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Customer service training programs for Call Centers, Customer Service Centers, and Technical Support Help Desks often fall short of the one tool that makes every interaction successful. What is the one thing that the best CSRs (customer service reps) and technical support reps do well? The best adapt to the customer’s personality type to deliver A+ customer service every time.

Picture a driver type customer calling for customer service and a CSR with an amiable personality type picking up the phone. Will this go well? It will if the CSR knows how to adapt to a driver personality type. Can you imagine a high expressive CSR and a deep analytic customer working well together? It will be far more productive if the CSR knows how to adapt to personality type.

Train all CSRs and technical support reps on how to quickly spot and adapt to personality type. Then celebrate all the positive results — customer delight, faster call handling, increased productivity, flexible teams that handle change well, and an A+ customer service reputation.

Good news. There is a quick way to spot and adapt to each personality type with tangible steps to success every time! Here is actual footage from my customer service training program “GPS Your Brain to Work With Any Personality Type”. I am ready to train you and all your teams on this fast method of spotting the four personality types and exactly how to adapt to each.

Footage filmed by www.dolcevideo.com.

Practice using this tool and it becomes one of the most far reaching and powerful professional people skills you will use in each and every career you choose. When you can speak in a way that is comfortable for someone else, you become very influential. In customer service, it is essential for delivering A+ customer service.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers advanced people-skills training and keynotes to span the differences between people and create superior customer service and teamwork. She has also just released a training DVD on adapting to customers’ geographic differences. Click here for Customer Service USA – Coast to Coast Expectations.

As a leader, your vision and focus affect, perhaps even determine, the ultimate outcome.  How is your vision of the organization?  Is it a perfect 20/20?  Well I hope you are multi-focal corrective lenses to sharpen your daily vision because many things can cloud the picture.

Personality type. 

If you are a driver personality, you may miss seeing the potential in people if it isn’t straight at you.  Caring primarily about the end-result, you often see the distance better than anyone yet your close vision is blurred.

If you are an analytic personality type, your vision of details is superb yet you may miss the ultimate destination because you aren’t looking far enough ahead to steer others to success. 

If you are an amiable personality type, your desire for harmony seeds great bonding yet your team may falter in the completion of tasks.

If you are an expressive, your team will know what you want yet you may not necessarily hear their questions or input.

If you are wearing corrective lenses, you can balance out your dominant trait with focus on these other important aspects.

Economic Conditions.  Do you make the same wise decisions in tough economic times as you do in good times?  Or is your vision blurred by the pressure of financial impact?  The corrective lenses to wear in this case – a checklist of the questions that have guided you to wise decisions in the past.  Update the list and use it!

A New Team Given to You.  Picture it – you have accepted a leadership position of an existing team you did not previously know.  As you do a quick assessment you sense they are not the right people for these jobs.  If you are thinking, “I would never have hired these people”, your thinking will block your vision for success.  The corrective lenses to wear in this situation are discussions with each person to truly understand what they have to offer.  It is very possible that conditions have buried their talents.  If it isn’t true, your vision for success will still be clearer than had you not worn these corrective lenses.

You Get a New Boss.  There is a shake-up above and a new leader is over your organization.  What is your reaction after you hear her/him say that there will be big changes in how things are done?  Do you sub-consciously or consciously think “Oh s_ _ _ !”   Get those corrective lenses on your thinking quickly and go into creative exploration mode.  You and your teams will enjoy the journey through the changes and your new boss will have an exponentially better view of your value!

Your Customers’ Business Changes.  They say that businesses fail when the market changes and businesses don’t.  Are you in touch with where your customers’ businesses are going?  Are their markets changing?  As a leader, you need to be wearing multi-focal lenses to see far ahead so you have time to re-focus your teams.  For example, if your customers are scientific researchers and their results take them in a completely different direction – it can have far reaching affects on your organization as a supplier or service provider.  Keep your corrective lenses focused on your customers to stay current with their needs.

Remember, multi-focal corrective lenses sharpen your leadership vision and remove the clouds that can block your success.  Is it any wonder that these lenses are known as progressives?

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

I received an ad in my email box for a customer service training video.  Even after 20 years of teaching customer service, I still learn new things.  So I took a quick look at the sample footage.  What I saw was fake, neutral, and difficult for the customer.

They advise you to give an irate customer something specific - like a  form to fill out!  Tell an irate customer to fill out a form?  If you were the irate customer, how would you respond? I laughed so hard at this video I could barely find the esc key to stop the footage.  And this training video is for sale!

Now that I have stopped laughing, I deal you the ACE for top notch customer service: ACE – authentic, committed, and easy.

Authentic.  Customers want you to sincerely care.  Sincere caring shows in your authenticity.  This is why I rail against call center scripts.  Scripts sound company-focused not customer-focused.    Authenticity shines through when you paraphrase the customer’s request, use a tone of voice that reflects interest not script reading, and validate the customer’s situation including his/her emotion.  If you are face-to-face with the customer, then your body language as well as your courteous words also reveal your level of authentic caring.

To come across as authentic and caring, it helps to first be able to read the customer’s needs.  

Action steps: Take this well-known EQ (empathy quotient) test online free of charge to assess your ability to read others: http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/EmpathyQuotient/EmpathyQuotient.aspx.  I was thrilled with my very high score.  Can you imagine The People-Skills Coach scoring low on EQ?

If you want to test your ability to read others’ authenticity, here is a twenty question quiz based on the work of Dr. Paul Eckman: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml

Committed.  On one of my many trips, I was driving to a smaller city.  I had a terrible headache and no medication.  I spotted a large mall and went in to buy some Tylenol.  Thankfully the first thing I saw was an information booth.  So I asked the young woman, “Where is the closest drug store in this mall?  I have a terrible headache and have never been here.”  Her answer in a flat voice was: “I don’t know (IDK).”

My unspoken reaction was “Then why are you in the booth? Get out of the booth!”  Even if it was her first day, she could make an authentic attempt to help. Customers judge your commitment from your “first” –  first greeting, first response, first facial expression, first tone of voice, first attempt. 

Long pauses, IDKs, blank stares, attention to other people/things show lack of commitment – i.e. not caring.  What would you add to this list as signs of non-commitment?  I would love your comments below.

Easy.  Although customers’ expectations vary, there is one thing every customer celebrates – an easy experience.

Here are 5 things you can do to make it easy for your customer:

• Listen and speak from his/her perspective. http://tinyurl.com/cjbdhl 
• Quickly paraphrase his/her request and take action.
• If you don’t know the answer, find the answer.
• Use words that focus forward not back.
• Spot his/her personality type and treat them that way. http://tinyurl.com/ddfhgq

I would love your comments and insights below.  You are welcome to share the info in this article with others if you will credit me and the URL as the source.

These stories and tips are just a small sample of what I deliver in my sessions on customer service.   Tap me to speak at your next customer service event or for training to ACE every customer service moment. 

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

My passion is customer service and teamwork.  So I was very pleased to deliver a key session at the International Help Desk Conference Las Vegas, NV.

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“Conversations with Customers: Best & Worst Moments”
The session was recorded. If you want a copy of the CD, please contact me.

Metrics don’t create great service. They measure great service that you create through the conversation. In fact, the conversation is the customer’s metric — voice-to-voice and online.

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When conversing, speak from inside the customer’s head.

• Value the customer’s need for help – that’s why you are in business.
• Use the customer’s language and jargon — not yours.
• Respect the customer’s expertise and add yours to it.
• Use the customer’s perspective when choosing your focus.
• Embrace the customer’s business priorities and deadlines to satisfy them.

Lastly, make the service experience easy and enjoyable for the customer.  View this related post GPS Your Brain to Work Other Personality Types if you want to deliver customer service at the highest level.

I welcome your contributions in the comment section below.  If you wish to share the info in this post with others, I ask only that you credit this site.

Yours in service … Kate