Customer Relations is Directly Tied to Keeping Your Word
Customer service training for employees must cover basic customer service skills (i.e. verbal and nonverbal communication, how to build and maintain customer relationships that can lead to customer and brand loyalty and overall customer satisfaction). It must also emphasize how to handle situations when something goes wrong and teach how to implement sound service recovery strategies. This last topic is crucial since some customer situations can quickly escalate when people perceive that they have been lied to or that a service provider failed to meet a commitment to them.
An example of the importance and severity of what might happen if employees fail to meet commitments to a customer was provided in an article in USA Today newspaper on February 28, 2014. Four people were shot in a tax preparation business when a customer became disgruntled when her tax return was not ready as promised. Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/01/detroit-shooting-tax-refund/5919971/.
For more ideas and strategies on building better customer relationships and implementing service recovery strategies when customers are dissatisfied, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success.
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.