KateNasser.com

Customer service professionals and leaders need always remember that great customer service is defined by the customer and from the customer’s perspective. Yet as with most professions, the temptation to see things from the inside often takes control and drives beliefs.

When this temptation controls for too long, the beliefs become ingrained. These deep-rooted customer service myths can sink long term success.

Here are 4 of these customer service myths that won’t die. What would you add to this list and how can we finally bust these myths from the soul of customer service?

MYTH #1: Delivery is more important than how you treat the customer. There are many who believe that as long as you deliver the goods or solve the customers’ problems, the customers will be very pleased. Not true. 
Remember, if you stress the customers out along the way — they will remember the negative even if you deliver in the end. They start looking for companies that can make service easier next time.


MYTH #2: If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. Baloney. All the discoveries humans have made existed before we discovered them. Metrics are a valuable tool for humans to make decisions. They are one means to an end — they are not the end.
Believing that metrics are the heart and soul of great customer service is a very dangerous myth.


MYTH #3: Customers separate customer service from customer experience like companies do. Are you laughing as much as I am at this one?
Customers don’t care what you call it. They want every aspect of products and services to meet their needs and be easy to use!


MYTH #4: If you treat customers well, you teach them to be demanding and unreasonable. Huh? How did that one get started and plant its long roots into the customer service psyche?
Let’s replace that myth with the truth: If you treat customers badly, they eventually go elsewhere.

What other harmful customer service myths do you want to bust apart? I welcome your customer service voice in the comments section below.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, customer service, customer experience, and teamwork. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

The title of this post, Customer Service: High Touch B4 High Tech, might suggest I am resurrecting the old debate about the value of technology. I’m not. I write today to raise the flag on a new trend that maliciously undermines great customer service and the customer experience.

Business leaders, business owners, and their customer service teams are placing more focus on high tech than on connecting with the customer.

High tech delivers many capabilities to the customer experience — choice of self-service, automated confirmations, shared knowledge bases, inventory checks, timely shipping, and the list goes on and on. Yet a high tech focus alone does not create great customer service — not even online.

1. E-commerce sites designed without a true customer focus are maddening to use and dissuade customers of all generations from returning.
2. Websites that hide their contact info and phone number send a negative message to the customer — “don’t bother us”.

In face-to-face customer service (retail, hospitality, etc…), a focus on high tech is even more damaging. I witness front desk agents at hotels standing sideways to the customers because the computers are at a right angle to the desk. Face-to-face customer service means “look at and care for the customer” — not talk over your shoulder.

I see retail sales associates walking around wearing headsets. This may look cool to the young generation yet it sends a negative message to many customers — “I’m busy”. Victoria Secret, Bath & Body Works, Staples, etc… are doing this and it diminishes the customer experience.

Conversely, Macy’s flagship store in NYC has blended technology into the customer experience very well. In the shoe department, the sales associates have hand held devices to check inventory for sizes. What a great use of high tech to facilitate and support the customer experience. They have had self-service price check scanners for quite awhile making shopping easier and more profitable.

Bravo Macy’s. Your high tech supports a faster more informative connection to and for the customer.


What have you experienced as a customer? Great high tech supporting customer service or — businesses focusing on high tech instead of focusing on you? Please share your story in the comments section below.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, former techie turned people-skills guru delivers advice and training workshops to business leaders and their teams that transform customer service and teamwork. See this site for more info and customer reflections.

A recent trip to a Bath & Body Works with my mom proved to be both a humorous and insightful customer experience. The young cashier, wearing a headset, scanned my mom’s items and then started the prescribed cross-selling of other scents. Alas success was not in her grasp because details did derail her.

The music was blaring in the store and the cashier was mumbling quickly. I could only hear the last word of each question. I laughed hysterically as I watched and listened to this ridiculous interaction between my mom and the cashier.

Cashier: Blah blah blah coconut? Mom: “No”.
Cashier: Blah blah blah cucumber melon? Mom: “No”.
Cashier: Blah blah blah mango? Mom: “No”.

In fact, my mom told me later she didn’t even hear the scents. She found the loud music and mumbling cashier annoying and not being able to read lips, she refused to buy anything else.

The Details of a Great Customer Experience

1. Care about what the customer cares about. If your demeanor, behavior, and actions are all about what your company care about , the customer won’t care about you.
2. Make it conversational. Robotic inaudible questions don’t sell. A slightly slower pace with a tone of a real question, makes the difference. Just last week, a cashier sold me some new chewing gum with a sincere question: Would you like to try it? It’s really good and a steal at this price?
3. Make it personal and personable. Many retail stores like Victoria Secret and Bath & Body Works have their sales associates on the floor wearing headsets. This one detail inhibits a great customer experience. It inhibits customers from approaching the sales associates. They look busy. They look preoccupied. They look as if their job is to listen to whomever is speaking into their ear instead of to the customer.
4. Know and remember the difference between the customer’s experience and managing the customer experience. Leaders and managers like things routinized to make them easy to measure, analyze, and supposedly improve.

   Yet I ask leaders, when the details of those prescribed procedures create a bad customer experience — which they will — what exactly do your measures guide you to improve? I daresay no manager or leader will know how much money and potential customer loyalty they missed from my mom’s disgust.

Let empowered sales and service associates use great people-skills to engage customers for great results.

If you want to give your associates and reps a rule to follow, this one will create a great customer experience:

Make it easy, make it personal, make it memorable!


©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. For permission to re-post or republish, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers transformational customer service workshops that put the care back into customer care. Across diverse industries and verticals, Kate’s 21 years of experience and insight create stellar results. See this site for outlines, footage, and customer testimonials.

Obviously, in sales and customer service, listening is critical to success. Not so obvious is how to listen for customer cares when your mind is processing your own perspective.

What’s in it for you to work on this? Sales & service fail when you don’t address customer cares. Moreover, customers even select higher priced products and services when you show them you get what they care about.

Winning Ways to Listen for Customer Cares

1. Hear the story as well as the details. If you are highly analytic, you may naturally listen for details. You may miss important customer cares because they emerge as the sum of the details. Do you listen for the whole point of the story?
   Winning way: If this is your listening challenge, say to the customer “I hear these details (a. b. c. …). If we put this together, what does it say about your key interest or concern?” It shows the customer you listen & you care!




2. Accept the obvious. Often customers are clearly stating their preferences. When it represents a challenge to what you want or can deliver, do you respond with what’s on your mind?
   Winning way: Paraphrase the customer’s preference then respond. If you do this consistently, you will listen better, sell more, and serve well. You and the customers will connect with mutual success.




3. Be excellent instead of right. Working with others, especially with customers, is first about excellence in connecting. It is the nexus of trust. Successful results come from excellent connections not from you pressing your points at the start. Once you are connected to the customers’ cares, they are more capable of hearing your perspective and valuable ideas.
   Winning way: Respect the differences, learn to love the differences, find the fit. One key step: Spot and Adapt to Personality Types.

Success in sales & service is within your easy reach if you reach outside your own perspective. Staying inside your own zone of communication style, knowledge, and control keeps you comfortably disconnected — from success. Think about it …

Yours in service,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

What is your best listening skills tip? Please share your people-skills experience in the comments field below.


©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. For permission to re-post or republish, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, has amassed 21 years of stellar results with corporate customers turning interpersonal obstacles into business success. Her energy is legendary, her insight objective, and her results tangible. See this site for info about her keynotes, workshops, and dvds.

It is common in a restaurant for the server or maitre d’ to ask you how you like your meal while you are eating. They gather feedback before you are done. Hotels ask their guests how is their stay going.

There are pearls of wisdom in that approach. Gathering feedback before the finish line gives the customer service provider a clearer picture of the customers’ expectations throughout the delivery of service. This tremendously increases the chance for customer satisfaction.

Then why do customer service providers rarely gather feedback during a phone call or webchat? They often ask a customer to stay on the line after the call or chat to complete a feedback survey. Isn’t that a bit late for that customer’s satisfaction?

Customers’ feedback are little pearls that your reps and agents can string together into customer satisfaction before the finish of the call or chat.

I propose that the customers’ would love to give feedback before the finish line. Why else would they use Social Media like Twitter and Facebook when customer service is failing them?

I ask for feedback while I am consulting with clients — face to face, on the phone, or online in a webinar or videoconference. When I am delivering customer service & team building workshops, I ask for feedback at breaks and lunch to see what they are thinking.

Picture your reps or agents asking customers — “how’s my service so far?”

It makes customer service a dialogue — an engagement of the customers’ views during the process. Empowered reps and agents can then adjust their delivery to meet the customers’ needs.

Social media is engaging your customers more than ever before. Are you? Engage them and gather some pearls during the calls and chats.

Business Benefits

1. Dynamic in-the-moment low cost learning about customers’ needs and expectations
2. Creating a loyal customer through listening to them and reaching their finish line
3. Preventing a dissatisfied customer (who seeks an audience) bashing your brand on Social Media
4. Creating memorable moments instead of routine actions — customers remember moments and your brand!

One simple question, “How’s my service so far?” to change course and turn customer service into customer engagement.

Gathering feedback before the finish line gives you preventive and proactive success!


What tips for success would you like to share in the comments section below? I welcome your perspective.


©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. For permission to re-post or republish, please email info@katenasser.com.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers customer service and team building workshops that take your people from inspiration to action. Now celebrating 21 years in business, Kate delivers results that are well known in the corporate world. See this site for more information.

A positive attitude and enthusiasm are essential tools for sales and customer service. A recent study at the Wharton School of Business showed how mood affects customer service performance.

Customer service representatives (also known as a CSRs) who start the day with enthusiasm and a positive mood deliver better service throughout the day. Most would agree that the same applies to sales teams’ success.

So the more enthusiasm in sales and service the better, right? As a mindset or mood, yes.

As a communication style, über enthusiasm can overwhelm and turn off the customer. In other words, there are ups & downs to enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm’s Ups & Downs

1. Enthusiasm for customer service shows the customer you care. When it drives you to do all the talking, it tells them you don’t care enough to listen.
2. Enthusiasm in technical support drives you to solve even the toughest problems for customers. When you show the customer enthusiasm for broken technology, they think you care more about technology than you do about them.
3. Enthusiasm for the products and services you sell, captures the customer’s attention. When you spew it like a geyser, you stop the development of great customer relationships.
4. Enthusiasm sustains your objectivity and commitment when facing an irate customer.  When you ooze enthusiasm on an irate customer, you come across as insensitive. Your actions lack empathy.

Sales and service tip: Before you take off on an exciting ride, make sure that you and the customer are together!

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers keynotes and workshops that take sales and service teams from inspiration to action! Her results are legendary. See this site for more information.

Recent studies show that loyal customers are the ones that find your service easy.  For hotels and the hospitality and travel industry, this has morphed into frequent guest profiles on room type, or rental car preference, or aisle/window choice on an airplane.

They have created a standard process on certain service items to earn customer loyalty. It’s just a beginning.

Hotels must go far beyond that and rewards programs to earn the customer loyalty especially of frequent business travelers. They must:

Make it easy for customers to get exceptions to the standard process and sustain those exceptions throughout each stay.

Most hotels don’t sustain customers’ exceptions. The hotels are driven by standard processes and handle each exception as a transaction. You can make a special request and hopefully they deliver on that exception. Yet if it’s something you want every day during the stay or for every stay, you must request it each time.

A recent example: Sheraton hotel provided two bath towels, two hand towels, and two wash cloths in the room. I asked for two additional bath towels. They delivered. The next day housekeeping gave me — you guessed it — just two bath towels, two hand towels etc… Each day I had to request the same exception to their standard process.

Delivering great customer service when requested may get you high customer satisfaction scores. Delivering pro-active customer service may win you great acclaim.

But to earn customer loyalty, deliver easy exceptions and sustain those exceptions. Why? In this example, it’s just one easy phone call each day for some towels right? Easy maybe. Loyalty building it isn’t.

Customer loyalty is earned from easy exceptions that you remember to deliver each time. When you sustain the customers’ exceptions, you are telling them you remember their needs. Being remembered and cared for creates psychological comfort. That earns you the customers’ trust and thus their loyalty.

Picture yourself as a customer. Think about the diner waitress who remembers exactly how you want your eggs. The dry cleaner who knows your name and remembers your preferences. The consultant who already knows your hot buttons and key concerns. The dentist who knows your pain tolerance and how to ease it. The florist who remembers what flowers you send your mother even when you don’t!

This type of customer service becomes more than service. To the customer, you become an essential part of their easy life. If a hotel makes my life easy, I don’t even consider a different hotel for my next trip. You prevent the question mark from forming in my mind. Your hotel becomes my sanctuary when you sustain my exceptions to your standard processes.

This is a challenge for large scale operations yet it is feasible with modern technology. How about easy online portals for all customers to send in their exception requests in advance — without having to call? Or even when they are on site? How about special request kiosks on each floor? Perhaps hand held devices on housekeeping carts that give the staff just in time info on what each customer wants?

Capitalize on the fact that most people don’t like change. They like comfortable easy situations that they can rely on especially when far from home. Following your standard process is a change. You earn their loyalty by making exceptions easy to get and remembering to deliver them each time.


Will it be your brand? If yes, let me know and I will be a regular at your hotel!


From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers actionable customer service insights through workshops, keynotes, consultations, and DVDs. Now in her 21st year in business, her stellar results are well known in the customer service industry. See this site for more information.

Whether you are a customer service leader or a customer, you have most likely witnessed great customer service reps (CSRs) or technical support reps. dealing easily with difficult situations. What makes the best CSRs successful is that they define the moments as difficult situations not as difficult customers.

CSRs can change tough situations into successful outcomes with listening, empathy, knowledge, and action. They can’t change people and the best CSRs know this.

In fact, the best CSRs actually beat a common mistake most people make in everyday life — attribution error.

Attribution error is the tendency to over value personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors. (Source: Wikipedia).

Stated simply, we think it’s something inside of the people that makes them act badly. Meanwhile when it is our own behavior, we are more likely to attribute it to external conditions.

Since the best CSRs free themselves from the grip of attribution error, they shine and succeed at:

1. Empathy. They walk easily in the customers’ shoes because they believe external conditions have caused the customers’ behavior. If instead you attribute the behavior to something evil or sinister inside of the customers, how or why would you empathize?




2. Empowerment. They believe that they can fix external conditions and this fuels their desire to work through the details and with the customers.




3. Listening. The best CSRs value listening as critically as surgeons value their instruments. It is through listening that they find the external conditions they must fix.




4. Knowledge. They also use the knowledge of previous customers’ behaviors to prevent future attribution error. The best CSRs have proven to themselves that external conditions cause many of the difficult situations — not malicious customers intending harm.




5. Well-timed Action. CSRs caught in the grip of attribution error, often try to push irate or upset customers to calm down. The best CSRs know that listening and well-timed communication calm the customers and unearth the external conditions leading to action.

The implication for training CSRs is quite clear. Have them do a simple exercise like using another company’s website. As they encounter challenges, do they blame themselves for the difficulty or do they blame external conditions like website design, or internet connection speed etc…? Then raise the issue of attribution error.

The next time upset or irate customers call, the CSRs’ attitudes will be far more empathetic. If you have empowered them to take action, you will also see fewer call escalations to team leaders and supervisors.

BONUS: Lower stress. CSRs who view tough moments as difficult situations that they can fix, experience less stress and greater fulfillment. Now that’s motivation!

Yours in service,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach
M.A. Organizational Psychology

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. For permission to re-post or republish, please email info@katenasser.com.

Related post: Hiring, a Natural Call to Customer Serivce

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach is widely known and respected across industries for training the best customer service and technical support reps. See this site for workshop outlines and testimonials.

Customers remember moments. The truly memorable customer service moments move them to tell others about you, your products, your customer service. How would you make yours truly memorable – in a positive way of course?

Be unique and different within the context of your brand.

CDBaby.com does that at the moment of arrival! What is CD Baby? It started as a one person business in a garage and grew up to be the largest distributor of independent music. It’s run by musicians and their creativity shows even before you play the CD.

Here’s the memorable packing slip that arrived with the CD:

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Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterward and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, March 3, 2011. We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby.

In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Sigh…
We miss you already. We’ll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return.

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Kudos to CD Baby. They make it memorable in ways that connect and enhance their brand. Notice how often people share stories of a baby, a picture of a baby, a video of out of unique behaviors of a baby. (If you don’t believe me, check out how many baby videos have gone viral on YouTube).

CD Baby uses the theme of caring for a baby to show how much they care for you the customer. They also make it truly memorable with a bit of outrageous humor. The story telling gives them the chance to repeat their company name in a memorable yet non-annoying way. This is no cost creative caring that makes customer service as memorable as a baby!

What stories will you share here about truly memorable customer service that you have received? I will be right here waiting … sigh.

Yours in service,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers customer service, teamwork, and communication workshops, keynotes, and DVDs filled with true stories that teach memorable lessons. See this site for more information.

Professionals with great people skills (soft skills) win big in sales, customer service, teamwork, and leadership. They tend to lead better because they understand people, collaborate more easily, sell more by hearing what customers aren’t saying, and shine by anticipating customers’ needs for service.

How well you can read people and interact with them determines your professional success. I was reminded on New Years Eve of how great people skills can help you win big in other ways.

The Funny Story!

As we waited for the clock to strike twelve, someone suggested we play the board game Apples to Apples – this new game of funny comparisons. I had never played. My sister Mary Ellen had and explained the rules.

In each turn there is a question and a selector who decides which card/answer of all those played is the winning answer. The person who played the selected card/answer wins the point.

Ooh — my how to read people skills went into overdrive. For each question, I thought about the selector, what s/he cares about and how s/he makes decisions.

Point after point went to me. They started saying, Hey how are you doing this? I replied “Beginner’s luck?”. I won the game. It wasn’t luck and I am not psychic. I simply thought first about the decision maker and what matters to her/him. That drove my actions.

“Seek first to understand then to be understood.” ~Saint Francis of Assisi

Win Big With Great People Skills

1. To lead and inspire innovation, get comfortable with diverse personality and natural conative styles. Tap innovation where it lives — in your team members’ minds!
2. To collaborate better on teams, see how others see things and how they see you. Present your unique ideas in ways they can understand.
3. To change careers, explore how that new discipline sees things differently then add your experience. You will win big.
4. To increase sales bridge the gap between your outlook and your customers’ and then make them successful.
5. To deliver truly memorable customer service, step outside of your own perspective and into theirs.

Develop your people skills to win big in life.


What win have you had in your personal or professional life from great people skills? Please share your story in the comments section below to help and inspire others.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, inspires people to growth and professional success in leadership, customer service, sales, and teamwork through her keynotes, workshops, DVDs, and consultations. See this site for the stellar success she has fueled.

Customer loyalty, the desire for customers to return to your organization instead of your competitors, can be secured with one primary focus: prevent the question mark in their minds. I have taught this for many years to business leaders and customer service reps (also known as CSRs).

I am inspired to write this post on customer loyalty after reading The Primary Fuel of Dissatisfaction by Bob Champagne. He states that fear and uncertainty are the primary fuel of customer dissatisfaction and I wholeheartedly agree.

When you think of the statistics showing that most people are averse to change, it must take strong emotion for customers to overcome their resistance to change and move on to your competitors. People change when the fear of changing is less than the fear of staying the same.

When you create a question mark in your customer’s mind, you give them motivation to change. You increase their fear of staying and run the risk of losing their loyalty!


Prevent the Question Mark for Customer Loyalty

Build trust.

1. Do you both see and foresee their needs? If not, they question your reliability.
2. What level of knowledge and customer service people-skills do all your employees have? If it is low at the front lines, they question if a competitor can do better?
3. How well and how fast do you recover from product and service problems? Else they will question your commitment and capability.

Deliver the customer’s success.

1. Especially in service businesses, give your expertise, advice, and guidance before giving the customer exactly what they request. Else they will question if a competitor can offer this quality and protection.
2. Stay current. If your business is not keeping pace with your customers’ business changes, they question who else can deliver?

Make it personal, make it easy, make it happen, make it memorable!
People do business with those they like and trust. If they like you yet mistrust your capability and reliability, you lose their loyalty. If you are capable and reliable yet distant or difficult to work with, they question if they can get quality, as well as ease and connection from your competitors.

Whether you are running a small business or a large sales and service organization, for customer loyalty prevent the question mark.

My advice: Have all your teams review every aspect of product design, sales, and service with one criterion — what could create the question mark in our customers’ minds? Then get to work on erasing those question marks.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach uses her 21 years of experience in customer care to advise and teach large corporations, medium size companies, and technical organizations to capture customer loyalty and deliver truly memorable service.

My work for 20+ years has focused on truly memorable customer service for your business acclaim and customer loyalty. Yet some of my recent experiences as a customer, bring me to write this post for businesses of all sizes, industries, and professions. Please feel free to add your customer service wisdom on delivering outstanding service and increasing customer loyalty.


Customer Service Wisdom to Up Customer Loyalty!

1. Make it personal. Know your customer then greet and treat them that way. Don’t treat your known customers as unknown. A true loyalty killer.









Customer Service: Make it Easy to Enjoy Image by:LarryMac

2. Make it easy for the customer. Bureaucracy kills customer loyalty.




Procedures can kill listening and that kills customer loyalty. If you are going to use scripts, they should be guidelines to discussion not marching orders!









Customer Service - Make it Happen. Image by:UggBoyUggGirl




3. Make it happen. Train, assess, and empower staff to serve. If the reps can’t deviate from a strict procedure, they cannot serve the customer. Inspire and empower them to make it happen.










4. Make it memorable. Customers remember moments and consistently memorable service. Many leaders have mistaken this to mean routine repetition. This contrived approach kills loyalty. Create a culture and practice of caring and follow-through to produce authentic sincere moments to remember — each and every time.

Inspire, train, and empower your staff to: Make it personal, make it easy, make it happen, make it memorable. It is still the way to up the loyalty!

I welcome your customer service wisdom in the comments field below.


[©2011 Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ.
If you would like to re-post or re-publish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission. Thank you.]

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers customer service workshops and keynotes to diverse industries and audiences for truly memorable customer service and business success. See this site for topics, outlines, and success stories.