Gaining Customer Loyalty

Gaining customer loyalty and getting repeat business is crucial for organizational success in today’s global business world. Too many managers and small business owners do not recognize that customer loyalty are not just about competitive pricing and product line offerings. With competition being literally a mouse click away, the differentiator between companies is often the level and quality of customer service that they provide. If companies fail to personalize service, empower customer service representatives to effectively and efficiently serve customers, and invest in the latest service technology, they are likely to suffer from customer churn.

Unfortunately, many organizational leaders have not recognized the need to adopt customer service as a strategic initiative. They also fail to identify consumer trends and go to the effort of meeting changing customer needs, wants and expectations. According to the 2014 American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, 62% of 1,000 American consumers surveyed believe that companies “meet customer expectations.” Only 5% of those surveyed said that interactions that they had with companies “exceeded their expectations,” while 29% thought that companies usually “miss their expectations.” Companies, such as Radio Shack, Borders Books, Blockbuster and Circuit City have paid the price of failure for failing to read and meet customer needs and expectations. Other organizations that are teetering and struggling to regain or maintain market share include Sears, JCPenney, Best Buy and the U.S. Postal Service.

The simple solution for gaining customer loyalty and getting repeat business is to make every customer experience positive. By investing in customer service skills and communication training for all employees, upgrading equipment, processes, and policies regularly, and looking at service through the customer’s eyes, customer loyalty and satisfaction is attainable.

For additional ideas on ways to improve customer service in any organization, 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.

Causes of Customer Service Breakdowns – Being Preoccupied

by Robert W. Lucas

Causes of Customer Service Breakdowns – Being Preoccupied

There are numerous reasons why customer service breakdowns occur. These run the spectrum from lack of sound customer service skills to bad customer service representative attitude.

In today’s hectic workplace where customer service representatives are constantly multitasking, it is sometimes easy to forget that your customers are a priority. Being preoccupied and not giving full attention to a customer is one quick way to cause a service breakdown. This is often due to trying to juggle multiple tasks or simply failing to care about the quality of customer service that you deliver.

If you have ever called or visited an organization only to have them put you on extended hold while they performed some task? Have you ever visited an organization where a customer service representative failed to acknowledge your presence and serve you right away? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you know how your customers might feel under similar circumstances. If you must put someone on hold while on the phone, do so only if you are currently serving another customer or you have no other option, but make sure that you explain why they are being asked to wait and how long it will take to get to them.

To prevent possible negative situations with customers from developing, if a customer arrives and you are performing an administrative function, such as filing, calculating, writing, or stocking, quickly get to a point where you can pause and serve the customer. In the meantime, take a moment to make eye contact, smile and either tell them or non-verbally (by holding up a single index finger) that you will be with the customer as soon as possible. This is an especially important action when dealing with someone from a culture in which relationships are an important aspect of business (e.g. the Middle East, Hispanic cultures, and Asia). Such efforts may not satisfy everyone, but they work with most customers, who understand that many service providers are doing more with fewer human assets these days.

To learn more customer service tips, ideas and strategies that might help prevent customer service breakdowns and how to better deliver excellent customer service to your internal and external customers, check out Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and Customer Service Skills for Success.

Customer Service Is Driven By Many Factors

by Robert W. Lucas

Customer Service Is Driven By Many Factors

Any customer service professional who has been on the job a period of time will tell you that dealing with internal and external customers can be a challenge at times.

To succeed in providing excellent customer service requires patience, a desire to help others and sound customer service skills. As the world becomes more global and you encounter people of all types and backgrounds, you will be required to gain new talents and insights, and to continually update your knowledge and skills. Sound customer communications and better understanding of people, in general, can lead to more satisfied and loyal customers in the long run.

Happy Waitress Even Happier After Receiving Astounding Tip

by Robert W. Lucas

Happy Waitress Even Happier

After Receiving Astounding Tip

Many servers in the restaurant and hospitality industries and well, as customer service professionals in general, are underpaid and often overworked. This is unfortunate because, like many customer service representatives who work for minimum wage or less, they often do not make enough to pay for basic essentials.

It is for that reason that a recent story by Lauren Tuck of the Shine Staff put the spotlight on why it is important to provide superior customer service, and on customers who appreciate great service and are willing to open their hearts and bank accounts to help out deserving employees. Tuck’s blog article highlights how the generosity of one customer was touched by a deserving server’s financial plight and took action to make her life better.

The example highlighted in the article also serves as a great example for others in the service industry who may go to work disgruntled and as a result deliver marginal or sub-standard service to their customers. Quite simply by following basic rules of positive service, they can make a customer service experience one that is not only appreciated but also rewarded generously.

For ideas and techniques that can be used to develop excellent customer service skills and deliver superior customer service, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success and Please Every Customer: Designing Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

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.

Bob Lucas B.S., M.A., M.A, CPLP is the principal in Robert W. Lucas Enterprises, Inc and an internationally-known author; learning and performance professionals. He has written and contributed to numerous books on the subject of customer service skill training.

He regularly conducts workshops on creative training, train-the-trainer, customer service, interpersonal communication, and management,
and supervisory skills.

Learn more about Bob and his organization at www.robertwlucas.com and follow his blogs at www.robertwlucas.com/wordpress,
www.customerserviceskillsbook.com, and www.thecreativetrainer.com. Like Bob at www.facebook.com/robertwlucasenterprises

Customer Service Tip – Use Behavioral Style Assessments Surveys to Better Understand Yourself and Your Customers

by Robert W. Lucas

Customer Service Tip – Use Behavioral Style Assessments Surveys

to Better Understand Yourself and Your Customers

By better understanding yourself and why you behave the way that you do when interacting with customers and other people, you can work toward building stronger relationships in the future. This is especially true when interacting with customers and potential customers. The point is that the more you know about people, the better prepared you are to deliver excellent service, meet customer wants, needs and expectations, provide satisfaction and aid customer and brand loyalty.

One way to achieve better self-awareness is to use commercially available self-assessment surveys (questionnaires) that are available online or through consultants who specialize in their use. By attending training sessions that use and help explain these instruments you can be a more rounded individual personally. You can also start to recognize the behavioral traits that you display in others. In doing so, you can start to tailor your actions and reactions to other people in different situations in order to help mold a more positive situational outcome. This is especially true when there is the emotion or negative energy involved displayed on either person’s part during a customer-provider interaction.

Two popular commercially available surveys or questionnaires include:

For more ideas on how to improve relationships with customers and how to apply knowledge of behavioral styles for building stronger customer-provided relationships, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success (Chapter 6).

About Robert C. 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.

Quote on Internal Customer Service – Jan Carlzon

by Robert W. Lucas

Quote on Internal Customer Service – Jan Carlzon

A group of people, often overlooked by many customer service representatives and employees in organizations, are the “internal customers.” These are the peers, supervisors, and fellow employees throughout an organization. In many instances, these folks are in support positions in departments that are served by others in the organization.

Internal customers are people to whom and from whom you provide or receive information, products, and services. These might be people you depend on to get the information needed to complete your monthly reports or who depend upon you to provide materials or data for them to do their jobs.

The key to providing professional internal service is for everyone in the organization to adopt a customer-centric approach to interactions with other employees. Requests for information, products, and services should be viewed as just as important as those received from external customers in any situation. The only exceptions would be if there is an external customer waiting for service. In such instances, you should professionally inform your internal customer of that fact, provide service to the external customer and then get back to your internal customer in a timely fashion.

Jan Carlzon, former CEO of SAS Group famously made the following statement regarding internal customer service:

Learn All About Robert C. ‘Bob’ Lucas Now

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.

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 Cost of Dissatisfied Customers

by Robert W. Lucas

The Cost of Dissatisfied Customers

Numerous research studies have been conducted to try to determine the cost of a dissatisfied customer who defects. Too often, service providers look at the loss of a sale as a single event when a customer is dissatisfied. However, one dissatisfied customer can cost your organization a lot if they defect to a competitor and share their negative experience with friends and relatives.

To get an idea of what one negative customer experience can cost your organization over a 10-year period, consider the following example:

Ms. Ling comes in to return a product that she paid $22 for over a month ago. She explains that the product did not fit her needs and that she had been meaning to return it since the date she purchased it, but kept forgetting. She also explains that she comes in at least once a week to make purchases. Your company has a three-day return policy, your manager is out to lunch and you do not have the authority to override the policy. Ms. Ling is in a hurry and is upset by your inability to resolve the issue. She leaves after saying, “You just lost a good customer!”

Let’s assume that Ms. Ling spends at least $22 a week in your store and calculate the potential loss to your organization.

$22 x 52 (number of weeks in a year) = $1,144
10 (number of years as a customer) x $1,144 = $11,440
16 (number of people statistically told of her negative experience) x $11,440 = $183,040

These numbers are bad news. The good news is that you and every other employee in your organization can reduce a large percentage of customer defections by providing the best possible quality service. If you and everyone in your organization focus on strengthening customer relationships, reducing customer defections and building brand and customer loyalty through the use of sound customer service skills, both your customers and your organization benefit.

About Robert C. Lucas

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