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.

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.”

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

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.

Customer Relations is Directly Tied to Keeping Your Word

by Robert W. Lucas

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.

Customer Relations is Directly Tied to Keeping Your Word

About Robert W. Lucas

Preparing Customer Service Representatives

by Robert W. Lucas

Preparing Customer Service Representatives

Preparing customer service representatives in the twenty-first century has become a prime strategic initiative in many organizations. That is because they face many challenges in achieving customer satisfaction, increasing customer retention and building customer loyalty that their predecessors did not experience. Technology continues to move at a break-neck pace, while the world economy shifts continually and causes companies to regularly re-evaluate how to best deal with competition. Add to this mix changing customer demographics with culturally-based needs, wants and expectations, and you have a potential prescription for failure.

Customer service representatives in the twenty-first century face many challenges in achieving customer satisfaction, increasing customer retention and building customer loyalty that their predecessors did not experience. Technology continues to move at a break-neck pace, while the world economy shifts continually and causes companies to regularly re-evaluate how to best deal with competition. Add to this mix changing customer demographics with culturally-based needs, wants and expectations, and you have a potential prescription for failure. The concept or practice of customer service is not new throughout the world. In fact, customers are the core of every business. As such, they should be the top priority for every organization. This includes internal (employees) and external customers.

The concept or practice of customer service is not new throughout the world. In fact, customers are the core of every business. As such, they should be the top priority for every organization. This includes internal (employees) and external customers.

Successful managers recognize the need to reduce their customer churn rate and realize that if their customers go away, so do their jobs and organization. This is why truly customer-centric organizations strive to attract, hire, and retain the best qualified and capable customer service representatives (also known as customer care professionals) that they can find. They also pay competitive wages, provide industry-comparable benefits and continually train everyone in the organization. This training includes product and organizational culture information, as well as, the customer service skills necessary to effectively interact with all types of customers face-to-face and via technology.

In addition to effectively training employees, customer-focused organizations also ensure that all supervisors and managers have been trained in ways to effectively coach and mentor staff members. They also ensure that written policies and procedures are in place to provide guidance on expectations and processes so that all employees know what is expected of them. Also, to help employees deliver the best customer service possible, organizations must provide the most up-to-date software and equipment available, if it is required to help deliver stellar customer service.

A final means of preparing customer service representatives for the challenges that they will likely face on any given day is to empower them to make decisions, when necessary to satisfy a customer or resolve and issue that arises.

For ideas and strategies on better preparing customer service representatives and other employees for the tasks required in their jobs, check out two of my books – Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures, Customer Service Skills for Success and the American Management Association self-study course, How to Be a Great Call Center Representative. This latter resource results in a certificate of completion from the American Management Association once a final exam is taken and submitted to the association.

Strengthening Communication with Customers – Tip#2

by Robert W. Lucas

Strengthening Communication with Customers – Tip#2

Be Consistent

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

People tend to like what is familiar. If customers come to know that they can depend on you and your organization to regularly provide timely, factual information, they will likely be more loyal. Provide information and updates to customers on a regular basis, not just when it is convenient for you. This is especially true when you are working on a problem or service breakdown. Remember that they do not know what you know. For example, if you are gathering information or need more time than expected, come back to the customer with periodic updates to give him or her a status check. Do not wait until the time or date that you were expected to resolve the issue to contact the customer; Otherwise, they are likely to be very upset.

Strengthening Communication with Customers – Tip#1

by Robert W. Lucas

Strengthening Communication with Customers – Tip#1

Gather Information

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

Ask for customer input whenever possible. By knowing more about their needs, wants and expectations, you will be better able to provide services and products that satisfy them. Use communication strategies in publications, books and on the Internet to gather valuable information from people who you encounter on a daily basis.

About Robert W. Lucas

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

Delivering Excellent Customer Service as Part of a Service Culture

by Robert W. Lucas

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.

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.

Dealing With Stress as a Customer Service Representative

by Robert W. Lucas

Dealing With Stress as a Customer Service Representative

Numerous workplace studies have categorized the job of customer service representatives as one of the top ten most stressful today. The potential result of such poor positioning is that bad health problems may materialize since the effects of stress include damage to the heart, high blood pressure and other serious medical conditions. All of these issues not only jeopardize an employee’s health and life but also significantly increase medical costs for organizations. Those higher costs drain budget money away from equipment, facility, training, employee raises and other workplace factors.

A myriad of factors contributes to stress in today’s customer service environment. These workplace stressors are anything that creates tension, anxiety or frustration for you during a given workday. They might be in the form of people, tasks, or elements of your job and environment.

The average customer service representative strives to come to work ready for his or her job activities and with a desire to deliver the best customer service possible. However, many arrive with anticipation of dread over what the day will bring and what types of customer interactions await them. Work is no longer fun for millions of employees around the world.

Some potential factors that may create pressure in your own work environment might include:

The requirement to do more with fewer resources.
Inadequate supervisory guidance or poor management.
Job design where you have a heavy workload, get infrequent breaks, often do not have time for lunch, and have to deal with mundane tasks and rude people.
A feeling that you have little input or control over your daily activities.
The pressure to perform at higher levels without being adequately compensated or rewarded.
Regular friction or conflict with co-workers and customers.
Workplace turmoil or constant change that leads to high degrees of uncertainty related to expectations of you and your co-workers.
Unsafe or dangerous work conditions or job assignments.
Reduced levels of training to prepare you for job responsibilities.
Fewer opportunities for career advancement.
The constant barrage of negative news reports related to job security and cuts being made throughout many industries.

The good news is that you can do some things to reduce some of your own anxiety and maintain a professional attitude while providing excellent customer service. Do some Internet research to find suggested ways to reduce workplace stress. Some common ways are watching your diet, avoiding tobacco, excessive alcohol, getting eight hours of sleep per night, avoid overeating before bead and watching your diet.

For additional stress reduction strategies and ideas and information about stress and how to avoid it, get a copy of Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and search the Internet for related topics.