At Your Service:
Gaining the Competitive Edge
by
Mimi Donaldson
More time is spent in stressful work. We have less time for leisure.
Standards are changing. Aging baby
boomers want to enjoy work; they demand service. The ever-growing demand
for more customer service focuses us
on gaining the edge. Smart entrepreneurs treat customers more than right.
And managers need to become
"trainers" of customer service.
Top people seem to already have an edge in grasping the "rapport-building
service" mentality. We
discovered long ago that people often don't "buy" on the basis of need,
and people don't "sell" based on their
breadth of product knowledge. People "buy" people; the buyer buys you. All
of us have bought at least one item
we don't need, and we bought it out of the "relationship" we developed
over a two-to-ten minute period with the
salesperson.
Women often more easily grasp the "go-the-extra-step-service" approach, as
they've had to go many extra
steps to achieve quasi-equal footing with men in the workplace. We know
how to nurture, and the concept of
"taking care" of the customer comes naturally.
The "basics" of good customer service training, however, are not
gender-based. Managers can coach
customer service representatives to answer the phone, channel potential
buyers to salespeople, answer questions
and handle complaints and calm agitated customers. They must handle huge
volumes of calls and be compassionate
while being efficient! Most people view this is an impossible task. It's
not.
Here are the 5 basic steps of servicing a customer with grace and control:
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Be clear on your purpose. What do you want the customer to do, think, or
feel after your
communication with them? Managers are smart to coach people to "write it
down!" In the "do" column, you may
list: "pay, renew, expand the order, and fill out the form correctly; tell
friends to buy; give us repeat
business; not call my boss; never again call to complain."
In the "think" column may be: "think we're an excellent company; I'm a
capable, intelligent,
professional person; think our product is worth the investment."
In the "feel" column may be: "feel taken care of; feel they're in capable
hands; feel satisfied and
confident in their decision to buy; feel trust in our company and in me."
When people are clear on their purpose and write it down in their own
words, their focus improves. It's
also the necessary step to provide focus for the next four steps.
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Be appropriate. Appropriate is one of the best words in the English
language. The dictionary
definition is "proper, fit, and suited to a given purpose." In I Ching,
the Book of Changes, a source of
oracular wisdom in Chinese philosophy for three thousand years, a most
important concept is Li, which means
"conduct". An excerpt: "One's purpose will be achieved if one behaves with
decorum. Pleasant manners succeed
even with irritable people." To the manager or entrepreneur who is a
service person, this means that every
word uttered, every action performed must be suited to the purpose they
defined in Step #1.Logic prevails as
people start examining their behavior. If your purpose is that this
customer come back, would you be rude to
him to prove your point? Of course not. If your purpose is having the
customer thinks your company is
professional, would you answer her query as to the whereabouts of a
salesperson, "Oh, she's around here
somewhere - we never know where she is.” Ridiculous. These comments defeat
your purpose. They're not suited to
your given purpose, so they're not appropriate. But how do you stop these
sentences before they come out of your
mouth? This leads us to the next step.
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Know your "hot buttons" and don't get sucked in. Certain words or
phrases used by customers push our
buttons. Examples: "What are you gals doing over there anyway?" "It's your
fault." "Let me speak to the man
who knows something or who owns the company." "You must have lost my
payment." "Why is your product so
expensive?" Be aware of what your "hot buttons" are. Make a list; read it
over; desensitize yourself, so the
next time you hear one of them, you do not have to lash back with a
defensive remark, or a "yeah, but."
Instead, you can ...
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Push the "pause button" to gain control. Our "pause button" separates
us from the animals. My cat, Linguini, is a stimulus-response machine. When he hears the sound of the
electric can opener, his response is
consistent and predictable. He will come running, and howl incessantly
until the stimulus is removed - until
the sound of the can opener stops. Linguini has no pause button. He can't
pause at the kitchen door and before
he expends all that energy, check to see if it's my tuna fish or his. He
doesn't know the difference. (I do.
It's about a buck thirty-three.) Some customers you know act like
stimulus-response machines. Their upsets are
consistent and predictable. But your reaction doesn't have to be. When you
are aware of your hot buttons and
one gets pushed, you can pause - very briefly - and choose the appropriate
response. One appropriate response
-- suited to your given purpose and efficient at the same time -- is
described in the final step of customer
service.
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Give the customer 6-second empathy. Using empathy is demonstrating with
words that you understand
what the customer is saying and how they are feeling. It is a statement
that is calming, comforting, positive,
and specific. A good one takes only six seconds. "I understand how
frustrating it is not to get the information
when you want it." 6 seconds. "I understand how easy it is to get
impatient with that machine." 6 seconds.
"It sounds like you're very upset. I see you need our full cooperation." 6
seconds. A sincerely empathetic
statement can defuse a hostile customer. It also gives you time to think
of the response you can make which
will satisfy your customer (i.e. achieve your purpose) while staying
within the boundaries of your company's
policy. These five steps have proven effective for thousands of people and
will prove effective for you.
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