As I spend more time online for blogging, for business, and for personal purchases, I am struck by how many websites show no customer focus.

They show selfishness, desperation, and an insatiable craving for market research data.

It’s as if these websites have one people-skills message:

We are selfish!

Would you stand in front of a customer and say that to deliver an oustanding customer experience?

Pop-up ads at the very beginning, hidden contact information, squeeze pages that immediately ask for name and email, surveys that interrupt — all break 3 important rules of outstanding customer service experience:

1. Make it easy for the customer to find what they want and to contact you.
2. Listen and help before asking the customer to help you.
3. Deliver value to capture loyalty; don’t desperately capture the customer.

It reminds me of an in-person experience I had at a L’Occitane store.

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I walked in and picked up the exact moisturizer I always used. I went to the checkout and the sales associate asked me if I needed anything else. I quickly said “no thanks and I’m in a hurry” and handed her my credit card. She held it in one hand and then picked up another product to upsell me. And then another all while holding my credit card hostage!

When I asked for my credit card back, she suddenly rang up my one purchase. I never went back and stopped using their products. Out of curiosity, I just checked their website and guess what — a pop-up squeeze page appeared right away.

I clicked twice to exit.  I don’t pay to be trapped.

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Companies that think customers owe them information before buying, have the customer service experience backwards.  Perhaps if they experience a reversal of fortune, they will reverse course and deliver value to capture customer loyalty.


Every website has a people-skills message and a personality. What is your website’s message? Is it selfish or giving? Does it capture the customer’s attention with content and value or does it just try to capture the customer?


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 email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes on customer service and teamwork, turning interaction obstacles into business successs. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

A recent routine eye exam was one of the most bizarre – and horrible — customer experiences I’ve ever had.  It was stressful and unnerving. In hindsight, it’s oddly humorous.  



Here’s the story and the 10 humorous people-skills’ lessons on my bizarre customer service experience.

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My eye doctor retired. I met one in a social setting, checked out her credentials, and made an appointment for my annual exam. I expected the eye exam would take about an hour give or take.

Two and half hours later I emerged from the office of an obsessive nut case who had actually invented a different kind of eye chart that she admitted was tougher to see.

Declaring she was a perfectionist, she wanted to know every aspect of my medical health and gave me a political speech about how she was collecting information for the government without sharing names. She even lectured me on how to wash my hands — a task I mastered years ago.

She and her assistants tried to enter all my info into computers during the exam and ran between rooms to find the problem when information was not showing up on all the computers.

I returned to my office with only 45 minutes to prepare for a videotaped interview on the future of customer experience. Ironic isn’t it? I couldn’t have imagined that timing!

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10 Extreme Lessons on Bizarre Customer Experience

1. Perfectionism inflicts stress and pain on others. It’s not a customer care goal! It’s a disease. Get thee to a therapist.




2. If customers are expecting something routine, you better hang up a neon sign if it’s going to be oddly different — and I don’t mean that weird eye chart of hers!




3. If you care for technology more than your customers, pray that the technology needs your service and can pay you! The humans won’t be back.




4. Innovation needs explanation especially if you make the common and comfortable — new and stressful. Where can I buy a traditional eye chart? Maybe I’ll give myself the eye test and someone can stand by and tell me how many I got right.




5. Put the customers too far out of their comfort zone and they will put you out of their lives and out of all those they tell!




6. Manipulate your customers to get what you want and next time they will go to someone who will give them what they want – a simple routine eye exam.




7. Trap a customer with your extremely obsessive need for information and they will see you as selfish or crazy. Neither trait produces customer loyalty.




8. Treating every customer the same is not great service especially if you treat them like ignorant fools who don’t know how to wash their hands. Each customer wants you to treat them as the unique person they are.
   
   

9. Time is a precious resource. Abuse the customer’s time and they may say it’s time for them to go — without singing “I’m so glad we’ve had this time together”.




10. Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to see how your customer wants to be treated. How’s your vision? Better than this doctor’s?

Customer care is noteworthy when you keep your sight keenly focused on the customer’s needs and deliver service with that vision.

So what’s up Doc? Can you read the “EI” on the chart? If not, maybe it’s time for a routine eye exam and some corrective lenses.

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 email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes on customer service, teamwork, and interpersonal success in business. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

There are universal customer complaints that echo through time. They paint a picture of the human need to be understood and helped.

Whether you have been delivering customer service for decades or are part of the new generation, join the movement to rid this world of these age old complaints.

Add your #13 to this list of the 12 most universal customer pleas to change customer service.

12 Most Universal Customer Pleas

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Drop This, Keep That – Please!

1. Drop the squeeze page as the greeting to your website. We don’t want to be squeezed before we get to know you. Keep the squeezing for later in the date!




2. Drop the voice response menus that make sense to you not us. Keep the humans – at least they can dialogue!




3. “There’s nothing I can do. I’ll transfer you.” Drop the first part and keep moving us to those who can help. Telling us you can do nothing is maddening. Connecting us to those in the know is the way to go.




4. Drop the speech recognition unit that interprets “re-order supplies” as “birth order surprise”. Keep any technology that helps deliver timely accurate service.




5. Drop the scripted monologue and keep an open mind. When you open with a dialogue, we open our wallets and offer our loyalty.




6. Drop the confusing coupons – buy two at a single price and get the second at 50% off. Keep us from having to guess what math you use!




7. If we smile, please return the favor. Drop your straight face and keep smiling.
   
   

8. Drop the slow refund routine else we keep filling your queue with angry calls.




9. Keep us in the know. When you drop the communication about our problems, we think you are doing nothing.




10. Drop the prove you wrong attitude. Keep in mind that for every action there is an equal reaction. Every ouch you inflict on us pings back an ouch on your financial success. Every empathetic moment you extend to us earns you our gratitude.




11. Keep sharing our information among you. With the technology available today, we shouldn’t have to repeat ourselves. If you drop the teamwork, we question your commitment — and competence.




12. Drop the customer satisfaction survey that has no room for our true feedback. If you want to understand what we expect, let us (customers) design your customer survey! It will keep you very aware of what we truly care about.

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What would you add to this list? What timeless universal complaint would you like to drop forever?

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


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

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, inspires and trains corporate teams, customer care professionals, call center agents, and technical support teams in the greatest people-skills for customer service. See this site for workshop outlines, customer feedback, and footage to view. Turn interaction obstacles into business success — book Kate now.

The rule, the customer is always right, has survived over a century as a quick way to instill a strong sense of customer in all employees.

Despite its detractors, it has breathed life into customer service and sales and filled the gaps during uncertain moments.

As new graduates enter the workforce, many will be glad to know that customers’ views breathe life into this old being right rule.

The customers’ views about the following are always right — always count:

1. Urgency. – Theirs not ours.
2. Business or personal impact. – To them before us.
3. Critical factors. – From their perspective over ours when there is disagreement.
4. What they expect of us. – Work hard and smart to achieve it.
5. How they want to be treated as people. – Completely right.

The key to living this old rule in today’s world is to remember that we may disagree or say no even when the customer’s view is right for them.

Whether we say no for ethical reasons, legal restrictions, limited capabilities, or strategic mission, we must still treat the customers’ views with respect. They have insider insight we will never have regardless of how well or how long we know them. The decision of where to buy is theirs.

Their views are the lifeline for our success. Respecting their views preserves that lifeline for the long term. Acting as if we always know better, suffocates the customers’ views and could forever sever our lifeline of insider insight.


Benefits of The Customer Is Always Right Rule

It helps establish a customer centric culture.

Guides all employees to sell to and serve the customer well within the strategic mission of the business.

Increases our listening especially when our experience tries to drown it out.

Keeps us in service mode even when business is booming.

Fills the gaps during uncertain moments.

Shows constant gratitude and desire for future business.

Expresses respect for the customers’ insight and perspective.

Builds trust for current and future business and often with more openness for our views and expertise.

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Basically, it keeps customers coming back and interested in what we have to offer. Not a bad payoff for one old rule.

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

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

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times. See this site for customer service workshop outlines and business results. Fill the gaps in customer service and teamwork with business wins – book Kate now.

Working on the front lines of customer service can be wonderful or terrible. It depends on your mindset – on what you picture — not on the customer. Surprised?

It’s actually good news. What happens when you interact with others is not completely random. Success is within your grasp because what you picture, you create!

It’s not voodoo. It simply that what you picture or think about, you focus on, say, and do.

Customer service starts with picturing that you can make a positive difference.

If instead you picture difficulty or conflict, you will focus on being right, being heard, and being in control. All of this creates the difficulty you pictured at the start.


The Story

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I walked into the airport luggage service office when I arrived at my destination and my luggage didn’t. As the line inched forward toward the service rep behind the computer, I noticed that each person leaving the office was surprisingly calm.

When I reached the service rep, he handled my problem with empathy, accuracy, and calm confidence. Before I left the room, I said to him: “I teach customer service to large corporations and reps tell me how stressed out they are. How do you stay so positive with so many people in here complaining?”

He replied: “Kate, if they’re smiling when they come in here … they’re in the wrong room!”

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He understood what people would naturally feel and he became the picture of a man making a difference.

Picture the positive and you reduce your fear. Result: Increased listening that guides the interaction to success.

Picture the positive and you feel influential with no need to control others. Result: A collaborative success instead of a target shoot.

Picture the positive and you project empathy and connect sincerely. Result: You make a difference and that is great customer service.

One informed rep with a positive attitude and one customer-friendly policy of delivering luggage created a positive customer experience instead of a social media rant.

What you picture you create!

What will you and your teams picture before you all start work tomorrow? I hope that it’s caring for customers and making a difference.

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


Related post: Customer Service, Key Link in the Chain not Life in Chains

©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 workshops, keynotes, and consultations that inspire the ultimate interaction with customers. Leaders have been booking Kate to bring both her customer service experience and intuition to their success — repeatedly. See this site for customer results and book Kate now.

To us as customers, satisfaction is very Gestalt. The “whole” is greater than the sum of its parts. We experience customer service not as a series of details and transactions but as one total experience.

The companies who get customer loyalty – gestalt it.

Behind the scenes, they manage a myriad of details and transactions across all channels and for multiple customers; with the customers, they focus on a unique total experience for each one.

1. They adapt to each customer instead of pretending that each customer is the same.
2. They make the process and interaction easy. The customers and their happiness come back to them.
3. They move through the procedures to solve the problems; they don’t highlight the procedures to the customers.
4. They prevent the upset customer knowing that positive breeds more positive and negative seeks a large empathetic audience.

They also know that each time they interact with a customer, it continues and adds to the experience.


A Recent Story.

A business hotel conveniently located has served me for years. +
They empower whatever I need to do. +
They remember me each time I go back. +
They have made it a home away from home. +
They offered to reinstate expired reward points. +
They just gave me outstanding interpersonal treatment as I made a new reservation.
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TOTAL: A continuously positive experience not a series of positive experiences. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts!

The continuous whole creates emotional loyalty that individual transactions do not. It prevents the question mark in the customer’s mind. “Why wonder if there’s something better when I already know I will be cared for?”

There is no end to the customer loyalty you can build if you continue to build one whole. Get loyalty — gestalt it!

Yours in service,
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 customer service and teamwork training and improves your company’s customer loyalty quotient. Preview and purchase her unique DVD Customer Service USA – Regional Differences That Matter.

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.

Twenty years of planning and delivering customer service training have produced this advice for leaders. You can do much to ensure and extend the value of any expert customer service training.

Make the training stick and create a new movement for the ultimate customer service experience with these steps.

Extend Value of Customer Service Training. Image by:KimbManson Graphics

STEP #1. Before selecting any training, write down what you want your customers to experience. Use customer feedback and your business goals in this process.  Communicate with all leaders and staff — not just the customer service front line.  Look for and resolve the discrepancies in the definition. If you are not of one mind, training participants will interpret and use the skills purely from their own definition.

STEP #2. Prepare your staff on how to learn from an expert. Customer service staff often develop an emotional attachment to the way they have handled customers — especially the challenging situations. They hold onto their methods as a life vest or buoy yet these methods are more protective of them than helpful to the customers. A simple statement from you at the beginning of the training — encouraging them to open up to the expert’s experience — is very effective!

STEP #3. Be the initial champion of the movement to improve customer service. Communicate what you expect of all staff in making the ultimate customer service experience come to life. Why should staff change behavior if you aren’t exhibiting this commitment and importance of the change?

STEP #4. After-session visual reminders of the skills are standard and effective. Visual reminders of customer service spirit and the ultimate customer experience turn the inspiration generated during training into a customer service movement. Shirts, buttons, signs, daily start huddles, peer coaching, frequent use of customer feedback, weekly lessons learned, and celebrating commitment, make the skills come to life every day.

If staff strongly resist this last step, you may be facing either a deeper morale issue or a reflection of your leadership style. Perhaps you have created a democracy rather than empowered teams all working toward the organization’s vision and goals.

To extend the value of training, develop a culture of visible spirit and learning. It inspires, engages, and encourages teams to deliver the ultimate customer service experience.

What other steps have you taken to create a highly effective customer service culture?

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, is widely respected for her insight, expertise, and skill in inspiring and delivering advice and training for the ultimate customer service experience. See this site for what others have said about the training and for workshop outlines.

For years I have been able to spot job applicants who are drawn to service careers. They excel at it. They have an ease, commitment, and skill that makes them, what I call, the naturals in customer service. Theirs is a calling to customer service work and they answer that call very well.

Leaders, spotting and hiring those with this natural calling to customer service work gives your business a competitive advantage. It gives you the trust to empower these naturals to wow the customer. Since they need little if any supervision to deliver outstanding customer service, the customer experiences the ultimate in care and action — in the moment, every time.

What will you spot in potential hires who have a a natural calling to customer service?

Naturals in Customer Service do all these things …

1. Accept the absurdity of life without using sarcasm toward the customer.
2. Easily adapt; need for control is low.
3. Brilliantly balance objectivity and caring.
4. Initiate both caring and action.
5. Know that they can’t change others — only their own perspectives and reactions.
6. Love diversity and are inspired and excited by it. Non-judgmental.
7. Exhibit a high sense of ownership and teamwork.
8. Understand the big picture and show attention to detail; they follow-through.
9. See and hear far more than what the customer is saying and use it well.
10. Continuously learn from interactions and quickly reapply this insight.
11. Love to serve because of the giving — not to be liked or loved in return.

Be wary of job applicants who say they like customer service work because they enjoy hearing thank you and being appreciated. When the difficult customers are there and the thank yous aren’t, these types become frustrated and do poorly. Remember, customer service work is about caring for others not about the customers caring for you.

Job applicants: If you a natural, you will be happiest working for an enlightened company who sees the business value of outstanding customer service to every customer or working for high end customer care departments (in traditional companies) that focus on their top level customers.

Leaders/Employers: The one thing a natural in customer service does not do well is work in very highly structured scripted departments with loads of supervision and rigid rules. If this is how you operate, select nice people whom you can train to work specifically the way you want them to perform. Your customers will not have the ultimate customer experience yet you will spare yourselves the upheaval of the naturals leaving your company.


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

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach is widely known for her insight and 20 years of experience in customer service for the ultimate customer experience. Her workshops re-energize caring and activate follow-through. See this site for workshop outlines and what so many have said about the results.

The best service experience for the customer includes being recognized, being known — treated as a regular valued customer. Whether it’s the bagel shop on the corner that remembers your usual order or the greeting in a high status platinum frequent flier lounge, being known is a great experience.

The worst customer experience is not being unknown; the worst experience is to become unknown.

Do you un-know your known customers? The loss that the customers experience causes a huge loss of trust — often an irreparable break. It often happens during times of change. Here’s a checklist to assess and prevent this descent.

From Known to Unknown

1. Have you recently changed business procedures?  Do those procedures treat known customers that you can trust as unknown customers that you can’t? That is how the customers experience it. Remedy: Consider changes in procedure from the view of the customer before finalizing them. Do they serve the customer or just the company?




2. Has your company purchased or merged with another company? Employees aren’t the only people who will struggle with the changes. The customers will struggle if they go from being known long time valued customers to being just IDs in a database. Remedy: Intelligent databases that retain valued information and CSRs who use that information well.




3. Have you recently had turnover in personnel or new hires? The customers can experience a loss when new hires treat them as unknown. Remedy: Brief and train anyone who interacts with customers — receptionists, CSRs, sales, marketing, account reps — on current customers’ buying patterns and preferences. If that isn’t possible due to the size of the business, have the new hires let the customers know they are new hires. It explains the lack of knowledge and prevents misunderstandings.

If customers tell you they are displeased about being treated as a number or an unknown, avoid replying that things have changed. Expressions like, time marches on, it’s the age of technology, one bad apple spoils the bunch, reinforce that they no longer matter as individuals.

It makes matters worse and can irreparably damage the relationships. Instead, use their dissatisfaction as an opportunity to learn even more about the customers and re-secure the bond.

This post is not a plea to stop change; it is a reminder to handle change well to avoid un-knowing your customers.

What else will prevent “un-knowing” the customers? I welcome your thought-filled discussion in the comments field below.

©2010 Kate Nasser, Somerville, NJ. For permission to re-post or republish, please email info@katenasser.com.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, continues to guide and teach diverse businesses and industries how to deliver great customer service for outstanding experiences and long term business success.

Business owners seem to inherently know the value of a customer.  If not, they generally go out of business.  As businesses grow and hire more people, the employees don’t inherently know the value of the customer.

As part of National Customer Service week, I wrote The Customer Value Creed for organizations of all sizes to use as ongoing inspiration for quality customer care.

This creed includes the two winning entries from the customer value contest.  Congratulations and thanks to Kalin Bracken and Joan Koerber-Walker for their winning entries (#12 and #13 below).

The Value of Customers

1. Customers spark innovation through their demands. Embrace your innovators.
2. Customers give you an advanced education about people. Respect your “teachers”.
3. Customers pay for your performance.  Give your best show.
4. Customers keep your company alive. Feed your blood.
5. Customers blow your horn. Herald your trumpeters.
6. Customers are your future Wikipedia. Make many entries.
7. Customers are your tweeps on Twitter.  Tweet them right.
8. Customers are your reputation. Protect it.
9. Customers are gold. Mine for it.
10. Customers are your greatness. Cherish and nurture it.
11. Customers are human. Help humankind.
12. Customers are your muse. Be inspired. ~Kalin Bracken
13. Customers share their remarks with others. Be remarkable. ~Joan Koerber-Walker

I welcome your additions to the customer value creed in the comments section below.

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

©2009-2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of 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 coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on the ultimate customer service experience, teamwork, and leading change. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

On the Road Again: New Journey w/Each Customer’s Request

You have heard them many times – customer service reps that sound scripted and robotic.  Do they impress you?  I doubt it.  In all my customer service consulting work, I have yet to hear a single customer tell me they prefer it. 

Does hearing a script make you feel confident?  No.  Quite the opposite.  If a rep doesn’t sound like a thought-filled caring professional then you wonder what s/he can possibly do for you.  Scripts make companies feel secure that they are controlling the message the customers receive.  Yet each customer wants to feel the service rep is focusing just on them.  The more scripted the customer service seems, the less caring it appears.

Some skeptics shoot back with customer service reps don’t get paid enough to be caring and thought-filled.  My answer to the skeptics:  Inspire and train reps to do an excellent job.  Your customers will reward your company.

 

Finding the Balance.   Give customer service reps the components to cover: in the greeting, for meeting the request, and in the closing and follow-up.  Train and coach them to find the balance on how to deliver all of this without scripting.  The return on the company’s investment is the ultimate customer experience delivered to each customer every single time. 

 

Delivering Consistent Quality Customer Service in Diverse World.  The challenge of excellence is consistency — consistent high quality not repetitious and scripted.  The key to achieving this in a diverse world is to adapt!  Sounds like an oxymoron?  Consistency in customer service does not mean saying the same words to every customer.  Right here in various regions of the USA, there are different expectations of great customer service.  Things you would say in NYC you might not say to someone in Texas or in the Midwest.  Moreover, different cultures vary in their customer service expectations.  To deliver the ultimate customer experience, you must deliver your message in culturally acceptable way.  Listen to  more key concepts on this topic in video footage on this site http://katenasser.com/category/video.

 

(You are welcome to share the text in this blog with other people, on other blogs, on other website, and in articles.  I ask only that you credit me as the source with URL link www.smartpeopleskills.com to continue sharing.)

 

I am interested in your customer service stories.  I am especially interested in any geographic or cultural differences you see as important in delivering great customer service.  Please post in the comment section below.  Many thanks!

  

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

Training and Keynotes for Customer Service, Teamwork, Thriving in Change

908.595.1515 (USA)

Thanks for 20 years and counting …

MA Organizational Psychology

Continuous Learner