to fix. Second, customers won't go through
the aggravating process of getting you to accept blame--if
you got to the airport on time and checked your baggage,
it's hard to see how it's your fault that it got sent to the
wrong continent.
4. Don't point the finger. This is the flip side of
taking responsibility. As computer owners we all know that
when a program doesn't work, vendors often resort to finger
pointing: "It's Apple's system software." "It's Microsoft's
'special' way of doing things." "It's the way Adobe created
PDF." A great customer service company doesn't point the
finger--it figures out what the solution is regardless of
whose fault the problem is and makes the customer happy. As
my mother used to say, "You're either part of the problem or
part of the solution." (By the way, as a rule of thumb, the
company with the largest market capitalization is the one at
fault.)
5. Don't finger the pointer. Great customer service
companies don't shoot the messenger. When it comes to
customer service, it could be a customer, an employee, a
vendor, or a consultant who's doing the pointing. The goal
is not to silence the messenger, but to fix the problem that
the messenger brought so that other customers don't have a
bad experience.
6. Don't be paranoid. One of the most common
justifications for anti-service is "What if everyone did
this?" For example, what if everyone bought a new wardrobe
when we lost their luggage? Or, to cite the often-told,
perhaps apocryphal, story of a customer returning a tire to
Nordstrom even though everyone knows Nordstrom doesn't sell
tires, what if everyone started returning tires to
Nordstrom? The point is: Don't assume that the worst case is
going to be the common case. There will be outlier abusers,
yes, but generally people are reasonable. If you put in a
policy to take care of the worst case, bad people, it will
antagonize and insult the bulk of your customers.
7. Hire the right kind of people. To put it mildly,
customer service is not a job for everyone. The ideal
customer service person derives great satisfaction by
helping people and solving problems. This cannot be said of
every job candidate. It's the company's responsibility to
hire the right kind of people for this job because it can be
a bad experience for the employee and the customer when you
hire folks without a service orientation.
8. Under promise and over deliver. The goal is to delight
a customer. For example, the signs in the lines at
DisneyLand that tell you how long you'll have to wait from
each point are purposely over-stated. When you get to the
ride in less time, you're delighted. Imagine if the signs
were understated--you'd be angry because Disneyland lied to
you.
9. Integrate customer service into the mainstream. Let's
see: sales makes the big bucks. Marketing does the fun
stuff. Engineers, well, you leave them alone in their dark
caves. Accounting cuts the paychecks. And support? Do to the
dirty work of talking to pissed off customers when nothing
else works. Herein lies the problem: customer service has as
much to do with a company's reputation as sales, marketing,
engineering, and finance. So integrate customer service into
the mainstream of the company and do not consider it
profit-sucking necessary evil. A customer service hero
deserves all the accolades that a sales, marketing, or
engineering one does.
10. Put it all together. To put several recommendations
in action, suppose a part breaks in the gizmo that a
customer bought from you. First, take responsibility: "I'm
sorry that it broke." Second, don't point the finger--that
is, don't say, "We buy that part from a supplier." Third,
put the customer in control: "When would like the
replacement by?" Fourth, under promise and over deliver:
Send it at no additional charge via a faster shipping method
than necessary. That's the way to create legendary customer
service.
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/04/the_art_of_cust.html
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