KateNasser.com

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?

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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.
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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.
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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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

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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!”

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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

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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.

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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.

As The People-Skills Coach™ , I often teach others how to deal with people’s anger in the workplace. Does your boss yell sometimes? Has a team member suddenly become edgy with you? Has a customer surprised you with a yell?

If you prefer that everyone calmly communicate and never yell, you need this professional people-skill to find nirvana:

Hear the urgency before the yell.

Quite often when the boss, a teammate, or a customer yells, you have missed the urgency they were communicating before the yell.

Common leadership and teamwork beliefs encourage open honest communication without anger or yelling. Yet this requires something of both the speaker and the listener.

In the face of urgency and a listener who doesn’t hear it, it is likely someone will resort to a yell. I am not speaking about people who yell all the time. I am referring to people who suddenly yell after calmly communicating.


Do You Hear Urgency in Their Calm — Before the Yell?
If not, here are 5 ways to spot urgency and develop this professional listening skill.

1. Find urgency in the bigger picture. I was teaching a public class. The banquet room was to be setup by 7:30am so I could prepare before greeting the students. I walked in to see a room configured incorrectly and no flip charts. I calmly spoke with the hotel rep about the timeframe and ten minutes later — no change. I then said, “Fix this now!”. He quipped, “that’s good, you woke me up” and quickly fixed the problem. To him, my initial calm voice meant it wasn’t urgent. Had he looked at the bigger picture of my needing to get ready before people arrived, he would have heard the urgency in the calm.




2. Find urgency in the need to be acknowledged. Urgency is not always a deadline for action. Often people’s urgency resides in their need to be heard. Paraphrase (not parrot) what they have said. Tell them that you hear what they are saying. This simple technique prevents the yell.




3. Hear urgency in repetition. When they calmly say the same thing twice, hear their urgency and acknowledge it — before the yell.




4. Urgency lives in their lack of knowledge. Your expertise blinds you to their urgency. As they speak and your knowledge is calmly telling you “no problem”, speak up. Communicate solutions. Else get ready for a yell.




5. Hear urgency in the painful past or impending future. Many times people’s urgency comes from previous negative experiences that caused them pain or something they are anticipating. Ask great questions while people are calm to uncover their concerns — before the yell.

Bonus Tip: The more you know about people, the easier it is to prevent the yell. You learn their pet peeves, their personality types, their fears and goals, their frustrations, and how best to respond before the yell.

If you believe that people-skills and relationships are fluff, don’t expect to reach the nirvana of calm communication. It comes from knowing people!

What makes you want to yell?

What have surprising yells taught you that you can share with all of us here at Smart SenseAbilities™?

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


Related Post: Why Executives Get Impatient With You

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of 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 of change. See this site for workshops outlines and customer results.

Is technology killing customer service in healthcare? Has technology removed our reason to care for others?

Technology has contributed countless life changing advances to healthcare yet I see two distrubing customer care trends.

Image by and Courtesy of:Daneel Ariantho


Our Reason to Care
As I see technicians and nurses working with me and friends/family, their behavior alarms me in two ways. Some let technology remove their sense of reason and logic and others have lost the human reason to care.


Story #1
A dear friend who is a large size person knows from experience that automatic blood pressure machines frequently report false results because of her large size arm. The nurse insisted on using that device and the machine reported very low blood pressure. My friend with a history of blood pressure issues, questioned the result. The nurse replied, “But that’s what the machine is reporting.”

My friend urged the nurse to use a traditional blood pressure device with a large cuff. This time the result was much higher than usual. The nurse, seemingly stumped, said: “Which result do you want me to note on your chart?”

Don’t Let Technology Remove Good Reason

1. Technology alone does not provide complete care. If you are getting two very different results, good judgment would guide you to question and perhaps test again.
2. Relying completely on technology assumes that technology cannot make a mistake. Yet good reason would suggest that variations or mistakes in input or use of the technology can cause faulty results.

Story #2
I was undergoing a medical test conducted by a technician. As the technician vigorously moved the wand around inside of my body, she never once asked how I was doing. I told her I was in pain and her response was “I can’t get good pictures of what’s going on” as she continued on with this painful test. I finally said “enough!”. She then said, “Oh, well if you would go empty your bladder again it might make it easier.”

Her demeanor spoke volumes about her focus. Her reason for being there was purely technological not human and diagnostic customer care.

Result: I never went back to that radiology center and told many how poorly the technician treated me. The next time I needed a test, I found another company which I now recommend to all my friends and family.

Technology is a wonderful adjunct to the human brain. Let’s not allow technology to remove our good judgment or reason to care!

Questions:

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Where in your life have you seen technology overtake people’s reason and judgment? Why do you think this happens? How can we prevent it?

In healthcare this poor judgment can be very scary. Where else do you think this error can cause great harm?

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Curiously yours,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of 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 for customer service and teamwork — that turn interaction obstacles into professional success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshops outlines and customer results.

There is a hidden opportunity for a competitive edge in the wireless service market. Have your call center follow through with the same brilliance that marketing started. If marketing gets the customer to call, hey call center — don’t blow it!

The Story
Marketing, You Got Me. Call Center You Blew It!
AT&T Wireless sent me a mailer about a deal for wireless service. I had been thinking of changing wireless carriers so I opened it, read it, and called the 800 #. Marketing you got me!  

A short voice response menu asked me if I was a current customer or not.  Press 2 and I was put through to a rep.  I thought wow this is great and then the path to success blew up.

The call center rep actually read a sales script without a breath and at the end asked me if I wanted to buy now. Call center you blew it!

Sales and service are not a monologue from you with a burp at the end from me. The scripted call center rep blew the brilliance of the marketing in 12 non-listening seconds.

Wireless carriers take heed — customers today are doing their homework and call with specific questions.

Drop the sales script and start dialoguing. Your marketing-to-sales conversion rate will soar. Lose the script or lose the sale!


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


How do you react to a scripted sales or service rep?


Related Post from BNET: Why Sales Scripts Are a Waste of Time

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of 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 sales and service success. See this site for workshop outlines, customer feedback, and footage to view. Turn interaction obstacles into business success — book Kate now.

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.

I found two people-skills articles online that popped in stark contrast — People-Skills Are the New Black discussing people-skills in healthcare and 10 Stupid User Stories, The Madness Persists  which overlooks the importance of people-skills in technical support.

As one technical profession — healthcare — is embracing the critical importance and value of people-skills, (aka soft or interpersonal skills) others may be holding on to decades old thinking that technical prowess alone is enough.

Nonetheless, many people in technical professions — healthcare, engineering, science, technology, finance, and even law — want to know:

 

What do people-skills contribute to the end result?

 

#1 Comprehension. How you interact with people impacts understanding. Attitude, tone of voice, body language, are just a few of the people-skills’ components that affect how people interpret what you say. People-skills create context and context impacts comprehension as much as your words.

#2 Influence for cooperation. Going a bit deeper, people-skills are critical if you are going to influence others. Empathy, listening, adapting to personality types, and sharing insight on tough challenges, all empower your words to do more than speak. They can transcend fear, habit, status, and stereotypes. Thus they influence cooperation and buy-in with your patients, business co-workers, customers, and clients.

#3 Trust. The big surprise for many technical professionals is that trust is not primarily built on their technical qualifications, capability, and rational data. Recent research with 14,000 takers of the Trust Quotient self-assessment test, indicates that more expertise does not equal more trust: Why Hard Trust is Gained from Soft Skills. People trust based on what seems to agree with their existing inner construct — what makes gut sense long before rational analysis begins. It results, first, from some interaction or reaction between two people not from one person’s (your) individual qualifications.

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People-skills are the pathway for end results. They are the catalytic force for understanding, influence, trust, decisions, and actions.

Without them, you are left to reach success without this energy and with the drag that poor people-skills create.

Combine people-skills with your exceptional expertise and soar in your technical career. The double focus does takes effort, learning, and commitment yet the return is great.

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

“I teach technical professionals how to interact with non-technical co-workers and customers for collaborative success.”


©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, is a former techie (BS Mathematics) turned people-skills guru with a natural intuition about people. Her consultations, workshops, and coaching transform your occupational focus into business success with service and teamwork. From inspiration to action, Kate will help you fill the gaps of diversity with business wins. See this site for workshop info and customer results.

Business leaders always seek ways to ignite customer passion about their products and services.

Here are 12 ways to light the fire by investing in the customer relationship using today’s technology and resources:

1. Give customers valuable information and simple ways to organize it. The Internet and social media are overwhelming individuals and companies. It is no surprise to find so many applications to organize info on mobile devices and for social media like Twitter. Deliver info that is valuable to your mutual industry and offer ways to organize it. Does your website feature the latest tweets about a hot issue in your industry? Do you have a daily summary of an industry conference? If not, why would the customers connect with you?




2. Make your information quick and easy to read. Is your website an easy read? Does it speak to them or just about you? In this economy, your customers are truly doing more with less and are pressed for time and solutions. Your conversations, your texts, your tweets, your website — must clearly speak to them.




3. Energize with learning.  Customers can feel the energy in a company. They are attracted to the energy. Establish a free-wheeling fun learning culture to ignite this energy and don’t crush it with corporate structure and SMART goals. Pick hot industry topics and get employees talking over lunch. Tap into podcasts and webinars on professional development topics. Transform staff meetings from in-person status reports into learning exchanges!




4. Fire them up with fun.  Fun is always memorable and memorable brings customers back. Advertising execs have known this for years. How are you using fun to engage your customers? How are you using fun to engage employees who engage customers? Example: Customers are more connected to you when they hear you smiling on the phone. TRUE. So for years the chosen solution was a mirror on each customer service agent’s desk as a clue to smile. BORING. Instead have something fun on the desk to inspire a smile.




5. Flex when communicating.  People do business with those they like and trust. They tend to be most comfortable with those of a similar personality type. Communicate to the customer’s personality type not from yours. Honest messages are more accepted when delivered with personality type in mind. Know your own type, spot  your customer’s type, and flex to it. Sales reps. have done this for years. It’s time for all to do it.




6. Use your uniqueness.  You must also use your special talents to create bonds with customers. One of my strengths is seeing the big picture quickly while others are stuck in details.  My customers bring me in for that purpose and welcome my dissent. Many of them are detail-oriented and, to use their words, get stuck in the weeds.




7. Care.  We often think of caring as something done in the customer service department.  Care is not a department. Care is a mindset that leads to behavior. It should be visible in every person and in every aspect of your company including your website, your phone menus, your service recovery, your ethics, and your products and service. When you care about customers it ignites their passion for your company.




8. Pump up your heart rate.  Customers are attracted to companies whose heart is beating loud and strong. It gives them hope. Show the customer the vibrancy and energy  of your company — perhaps through contributions to the community. Offer them a freebie on something that matters to them that doesn’t cost you loads of money.  After the attacks on 9/11, Broadway theater banded together to perform shows even though far fewer people were buying tickets.  The message: We will survive and we want you back in our theaters.  I delivered six months of free job coaching to job hunters.  My message: We will survive this downturn and here’s my contribution!




9. Be ready for your customer’s rainy day.  When it rains in New York City many store owners push carts onto the streets to sell umbrellas to unprepared tourists.  Customers will bond with you if you can provide what they need at a moment’s notice — either through your company or another source.  How can you foresee this?  Ask your customer service agents to keep a running list for one week of all the requests they get to which they currently say no. Go through this list and identify a solution for each request to prepare for your customer’s rainy day.




10. Give each employee a crystal ball.  Customers are attracted to companies that are forward thinking. What image do you and your employees project to customers? Often the official publications of a company sound forward focused yet the employees don’t. Do all your employees sound focused on the future or just the sales/mktg departments? Do they ask the customers interesting questions to unearth future needs? Are you asking your employees interesting questions about the future to instill this thinking in them? Think about it.




11. Revel in diversity.  Cultural norms impact customer’s expectations and buying choices.  In many countries, including the USA, your customers are from different countries and cultures. In every aspect of your business, embrace and use cultural diversity to bond with the customers. In your presentations, use stories and references that make sense to that culture. When designing a product or delivering customer service, make sure it makes sense to that culture.  Ask  your customers to teach you about their cultures through Social CRM.  Look for an unfilled niche based on cultural norms and fill it!




12. Develop an uncommon talent to build common bonds.  How good are you and your employees at building common bonds with  your customers and your suppliers?  How good are you at connecting with leaders in your customer’s industry through conferences, social media, and the press?  Across generations, cultures, and industries, the ability to form common bonds ignites passion for your services.  Continue to develop your communication, listening, social networking, creativity, and innovation skills.  If your reaction to this  is “I don’t have time”, then learn from those around you as you work.  They may ignite your passion in developing an uncommon talent for common bonds. 

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.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers customer service and teamwork training for delivering the guts of great service to every customer. Preview and purchase her new DVD Customer Service USA – Regional Differences That Matter.

Obviously, in sales and customer service, listening is critical to success. Not so obvious is how to listen for customer cares when your mind is processing your own perspective.

What’s in it for you to work on this? Sales & service fail when you don’t address customer cares. Moreover, customers even select higher priced products and services when you show them you get what they care about.

Winning Ways to Listen for Customer Cares

1. Hear the story as well as the details. If you are highly analytic, you may naturally listen for details. You may miss important customer cares because they emerge as the sum of the details. Do you listen for the whole point of the story?
   Winning way: If this is your listening challenge, say to the customer “I hear these details (a. b. c. …). If we put this together, what does it say about your key interest or concern?” It shows the customer you listen & you care!




2. Accept the obvious. Often customers are clearly stating their preferences. When it represents a challenge to what you want or can deliver, do you respond with what’s on your mind?
   Winning way: Paraphrase the customer’s preference then respond. If you do this consistently, you will listen better, sell more, and serve well. You and the customers will connect with mutual success.




3. Be excellent instead of right. Working with others, especially with customers, is first about excellence in connecting. It is the nexus of trust. Successful results come from excellent connections not from you pressing your points at the start. Once you are connected to the customers’ cares, they are more capable of hearing your perspective and valuable ideas.
   Winning way: Respect the differences, learn to love the differences, find the fit. One key step: Spot and Adapt to Personality Types.

Success in sales & service is within your easy reach if you reach outside your own perspective. Staying inside your own zone of communication style, knowledge, and control keeps you comfortably disconnected — from success. Think about it …

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

What is your best listening skills tip? Please share your people-skills experience in the comments field below.


©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, has amassed 21 years of stellar results with corporate customers turning interpersonal obstacles into business success. Her energy is legendary, her insight objective, and her results tangible. See this site for info about her keynotes, workshops, and dvds.

A positive attitude and enthusiasm are essential tools for sales and customer service. A recent study at the Wharton School of Business showed how mood affects customer service performance.

Customer service representatives (also known as a CSRs) who start the day with enthusiasm and a positive mood deliver better service throughout the day. Most would agree that the same applies to sales teams’ success.

So the more enthusiasm in sales and service the better, right? As a mindset or mood, yes.

As a communication style, über enthusiasm can overwhelm and turn off the customer. In other words, there are ups & downs to enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm’s Ups & Downs

1. Enthusiasm for customer service shows the customer you care. When it drives you to do all the talking, it tells them you don’t care enough to listen.
2. Enthusiasm in technical support drives you to solve even the toughest problems for customers. When you show the customer enthusiasm for broken technology, they think you care more about technology than you do about them.
3. Enthusiasm for the products and services you sell, captures the customer’s attention. When you spew it like a geyser, you stop the development of great customer relationships.
4. Enthusiasm sustains your objectivity and commitment when facing an irate customer.  When you ooze enthusiasm on an irate customer, you come across as insensitive. Your actions lack empathy.

Sales and service tip: Before you take off on an exciting ride, make sure that you and the customer are together!

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers keynotes and workshops that take sales and service teams from inspiration to action! Her results are legendary. See this site for more information.

Recent studies show that loyal customers are the ones that find your service easy.  For hotels and the hospitality and travel industry, this has morphed into frequent guest profiles on room type, or rental car preference, or aisle/window choice on an airplane.

They have created a standard process on certain service items to earn customer loyalty. It’s just a beginning.

Hotels must go far beyond that and rewards programs to earn the customer loyalty especially of frequent business travelers. They must:

Make it easy for customers to get exceptions to the standard process and sustain those exceptions throughout each stay.

Most hotels don’t sustain customers’ exceptions. The hotels are driven by standard processes and handle each exception as a transaction. You can make a special request and hopefully they deliver on that exception. Yet if it’s something you want every day during the stay or for every stay, you must request it each time.

A recent example: Sheraton hotel provided two bath towels, two hand towels, and two wash cloths in the room. I asked for two additional bath towels. They delivered. The next day housekeeping gave me — you guessed it — just two bath towels, two hand towels etc… Each day I had to request the same exception to their standard process.

Delivering great customer service when requested may get you high customer satisfaction scores. Delivering pro-active customer service may win you great acclaim.

But to earn customer loyalty, deliver easy exceptions and sustain those exceptions. Why? In this example, it’s just one easy phone call each day for some towels right? Easy maybe. Loyalty building it isn’t.

Customer loyalty is earned from easy exceptions that you remember to deliver each time. When you sustain the customers’ exceptions, you are telling them you remember their needs. Being remembered and cared for creates psychological comfort. That earns you the customers’ trust and thus their loyalty.

Picture yourself as a customer. Think about the diner waitress who remembers exactly how you want your eggs. The dry cleaner who knows your name and remembers your preferences. The consultant who already knows your hot buttons and key concerns. The dentist who knows your pain tolerance and how to ease it. The florist who remembers what flowers you send your mother even when you don’t!

This type of customer service becomes more than service. To the customer, you become an essential part of their easy life. If a hotel makes my life easy, I don’t even consider a different hotel for my next trip. You prevent the question mark from forming in my mind. Your hotel becomes my sanctuary when you sustain my exceptions to your standard processes.

This is a challenge for large scale operations yet it is feasible with modern technology. How about easy online portals for all customers to send in their exception requests in advance — without having to call? Or even when they are on site? How about special request kiosks on each floor? Perhaps hand held devices on housekeeping carts that give the staff just in time info on what each customer wants?

Capitalize on the fact that most people don’t like change. They like comfortable easy situations that they can rely on especially when far from home. Following your standard process is a change. You earn their loyalty by making exceptions easy to get and remembering to deliver them each time.


Will it be your brand? If yes, let me know and I will be a regular at your hotel!


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.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers actionable customer service insights through workshops, keynotes, consultations, and DVDs. Now in her 21st year in business, her stellar results are well known in the customer service industry. See this site for more information.

Customer care (customer service, help desks, technical support, contact call center) reps,  sometimes struggle with showing empathy to angry customers. Heck, some struggle with showing empathy to any customer!

Throughout 20 years of inspiring and training professionals to understand the customer’s perspective and empathize to build customer loyalty, I have seen some who are naturally good at it, some who learn it, and others who struggle with it.

Most puzzling to me have been those whom I have seen empathizing with customers — except with angry or irate customers. If you or your customer care reps find it difficult to empathize with customers — especially angry or irate customers — is fear of emotion part of the reason?  I believe that it could be. I have met professionals (many not even in customer care) who are afraid to empathize with a colleague, a customer, or even a boss. They have said to me, “What if the person gets more emotional when I empathize?”

Moreover, recent research has taken on the subject of negative emotions and empathy. In one such study, subjects empathized more with those who showed fear than with those who showed anger. Turning Bad Emotions Into Empathy and ProSocial Behavior post reports: “While there is a huge range of human emotion, recent studies have suggested that a fearful facial expression is a more salient elicitor of prosocial behavior than are other facial expressions, such as surprise or anger.”

Are you more likely to show empathy to a customer who shows you their fear — credit card problems or serious technical difficulties or critical health issues — rather than their anger? Is it because their fear doesn’t frighten you but their anger does?

The issue is critical in customer service, technical support, and customer care because it affects customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Showing empathy to customers, angry or not, builds bonds to your product, service, and brand.

Lose the fear of the customer’s anger to build your empathy skills. Here is a post to help you do exactly that Two Mindsets to Show Empathy for Irate Customers.

What else do you think blocks people’s ability to show empathy? I welcome your comments below.

©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.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, has a Masters in Organizational Psychology and a natural intuition about people. She delivers highly interactive workshops, info-packed webinars, and distance learning DVDs on this and many customer service topics including customer care in technical support.

Customer care, the true sense of wanting to help customers, is a subject that has intrigued me for many years.   Why do I feel so much inspiration to care for customers?

You might immediately think personality type. Maybe some types are more innately inspired to care for customers. Yet, I am not an amiable on the personality scale.  In fact, I have seen many different personality types working quite well in customer care.

Maturity? I have always felt the inspiration to care even as a teenager with summer jobs.  Money?  Well, summer jobs didn’t pay much. In fact, read the myriad of blog articles that claim CSRs are demotivated because they don’t get paid enough to care.  (I don’t agree with that one.)

Well I have spent much of my professional life inspiring customer service and tech support reps to care for customers. Leader after leader has asked me the same question, “How can we motivate our reps to deliver better customer care?”.   One day, I heard the same question again. This time it hit me that the obstacle the leader faced was not the reps — it was the concept of motivation.

Motivation

The concept of motivation conjures up images of offering comp days if they consistently reach their metrics or scheduling a pizza party if they clear the backlog in the email queue. There is nothing inherently wrong with offering these carrots to accomplish a short term goal. It will not, however, create consistently high quality customer care. The effect of the motivator wears off the same way an advertisement loses its marketing/sales effectiveness over time. It no longer motivates.

Inspiration

On the other hand, inspiration is something deep inside your reps and consistently there. The actual feeling varies in each person. Here is a short list of inspiration points I have tapped in thousands of reps over the years. You will notice a common thread. Inspiration is integral to what makes the individual rep naturally feel good.  What would you add to this list?

1. Making a difference in the customer’s life that day. To do that, the reps need to be empowered to actually help.   Reading from scripts and having to pass all exceptions to a supervisor is not inspirational.
2. Seeing how their work contributes to the company and the customer’s success. A director of customer services recently told me that their initial attempt at training reps included a product manager delivering a Powerpoint presentation on the products.  She was in the back of the room and saw the reps disengaging, looking around, swiveling their chairs.   She decided to redo the customer service reps training program and had them actually touching the products, installing them, and so forth.  The results were amazing.  In fact, the results were inspired!
3. Living what it feels like to be a customer.
4. Enjoyment and fun. There are people who begin to care about others when they feel good themselves. It doesn’t have to be constant fun — life rarely is. Yet if there is no fun, these reps will not be inspired to give more.
5. Respect for their individual talents. Perhaps one of the most common inspiration points is people being known and respected for their individual talents — at least in our American culture. In eastern philosophies/cultures, this is not necessarily the case.

©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.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, is an inspirational and activational speaker and trainer in customer service and teamwork. Her years of experience, her natural intuition about people, and passion for people-skills always take your organization to a higher level of performance.  See her video footage on this site.