A Customer Service Blog

Running throughout all of our customer service courses are the following five values -

Show Respect

Every customer is your most important this applies both internally and externally

Show you care

Make sure you always present a positive and supportive attitude in everything you do

Advocate

In other words stay on your customer’s side - they will value you it in the long term enormously

Personalise

Make sure to avoid pre-conceived ideas and stereotypes

Pay Attention

Assess how you customers want to be served and then adjust your behaviour appropriately

There is of course a great deal more to customer service than the above five principles but if you make these the bedrock of your offering you won’t go to far wrong in the long run.

Yesterday we gave some tips on handling stress for customer service operatives.  Here is part 2 of the top tips, we hope you enjoy it and practise at least one thing.

1. Don’t try to be ‘one of the boys’.  Develop your own style of management and let is evolve as you gain experience.
2. Make decisions about your life and career – have some definite goals – don’t allow yourself to just be buffeted whichever way the wind blows.
3. Build flexibility into your schedule.  Allow time for the unexpected.
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Spare a thought this morning for those poor souls on the frontline of customer service.  Day after day they have to often put up with abuse and awkward situations.  It can be a stressful job so this morning we are giving out some top tips for coping with stress.

If even one of these tips is used and results in less stress for a customer service operative then we will be pleased.

We will run this section across two days so be sure to check back tomorrow for the rest of the tips.

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Yesterday on the tube I saw for the first time the controversial advert campaign by Dixons which pokes fun at their rivals Selfridges and John Lewis.

In case you haven’t seen the adverts or indeed heard any of the storm they have whipped up I will explain.  The basic premise of the campaign is that you can go to a department store and let them walk you through something like a flatscreen TV and all its functions and then go to Dixons to buy it.

The advert campaign is clever because it provokes controversy and discussion which gets Dixons into the spotlight.  Do not get me wrong however this is no Benettons although the ad agency who developed it would probably have you believe that it was!

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It is that time again when the Daily Mail run their annual Wooden Spoon awards for customer service.  Last year this award was won by a long way by British Telecom who will be hoping not to have the “honour” of winning this award again this year.

It will be interesting to see BT’s place this year and to see whether they have made any improvements following the bad press they received last time.

If you would like to vote in the awards you can do so here - thisismoney.co.uk/shortlist

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A short post today but hopefully still with a powerful message.

Below is a phrase that we believe potentially sums up what excellent customer service is.  Although we know that you need committed and well trained staff, good systems, simple processes and many other things in the mix to provide excellent customer service if you apply the statement or mantra below you will succeed 9 1/2 times out of 10.

The aim of excellent customer service is -

“To provide products and services that don’t come back to people that do”

Very simple really when you think about it.  If your products and services are so good that they don’t come back but your systems and approach to customer service is excellent at all times then people will come back.

I don’t want to make it seem like we are trying to distill customer service down to just this simple thing but it is well worth dwelling on for a moment and thinking of the implications this can have for your business.

Get this right and half the battle is won, you would also be amazed at how many people sell products and services that do come back to people who don’t.  Of course we all know that this is not sustainable in the long run but many of your competitors may be doing this which gives you a huge opportunity to set yourself apart.

I recently wrote on this blog about when it is acceptable, if at all, to use the word mate in customer service.  It seems that I have found someone who really takes offense to this - Terry Wogan.  I am in exhalted company indeed!

Our conclusion on this blog was that it was not really ever appropriate to use the word mate in customer service and that one should always retain a professional element at all times.

Terry Wogan writes yesterday in his Wogan’s World column -

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In customer service we live and die by our systems and how effective they are at doing the job they are designed for.

In the past on this blog we have talked about the need to simplify our systems to make sure they put the customer at the centre of it all and ulitmately make their life easier.

However good a system or process is it can always without fail be improved upon.  It may simply be a tweak here and there, and often it is just that, but so often we take the attitude of if it ain’t broke then don’t try to fix it.

There are things that I use in my daily life, products I have bought that aren’t broke but they could do with a bit of fixing in some way.  More often than not I either don’t have the requisite skills or motivation to “fix it” even if I tried.

We can’t afford to take the same approach with our customer service systems.

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On this blog before we have spoken about achieving client delight and how with some simple steps and a thorough analysis of your customer’s needs you can achieve delight in a relatively simple way.  It also doesn’t have to be done at huge expense.

I had a direct experience at the weekend of a company that had clearly thought about their customers and designed the experience so that it was simply without comparison.

I was in a tyre and exhaust fitters having some work done on the car but I felt like I was in the waiting room for the Ritz or indeed Heaven.

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The official definition of a customer is as follows -

“A person or entity who willingly buys goods and services from another person or entity.”

Last week I watched a very interesting Cutting Edge documentary on traffic wardens.  The film makers followed a selection of people who had recently arrived in this country and taken a job as a traffic warden in the London Borough of Westminster.

On the limited evidence of this film one thing was very obvious and that is that racism is alive and well on the streets of London.  I cringed as the traffic wardens were called “coon” or “packy” on a frequent basis whilst they went about their jobs.

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