Customer Service Training Workshops:
Our customer service workshop teaches by doing with less than 15% lecture and 85% hands on
activities. Participants learn by Doing and not by being told. Exercises are
practical, realistic, fun and are skill based.
To maximize your customer
service teams effectiveness we suggest our custom, private
customer service workshops offered in house at the location of
your choice, usually in groups of 6 or more.
Contact
us for a free consultation on how we can best service your
training needs.
Workshop Objectives:
In our Exceptional Customer Service one-day
workshop
participants will:
- Understand how to handle inquiries and/or complaints in
ways that create improved, lasting relationships with your
customers or clients.
- Learn to promote positive "chemistry" between
your company and your clients by recognizing and
responding to the needs of each individual.
- Learn how to handle doubt, misunderstandings, and
objections.
- Acquire techniques for seeing issues from clients'
perspectives, creating value-adding options for clients,
and making sure clients recognize the added value they are
getting.
- Learn how to gain agreement from clients and reinforce
mutually satisfying long-term relationships.
Customer Service Training:
Customer Service Skills: The Golden Rule
People start their own businesses for many different reasons. Many times they get so involved in what was, up to that point, a hobby that they suddenly turn into a full-time business. Other times, the reasons for starting a new business are more mundane but nonetheless compelling. I started my own business because there weren't any available jobs that interested me. Being interested was the key ingredient in carving out my niche, and the same goes for you.
Get out the Carving Knife
Most entrepreneurs start a business because they're passionate about something. Book lovers launch e-publishing enterprises, shutterbugs start photo studios (that's my story), and art lovers open galleries and Web-design studios. But you'll need more than passion to be successful. You need to be able to set yourself apart from all of the other new businesses that offer similar services. Sometimes this means doing things you don't like to do if the market warrants. As with any career choice, carving out your niche is a balance between doing what you love and doing what the market dictates. Here are some tips for flourishing on the tightrope that defines small start-ups.
Make sure your business name is unique. Don't just settle for a quick search of the Yellow Pages or available domain names. It is just as possible that your new company name is a trademark of somebody else that, as unlikely as it may seem, may not have a Web site or uses a different domain name. Hire a lawyer with experience in trademark law and have him or her do a search before opening you’re doors-virtual or otherwise.
Be original. Start by looking at your competitors and making sure you have very little in common with them. If the only thing that separates you from the competition is the color of your carpet (or Web-site background) and the name on the front door, you reduce your products and services to a commodity, and all commodity purchases are based on price alone. All businesses are different, and it's important that you express this difference to potential clients. This can be done in product presentation, or more important, customer service.
Look for gaps in the marketplace, and then fill them. As we approach the real millennium, it may seem unlikely that there could be anything new, but the opposite is always true. There is always something new. Look for new technology around which you can develop products and services. If you think the Internet is finished growing new companies, you are wrong. The Web is a toddler taking its first, halting steps, and you can leverage Internet technology, along with wireless communications and handheld devices, to offer services and products that nobody has thought of or applied to the Web. Ten weeks after Britain's Richard and Grahame Cohen launched DesktopLawyer.com, they had captured 6 percent of the $120 million divorce market in the U.K. Online divorces? As far-fetched as that sounds, thinking outside the box can be profitable.
Don't practice on your clients. Know what you are doing before you hang out that shingle on your Web site. Knowledge of your products and skill in performing your service must be a given. Over time, you will be better able to develop streamlined policies and practices that will enable you to do a better, faster, cheaper job for your clients, but enthusiasm alone will not sustain your enterprise: You have to know what you are doing.
Treat customers and clients the way you would want to be treated. This golden rule approach to customer service may sound Pollyanna-ish, but bad customer service is the norm today, and one way to set yourself apart from your competitors is to treat clients like the gold they are. The temptation with a start-up is to worry about cash flow, and the thought of refunds, or even giving a client something for nothing, may sound suicidal. But customers aren't the enemy; they are the reason you are in business and they should always receive great customer service.
Studies of employees in the customer service industry showed that the No. 1 factor that stands in the way of employees enjoying their work is the guests. If it weren't for these customers, customer service employees say, they would really enjoy their jobs. But once you've developed this attitude, you are doomed. Every product or service that I give away to satisfy a customer's complaints has been returned to me tenfold. The initial reaction from customers was astonishment that instead of giving them the expected resistance, I was understanding and gave them something for their trouble. This enabled me to build a legacy of customer service that is the top reason for return business.
Hire the right people. Finding people who fit your business takes time. Unfortunately, time is something start-up entrepreneurs rarely have. Too often, small-business proprietors get so overloaded before they can hire someone who they hire from a small batch of available recruits rather than anticipating the need and finding the best people. One of the biggest problems for startups is having the legal knowledge and experience to provide the kinds of benefits packages to attract and keep employees. This was an obvious gap in the marketplace that online entrepreneurs were happy to fill. There is a new, emerging group of human-resource service providers, such as TriNet http://www.trinet.com, that will do HR work for you.
Treat your employees the way you would like to be treated. While you may start your business by yourself, the reality is that if you're going to make enough money to support your family, you're going to need employees. When carving your niche, you need to be able to instill in your employees the same enthusiasm for your company and customer service that you have. You can do this simply by treating them like human beings whose efforts are appreciated. As with customer service, this is a rare occurrence in many businesses today. Too often, employees are treated as something that is siphoning off money that the owner feels is rightly his or hers. You must be able to accomplish your work through the efforts of others, otherwise you will never be able to take a sick day, vacation, or watch your child's first tee-ball game.
Before Opening Your Doors
While many people with great ideas want to rush out and open a business, the truth is that it takes time to rent space, have it remodeled to your specifications, and apply for all of the licenses your state and county may require. Use this time to your advantage by heeding the following suggestions. Even if you're only planning on buying a well-worn desk from the Salvation Army and plopping down a couple of computers that you purchased from your local vendor, make the time to exploit at least a few of these suggestions.
Hire a designer. And make his or her first assignment the creation of a logo or distinctive identity for your new firm. You're not going to get the most distinctive logo in the world--the Mercedes three-pointed star has that distinction--but anything that sets you apart from the Helvetica’s masses will create an identity. Remember that it takes 18 impressions on a potential client to make a sale. Hitting these potential buyers with 18 different ways of representing your company multiplies this factor by the number of different ways that you present yourself graphically. If you hit them with three different approaches, it will take 54 impressions, and by then they may have lost interest or gone in other directions.
Resist the temptation to skimp on design. For years, I traded services with various designers to create and update my studio's look, but it wasn't until I actually hired somebody and paid the designer real money that I got a design I've used longer than any of the others. After they finished the logo, I put them to work on a Web site design.
Launch your Web site before opening your business. From day one, potential clients are going to be searching the Internet for you. Make sure that the site opens months before your doors do. Even when looking for a location, you can be on the Web selling products and services. You can treat this early Web experience as a focus group and experiment with designs and interfaces to find out what works best. The most important thing to remember is that a Web site is more like a daily newspaper than a brochure. It has to be updated regularly. Failure to update on a weekly or monthly basis will result in a dead site with few hits.
After the Novelty Wears Off
Most of us today operate on Internet time, which is like dog years. Each year of real-time translates into about eight years of Internet time, which means that after you've been in business for six months, it will be like you've been operating for four years. A Dun & Bradstreet analysis of 800,000 small businesses showed that 70 percent were still in business after eight and a half years. Further analysis showed that of those businesses that fail, 85 percent do so in the first five years. If you survived those first six months, the worst thing to do is become complacent. Here are a few tips for ongoing analysis that will bring some of the luster that may be dimmed by working too many hours and consuming too much cold pizza.
Analyze the services you currently offer. The purpose of this analysis is to find a service that your clients need-something that's missing in your current offering of products and services. Amazon.com started by selling books, but now you can buy just about anything on that site. Look for ways to implement new offerings that leverage the products and services you deliver today but expand what you can offer to customers tomorrow.
Do ongoing cost analysis. Determine what your process will be for any new product or service. If you haven't already done a cost-of-sales analysis for the way you are currently working, produce one based on your existing system before getting started on new products or services. Be sure to include all of the costs, such as travel time and other costs that are often overlooked.
Test the market. After analyzing the potential client applications for a new product or service, pick one-and only one-to use as the first offering, which will keep you from being distracted by competing elements for other potential new services. After you gain experience, you will be able to apply what you've learned from one of them to all of the others.
Paths to Increased Profitability
While this new business of yours might have its origins in a hobby, you're going to have to treat it like a business if you plan to succeed. Part of that process is learning from your mistakes and enacting procedures that keep you from making the same mistakes over and over. When looking in from the outside, some of the following suggestions may seem obvious, but these are some of the most common problems that startups face.
Adopt a pricing/packaging policy that ensures revenue. This seems apparent, but too often start-ups base their prices on what their competitors charge, without any analysis of their actual overhead and profitability requirements. For service businesses, this may mean they should base estimates and invoices on time and materials. Stick to your guns. Here's one rule you should never forget: Every exception you make to one of your policies costs you money. When someone tells you "Give me a deal this one time, and I'll give you a lot of work in the future," don't do it. During times of low cash flow, your resolve will weaken to the point that you'll do anything to get the job. My philosophy has always been to reward old clients for continued patronage, but all new clients go by the book. That's one of the biggest reasons you need standard policies and practices. Get it in writing. Don't begin any projects or take any orders without a written agreement specifying what you're going to do and what the client is going to do, including method and timeliness of payment. Every start-up I know has had major problems because they neglected to have enough written documentation. Document everything. Keep all forms and product information in a binder next to the telephone so that anyone answering it can quote price and state policies to potential clients. You should also produce an operations manual that anyone in your business can use. Keep customer information safe. If you sell products directly online, make sure not only that you have a secure server, but also that you tell everybody about it. Make customer privacy your new religion and be sure to spread that gospel to every potential client or surfer that visits your site. Get full or partial advance payments for service work. That may not be appropriate for what you do, but investigate ways to get money in advance from clients who may have a tendency to cancel-especially if your service is date-sensitive and you have reserved that date for them. You may also want to establish policies to ensure that if there is an order cancellation after a certain number of days, the customer's deposit will be kept for liquidated damages. Be sure to establish a policy on collections and follow it consistently. Do not accept third-party billing. Don't sign an agreement with anyone other than the party for whom the work is being done-unless you can bill that party directly. Position products for the future. Start thinking of your business in terms of product lines. Discontinue unprofitable lines. The most powerful word in advertising is new. Make sure there's always something new going on in your operation. Build a reputation as an innovative company by experimenting with new ways of doing things, and when you do, tell everybody about it.
Source:
Joe Farace:
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Article Content: Customer Service Skills
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