Delivering Excellent Customer Service as Part of a Service Culture

Delivering excellent customer service as part of a service culture has become a pivotal determinant in the global competition between organizations. As the world has gotten smaller because of geopolitical changes, trade agreements, personal mobility, and connections via technology, the way that companies provide customer service and business has morphed. Customer retention and the establishment of customer service as a differentiating strategic policy is crucial in gaining and maintaining market share, especially for small businesses. Instead of just mouthing the words customer service to employees, they must ensure that the concept becomes part of the organization’s service culture. In order for any organization to deliver excellent customer service, it must adapt and embrace the new paradigm by investing in technology, attracting the best-qualified employees and then training them effectively.

In order to achieve customer satisfaction and reduce the customer churn rate, everyone in the organization must adopt a customer-centric approach in the way that service is provided. A paramount point for every employee to remember is that while vision starts at the top of an organization, it is the point-of-contact person who the customer reacts to and remembers. What that person says and does will often determine the outcome of interaction and what the customer says about his or her experience after it is over. Delivering anything less than excellent customer service during each customer-provider interaction can lead to the demise of customer service representatives and their organization.

All employees are involved in customer service today and must be open-minded and flexible when dealing with customers. They must embrace change, continually seek customer service training and upgrade their product and service knowledge while seeking to identify new, more effective and efficient ways to deliver service on a daily basis. This need is driven by the fact that the world is more diverse, automated and people move with a 24/7/365 (24 hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred-sixty-five days a year) mentality. Customer needs wants and expectations have changed dramatically. People expect things instantaneously and if they do not get it, they can become agitated or take their business elsewhere. Their desertion can often be accomplished with just the click of a computer mouse.

For additional articles and ideas on customer service, examine two of my books: Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures, Customer Service Skills for Success. You can also take the American Management Association self-study course, How to Be a Great Call Center Representative. All are available through the website www.robertwlucas.com.

What Is Customer Service?

by Robert W. Lucas

What Is Customer Service?

People often ask, “What is customer service and why is it important?” To answer this, you have to recognize that customers come in many shapes, sizes and types, and from a variety of diverse backgrounds. Each customer has his or her own values and beliefs and comes with specific needs, wants and expectations based on their perspectives, background, and lifestyle. The following is one definition of customer service:

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. – Source: Customer Service Skills for Success

The concept or practice of customer service is not new throughout the world. In fact, customers are the core of every business, and as such, should be the top priority. In reality, if organizations have no customers, their reason for existence goes away. This is why it is essential for companies to attract, hire, train and retain the most qualified and capable employees they can find. It is equally important that employees at every level of the organization take ownership of delivering stellar customer service.

For more answers on what is customer service and why is it important, explore the term “customer service” on this blog and check out: Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures, Customer Service Skills for Success and How to Be a Great Call Center Representative.

More Typical Customer Contact Center Representative Competencies

by Robert W. Lucas

More Typical Customer Contact Center Representative Competencies

In a previous blog article, I discussed crucial competencies call center and customer care center applicants and employees must possess to be successful when interacting with customers. In this article, I share more typical customer contact center representative competencies. I do this because I believe that it is essential that call center/customer care center personnel have strong interpersonal communication skills, be organized, able to problem solve, and have a strong sense of the importance of their function as the “face” of the organization.

It is essential that call center/customer care center personnel have strong interpersonal communication skills, be organized, able to problem solve, and have a strong sense of the importance of their function as the “face” of the organization. The following are additional common competencies that employers look for in applicants desiring to work in a call center/customer care center. These are listed in alphabetical order and vary in importance depending on the organizational mission.

The following are additional common competencies that employers look for in applicants desiring to work in a call center/customer care center. These are listed in alphabetical order and vary in importance depending on the organizational mission.

Multitasking/Managing multiple priorities or assignments simultaneously. Ability to receive customer information via the telephone while inputting data on the computer.

Negotiating effectively. Ability to identify customer needs, wants and expectations and then meet them through the negotiation of appropriate alternatives, when necessary.

Organizational skills. Ability to assemble and maintain information and data using a logical system using software or hard files where it can be readily accessed by the employee and others.

Peer coaching. Ability to offer support and guidance to employees and others, when required or appropriate.

Problem-solving. Ability to identify a root cause for a problem or issue through effective questioning and application of appropriate interventions to address them.

Teaming. Ability to work with diverse employees and contribute to team tack accomplishment.

Technical literacy. Knowledge and ability to learn and use a common call center or customer contact center, and basic office software and equipment, to accomplish routine job tasks.

Time management. Ability to use time and resources to address assigned tasks and customer issues.

For additional call center/customer care center competencies, ideas, techniques and strategies for enhancing customer relationships, and information on ways to build solid interpersonal communication skills, check out How to Be a Great Call Center Representative. In this self-study course book, you will find hundreds of powerful ideas for improving knowledge and skills that can aid in meeting customer needs, wants and expectations and lead to greater customer satisfaction and retention. You also receive a certificate from the renowned American Management Association.

Typical Customer Contact Center Representative Competencies

by Robert W. Lucas

Typical Customer Contact Center Representative Competencies

To perform well in a call center/customer care center, employees must possess some very special competencies or capacities/abilities to perform required job tasks. Because of the specific requirements of the job, organizations must look for candidates possessing many of these typical customer contact representative competencies as possible. It is essential that call center/customer care center personnel have strong interpersonal communication skills, be organized, able to problem solve, and have a strong sense of the importance of their function as the “face” of the organization.

The following are some common competencies that employers look for in applicants desiring to work in a call center/customer care center. These are listed in alphabetical order and vary in importance depending on the organizational mission.

Business acumen. An understanding of the relationship between their jobs and how they impact the business and customers.

Contact management. Ability to control customer interaction once they contact the representative through a variety of assigned technology.

Change management. Ability to adapt to and handle changing situations and customer and business environments.

Conflict resolution. Ability to use effective interpersonal skills to resolve difficult customer-provider interactions.

Cross-selling. In environments where selling of products and services is a business focus, the ability to recognize potential customer needs and opportunities to sell or up-sell to customers.

Decision making. Ability to gather and analyze information, then apply appropriate interventions to resolve and issue or come to a decision.

Interpersonal communication. Ability to actively listen, question appropriately, provide feedback, and use customer communication skills to build and strengthen customer relationships.

Managing diversity. Cultural diversity knowledge and the ability to interact with a variety of people from various backgrounds in the workplace.

Managing stress. Ability to maintain a calm demeanor and mental state when situations and emotions escalate to higher levels when interacting with a customer.

Providing Effective Customer Service in a Diverse World

by Robert W. Lucas

Providing Effective Customer Service in a Diverse World

As the world grows smaller economically and otherwise (e.g. world trade, international travel, outsourcing and offshoring of jobs, worldwide Internet access, international partnerships between organizations and technologically transmitted information exchange), the likelihood that you will have contact on the job with people from other cultures, or who are different from you in other ways, increases significantly.

Providing effective customer service in a diverse world is something that virtually anyone in an organization must master in today’s business world. As the world grows smaller economically and otherwise (e.g. world trade, international travel, outsourcing and offshoring of jobs, worldwide Internet access, international partnerships between organizations and technologically transmitted information exchange), the likelihood that you will have contact on the job with people from other cultures, or who are different from you in other ways, increases significantly. This possibility also carries over into your personal life, since diversity is encountered everywhere (e.g. over the telephone and Internet and in supermarkets, religious organizations, on public transportation), and is an important aspect of everyone’s life. Although diversity presents challenges in making us think of differences and similarities, it also enriches our lives; each encounter we have with another person gives us an opportunity to expand our knowledge of others and build relationships while growing personally.

One significant impact that diversity has on customer service is that people from varied backgrounds and cultures bring with them expectations based on the “norm” of their country or group. Whether this diversity pertains to cultural or ethnic differences, beliefs, values, religion, age, gender, ability levels or other factors, a potential breakdown in customer satisfaction can occur if people get other than what they want or expect.

Part of creating a positive diverse business environment is to train each service provider on the nuances of dealing with people who have backgrounds that are different from their own. Additionally, this effort involves each employee taking ownership for enhancing his or her knowledge and skills related to working with a diverse customer base.

To learn more about dealing with diversity in a customer service environment, along with hundreds of ideas on effective customer service skills and tips for dealing with a variety of common customer service challenges and delivering excellent customer service, get copies of 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.

Is Customer Service Week the Best Time to Show Customer Appreciation?

by Robert W. Lucas

Is Customer Service Week the Best Time to Show Customer Appreciation?

Have you noticed how many articles and references are flying around stores and on the Internet regarding the importance of Customer Service Week? Service providers are wearing shirts and hats and articles abound on blogs and on various business sites stressing the importance of customer service. It all makes me wonder — “Is customer service week the best time to show customer appreciation?”

My question is, why do organizations and customer service representatives wait for one time a year to thank the most important element of their business – their customers? Without their customers, they could all pack up and go home. This negligent approach to customer service reminds me of a joke I heard many years ago about an old married couple sitting with a marriage counselor. The wife was very distraught and crying her eyes out as she told the counselor that their problem was that after fifty years of marriage that her husband never told her that he loves her anymore. The startled husband was dumbfounded to hear that. He turned to her and asked, “Didn’t I tell you I loved you when we got married?” She responded timidly, “Yes.” He countered with, “Well if that changes, I’ll let you know!”

Similar to the story above, many organizations go out of their way to court potential customers by offering discounts, special incentives, and promises to outperform their competition. Once a customer comes aboard, the company is off creating new campaigns to entice more new customers, while typically forgetting about the current ones or demonstrating how much they mean to the organization.

It is no wonder that most organizations experience such high customer desertion or turnover rates (customer churn). Why would you go to an organization that does not appear to respect or value your business; Especially, when a qualified, and sometimes better, the competitor is only a mouse click or phone call away.

Managers need to continually remind themselves that they should not wait for a customer to reach out to inform the organization that they are taking their business elsewhere before going into recovery or retention mode. Often their special retention department customer service representatives have special authority to grant customer incentives, offer lower rates, and take other actions to encourage the customer to stay. At this point, depending on how irritated the customer is, it might be too late and the damage is irreversible.

Here are five simple things companies can do to reinforce customer satisfaction or brand loyalty and reduce customer attrition:

Empower every customer service representative to offer customer incentives and help head off customer desertion.
Create policies that are customer-centric and are continually updated to demonstrate that all customers are crucial to the organization.
Continually look for ways to show that their organization really is the best value for the money and has its customers’ best interests in mind.
Regularly provide customer service training that focuses on customer service skills, tips, ideas and strategies to address customer needs, wants and expectations.
Treat every customer as unique and important and do not lump them into various demographic groups that receive generic approaches to service based on pre-conceived ideas of what they want or expect.

For hundreds of additional effective and proven customer service tips, techniques and strategies for creating and maintaining an excellent customer service environment that truly supports all customers, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success, How to Be a Great Call Center Representative and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

Customer Relationship Management Initiatives Focus on Customer Loyalty and Retention

by Robert W. Lucas

Customer Relationship Management Initiatives Focus on Customer Loyalty and Retention

Providing Effective Customer Service in a Diverse World At one point in history, business owners knew their customers personally. They knew their customers’ families, what their religious affiliation was, and what was happening in their lives. Customers dealt with the owners of a business and had personal relationships with them. That was then, and this is now. That is why many customer relationship management initiatives focus on customer loyalty and retention.

Our current society is more mobile; people live in large metropolitan areas where customer relationships are distant, and families live miles apart from one another in many instances. Large multinational organizations provide the products and services once provided by the neighborhood store. All this does not mean, however, that the customer-provider relationship can no longer exist. Many successful organizations, and those who want to become successful, spend a lot of time, effort and money on building and maintaining strong customer relationship management program.

Why bother building relationships with customers? The answer would seem obvious—so that you can stay in business. However, when you examine the question further, you may find that there are more reasons than you think. This is where the customer relationship management (CRM) concept comes in. In effect, such initiatives strive to create ongoing friendships with customers and focus on making them feel comfortable with the organization and its service providers in order to enhance customer and brand loyalty. By training all employees, especially frontline customer service representatives, to more effectively interact with customers and deliver excellent customer service, organizations are more likely to gain and retain a loyal customer base.

To learn more about effectively creating a customer-centric organization that continually strives to improve service to internal and external customers while working to achieve customer satisfaction, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success.

Excellent Customer Service Strengthens Customer Relationships and Leads to Brand Loyalty

by Robert W. Lucas

Excellent Customer Service Strengthens

Customer Relationships and Leads to Brand Loyalty

Excellent customer service strengthens customer relationships and leads to brand loyalty. When organizations attain a high degree of brand recognition and a reputation for providing quality products and services at a competitive price while going above and beyond their customers’ expectations, they are typically rewarded with customer loyalty and repeat and referral business.

According to a 2009 J.D. Power and Associates North American Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study, “The highest-performing hotel brands differentiate themselves by meeting customer expectations consistently, whether it’s a guest’s first stay with the brand or they’re fiftieth. . . . By setting and maintaining high brand standards, hotels build a reputation for reliability, which breeds customer loyalty.”

There are numerous benefits that result from creating a customer-centric service culture where current and new customers come to assume that they will receive the same high quality of customer service as the last time they contacted an organization. Each time frontline customer service representative goes out-of-the-way to identify and fulfill a customer’s needs, wants and expectations, it strengthens the customer relationship. This typically leads to repeat business and word-of-mouth publicity to the customer’s friends, family, and associates.

Here are a few direct results that are derived from exceeding customer expectations:

Less need to obtain new customers through marketing, since current customers are aware of offerings and take advantage of them.
Reduced marketing costs, since direct mail, follow-up, and other customer recruitment activities are reduced.
Increased return on investment (ROI), since marketing can target specific customer needs.
Enhanced customer loyalty due to pricing and product service offerings that meet current customer needs.
Elevated profitability due to increased sales, customer referrals, and longer customer retention during the life cycle.

The above extract is from Customer Service Skills for Success, 6th ed. To learn more techniques and strategies for delivering excellent customer service, building stronger customer relationships, helping develop brand loyalty and become a better customer service representative, get a copy of the book along with Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

A 100 Percent ATTITUDE Is Crucial for Customer Service Representatives

by Robert W. Lucas

A 100 Percent ATTITUDE Is Crucial for Customer Service Representatives

Organizations are constantly looking for better ways to increase customer satisfaction, generate additional revenue and spark customer retention. While some customer service professionals say that brand loyalty and keeping customers for life is an unachievable goal, there are some strategies that can strengthen the customer-provider relationship. A few of these efforts include:

Hiring people who have “personality” and who really enjoy interacting with internal and external customers.

Delivering quality customer service face-to-face and via technology by training every employee to be adept at using the technology provided for serving their customers effectively.

Educating all employees on the policies, procedures, products, and services that customers should be able to expect them to know. Organizations are constantly looking for better ways to increase customer satisfaction, generate additional revenue and spark customer retention. While some customer service professionals say that brand loyalty and keeping customers for life is an unachievable goal, there are some strategies that can strengthen the customer-service provider relationship.

Building a customer-centric environment that lets customers know that they truly are valued. This includes using positive interpersonal communication skills (e.g. active listening, verbal and nonverbal skills, and asking the right questions).

Ultimately, the secret tool for making sure that customers want to do business with an organization is that all employees must continually develop and display a positive attitude when dealing with current and potential customers. To demonstrate the power of this trait, think about the following formula.

If the letters…

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Equals numerical values of…

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 18 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Then…

A+T+T+I+T+U+D+E

1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 =100%

To learn more about the power of positive customer service using sound and proven customer service knowledge, techniques and strategies, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

Create a Positive Customer Service Culture by Making Customers Feel Valued

by Robert W. Lucas

Create a Positive Customer Service Culture

by Making Customers Feel Valued

Organizations are often chasing the illusive loyal customer. Various research studies have shown that it costs less to keep a good customer than it does to attract new ones through expensive marketing and incentive programs. Related to this, it seems logical to focus on converting new and occasional customers into loyal customers who return regularly and tout the organization’s benefits and customer-centric approach.

Alas, many managers, organizational leaders, and frontline customer service representatives simply do not get the whole concept of keeping loyal customers who use the organization’s products and services. These managers try to hold costs down by hiring inexperienced and low-cost employees, do not want to invest a lot of money in training staff (other than rudimentary product and service knowledge), and offer no real support for the customers they already have.

If you work for an organization and want to create an environment that is known for stellar customer service and customer-friendly people and policies, consider the following strategies to help make customers feel valued.

Hire personalities, not bodies. It takes a special person to be successful in a customer service environment. Strive to find people who are focused on interacting with others, seem to enjoy the service environment and life in general and sincerely want to help others. Product and policy knowledge can be taught to most new employees, as can the requisite skills necessary to successfully interact with new and current internal and external customers (e.g. interpersonal communication skills, knowledge about various demographic groups, team building, and other similar skills).

Prove that the organization and employees value customers. Create policies and procedures that are customer centric (e.g. return policies, hours of operation, and allow employee empowerment so that they can make decisions without a supervisor’s approval).

Train employees to recognize regular customers. People like to be seen as a person and as someone who is appreciated and valued by the organization. Customer service training sessions should stress this important fact and encourage employees to use a customer’s name when greeting and throughout a conversation. Memory improvement might be added to the training schedule to aid people in developing better memory and aid recall of customer names and faces.

Develop customer recognition and incentive programs. If customers are not rewarded for their continued business, they are likely to go elsewhere, especially if service breaks down or they encounter a problem. Reward good customers with discounts, personal communications (e.g. a greeting and coupon on their birthday, anniversary or other special occasions) and a warm welcome when they contact the organization. Instruct employees to focus on the human part of a transaction first (e.g. a warm greeting or comments about previous contacts, purchases or visits) before moving to the business of why they contacted the organization and what can be done to assist them.

Doing these simple things and others can make a world of difference to many customers and can often make the difference between a transient and a loyal customer. For additional customer service tips and strategies for creating a positive customer service environment where visitors demonstrate brand and customer loyalty as a result of receiving excellent customer service, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success.