Customer Service Skills That Lead to Customer Satisfaction

As a customer service professional, what can you do to enhance customer satisfaction and build a lasting relationship with your customers? If you answered “improve your customer service skills and knowledge,” you are correct. Unfortunately, many managers and their organizations do not take the time to invest in employee knowledge and skill-building. Often, supervisors are not taught how to effectively coach and mentor employees and ongoing customer service skills training is neglected for all employee levels. Cost and time constraints are two common excuses for both of these failures. The ultimate result is lowered employee morale, high turnover, lowered customer satisfaction, and increased customer churn rates.

What skills do you believe are crucial for enhancing customer satisfaction?

If you find yourself in a situation in which customer service skills training is not being provided, take responsibility for your own professional development. There are many options for gaining, updating or upgrading your knowledge and skills.

Read books about customer service.
Search customer service blogs and articles on the Internet.
View free videos and webinars on a variety of websites.
Attend national conferences and professional customer service association meetings (check local listings on the Internet).
Visit local colleges and universities for customer service classes.

The key to improving the chances of providing stellar service to your customers is to focus on personal motivation and continually strive to improve your own knowledge and customer service skills.

The following are specific areas that can lead to improved quality of customer service.

Customer service skills. No matter whether you serve internal or external customers, you are in the “people” business. To be successful in interacting with others, you must be able to communicate verbally and nonverbally, actively listen, empathize, question in a non-threatening manner, provide appropriate feedback, and demonstrate that you have their best interests at heart. All of these skills take a conscious effort on your part after you learn how to use them.

Enhanced knowledge of diversity. The world is continuing to evolve related to interactions between a variety of people. This means that for you to be effective in delivering effective service, you must first understand the needs, wants and expectations of various groups. To help accomplish this: (1) Learn as much as you can about the cultural backgrounds, values, and beliefs of customer groups with whom you are likely to encounter, (2) Explore differences and similarities of people from various generations, (3) Identify preferences of customers based on their genders, age, and ability levels, and (4) Recognize that people have different behavioral style preferences that affect the manner in which they react in various situations. All of these crucial components can impact customer-provider interactions. By increasing your awareness about interpersonal dynamics, you can potentially become a more effective customer service provider.

Organizational and product knowledge. One of the most frustrating things that a customer can experience is an unprepared service professional. This is one who does not know what his or her organization is about, the features, benefits, and functioning of products sold, and services offered. Typically, these areas are addressed briefly in new hire orientation and in the information provided online or in materials provided to employees. Take the time to familiarize yourself with all of these components of the customer service process so that you are prepared to answer questions from customers and offer appropriate options when the time arises.

For additional ideas on how to improve your customer service skills and improve customer satisfaction, search those topics on this blog.

Effective Verbal Communication Can Lead To Customer Satisfaction and Customer Retention

by Robert W. Lucas

Effective Verbal Communication Can Lead To Customer Satisfaction and Customer Retention

You may have heard that the expression is sometimes not what you, but how you say it that makes a difference. Nothing is truer when you are dealing with a multi-cultural, diverse customer base.

In many situations, when customer service breaks down it can often be attributed to what a customer service representative does or does not effectively say verbally or non verbally. In some cases, the lapse may be due to an unconscious message (e.g. non-verbal gesture, body movement, signal, or eye contact) that was interpreted differently than intended. In other instances, it might be an incorrect tone, word or inflection added to a message that was received incorrectly by the customer.

Whatever the reason(s) for such failures in communication, it is crucial that anyone dealing with internal and external customers is prepared for potential interactions that might go wrong. The easiest means of doing so is to enhance customer service and communication skills and to become educated related to approaches to verbal and communication practices in various cultures.

If this topic is of interest to you and you want to get ideas and strategies related to communicating effectively with diverse customers, get copies of my books Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and Customer Service Skills for Success.

About 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.

Successfully Addressing Diversity as a Service Provider

by Robert W. Lucas

Successfully Addressing Diversity as a Service Provider

As the world grows smaller economically and otherwise through world trade, international travel, outsourcing and off shoring of jobs, worldwide Internet access, international partnerships between organizations and technologically transmitted information exchange, the likelihood that you will have contact as a customer service provider with people from other cultures, or who are different from you in other ways, increases significantly. This likelihood also carries over into your personal life.

Diversity is encountered everywhere over the telephone and Internet, in supermarkets, religious organizations, and on public transportation and virtually anywhere that you come into contact with others. It is an important aspect of everyone’s life. Although it 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 customer 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 personal preferences and 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.

In order to provide excellent customer service rather than good customer service, you will need to raise your personal awareness about others and focus on addressing the needs of a diverse customer base.

Part of creating a positive diverse customer-centric 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 better prepare for the inevitable opportunities, you will have in serving others who are different from you, ask yourself the following questions. After thinking about them, set out to do some research in areas where you feel deficient.

How do you define diversity?
What do you already know about diverse cultures around the world?
In what ways do your cultural beliefs and values differ from those of cultures with which you have contact as a service provider?
In what ways are your cultural beliefs and values similar to those of cultures with which you have contact as a service provider?
How do the beliefs and expectations of people from a gender other than your own impact your ability to serve them effectively?
How do the values of other generations differ from your own?
What accommodations might be necessary for customers who have special needs?
What is your personal interest in learning about other cultures or diverse groups?
What training or research have you done on diversity and how has that impacted your views or perspectives towards others who may be different from you?

For ideas and strategies on providing quality customer service to a diverse population, check out, Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

About Robert W. Lucas

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.