Service Recovery Quote – Donald Porter

The question of “What is good customer service” has been brought up occasionally in customer service workshops that I have done. And, while there is no one answer to the query, there are certainly a number of elements that do fall into the category of “good.” For example, in the changing competitive global marketplace, good involves recognizing the diversity of the customer base and for employees to be trained on some of the common needs and wants of each group or subgroup. Additionally, they should be prepared with knowledge and skills to meet what their customer expects in a given service situation.

Ultimately, while no one is perfect, service providers should strive to go out of their way to provide a level of service that separates them from their competitors. When something goes wrong, the service provider should acknowledge it, accept the responsibility on their part or that of the organization and immediately set out to “make the customer whole” again through a planned service recovery process. This means not only providing a remedy and giving the customer what he or she paid for but also compensating them for their inconvenience or loss.

Donald Porter, a former V.P. at British Airways, captured the essence of this concept in a statement he made some years back:

“Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. they do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” – Donald Porter

For ideas and strategies on how to recover when service levels break down, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success.

Learn All About Robert C. ‘Bob’ Lucas Now

and Understand Why He is an Authority in the Customer Service Skills Industry

Robert C. ‘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.”

Customer Service Quote – Sam Walton

by Robert W. Lucas

Customer Service Quote – Sam Walton

“The goal as a company is to have customer service

that is not just the best, but legendary.”

– Sam Walton Founder of Walmart

Customer service is not just the job of customer service representatives and others on the “front line.” It is a crucial role that everyone from the CEO down must fulfill in order for an organization to be successful.

Certainly, the first people to come into contact with a customer are often those who answer the phones or respond to electronic messages as part of their job description. However, isn’t that something that everyone in the organization does every day? The challenge is that many people who are not hired specifically to fill a position designated as “customer service” forget that they also represent the organization each time that they come into contact with someone during the day. They often do not consider their peers or other employees as internal customers and fail to provide a level of quality attention that they deserve. This might happen when someone from within the organization asks for information, only to have to call several times to follow-up when it is not provided as promised.

The bottom line is that if every employee adopts a customer-centric approach to doing their job, their reputation and that of the organization will potentially soar. By creating a service culture where everyone takes responsibility for positive service delivery; everyone wins.

For ideas and strategies on how to develop a customer-focused attitude, get a copy of the book Customer Service Skills for Success.

Learn All About Robert C. ‘Bob’ Lucas Now and

Understand Why He is an Authority in the Customer Service Skills Industry

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

Strategies for Improving Your Service Culture

by Robert W. Lucas

Strategies for Improving Your Service Culture

In the past, organizations were continually making changes to their product and service lines to try to attract and hold customers. Often this has been their primary approach to customer satisfaction.

Many major organizations have become more customer-centric and stress long-term relationships with customers. They realize that it is cheaper, and smarter, to retain current customers, rather than subscribe to a revolving door approach of continually trying to attract new customers to replace the ones that they lost to competitors. Their goal is to continually try to enhance their service culture and the perception that current and potential customers have of their organization. Advertising campaigns often reflect this new awareness as companies try to communicate that they are more focused on their customers.

The following are some familiar slogans used by companies in their promotional materials:

“You can do it; We can help” – Home Depot
“Like a good neighbor”—State Farm Insurance
“When you’re here, you’re family”—Olive Garden Restaurants
“You’re in good hands”—Allstate Insurance Company
“It’s your store”—Albertsons Grocery Stores
“What can Brown Do for You?” – United Parcel Service (UPS)
“We’ll leave the light on for you.” Motel 6
“Think what we can do for you.” Bank of America

To do your part in better serving customers in your organization, take a look at the slogans above and ask yourself the following questions in order to help improve your service levels:

What am I currently doing to provide the same level of quality service that these companies are espousing?
What am I currently doing that I could do better when serving my customers?
What am I currently doing that is potentially detracting from customer perceptions of service?

Based on answers to these questions, develop an action plan for improvement and strive to develop customer-focused behaviors and deliver the best possible customer service in the future.

For additional ideas on how to improve your customer service skills, get copies of Customer Service: Skills for Success and How to Be Great Call Center Representative.

About Your Customer Service Skills Expert – Robert C. 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.

The Impact of Technology on Customer Service

by Robert W. Lucas

The Impact of Technology on Customer Service

Organizations of all sizes in different parts of the world are struggling to harness the power of service technology to deliver the best customer service possible. The wonderful thing about changing technology is that through the use of new innovations, even small organizations can create an image equal to their larger counterparts since someone visiting their website or contacting them in other ways have no idea how many employees or assets they have. The key is that once a customer does contact an organization, that customer service representatives and other employees who interact with them must project a positive and professional image during interactions. Creating a positive customer-centric service culture is the job of everyone in the organization from upper echelons to front line employees.

In years past, service-based technology consisted of the telephone and facsimile. Now, there are many new developing technologies (e.g. Skype, smartphones, tablets, and cloud-based solutions) and web-based tools available (e.g. blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon) as organizations strive to gain and hold their edge over local and international competition.

Billions of dollars are being spent worldwide to create systems through which customers can access products and services to satisfy their ever-changing needs and whims. This is occurring because the quality of service received or perceived by customers can either enhance or diminish an organization’s brand and reputation. In a global economy, diversity abounds. Each current or potential customer also brings along cultural values, beliefs, and backgrounds based on their background. All of these elements influence customer expectations and perspectives.

As organizations strive to hang onto market share and customers while eking out some degree of profit is a sluggish economy, they are seeking viable alternatives to be responsive to customer needs, requests, problems, suggestions and complaints. Technology-based service delivery systems are viable options.

Many organizations have dedicated customer service professionals to staff their telephones or call centers and communicate with customers via the Internet, blogs, email, and other technological means. Some organizations also outsource and off-shore their service functions to call centers, marketing, and similar companies in order to reduce direct, ongoing staff expenses from their budgets and receive tax breaks. Unfortunately, these cost-saving strategies do not always work because many consumers have begun to rebel against having to talk to people located in other countries, whom they sometimes feel do not understand them or their needs.

Larger organizations continue to add and upgrade hardware and software capable of contacting and serving customers and tracking service-related analytics while adding human resources and training to meet customer needs.

In smaller organizations, and those who have yet to use alternative servicing strategies to maximum potential, the responsibility for answering the telephone and providing service through other means often falls on anyone (e.g., administrative assistant, salesperson, driver, partner, or owner) who is available when a customer visits (face-to-face or via the Internet or computer), the telephone rings, or an answering system receives a message.

No matter the size of your organization, everyone must accept ownership for service delivery in order to provide positive global service and ensure that customers are satisfied in order to maintain some degree of loyalty.

For additional ideas, strategies and techniques on how to provide the best customer service possible, check out Customer Service Skills for Success, Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures, and How to Be Great Call Center Representative.

About Robert C. Lucas

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

Impact of the Recession on Customer Loyalty

by Robert W. Lucas

Impact of the Recession on Customer Loyalty

Many business owners and managers will tell you that they are struggling to maintain market share and service levels to guarantee customer loyalty. This has been a trend for a number of years and particularly became difficult once the recent economic downturn kicked into full swing. To off-set the trend, companies are striving to provide excellent customer service, create moments of truth that make the customer feel special and encouraging customer service representatives and employees at all levels to exceed customer expectations.

A big challenge is that companies realized that in addition to losing customers, they were also losing profits as many middle class and some higher-income customers retrenched on spending. To offset their reduced disposable capital, consumers have changed their spending habits, stopped eating out and traveling as much, limited their entertainment budget, shopped less for non-essential items, and cut services that they considered a luxury (e.g. grass, pool, and pest control services) and started handling those functions personally. They also started doing more comparative shopping, spent more time bargain hunting, attended yard sales and consignment shops, clipped more coupons, and in many instances traded down to less expensive store items or those that were not in the “status symbol” or name brand categories.

The result of all these cultural and societal changes has been that now that customers are accustomed to the “new economic normal.” They realize that they can actually live well and be comfortable at a lower spending level and using lower quality products. They even realize that in many instances they actually happy with their new lifestyle and spending habits. As a result, even though the economy has started a slow upward movement, consumers are now remembering the economic pain they suffered and are stashing away as much as they can in the event the recession comes back.

What all this means for retail businesses, service providers and product manufacturers are that they must retool their marketing and production mentality. They are reducing on-hand inventories, minimizing staff hiring and using part-time employees or outsourcing services and re-examining the way they deliver customer service in a changing world. In particular, they are changing the manner in which they show added value to their customers in an effort to gain and retain new ones.

The changing business environment has resulted in a winning proposition for many consumers who now feel that they are in a power position related to making purchases. This is especially true in instances of major buying decisions (e.g. cars, houses, property, recreational vehicles, and other higher-end items). Many realtors and dealers have experienced a large inventory surplus due to a slowdown in purchases and tightened lending policies from financial institutions. This has created a buyers market.

By doing adequate research and coming to the sales environment with knowledge of manufacturing costs, competitive pricing, and product and service details, the consumer is now often in a position to negotiate strongly and get pricing that is not only fair but also better than they could have gotten in the past. Retailers in nearly every type of product line and business are willing to negotiate and offer discounted prices when pressured by the customer to do so. They do this because they realize that their competitors will discount if they do not and the customer is likely to walk away, if not satisfied with an offer they receive. In addition, with a global economy and access to products from around the world only a mouse click away, companies realize that they must deal or die.

From a customer service perspective, it is imperative that managers develop a customer-centric mindset and that customer service representatives and everyone else in the organization adopt a can-do/must-do attitude when it comes to communicating effectively and working with customers. They must provide the best customer service possible in any instance where there is a of customer-provider interaction. Only through such initiatives will organizations be able to show customers that they offer the best value, care about their wants, needs, and expectations, and are willing to put forth the effort to help achieve customer and brand loyalty.

About Robert W. Lucas

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

Telephone Etiquette Sends a Powerful Customer Service Message

by Robert W. Lucas

Telephone Etiquette Sends a Powerful Customer Service Message

There is no excuse for poor telephone etiquette or lack of professionalism when you answer the phone as a representative of your organization. Take the time to plan your approach BEFORE a customer calls so that when you receive a call, you are prepared to positively impress your callers. Remember that you represent yourself and your organization when you pick up a ringing phone.

Related to receiving calls, if you have ever received an incomplete or undecipherable telephone message that someone else took from a caller, you can appreciate the need for practice in this area.

If you are answering someone’s phone while he or she is away, let the caller know that fact right away. This can be done by using a statement such as, “Hello, (person’s name) line. This is (your name). How may I assist you?” In addition, be cautious of statements you make regarding the intended recipient’s availability. Sometimes, well-meant comments can send a negative message to customers. For example, you should not share information like “She:

“has not shown up yet this morning,”
“is not back from lunch yet.”
“had to take her son to school.”
“is on vacation.”
“had a doctor’s appointment.”

Instead, simply state that the person is not available at the moment but that you can either take a message and give it to him or her or assist the person yourself (if this is an option).

Many office supply stores sell pre-printed message pads to help guide message takers. At a minimum, when you take a message you should get the following information from a caller when you answer a phone for someone else.

Name (correctly spelled—ask the caller for spelling)
Company name
Phone number (with area code and country code, if appropriate)
Brief message
When call should be returned
Time and date of the call and your name (in case a question about the message arises)

Professional phone etiquette is part of everyone’s job. Make it a priority to practice good phone service yourself. If you are unsure of how to deliver quality customer service, consider reading some of the excellent resources on the market that provide guidance on using telephones and other technology to better serve your customers.

About Robert C. Lucas

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

What is Service Culture?

by Robert W. Lucas

What is Service Culture?

An organization’s service culture encompasses its products and services, employees and the physical appearance of its facility, equipment, or any other aspect of the organization with which a customer comes into contact. Managers in successful organizations are keenly aware of the importance of all these elements and continually assess the impact that each has on service delivery.

Since customer service is made up of many facets, each of which affects its customers and helps determine the success or failure of service initiatives, care should be given in identifying what customers want, need and expect, Once these things are known, a company should carefully create a response to address those elements.

Too often, organizations over-promise and under-deliver because of their cultural and internal systems (infrastructure) do not have the capacity to support successful customer service initiatives. An example of this would be an organization where management has its marketing department develop a slick piece of literature describing all the benefits of a new product or service provided by a new corporate partner. Then, a special toll-free number or Web site is set up to handle customer responses, but no additional staff is hired to handle the customer calls and current employees are not given adequate information or training to do their job. The project is likely doomed to fail because adequate service support has not been planned and implemented in advance.

Unfortunately, an organization’s structure gets in the way of quality service. Many companies are top-down–oriented or product-centered and typically view customers from the standpoint of what company products or services they use. In such organizations, upper management is at the top of their hierarchy and customers as a final element or afterthought. Such companies often have stockholders who demand higher profit margins and lower expenditures, and to whom senior management must answer. Leaders in such companies often lose sight of what really drives their business…the customer. In an era when a competitor is only one mouse click away; this can be a road to disaster. A way to combat this dilemma is to flip the organization and put the customer as the focal point. Everything that the company does should be driven by needs, wants, and expectations that are identified through customer feedback. There should also be checks and balances built into the system so that when a product or service is provided, there is a means to gauge response and satisfaction immediately from customers.

On the opposite end of the customer-provider continuum, successful organizations are customer-centered or customer-centric and focus on customer individual needs. In such organizations, managers realize that without customers, they can close the doors and everyone can go home. Typically managers in such companies recruit and hire the best, train employees frequently and are vigilant regarding assessing customer needs, wants and expectations. Quality initiatives are evident in everything the company does and provides and customers are in the forefront of employee efforts.

To learn more about service culture and other aspects of effective customer service, click here.

About Robert W. Lucas – Customer Service Professional

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

Superior Customer Service at Fields Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram

by Robert W. Lucas

Superior Customer Service at Fields Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram

When was the last time you actually “enjoyed” a car buying experience? The answer for me is never in the past 40 years,,, until I recently visited the Fields Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram dealership in Sanford, Florida to purchase a car for my wife.

As a customer service consultant and author, I was blown away with the personalities, knowledge, and candor of our sales representative (Ryan Eiland), Ty Brown (Sales Rep) and New Car Manager, Brian Williams. In an industry with an often dubious reputation, these guys and everyone else we encountered at the dealership were a breath of fresh air and epitomize what I believe stellar global customer service should be. In fact, we were so impressed with their willingness to go the extra mile for a customer and take the time to provide that personal touch related to demonstrating that they really do care about whether the customer is satisfied, that we went back two days later and bought a second car for me!

I only wish that more organizations could “get it” like these folks obviously do when it comes to recognizing that the customer is the most important person they will meet on any given day in their workplace. By simply taking the time to make things right and help customers feel welcomed, appreciated and valued, they could raise their sales volume exponentially. Having a customer-centric approach to doing business, as Fields does, is what separated the successful from the non-successful organizations in a competitive automotive marketplace.

I’d be curious to hear from anyone else about similar organizations and service experiences.

For ideas and strategies on how you can deliver higher quality service check out these books: Customer Service Skills for Success, How to Be a Successful Call Center Representative and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.