Posted in Customer Service, Hot Topics and New Bits, People-Skills, Soft Skills
National Customer Service Week starts Oct. 4th, 2010. It is a time to celebrate customers, customer service, customer service agents, technical support reps, and to highlight key behaviors for truly memorable customer service.
I will write many posts for the next five weeks in anticipation of National Customer Service Week and today’s topic is — “The Folly of Being Defensive” when customers criticize your service.
Picture It! A customer tells you that your team didn’t get back in touch with them, has been unresponsive, missed a deadline, gave them an incorrect answer, was rude and non-empathetic, or a host of other negative information.
What Some Teams Hear. You are no good. They then explain to the customer why the customer service was bad in an attempt to recover their image. Being defensive like this is pure folly. Why? It has the exact opposite effect.
What the Customer is Really Saying. Help me and rebuild my trust. The truly memorable response includes empathy for the inconvenience, attention to fixing it now, and in some cases, compensation for the inconvenience and trouble. Once you have solved the issue in question, you might provide information on how this error will be prevented in the future if it was a serious error.
The folly of being defensive in business is that it reduces trust, makes working with you difficult rather than easy, and demeans your professional image. Avoid this defensive dribble.
You will regain customer’s trust when you take ownership of your mistakes, offer a sincere apology for the trouble, and fix the errors. It sends out a cheer of integrity, caring, and professional competence. It is worth celebrating. It is truly memorable. It will echo for quite some time. It delivers progress to your business and sets you apart from the average.
What else makes for truly memorable customer service? What do you expect as a customer?
©2010 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.
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, is widely known for transforming customer service from average to truly memorable. Her workshops, webinars, and DVDs distinguish from others in their ability to activate behavior changes in your global customer service teams. Preview Kate Nasser’s new training DVD on regional customer differences in America http://katenasser.com/training-dvds.