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As companies try to standardize customer service, customers continue to want just the opposite.   Customers are most comfortable when the sales team, contact center, customer service center, customer care team, or technical support department truly understands them (i.e. “gets them”)!

Think about it.  When you meet someone with whom you share similar mores, accents, cultural beliefs, and outlook, how do you feel? Happier? More trusting? Drawn to them? Witness BP’s action this week to install an American CEO to deal with the crisis in the Gulf. Already we hear comments from the Gulf: “An American in the Gulf intimately understands the real needs of Gulf residents.” Frequently, I am asked to teach customer service/sales to Canadian companies with a large number of American customers. Who better to teach them how to succeed with Americans than an American?

Show Your Customers You Get Them

Pundits and critics will debate whether this desire for similarity is good or bad.  Admittedly, when taken to extremes it can lead to groupthink, discrimination, and plagues like racism.  In moderation, it is a positive human desire for bonding and connection. For sales and customer service, showing your customers that you truly understand them produces positive results. Why? It reduces fear, builds trust, and makes interaction much easier. This is a key component. From the customer’s perspective, less to explain means less chance for misunderstanding.


“Get Me” Don’t “Imitate Me”

I am not speaking about the weird attempts of some off-shored call centers to bond with American customers by giving the reps Americanized names.  It was laughable because the strong difference in accents made the names sound very fake.  Rather contact call centers, customer care teams, customer service centers, technical support departments and sales teams with a true understanding of intercultural differences win big.

For example, here in the USA there are vast regional differences across the nation that impact customers’ buying decisions and their expectations in customer service.  Even American based sales and service teams need to learn the regional differences to win over American customers that are from other regions of the USA.


Resources for Intercultural Learning

If you truly want customer loyalty for sales and service, show your customers you “get them”.

1. You can build intercultural awareness by exposing your reps and sales force to social media streams.
2. With rare exceptions, the Internet puts worldwide news events at your disposal for learning cultural perspectives and preferences.
   
3. Provide intercultural training on that specific country or region. Communicaid Inc. and other firms deliver country specific cultural learning for your sales and service success.
4. If you are doing business with Americans, learn the regional differences in the USA with the DVD “Customer Service USA – What They Expect Coast to Coast & Everywhere in Between”. (Click for preview.)
   

How else have you learned about cultural differences to show your customers that you “get them”?

As The People-Skills Coach, I start this post with the assumption that you are willing to take ownership of the impact your actions and words have on others. You are ready to deliver the perfect apology!

Well the perfect apology is found in simple sincerity and the ONE word that destroys it is …

IF

I am sorry IF I hurt you. IF? Do you own it or not? Do you care to rebuild my trust or not?

I am sorry IF that came across as … IF? You are aware that it came across badly so why waver?

We are sorry IF we have not met your business needs. IF? We wouldn’t be discussing it otherwise.

Your intentions don’t matter much if a team member or a customer is offended by what you have said or done. Rebuild the trust with a sincere apology as soon as you are aware of his/her reaction.

Replace IF with THAT or FOR and see the difference.

I am sorry THAT I hurt you.
I am sorry FOR the impact this had on you.
I am sorry THAT came across as …
We are sorry THAT we have not met your business needs. We will …

Why does this little change make a big difference to others? Because it is clear that you are putting their needs ahead of your pride. Simple sincerity makes for the perfect apology.

Are there are other words that destroy the perfect apology?
What apology format have you found successful?

My strong technical background (Mathematics) and my natural intuition about people gives me a special insight into the people skills (also known as soft skills or interpersonal skills) of technical professionals. It is a myth that technical professionals are incapable of highly social interaction.  As with any population, there is a range of abilities which can depend on interest level. Many technical professionals seem to enjoy the technical/occupational skills over the people skills. Yet I see in them a wealth of knowledge and a very deep commitment to helping others.

Today, thanks to technology ironically, technical professionals must interact more than ever with all types of people and cultures globally while in pursuit of their technical goals!

So this post of people skills tips is dedicated to you, technical professionals and your people skills, in order that all can see and benefit from your intelligence, knowledge, and deep commitment to helping others.

People Skills Tips for Techies By:@J#@

Customer care (customer service, help desks, technical support, contact call center) reps,  sometimes struggle with showing empathy to angry customers. Heck, some struggle with showing empathy to any customer!

Throughout 20 years of inspiring and training professionals to understand the customer’s perspective and empathize to build customer loyalty, I have seen some who are naturally good at it, some who learn it, and others who struggle with it.

Most puzzling to me have been those whom I have seen empathizing with customers — except with angry or irate customers. If you or your customer care reps find it difficult to empathize with customers — especially angry or irate customers — is fear of emotion part of the reason?  I believe that it could be. I have met professionals (many not even in customer care) who are afraid to empathize with a colleague, a customer, or even a boss. They have said to me, “What if the person gets more emotional when I empathize?”

Moreover, recent research has taken on the subject of negative emotions and empathy. In one such study, subjects empathized more with those who showed fear than with those who showed anger. Turning Bad Emotions Into Empathy and ProSocial Behavior post reports: “While there is a huge range of human emotion, recent studies have suggested that a fearful facial expression is a more salient elicitor of prosocial behavior than are other facial expressions, such as surprise or anger.”

Empathy - Lose the Fear By:Zaaracollier

Are you more likely to show empathy to a customer who shows you their fear — credit card problems or serious technical difficulties or critical health issues — rather than their anger? Is it because their fear doesn’t frighten you but their anger does?

The issue is critical in customer service, technical support, and customer care because it affects customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Showing empathy to customers, angry or not, builds bonds to your product, service, and brand.

Lose the fear of the customer’s anger to build your empathy skills. Here is a post to help you do exactly that Two Mindsets to Show Empathy for Irate Customers.

What else do you think blocks people’s ability to show empathy? I welcome your comments below.

[If you would like to re-post this post on another site, please email info@katenasser.com. Many thanks.]

A customer service trainer and colleague, Laurie Brown of TheDifference.Net, often asks customer service reps What Business Are You In?. What would you reply? The customer service and care business? Or would you reply the airline business, the retail business, the technology business, the healthcare business? As a leader, your answer directly impacts what you and your employees think, say, and do for the customer.

ALL Think Customer Care By:AmandaWoodward

You may see this as logical for the teams directly tasked with customer service, customer care and sales. Yet leaders, ask yourselves, do all your employees think that customer care is their job? Do you think so? We know the legendary philosophy of Disney, Nordstroms, and Ritz Carlton. We also know that not every company embraces it. Reasons range from “cost” to “industry differences”.

So consider this post a plea to reconsider and a getting started guide for the sake of your business.

Even if you keep non-customer facing teams truly separated from the customer, they must think and act customer care in order to enable your sales, customer service, and customer care teams to wow the customer. If they do have occasion to speak with the customer, they must switch their mindset and communication from company focused to customer focused in an instant!

You can get started with no delay and little cost. Use the stories and questions below to spur conversation and action on customer care with the leaders that report to you and throughout your organization.

Accelerate to Customer Care

1. Exceptions. Non-customer facing teams often live in the world of procedures and standard practices. Customer facing teams like sales, customer service, and customer care live in the world of flexing and adapting to customers’ requests. The gap between these two worlds is where you lose customers and also lose morale among the customer facing teams.
   Action item: Minimize this gap by having customer facing and non-customer facing teams meet and identify the few highest risk areas where procedures must be followed. All else can be flexed and changed to meet the customers’ requests. The bonus from these meetings — better teamwork among all the teams.
   
   
   
2. Workarounds. To deliver on those exceptions, sometimes employees must first think workarounds rather than the total fix. Here is a story I have used for years to illustrate this as I teach customer care to non-customer facing teams: A customer facing team calls you about a customer’s pressing need. The customer reports he is having trouble printing the financial report and it must be in his CEO’s hands in 10 minutes.
   I then pose this question to workshop participants: What is the problem to be solved? Most of them reply “fix the printer” or “find out why the printer isn’t working”. Bzzzz — wrong answer. The problem to be solved is — get the report to the CEO in 10 minutes! Step 1: What are the possible solutions to achieving this in the time frame needed? Step 2: Once accomplished, what are the solutions to preventing a repeat call?
   Customer facing teams clearly see the purpose of two steps because they experience the urgency on the call. Non-customer facing teams often do not. They often skip step 1.
   Action item: Teach this simple yet powerful principle to your teams.
   
   
   
3. The New Boss. Non-customer facing teams’ loyalty and focus is frequently to their managers. Their managers write their performance reviews and have a say in promotions. Although this is true of customer facing teams as well, these managers know that in many ways the customer is the boss. The standards these managers use include customer satisfaction and customer WOW feedback. Not always so with the leaders and managers of non-customer facing teams.
   Action item: Include customer satisfaction and customer care teamwork in evaluations of non-customer facing team members.
   
   

What would you add to this list to get all employees to think customer care? Would love to hear from you in the comments field below.

©2010 Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach.  Please email for permission if you want to re-post on another site or republish.

If you are working in a call center (also known as customer care and customer service centre)  inside or outside of the USA, every call you get from the USA could have one of nine lives. Why?  Because we Americans (USA) may share a common language and citizenship yet as customers the similarities end there.

USA Customers

Ring ring. Who’s there? An American customer?  No. There is no such thing as an American customer. There is a New York customer, a Northeast customer, a Southeast customer, a Midwest customer, a Texan customer, a West Coast customer, a Pacific Northwest customer, an Alaskan customer, and of course a Hawaiian customer.

Each call brings a different set of expectations about what is great treatment.

A LinkedIn contact center colleague from Australia recently asked – we all speak English so what’s the issue? The issue is that satisfying a customer means understanding how they want to be treated interpersonally. In sales and customer service, it pays to know how to interact and communicate to your diverse customers – which is different than just speaking the same language.  In other words, courtesy is defined differently in diverse cultures.  In America, courtesy is defined very differently in various regions of the country.

20 years ago when I started my consulting and training practice, I didn’t even know this. Yet the years on the road have given me an invaluable education on these substantive differences in American customers.

If you have traveled the USA, you may well know this too. Yet many Contact Call Centres around the world are staffed by those who have not yet had that experience. The phone rings and Call Centre reps are left to guess which of the nine lives they are talking to at that moment and how to communicate with this American stranger.

Where are these call centers? Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, UK, Middle East, Africa, Canada, South America and Australia.

Even customer service centers in the USA have found it difficult to deal with customers from another part of the USA. How have they met that challenge?  They have attended workshops on regional USA differences that impact customer service. Does the USA really vary that much? Absolutely.

Now this workshop is available “live” on DVD for every call centre to use for training. Customer Service USA – What They Expect Coast to Coast and Everywhere In Between turns American strangers into customers you know how to serve well. You will know exactly how to satisfy each and every American customer across the nation. Thankfully, the information is easy to absorb and quickly apply. 

“I enjoyed Customer Service USA DVD we saw today. The second call I took when I got back on the phones was from a gentleman from New York. I picked up my pace and got right to the points of how navigate our website and he was off my phone in no time and I could tell by his tone he was satisfied with the results. Very useful information! Thanks sincerely.”

In a recent post on Bury These Phrases for the Best Teamwork, I buried the phrase “I am sorry you feel that way …”. It is a masquerade of an apology that scars team relationships.

One visitor to my blog, asked me if it was acceptable, however, to say that to an irate, angry, or upset customer? She went on to say that in several training workshops on how to handle irate or angry customers, they teach this and actually require the CSRs to say it. “So that you do not need to verbalize an apology, use I am sorry you feel that way to diffuse the emotion and move on to solving the issue at hand.”

Handling Irate or Angry Customers By:Josh.Liba

This is an abomination. Irate customers are adults who have lost trust and that is where the emotion begins. They want to be heard. The worst thing you can do is dance around and try to avoid responsibility.

I have been teaching how to handle irate customers for 20+ years and cringe at the thought of anyone teaching dedicated CSRs or technical support reps to say I am sorry you feel that way.

It is as bad as calm down and relax. In essence you are telling the customer that their emotion is unacceptable and that you are not responsible.

Let the irate, angry or upset customers vent their frustrations verbally. When they come up for air, there are several statements you can use one of which is a true apology for their experience. Yet if your company truly wants to avoid an apology (why I do not know), at least validate the irate customer’s emotion with something like “Clearly we have upset you. Let’s fix this now…” or “I hear your frustration and I am here to fix it.”

If you want customer loyalty, use “Clearly we have upset you and we are sorry. I am here to resolve the issues.” Stay away from “I understand”. Irate and angry customers are speaking from emotion. Most interpret “I understand” to mean “I understand your pain” which you don’t — and they yell that back at you.

What do you think? When you are the irate or angry customer, would you want someone to say to you “I am sorry you feel that way …”?

By the way, if you want more information on how to stay positive and objective with an irate or angry customer, here are two posts with key images: The Best Mindset and Training to Deal with Irate Customers and 5 Things to Think with Thorny Customers.

©2010 Kate Nasser, Somerville, NJ.