Seems like a no brainer but few do it well. What is the definition of ‘the Customer from Hell”? Answer, It’s me! You may or may not know that customer service is a pet peeve of mine. Whenever I interact with a company, I am always observing how employees handle the interchange. I’ve heard all the excuses for bad service from Leaders, “tuff to find people”, “the job is low paying, so you get what you get”, and on and on. In my experience from the grocery store clerk whose game face would scare a three old (and a personality to match) to Carlos ‘The Jackal’ who manages the Applebee’s in Apple Valley they are ‘costing their company money.
The perverse thing about good customer service is it doesn’t get you any ‘press’. Give out bad service and for sure that customer is not coming back and all the people they talk too. If you are really unlucky and it’s me on receiving end you are in for trouble because I will tell anyone that will listen how bad that company is with their service. I have even been known to walk up to people getting out of there car with a certain Twin Cities metro dealership and tell them about my bad experience with said car dealer.
Here are my questions for you if you want to improve your customer service outcomes:
In hiring decisions how important is personality? Make it the most important. I don’t care about their education I care if they are a nice person. Nice people come across all the time as nice. Would you let them take care of your mother?
Do you have a script for customer service people to follow on calls? BURN IT!!!! A nice person with average intelligence will be just fine. Give them the basics.
Is the customer always, right? Yes, 99% of the time unless they are obviously trying to screw you. Remember the COST of one bad experience.
How do you recognize people for there customer service? No plaques on the wall, no employee of the month, etc. Try and catch them when they are doing good, and a verbal thank you along with a little something extra like a dinner out.
Two stories. Walk into any Chick-fil-A and tell me it’s hard to find good workers. They have workers bumping into each other. They are young, have a smile on their face and perform exceptionally well under pressure (high volume of customers). Go visit them during peak dinner time. Go to a Kwik-Trip. They are staffed with older workers but not necessarily retires. Always pleasant with long lines of customers waiting and complaining about something.
What do these two organizations have in common. They both operate under the standard that if you treat your employees well, they will treat the customer well.
Good service is not rock science. The problem is either it’s ignored or handed off to some call center in central India.