Do You Have Customer Optimism?

Be An OptimistBe optimistic for your customers.

It is your choice. You can be optimistic or pessimistic. Both approaches use up energy. Only optimism gives you energy in return. Being Optimistic is an investment, and you get a return on your investment. Pessimism is an expense. It sucks up energy and there is no return. Not now. Not later. Never.

Be optimistic with your customers.

Be optimistic with your processes. .

Be optimistic with your staff.

The positive spend of energy is life giving.

Do you smile?

Do you say yes?

Do you never say “No”?

Do you say “I am here for you”?

Do you listen?

Do you ask questions?

Do you say “I can do anything for you”?

Are you optimistic?

Optimism is a no cost business investment opportunity that pays dividends all day long, all week long, all month long, all quarter long, all year long.

Choose optimism and your customers will thank you by returning, again and again.

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Are You Grabbing Customer Service Opportunities?

United Breaks Guitars – Awesome YouTube Video

Screen Shot 2013-07-03 at 2.07.35 PMThe customer had an issue that needed attention. The Company chose not to take care of the customer.  David Carroll put his experience in a song. Uploaded on July 6, 2009. As of July 3, 2013, 13,194,266 views.  And, comments as recently as yesterday.

How important is your approach to customer service?

Are you grabbing or wasting opportunities?

** Action Steps **
– Play this video for your team.
– What would 13 million views mean for your company?
– Challenge your team to find opportunities.
– Make it a game.
– Know it is serious.

 

 

Check out the book on delivering excellent customer service!

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Customer Service Is Not Difficult

RSNAP Duh Squareecently, Huffington Post, and other outlets, shared a story about a customer service misstep. The following quote from the offending CEO sums things up:

“Last night I sent a private e-mail to our Customer Service team in response to a customer complaint regarding her past orders and restaurant profile,” Lehmann wrote in a blog post on Sunday. “My e-mail, which outlined how to resolve the customer issue, contained a bad joke which was very poor in taste. Subsequently, the bad joke was sent to the customer. What I said was a major lapse in judgement on my part. I deeply regret this.”

CEO Lehmann’s blog post is here.

The Huffington Post article is here.

So, why do we care about all this?

A tremendous amount of energy is spent on service recovery with just this one gaff. Events like this distract company leaders from delivering real service to this and other customers. Customers are smart people. We know the line in the CEO’s email was not really a “joke.” Trust and integrity are compromised. Big Time!

How we communicate with our customers is a reflection of who we are, what we care about and how we actually value our customers. The unfortunate email and the attempt to minimize the words used, to me, demonstrate an attitude towards the customer that is not healthy.

We can learn from real life. This is a real life example, in fact, too true to even be believed. I had to check this out a few different ways, because to me stuff like this just does not really happen. Yet, it did.

Consider the amount of time and energy a short SNAP message would have required. Minimal. And, I am referring to a message that would have averted the situation in the first place, not a SNAP message as damage control.

Here are the dangers:

  1. Lack of customer respect, demonstrated by the level of frustration that prompted the unfortunate remark. If we respect our customers, we also respect their frustrations.
  1. Lack of appropriate behavior modeling. Sharing the wrong message with anyone internally affirms our lack of customer respect, sets a tone that this is status quo and acceptable behavior, at least internally. What we do behind the door is generally reflected in front of the door. In this case, directly so.
  2. Lack of integrity. Stating that the poor use of words was a joke, in my opinion, may be worse than the initial poor use of words. This demonstrates a continued lack of respect for the customer. Really, swearing with respect to a customer situation with my team is a joke? If it is, it speaks to other ills that are of great concern, such as corporate culture, which also have a direct bearing on our customer relationship.
  3. Extremely poor judgement.

If customer are a part of your business, then treat your customers with care, with respect, with tolerance, with dignity. After all, your revenue stream, your income, your bonus, your daily routines are all affected by your customer. Directly. Why mess with that?

Take a moment and build out some simple SNAP messages. Sure, we have times when customers are not happy. OK. Build out a few SNAP messages to deal with that. Make them simple, and customizable, so that these messages can be used with real people, and speak to real life situations.

Let the customer know the STATUS, the NEXT STEPS, the APPROXIMATE TIME line and the PLANNED OUTCOME for their current situation with you and your company. Include other members of your team in these messages. Be structured so that you present a united front to the customer. Manage up your team. Manage up your customer.

Part of the customer’s response was to twitter her experience. Read more here. Do we want our customers to do this?

Real life is a great learning lab. But, really, don’t we know enough to plan this out ahead of time?

  • Do you have SNAP messages in place for a variety of customer situations?
  • Do leaders in your company model appropriate customer interaction skills?
  • Do we listen and learn from the customer?

Customer service is not difficult.

Go and deliver excellent customer service.

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6 Ways To Share Status of Customer Service

Status of Customer ServiceProvide A Great Customer Experience

We all have customers. And, we want our customers to have a great experience, to be loyal and to return. However, many of us do not look at things through the eyes of our customers.

Consider that one of the most important things your customer wants to know as you deliver service is the status of whatever you are doing for them.

Review Current Situation

Take a thirty day period of time and make some notes. Ask your team to do the same. Make notes about what your customers ask you. At the end of thirty days review your notes and notes of your team.

There are bound to be many different topics on this list, however, one of those is most likely to be customer questions and requests about the status of what you are doing for them.

Frequently, it seems that a status message is shared early in the customer contact, and maybe again late or near the completion of the service engagement. However, during the course of service delivery, the customer is regular left unattended, not knowing the status of what is going on.

Customer Service Example

A few months back I took my car in for a repair. The repair shop representative at the service counter let me know the status when I checked in. What I was told was that they would need to look at the car and do a diagnostic test. I was told this would take about twenty minutes. So far so good.

At the start of the service encounter I knew what my status was as a customer. As time progressed, I received no updates. Twenty minutes came and went. Another twenty minutes came and went. I purposefully waited to see what action the repair shop would take. After yet another twenty minute period or so, I was given an update, and was told my car would be done in five minutes or so. Fifteen minutes my car was driven out. And, I did get a status message which included being told how much the repair cost.

I waited more than an hour not knowing what was going on with my vehicle. This causes apprehension and feeds fears the customer may have.

Take Control of the Customer Experience

Why do this? Are we are too busy to provide updates? Is it the job of someone else? Do we see our job as “performing the service” and someone else should manage the customer? How much do we care about the customer?

Let’s take control of the customer experience. The customer experience belongs to each of us. Let’s not let the experience, good or bad, be the result of pure chance. Let’s use the status sharing opportunity to set expectations, to update and manage those expectations, and deliver excellent customer service.

6 Opportunities To Share Status of Customer Service

Here are 6 awesome opportunities for delivering excellent customer service:

1. Tell your customer about the status of service when your service encounter begins. Also, preview for them that you will be giving the status updates on a regular basis. Then do so.

2. When there are any changes in the status of service, share this with your customer. Do this even if you just gave an update.

3. When time has passed, give your customer a status update, even if the status has not changed. Do this as often as is necessary. Do not assume your customer knows what you know. They don’t.

4. As you near the end of the service encounter, give a status update previewing that the service encounter is coming to an end.

5. Close the service encounter with an update. Let the customer know where the service encounter started and where and how it ended. Provide a service encounter summary.

6. Provide a status update at some point after the service encounter is over. Use this to remind the customer of their service encounter with you and how you satisfactorily met or exceeded their expectations.

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When you are a customer, is knowing the status of something important to you?

Do you think knowing the status is important to your customers?

Can you find time to let your customers know the status that is important to them?

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