KateNasser.com

As we work tirelessly to deliver super customer experience, I find and fix common everyday mistakes that drive customers away.

Recent experiences focus me today on ways we imprison customers which do everything but build loyalty. You might think imprisonment is too strong a word. Yet that is what customers report.

Give customers a get out of jail free card — fix these mistakes!

Ways We Imprison Customers!

1. Endless Loops. This is definitely #1 on the customers list. Beyond the endless unclear phone menus (voice response units – VRUs, IVRs), customers also feel imprisoned by agents, reps, and CSRs with poor skills.

   The Story: A business owner needed to become a credit card merchant. The sales rep was clear, focused, and offered a great deal. The business owner signed up. The sales rep reported that the support team would send an email with account # and temporary password. Support would then call to finalize everything.
   

   

   Super Customer Experience: Loyalty Not Imprisonment! Image: iStock for Editorial Use.

   
   The business owner received a phone message from support saying “By now you have received your email with account # and password. Please call me, Mindy, at this phone number and extension.” The business owner left Mindy a message saying “We never received the email. Please let us know what to do now.”

   Mindy left a second, third, and fourth message saying the exact same thing as her first message! When the business owner finally spoke on the phone with Mindy, she continued to say “you should have received the email by now.”

   Imprisonment: The business owner finally said, “Time is money. Move me forward or I will cancel my account.”

   Customer service is forward not stagnant. To customers, stagnant feels like imprisonment.

   Release customers from status quo prison! For a super customer experience, move them forward to the solution.

   Question: Where in your organization do customers get stuck in the status quo?




2. Lack of teamwork. Multiple teams engaged in service with little or no teamwork leave customers trapped in a maze. Customers must jump between teams to get a solution or jump out of the maze and choose freedom. That’s not conducive to customer loyalty.

   For super customer experience, deliver a single point of solution not multiple points of failure. Build teamwork with shared technology, mutual service level targets, and one service culture.

   Question: How many teams in your organization must work together to deliver a super customer experience? Do they all give it the same priority? If not, customers end up imprisoned in the maze.




3. Tunnel vision. A less evident yet still common mistake, thinking only from the company or agent perspective. Super customer experience requires seeing things from the customer’s view. Else the customers feel ignored and overlooked — imprisoned in solitary confinement.
   Cultural tunnel vision in global service leaves customers in the dark.
   Rigid script reading and poor listening slam the door shut.
   Websites with poor e-commerce design drive customers away — to well-designed easy-to-use sites.

   Shine the light of customer awareness throughout your organization to free customers from solitary confinement and to value them in your organization.

   Question: Where in your organization is tunnel vision blocking super customer experience? Expand the vision. Replace the tunnel with bridges to the customers and to your success.

Customers want information and solutions that meet their needs. Online, in person, or on the phone, they seek positive easy experiences to get what they want. Imprisonment is not positive nor easy. It makes them want to break out, run away from the stress and find success elsewhere.

Think customer care not customer control. Think bonding not bondage. Think customer!

I look forward to working with you, leaders, and your teams to create super customer experience.

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

Related Posts:
Super Opportunity to Improve Every Customer Experience
Simply Great Choices Create 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, customer experience, teamwork, and leading change. For 23 years, she has turned interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer testimonials and results.

Corporate Informational Technology (also known as IT) teams are challenged to protect the corporation while meeting its business needs with technology. Many of these teams lean more toward the protection side of that equation.

I thus hear IT customers often chanting “IT is not customer focused!” when I first go into an IT organization to improve customer experience focus.

I also witness CIOs and their IT teams doing wonderful things yet still falling short of customers’ expectations.

My key questions to CIOs are:

---

Are your IT teams truly customer focused?

Whose checklist are you using? Yours or your customers?

Two reasons IT organizations miss the customer focus mark:

Many are measuring and comparing themselves to best practices in their own IT industry! Best practices have value yet they don’t tell you if you are meeting your customers’ expectations.

Many wait for complaints to rise before understanding the customers’ view of IT service quality. But this squeaky wheel approach, screams out “non-customer focused”.

Your IT Customers’ View & Checklist

1. Talk to us about our business goals not about your IT processes. Use your IT processes behind the scenes to reach our goals.




2. Be able to adapt to our sudden business changes. Success is not always planned.




3. Mobility has not just arrived. It is an integral part of our business success. Make it both easy and secure.




4. Solve our short term business need when it is urgent — then solve the root cause later.




5. Speak our native language when we call for help. It difficult times, we need people we can easily understand — else our stress level goes up and our productivity down.




6. Don’t behave as if you are indispensable because we work for the same company. Collaborate with us — we are in this together.




7. Change is difficult for most everyone. When you are introducing changes in technology to our work, minimize the damage to us and to the business.




8. Treat us like valued customers — not like burdensome users.




9. Show us how excited you are to meet our challenges — not how excited you are about technology.




10. Respect our expertise and empathize with our frustration. Then use your expertise to minimize our frustration and and combine it with ours to solve the problems!




11. Rigid procedures make you feel secure yet they scare the bejeebers out of us. Don’t strangle our success with your inflexibility.




12. Be our heroes when tough times hit.

---

Find out how your customers rank you on these 12 points!

Customers rank you high in customer focus when they both like and trust you. For information technology (IT) teams, this means getting every IT team member to see and behave through the business lens.


Question: CIOs, IT Directors, and IT Managers — besides cost of delivery, what are your top 2 customer focus challenges? How would your team members answer this question?


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

©2012 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.

Related posts:
Customer Experience Blooms When We Flex

Super Customer Focus: Customers & Us in Harmony

---

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, is a former IT professional. She delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service focus, teamwork, and leading change especially to technical organizations. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

Customer experience surveys have been standard procedure for most businesses and corporations for many years. The delivery mechanism and the assessment of answers have gone high tech.

Yet there is one super opportunity to improve every customer experience survey and it requires a double vision.

We generally think of the customer experience survey as a way to understand our customers. Yet the survey itself also speaks volumes to our customers about our customer service and experience philosophy.

We think about what our customers are telling us. That’s good! Yet what is our customer experience survey telling our customers about us?

The quick answer might be that we care enough to ask their opinions. OK, that’s a start.  Yet do we really ask their opinions?

Does the typical customer experience survey ask for true opinions for improvement or mostly for votes?  There are the comment sections yet do customers receive a timely response? Do comments turn into corrective action?

Social media has become the venue for customers to get a response.  It begs the question, why haven’t customer experience surveys played the same role? As a customer, I fill out many surveys with concrete suggestions. I never hear anything back nor see results from my survey energy.  What has been your experience as a customer?

Does the customer experience survey measure what we in business care about or what our customers care about?

Or do the primarily structured survey questions broadcast that we think we know what’s most important? When we don’t respond to suggestions, does it say we don’t care? Or worse, that customers have to complain in public via social media to get a timely response?

---

Super Opportunity for the Customer Experience Survey
Acknowledge that the survey markets our customer experience philosophy and make every survey a two-way street.

1. Ask: What do you think of this customer experience survey?
2. Ask: Does it reflect what’s important to you?
3. Ask: What would you add to this survey? What would you eliminate?
4. Ask: What would make it easier to complete this survey?
5. Invite customers to help redesign the customer experience survey.
6. Connect the experience dots: Have social media teams review and respond to customer experience surveys A customer shouldn’t have to complain — and in public no less — to get our attention. If we respond to suggestions before the complaint, it says we truly care.




EXAMPLES

Lengthy hotel surveys ask many voting style questions in multiple categories yet often do not ask questions that relate to special needs.
——-
They ask much about the appearance of the lobby yet nothing about the comfort of the desk chair in the room where customers spend time working on their laptops.

Retail exchange forms with online clothing purchases ask the reason code for the return. Many of the reasons are valuable to improving future buying experience.
——–
The one blatantly missing is: “I don’t like how the garment looks on me.” If online retail wants to create the true clothing buying experience, this addition would speak volumes. Else this customer experience survey says, we don’t care about the bigger picture of how you look.

---

We can reinvent the customer experience survey to produce more than a metric based scorecard. We can have it reflect an open door that truly welcomes, listens to, and responds to customers’ feedback in a timely manner.

We can even have it be the vehicle of valuable dialogue, two-way understanding, and trusted exchange that builds long term loyalty.

Are you ready to review your customer experience survey? I’m ready to help you with objective insight.

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


Related Posts:
Customer Experience Super Blooms When We Flex.
The Best Customer Experience: Customers & Us in Harmony

©2011 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, customer experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

As more executives and leaders consider customer experience as an economic driver, the one challenge they must overcome is internal company thinking.

If you look throughout the organization, ask “have we accustomed and trained the employees to think about the company, about the customer, or both?” Do our operations and processes account for both?

In my consulting work to these many of these executives, the void we are trying to fill to improve customer experience is harmonic thinking. Internal thinking misses the mark. Thinking only of the customer and not the company business goals has its risks. Addressing both breeds success.

From the top to the front line teams, there is one message all must live, think, and deliver on every day:

Customers & Us in Harmony!

Harmonizing company and customer interests continues to be the one constant in business success. It may sound old and hackneyed yet it’s now at the forefront as a competitive advantage in this new customer experience economy.

5 Most Telling Moments to Build Harmony With Customers

1. At the First Meeting. Listening and collaborating during the first meeting lays a base for harmony with customers. This is your chance to show them you believe that customer focus makes good business sense.




2. During the First Impression of Your Products/Services. This may not be during the first meeting and it deserves a special focus. During this moment, you are at risk of trying to impress customers with the worthiness of the products and services. It often comes across as one-sided and non-harmonic. When the customers expect you to listen and collaborate, build harmony rather than prowess.




3. When They Give Feedback. Customers give feedback to be heard, to achieve different results, and/or to help you create a different customer experience going forward. Avoid responding to each feedback point with reasons why the current state exists. Instead, listen to their points, clarify if necessary, and then ask yourself, “how can we make this happen?”

   How each of your employees reacts when hearing customer feedback is a telling moment for the company. It tells the customer what you truly care about — your company or them.




4. When They Have Changes in Leadership. With business to business (B2B) activity, a change in customer leadership is a key moment to build harmony. Not only does it set you on a positive path with new leadership, it shows the company your true flexibility in handling changes. This speaks volumes about your long term value and reliability.
   Related Post: The Customer Experience Blooms When We Flex




5. When They Have a Crisis. There may be no greater bonding moment with a customer, than to deliver in harmony during a crisis. Can you work with them when they are very upset? Can you pull your diverse company teams together — in harmoony — to solve the customer’s crisis? In B2B, can you rally various teams in their company to find a solution to the crisis?

   Solve a crisis and you become known as the go-to company because you eliminate risk in their minds. Gratitude, loyalty, and profits are your bonus!

---

What gets in the way of harmony between customers and us?

1. A strong focus on operations instead of meeting the customer’s needs. There’s a difference!
2. The need to be “right”. It stops collaboration. Strive to be excellent, not right.
3. Fear that harmony delivers less than singular thinking. It’s a feeling not a fact. Collaborate.
4. Customers who don’t believe that providers will work in harmony with them. Show them!

What else blocks harmony and great customer experience? What would you add to this list?

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.

---

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.

Robotic use of procedures and inflexibility breed bad customer experience.

Flex like a willow and watch the super blooms of customer experience emerge.

Do your teams understand how to execute a procedure flexibly?
Do your customer experience metrics include how well you flex and meet exceptions?


True Customer Experience Story

The Old Man and the Medical Office Experience

---

An 85 year old man was in the waiting room of a cataract surgical center. He was a returning patient.

Other patients had gotten drops in their eyes and were sitting, eyes closed, as required. The woman behind the window called the elderly man to the desk, “May I have your insurance card?” and then asked him to sit back in the waiting room.

He no sooner sat down and she called him back over to the desk, gave him back his card, and asked him to sit down. Shortly thereafter she called him to the desk again and asked him to review some forms. He said, I can barely see or stand and I can tell you there have been no changes in the last month.

She took the form, starting at the top, and read:
Name, Sam Plotano? He replied “no change“.

Address, 642 Mill Road? He replied: “I told you no changes” as he continued to lean on the counter for support.

Insurance, Medicare? He replied: “Nothing has changed.”

Birthdate?

One of the other patients, laughing uncontrollaby, said to her husband, “My eyes may be closed but my ears are fine. Did she just ask him if his birthdate changed?”

In frustration, the elderly man turned to the waiting room and said in Italian, “Maledizione … what do I have to do?” The entire waiting room rang out “Nothing has changed!”

---

This one customer experience occurs repeatedly in various settings every single day.

There is nothing super about customer experience that meets the service provider’s needs at the expense of the customer.

Procedures, irresponsibly executed, can take the bloom off any experience. As management revels in the comfort of standardized procedures, customers reel up with curses at the impersonal treatment.

Metrics, valuable to determine needed changes, defoliate customer experience blooms, when you treat the customer like a number.

When we flex to the individual customer, the experience blooms into a positive memory. Industry experts are now predicting that, in this new experience economy, companies who master the customer experience will outperform those who don’t.

How ready are you? Do your staff know how to execute procedures with flexibility? Do you have metrics that assess how well you flex?


The time is now. Let’s talk further!

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.


Related Post: 7 Components of a Super Customer Experience

---

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.

Ever ask your customer service reps what do the customers think is a great experience? Regardless of your industry, the CSRs are close to the customers’ honest opinions. If you give them a chance, they could answer the question:

What’s Our Super Glue of Customer Experience? 

Here is some of the super glue of customer experience …

1. Being remembered beyond the name. When customers’ preferences are recalled in real time — not just noted in a database that the customers completed themselves — there is a sense of belonging.




2. Easy to do business with. The definition of easy varies by customer base including generations, occupational focus, educational background. Everything online may seem easy to one generation and maddening to another. Nonetheless, easy will always be at the top of the list.




3. Flexibility! When company procedures can flex and bend to the customers’ needs, customers experience the ultimate in care. Why? Because it fits them, their lives, and their businesses. It’s obstacle free.




4. Be top notch! Know your customer base and deliver the best product or service in their eyes. There is debate on this in light of Steve Jobs’ alternate approach to product development. I see both approaches working. Consider how people rebelled when new Coke was introduced — and they brought back Coke classic.




5. Prevent disasters. Customers are glad when you don’t have problems in delivering service. They are elated when your knowledge, experience, and foresight, prevent disasters in their business or life.
   
   

6. Deliver welcome surprises. In everyday life, customers rely on themselves. When they must reach out, they wonder what will happen. When the happening is beyond their expectations, the experience shines.




7. Memorable in uncommon ways. Quick story: I go for a yearly mammogram. I ask for the same technician each time because her interpersonal skills and sense of humor turn a stressful dreaded ritual into a memorable experience. She makes a difference. I could go to a center closer to my house yet I might end up with Rhonda the compression robot. I’ll pass on that thanks. (See you next year Flo!)

Do you know what your customers think? Would you get the same answers from all your teams? From the customers?


What is our super glue of customer experience? This one simple question can begin the discussion that will unite understanding and produce outstanding customer experience.


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.

---

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

When has fear kept you stuck in a rut? At a fork in the road in your career? When your business stagnates in a bad economy? In a dead end situation that others tell you to leave?

As a coach, I hear clients describe their ruts. Fear has them stuck like gum on a shoe. Meanwhile one single step can remove the gum and get them moving.

When you want success, know you must change yet feel stuck, don’t let fear be the gum on your shoe.

Break free by finding people who have been through something similar — who no longer have gum on their shoes of course — who will share the steps that got the gum off their shoes!

It sounds obvious and here’s the logic.

---

1. Fear of taking a step is lessened by learning from those who have survived the step.
2. Fear of the unknown is countered by those who now know the unknown.
3. Fear of acting oddly during the change turns to knowing smiles when you hear how they felt and behaved.
4. Fear of being wrong crumbles under the evidence of their experience.
5. Fear of being alone on the journey is eliminated when you travel it through their success.

---

Well established support groups and their members thrive on these principles. Still many people have issues not defined by any established support group.

Fear not. Online chatters, social media friends, bloggers, authors, and professional coaches all have life experiences to share.

My graphics designer, Kimb Tiboni, has chronicled her Illogical Success with personal insight and real life experiences. I have overcome business hurdles and gained inspiration through friends, coaches, and Twitter chats.


Take one step now and leave your story in the comments section below:

One rut you broke out of and how you did it and/or

One rut you want to break out of and two answers you seek.

You want success? Don’t let fear be the gum on your shoe! Reach out and step forward in your life, career, and business.


What stops people from reaching out — when it’s so obvious that it is key to success?

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.

---

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

Leaders, who lead change well during tough times, filter out needless noise. Their experience is the filter. It enables leadership without the bullshit.

New leaders, many in middle management, face an ironic challenge. They are building experience — the filter — while trying to filter!

I feel for new leaders and consult on the great challenges they face to give their experience a boost. They deserve a just-in-time filter for needless noise when leading change.

So here it is — a guide to leadership without the bullshit. Help new leaders. Add your experience in the comments section below to strengthen this filter even further.

Image by: Leo Reynolds


10 Point Leadership Experience Booster

Leading change in tough times …

1. The status quo doesn’t really exist. Things are always changing. Don’t debate if change should occur. It is occurring. Communicate, listen, and engage the team to create success together.




2. Convert why questions to what questions to filter the noise. Questions that start with the word what generate tangible dialogue and understanding.
   Rephrase why is this happening to …

   ---

   What conditions have changed and are feeding the need for more change?
   What are we facing in the future and how do we prepare?
   What roads can we take to get there?




3. Acknowledge the struggle don’t encourage it. Acknowledging the struggle that people have with change is helpful if you also ask them how they will get through it. Else they think it is your job to eliminate their struggle and you enable their resistance.




4. Encourage success by moving forward. Don’t confuse endless talk about the struggle with being an empathetic leader. If you want to be a caring leader make the unknown, known, by moving everyone forward sooner than later.




5. Negativity and positivity are both contagious. It’s pretty clear which one will create success. Admittedly people don’t have to be singing and smiling all the time. If they are very engaged in the change and venting some along the way, it’s natural.
   Yet constant complaining will retard progress and ignoring it is a classic mistake. The power of negativity is there even if you deny it. Call it out and note the impact of it. Identify what is needed instead.




6. Morale matters. Celebrate talents applied to the common purpose. You will see untapped potential materialize into unexpected wins. Even if your boss is a results-only person, always remember that morale impacts results. It is needed. It’s not a waste of time.




7. Perfectionism kills momentum. If you or team members suffer from the blight of perfectionism, override it with the motto make it work. It is rare that you will have all the information, optimal conditions, maximum resources, or complete understanding. When team members raise these points as reasons not to proceed, involve them in risk assessment and problem solving.




8. Personality type differences change from obstacles to advantages with simple training. To ensure that your diverse team members mesh even in tough times, hold a personality assessment workshop before the stress hits. Focus on how to adapt to behaviors and avoid using the results as labels. Make it fun and it boosts morale.




9. Hedging on difficult or necessary conversations confuses people; it doesn’t console them. Give employees the gift of being clear. Honest focused dialogue shows respect for them as adults and builds respect for you as a leader.




10. Redirect extremes into critical thinking focused on results. Tough times provoke stress and emotion that yield rigid outlooks and absolute opinions. Facilitate discussions that reawaken a realistic mindset and empower a can-do approach.

---

What have you learned from needless bs at work that leaders can use to filter out future noise?

What will you add to this experience booster? What is your #11?

Thanks in advance for adding your insight here.


From my 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.

---

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 workshops outlines and customer results. Fill the gaps of change and diversity with business wins!

If you are a new leader, your plate is full of responsibility and your to-do list with things to learn. Developing one skill will steer you through the new challenges and guide you to lead people well.

New leaders, develop your intuition.

Intuition is not voodoo. It is not magic. Intuition is not psychic ability.

Intuition is experience reapplied. Good detectives do it. Diagnostic physicians do it when when technology can’t. Very successful leaders do it.

Image by: Hexmar

If intuition is just experience, why call it intuition? Because it isn’t just experience.

Intuition is a synthesis of information and experience — especially about people — reapplied in a different time and space. Over time and with practice, the synthesis works so quickly that many people experience it as a hunch. In any case, this intuition delivers valuable foresight to a leader.


Steps to Develop Your Intuition

1. Become a student of human behavior. Observe & listen to them. Communicate with them.
2. Give yourself permission to see things as they are unencumbered with your fears, values, hopes, and personal agenda. Intuition comes from this. Like a detective, spot patterns and see exceptions to patterns. How they look when they are feeling certain things. How they behave in diverse situations when having those feelings.
3. Build your intuition data bank. Embrace this input as non-measurable data. It crosses over time and space. Gather it to store and reuse in the future for synthesis and reapplication.

Implications for Leaders

To broaden your vision, don’t micro-manage. It is difficult to see the forest if you are working on one tree.

Get to know those you work with as people. Get to know them sooner than later — your colleagues, your team, your vendors, your suppliers, and other teams that your organization will work with.

Learn about diverse people behavior and never stop learning. If you stop, your intuition data bank becomes incomplete and your intuition flawed.

Acting on intuition alone is a mistake. Use your newly developed intuition as a pointer for further investigation. It maximizes the value of your intuition and minimizes pattern error, stereotyping, and bad decisions.

---

Consider Einstein’s view:”The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. I believe in intuition and inspiration. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.”


What benefits have you had from intuition? What do you do to develop it? I would love to hear your stories and perspective in the comments field below.


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

---

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, has taught corporate leaders, managers, and their teams to develop foresight and intuition for success in customer service, sales, and teamwork. See this site for workshops and customers’ 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?

---

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.

Esther Denn, eDenn Property Management, recently asked me to pen a blog post on delivering great customer service to increase customer loyalty. Property management is a fast paced field and you need more than occupational knowledge to succeed. Entire teams must truly understand the value of the customer and deliver every aspect of daily customer service from that mindset. As I wrote the post, one thought kept recurring – easy does it for customer loyalty! Every customer celebrates, remembers, returns, and refers when the experience with you was easy.

This post is valuable for any business whether you are the CEO or a CSR because: Customers Remember Moments – What Do They Remember About You? Don’t leave it up to chance.

A recent experience brings me to this customer service reminder.  When interacting with the customer, use the customer’s jargon not yours.   Here’s a simple true story …

A financial professional switches from selling to financial advisory firms to giving financial advice to consumers — in this case us.  In his previous job, he was speaking to people who already spoke his financial jargon.  It was daily interaction on financial products under the same regulations.  They spoke with the same jargon using spreadsheets and pie charts.  They communicated in the same way.  A perfect fit.

Now, he is advising non-financial industry professionals on their lifetime savings.  The problem: he still uses financial industry jargon and assumes we understand.  He sends us pie charts, spreadsheets, and big thick books to read.  We ask him “How much did those transactions cost us?”  We want a simple $ amount.  He sends us a paragraph with no numbers in it.

The frustration is overwhelming.  We view him as non-customer focused.  He is making life difficult.   Can you envision what is about to happen? 

What do your customers think of you and your service?   Do you use the customers’ jargon or yours?

Remember:

1. Speak the language of the customer to build trust and loyalty!
2. Ask open-ended questions that unearth what they want to achieve.
3. Listen with their listening-style.
4. Ask creative follow-up questions.
5. Use their jargon — not yours!

©2009 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

908.595.1515 (USA)