Powerful Strategies for Strong Internal Customer Relationships

Internal customers are organizational or contracted employees to whom you provide information, products, and services. These people typically use what you offer to deliver service to their customers. Unfortunately, many employees fail to realize the importance of developing powerful strategies for building and maintaining strong internal customer relationships. That is too bad because internal customers are just as important as those outside the organization. Still, some employees fail to realize that everyone in the organization is a customer service provider, even if they work behind the scenes in a support function. This is why you should never forget that you are an important part of the customer service chain no matter what your job title.

The following are powerful strategies for building and maintaining strong internal customer relationships.

Develop positive relationships. Make an effort to greet others pleasantly each day and display common courtesies such as saying “please” and “thank you.” Do not forget the power of such simple acts. The impact of your success and that of your internal customers depends on the strength of your internal relationships.
Listen objectively. When another employee has an idea, take the time to listen and discuss it. This is especially true when it affects external customers. Keep an open mind and consider the merits of what is offered before responding or making a decision on any action needed.
Take time to get to know more about your internal customers. Possibly takes breaks with your internal customers. Go to lunch or talk before or after work in order to get to know them as a person and not just as another employee. People are more likely to provide better internal customer service when they like the person they are serving. Learn about customers on a personal level and about the job that they do. This can lead to a better understanding of what they might have to offer and how you might be able to assist them. The result might be that your job and service to your customers might become easier. Taking these simple steps can also give you a better understanding of the organizational structure and departmental functions.
Show appreciation for the help provided by others. If someone goes out of his or her way to assist you, take the time to acknowledge it. This could be a text or email message, or more powerfully, a hand-written note. Depending on the effort of the person, perhaps give a small reward. For example, give a hand-baked jumbo cookie along with a personalized thank-you note for any extra effort they provide to help you.
Acknowledge the contributions of others. Most people like to be appreciated. An important thing to remember is that you should always give credit for work done by others and never claim it as your own. The latter can lead to resentment and actually get you fired.
Avoid office politics and gossip. One of the quickest ways to get a bad workplace reputation is to become the person who acts like a pollinating bee. Do not move from one person to the next sharing stories that you have collected about things that are going on in the office or with another employee. That type of behavior can quickly tarnish your reputation. Such actions cause loss of productivity time that you can use to better serve your customers. They can also, gain you a reputation as someone who is not trustworthy or is unprofessional.
Respect diversity. Today’s customer base is diverse including people all shapes, sizes, abilities, and backgrounds. Employees must learn about and appreciate people and groups who may look different in order to appreciate varying views, values, and beliefs. This pertains to both external and internal customers. Since we spend the major part of our lives interacting with others in workplace and job situations, everyone benefits from a better understanding of people. Just because someone might look or act differently, have an accent, or not have the same knowledge or abilities as you does not mean there is something wrong with him or her. Embrace and respect diversity for the benefit of all internal and external customers.
Help others. Even if it means you have to put out extra effort, take the time to assist your internal customers. If you cannot do so immediately, negotiate a time when you can help. People will likely remember your generosity and willingness to assist them when a time comes where you need help.
Be reliable. Whenever you commit to something, you should follow through by delivering as promised. This includes meeting deadlines for information needed by others in your organization. In many cases, someone might request materials or products needed to serve their external customer(s). If the need is not addressed in a timely manner, external customers may become dissatisfied and the trust with your internal customer can be lessened. Another potential effect is that those internal customers may be penalized for poor performance. Ultimately, your failure to meet deadlines can also cause the organization to lose business revenue and suffer ill effects from negative publicity. Likely, this chain of events will have negative consequences for you.

The powerful strategies for building and maintaining strong internal customer relationships in this article are important to your success. While they can help improve relationships, continue to search for additional ideas. That can improve your ability to deliver stellar service to all customers.

The books Customer Service Skills for Success, Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and How to Be a Great Call Center Representative provide additional powerful strategies for building and maintaining strong internal customer relationships and for delivering stellar service to internal and external customers.

Customer Service Excellence Quote – Tony Alessandra

by Robert W. Lucas

Customer Service Excellence Quote – Tony Alessandra

“Good customer service is hard to find today.” How many times have you heard that statement? As a service provider (and we all are in any organization of more than one person since we all have internal customers), your goal should be to prepare to deliver excellent customer service to everyone with whom you have contact throughout the day. Anything less is inviting a breakdown in the customer-service provider relationship and is going to ultimately cost you and your organization. By gaining the knowledge and skills needed to interact with a diverse global customer base, you can potentially set up a win-win situation for yourself and your customers.

As an author and motivational speaker, Tony Alessandra puts it:

“Being on par in terms of price and quality

only gets you into the game.

Service wins the game.”

Tony Alessandra

For ideas and strategies on how to create a customer-centric organization and deliver excellent customer service, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success.

Learn All About Robert W. ‘Bob’ Lucas Now and Understand Why He is an Authority in the Customer Service Skills Industry

Robert W. ‘Bob’ Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills. Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Make Money Writing Books: Proven Profit Making Strategies for Authors by Robert W. Lucas at Amazon.com.

The key to successfully making money as an author and/or self-publisher is to brand yourself and your company and to make yourself and your book(s) a household name. Part of this is face-to-face interaction with people at trade shows, library events, book readings, book store signings, blogging or guest blogging on a topic related to their book(s). Another strategy involves writing articles and other materials that show up online and are found when people search for a given topic related to a topic about which the author has written.

If you need help building an author platform, branding yourself and your book(s) or generating recognition for what you do, Make Money Writing Books will help. Bob’s popular book addresses a multitude of ideas and strategies that you can use to help sell more books and create residual and passive income streams. The tips outlined in the book are focused to help authors but apply to virtually any professional trying to increase personal and product recognition and visibility.

In my book Customer Service Skills for Success, I define customer service as “the ability of knowledgeable, capable, and enthusiastic employees to deliver products and services to their internal and external customers in a manner that satisfies identified and unidentified needs and ultimately results in positive word-of-mouth publicity and return business.”

Strengthening Communication with Customers – Tip#4

by Robert W. Lucas

Strengthening Communication with Customers – Tip#4

Be Personable

Customers who feel that they have an active role in and control of a service-provider interaction often feel more important and valued. Improved interpersonal communication can lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction and retention and reduced stress for you and your co-workers.

Take advantage of the following strategy to build stronger relationships with your internal and external customers by being personable.

Service providers who tend to be “all business” or robotic in their service delivery often fail to get high marks from customers. Even if you are knowledgeable, are efficient, and follow all the rules in delivering service, you could end up with a customer who is dissatisfied if you do not demonstrate some degree of humanness. This means connecting on a personal level and showing compassion and concern for your customers and their emotional needs. For example, if someone tells you during an interaction that he or she is celebrating a special event, take the time to ask, explore the topic briefly, or relate a personal example. If it is the customer’s child’s birthday, you might wish the child an enthusiastic “Happy Birthday” and ask the child how old he or she is or what the child hopes to get for his or her birthday. Depending on the type of business you are in, you might even offer a small present (e.g., a free dessert, a piece of candy, a toy, a coupon for a discount on his or her next visit, or whatever might be appropriate). At the least, upon concluding the transaction, with the child well or congratulate him or her one more time.

For specific strategies on more effective communication with your customers, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

About Robert W. Lucas

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills. Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Make Money Writing Books: Proven Profit Making Strategies for Authors by Robert W. Lucas at Amazon.com.

Customer Service Skill – Listening to the Customer

by Robert W. Lucas

Customer Service Skill – Listening to the Customer

Successful listening is essential for any customer service representative to achieve customer service excellence. Like any other customer service skill, active listening is a learned behavior that some people perform better than others. To provide the best customer service possible you must master this skill, especially as part of telephone etiquette when dealing with customers over the telephone.

Some common characteristics possessed by most effective listeners include:

Empathy. Putting yourself in the customer’s place and trying to relate to the customer’s needs, wants, and concerns.
Understanding. The ability to listen as customers speak in order to ensure that you realize what they want, need and expect. This is essential in properly servicing the customer.
Patience. Taking the time to pause and listen attentively as your customer speaks. Keep in mind that it is your job to serve the customer and that not everyone communicates in the same manner. Thus, you must put forth the effort to allow your customer to share their ideas, issues or questions without interrupting in order to determine their needs.
Attentiveness. By focusing your attention on the customer, you can better interpret his or her message and satisfy his or her needs. Attentiveness is often displayed through nonverbal cues (e,g, nodding or cocking of the head to one side or the other, smiling, or using paralanguage).
Objectivity. In dealings with customers, try to avoid subjective opinions or judgments. If you have a preconceived idea about customers, their concerns or questions, the environment, or anything related to the customers, you could mishandle the situation.

The characteristics of effective and ineffective listeners are summarized below.

Characteristics of Effective and Ineffective Listeners

Many factors can indicate an effective or ineffective listener. Over the years, researchers have assigned the following characteristics to effective and ineffective listeners. As a customer service professional, strive to master the skills in the left column and work to eliminate those in the right column in order to better serve your customers.
Effective Listeners	Ineffective Listeners
Focused	Inattentive
Responsive	Uncaring
Alert	Distracted
Understanding	Unconcerned
Caring	Insensitive
Empathetic	Smug/conceited
Unemotional	Emotionally involved
Interested	Self-centered
Patient	Judgmental
Cautious	Disorganized
Open	Defensive

For additional ideas on listening to the customer and providing excellent customer service, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success.

Five Tips for Improving Communication with Your Customers

by Robert W. Lucas

Five Tips for Improving Communication with Your Customers

You should continually look for ways to enhance your communication skills in order to build strong interpersonal relationships with your customers and deliver the best customer service possible. Customer service representatives who spend time on self-improvement are more likely to be successful than those who do not.

Here are five simple techniques that you might use to increase communication success and potentially enhance customer satisfaction.

Increase your vocabulary. Occasionally spend some time scrolling through a dictionary and the many books on the market related to essential words that you should know in order to be successful. Continue to add to your vocabulary and knowledge throughout your life in order to become a better communicator and service provider.
Deliver personal service. Technology has increased the options and speed at which you can communicate with your customers. Even so, there is still a need to stay personally connected with them. There is no substitution for face-to-face or telephone contact with your customers. This format allows you to “read” their tone of voice and body language, which you cannot do via other technology.
Stay connected. Chances are that you really cannot over-communicate with your customers, especially when problems exist. It is important that you stay in touch with customers periodically to stay in the forefront of their memory and to demonstrate that you value them. The key is to read their reactions to your efforts, and in those instances when someone might want less contact; act accordingly.
Focus on the customer. When the telephone rings, mentally “shift gears” before answering. Stop doing other tasks, clear your head of other thoughts, focus on the telephone, then cheerfully and professionally answer the call.
Maintain good posture. Sit up straight when speaking, since doing so reduces constriction and opens up your throat (larynx) to reduce muffling and improve voice quality.

Communication is a learned skill and does not come naturally. If you want to excel as a representative of your organization and present a professional presence, you will have to work regularly to enhance your knowledge and skills about people and the way that they communicate most effectively.

About Robert W. Lucas

Make Money Writing Books: Proven Profit Making Strategies for Authors by Robert W. Lucas at Amazon.com.

Non-verbal Communication Quote – Robert W. Lucas

by Robert W. Lucas

Non-verbal Communication Quote – Robert W. Lucas

Customer service representatives are often the first people with whom a current or potential customer comes into contact when reaching out to an organization. Their role is to quickly and professionally use their customer service skills to assist in resolving issues or concerns or providing products and services that they are seeking. Communicating effectively with customers is the only means of gathering information from them that will allow a customer service representative to address and satisfy their needs, wants and expectations.

While verbal communication is a powerful tool for gaining customer input, their nonverbal messages often overshadow what they say and send their true emotional meaning of feelings in a give situation. If you learn to read these cues, you will often be able to more accurately deliver the best customer service possible.

Your non-verbal communication cues—the way you listen, look, move, and react—tell the person you’re communicating with whether or not you care, if you’re being truthful, and how well you’re listening. When your non-verbal signals match up with the words you’re saying, they increase trust, clarity, and rapport.

Here are some quick ways to improve your non-verbal communication asap:

Avoid slouching 24/7
Steer clear of nervous laughter when the message is serious
Display some animation with your hands and facial expressions to project a dynamic presence.
Eliminate fidgeting during a meeting
Establish frequent eye contact but never use a piercing stare
Focus on the conversation.
Introduce yourself with a smile
Offer a firm handshake
Listen carefully
Never interrupt the other speaker in a conversation

For more ideas and strategies on how to effectively read and sent non-verbal messages, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and Customer Service Skills for Success.

About Robert W. Lucas

Positive Impressions Help To Build Customer Relationships

by Robert W. Lucas

Positive Impressions Help To Build Customer Relationships

Customers often judge an organization and the people who work for it based on the first impressions made by front line employees with whom they come into contact face-to-face or via technology.

It is crucial that you and those who serve customers take time to prepare for customer encounters and to prepare yourself to send positive messages through your appearance, voice and nonverbal cues. This will help in building strong customer relationships that can lead to increased customer satisfaction and customer retention.

Here are 5 good positive body gestures:

Relax your shoulders to avoid looking tense
Be pleasant and friendly
Make good and strong eye contact when talking to people
Lean forward slightly to get engaged in a conversation
Share your body between both feet

To learn more about making positive impressions on current and potential customers, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

About Robert W. Lucas

The Role of Facial Expressions in Customer Service

by Robert W. Lucas

The Role of Facial Expressions in Customer Service

A major component of delivering stellar customer service to your customers is to continually hone your customer service skills in the area of communication so that you are able to deliver the best customer service possible. For example, there are so many different messages that can be sent to your customers through various nonverbal communication cues, that learning their meaning and significance can take years. This is especially true when you factor in the fact that different people and cultures assign varying meanings to what they see.

By moving the muscles in your face, you can convey feelings and messages to others that let them know whether you are experiencing happiness, sadness, frustration anger or many other moods. As with other nonverbal cues, the interpretation of facial expressions can vary between cultures and individuals. Since the time of Charles Darwin, researchers have studied facial expressions and have identified that most common facial expressions are interpreted in similar ways by cultures around the world. It is the beliefs of individual cultures related to the appropriateness of expressing emotions like surprise, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust that change how people use and interpret such facial signals.

Because facial expressions are closely tied to human emotion, you should be careful about projecting subconscious biases that you might have toward any group because you might unintentionally send a negative message to a customer before you realize it. For example, if you disapprove of customers who have facial piercings and tattoos you might indicate your displeasure nonverbally when with a smirk or other facial gesture or you might unintentionally stare when a customer matching that description walks up to you.

To learn more customer service tips related to non-verbal communication and how to effectively use it as a tool for delivering excellent customer service and gaining better customer satisfaction, get copies of Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and Customer Service Skills for Success.

About Robert W. Lucas

Customer Service in a Diverse World

by Robert W. Lucas

Customer Service in a Diverse World

Have you ever experienced a situation in which you were in a place of business and either had a service provider make a derogatory statement to you about another customer or group of customers or overheard two employees sharing negative comments about other customers? In many instances comments or off-the-cuff statements about based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender, disabilities or other diversity factors are not only hurtful but potentially discriminatory. In some instances, such remarks may be grounded in the employee’s deep-seated beliefs or personal values based on their own experiences or education. In others, they may be a result of simple ignorance related to individual customers or groups. Whatever the reason, making comments to or in the presence of other customers is unacceptable and is likely to have negative personal and business results.

I recently experienced an instance in which a small business owner of the barbershop that I’ve patronized for years made a comment that I felt was totally uncalled for and based on personal prejudice. I had commented about a newspaper article regarding a local Hindu group that had recently built a temple in the local area. I commented that I’d be interested in going over to visit the facility and learn more about the religion. My barber remarked, “Why would you want to do that? In my opinion, we should burn all those ragheads and keep them out of our country.” I was shocked since he is obviously ignorant of the topic on which he was commenting and had no concern for how his remarks might be received by others. I shared my feelings with him about what he had said and explained that he seemed to be confusing religions and ethnic groups and that in either case, his remarks were out of line and potentially offensive. His response was, “I fought in Viet Nam and I don’t trust any of these radicals.” The result of this conversation is that I now patronize a different hairstylist and have shared this story dozens of times with others.

In today’s world where people are so mobile, the economy is globally intertwined and information about other groups is so readily available through various channels, it is hard to believe that there are people who have not taken the time to discover the benefits of embracing diversity and still harbor such prejudice. Service providers who remain content to take actions such as the one I experienced not only guarantee lost business for their organization but also jeopardize their personal and professional reputation.

As I discuss in my latest book (Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Service Across Cultures), “Not only do today’s service providers have to be concerned with job knowledge, skills, and professional standards, but they also have to be cognizant of the values, beliefs, social mores, expectations, needs, and preferences of customers…They are the “face” of the organization and need all the knowledge and skills they get in the order to provide stellar customer service.”

For ideas and strategies on effectively serving customers in a multicultural and otherwise diverse world, check out the books Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and Customer Service Skills for Success.

Strengthening Communication with Customers – Tip#3

by Robert W. Lucas

Strengthening Communication with Customers – Tip#3

Demonstrate Openness

Take advantage of the following strategy to build stronger relationships with your internal and external customers by demonstrating openness.

Customers often want to see that service providers understand them on a personal level. The worst thing you can do as a service provider is to hide behind a policy or deflect responsibility when dealing with a customer issue or question. Think of how you likely react when a service provider says something like, “I can’t do that because our policy says . . . .” You probably feel the hairs rise on the back of your neck and become agitated. Your customers are no different. When interacting with them, take the time to put yourself in their place before saying something or taking an action that might create an adversarial situation.

About Robert W. Lucas

Make Money Writing Books: Proven Profit Making Strategies for Authors by Robert W. Lucas at Amazon.com.