Posted in Customer Service, Hot Topics and New Bits, IT
Delivering a super customer service experience is all about the choices. Simply great choices can create it! Poor choices can destroy it.
Frustration with the customer is often at the heart of those poor choices. In fact, frustration with customer behavior can make poor choices very tempting.
The best in customer service find something else even more tempting — the strength and skill to resist temptation and choose greatness!
Frustration, Temptation & Simply Great Choices
The strength to choose service greatness rests within your professional identity.
How do you want to be known? What do you picture as greatness? If service is not in that picture, your attitude and behavior will yield to frustration.
If you want to create super customer experience, here are 7 common frustrations, temptations and the simply great choices!
- Your Frustration: The customer wants to speak before you or more than you.
Temptation: Seize control of the conversation and talk over the customer. Poor choice.
Great Choice: Let them talk! Your response will be far more accurate the more you understand. - Your Frustration: The customer wants something non-standard. This takes time, thought, effort, and takes you out of your normal pace.
Temptation: Show your exasperation and label the customer as difficult. Poor choice.
Great Choice: Show your interest — even excitement — in doing and learning something different. This is the chance to WOW ‘em. - Your Frustration: You want the customer to completely populate your contact database before you help them and they want some information without being locked in your detailed procedure.
Temptation: Ignore their preference and continue on with your questions. Poor choice.
Great Choice: Get basic identifying information like name, account # and then focus on what they need! Once you have the solution underway, validate or get other personal information for your database. Focusing on the customer delivers a super customer experience. Focusing on your database doesn’t. - Your Frustration: The customer is upset and venting their anger.
Temptation: Lecture to them (i.e. There is no reason to raise your voice, I am trying to help you). Poor choice.
Great Choice: Let them vent. When they are done, empathize and take action. Fix the situation, not the customer! If you don’t, your competitor will. - Your Frustration: The customer waits until the last minute for help and has an urgent need.
Temptation: Tell the customer they should have called you sooner. Poor choice. Criticizing them for poor planning leaves an emotional scar on them that will burden you next time — if they come back.
Great Choice: Determine whether or not you can meet this urgent need. If yes, do it. Being the customer’s hero is a super customer experience! If you truly can’t, let them know that and refer to other resources that might be able to help them. Expressions of good will and effort build future trust. - Your Frustration: Customer doesn’t follow an important procedure and it causes the customer, and you, repeated problems.
Temptation: Patronize the customer with an insipid rhetorical question like do you remember I said to enter your account id not your phone number? Poor choice. Patronizing the customer is professionally immature and disrespectful.
Great Choice: Simply give the customer the answer again. Courteous honest answers help and don’t hurt. After you have helped them, ask if there is anything you can do to make it easier for them next time. You might also review any written instructions or online design to see how to make it clearer. - Your Frustration: The customer wants to ask questions along the way and you want to go through your whole presentation or explanation first.
Temptation: Tell the customer to wait until you are done. Poor choice. You are telling the customer that you are more important than they are.
Great Choice: Dialogue with the customer; put their needs first. You will meet your needs through theirs and deliver a super customer experience.
The feeling of relief from venting your frustration on the customer is very short lived. It ruins your company brand and your personal and professional reputation.
When you choose great listening, adaptability, patience, reasonableness, competence, and agility for sudden needs, you deliver truly memorable and super customer experiences.
Question
What other frustrations do you have with customers? Add them in the comments section below and I will help you deliver a super customer experience. I deliver the antidotes to your frustration!
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™
Related Post: Be Plentiful & Ready to Deliver Super Customer Experience
©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.
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.















