KateNasser.com

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:

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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.

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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

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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.

The Customer Experience ViewMaster!

Leaders, if your teams were to read this caption — Leaders, Foresee & Reduce the Burden of Needy Customers — whose burden would they think of? Theirs or the customers?

The answer will show you the state of your current customer experience culture. If they think of the customers’ burden, you are in a good zone. If they think of their own burden first, you have miles to go in building a super customer experience culture.

Image by: AndyMiah via Creative Commons License

Customer Experience Culture

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Needy customers are the only type of customers!

Un-needy prospects are of little value to our organization.

If they don’t need our products and services, they don’t need us.

It’s time to build your team’s desire to foresee and reduce the customers’ burden.

Help them to see the burden of uncertainty that every customer bears and how they can reduce it!


The 21 Customer Burdens (of Uncertainty)

1. Can I trust this company with my needs?
2. Will they fully understand my needs?
3. Do they care about my needs?
4. How well do they work together or will I have to run between them to get what I want?
5. Will I understand them and how to easily use their product/service?
6. How well will they deliver on my needs?
7. Will they treat me well — even when it doesn’t serve their profits?
8. How much will their mistakes cost me? In time, money, reputation, lost revenue?
9. What positive effect will they have on my life or business?
10. How easy will it be to use their product or service?
11. What if we disagree? How will they handle it?
12. Will the interaction be stressful or positive?
13. Are they capable of giving me a super customer experience?
14. What assumptions are they making? What do the expect of me?
15. What don’t they care about — despite their promises?
16. How will they treat me after the sale?
17. Will I regret picking their product or service?
18. What happens to me if I do regret picking them?
19. How will a bad decision impact my career, my life, my business, my customers?
20. Will I like their product, service, and dealing with them?
21. Should I trust this company?

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The customers’ burden of uncertainty takes them away from you.

Take the burden of uncertainty away from them and build your success with their trust in you.

When I go into companies to build a super customer experience culture, I often see that the leaders are aware of these customer burdens – the teams aren’t.

Teach every team in your company to foresee these burdens and reduce them through product and service design, positive selling and trust-based customer service.

It delivers a super customer experience with great success and best results for your business.

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Is there a #22 for the list above? What other customer burdens will you reduce?

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

Related Post: Super Customer Experience: Be Plentiful & Ready

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

A call came in from the Human Resources Director of a large prestigious law firm. The challenge?

Build more respect and teamwork between the most brilliant legal minds in the law practice and the support staff.

And not just any brilliant minds. These were the elite attorneys in cutting edge and high powered niches, all with double (some triple) degrees.

Support staff felt demoralized. Some had left. Turnover was on the rise. The HR director quipped in exasperation:

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Do brilliant minds breed bad teamwork?!

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Certainly everyone deserves to be treated with respect. HR and the attorney relations department addressed the few cases of actual verbal abuse. Yet the HR director wanted better daily interactions, teamwork, and morale throughout the organization.

She gave me examples of the interaction between the super educated brilliant attorneys and the support staff. I also spoke with support staff.

There was good news. The hurdles were from different levels of drive for achievement — not from a deeply rooted disrespect for support staff.

Now for the solution. The HR director noted that access to the attorneys’ time was very limited. So we first held workshops with the support staff to rebuild morale and build skill in supporting high achievers.

It was remarkable to see the support staff zealously embrace these basic beliefs of brilliant minds:

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1. Commitment turns intelligence into brilliance. “I am always learning — please do the same.”
2. Facilitate and sustain my achievement or get out of the way.
3. The organization expects me to hit the high bar. Please jump higher with me!
4. Shine at what you do so I can continue to shine at what I do.
5. Come at me with solutions to problems — not just the problem! Otherwise, get out of the way.

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Support staff remarked that this picture was one of continuous striving and learning not a desire to demean. They had never perceived it that way.

From this awareness, we re-mapped how to speak and behave in support of these high achievers.

Some say it is unfair to ask the support staff to learn new support skills instead of asking high achieving attorneys to change their ways.

Yet, high achieving revenue producing professionals respond, “If you ask me to put the feelings of teamwork ahead of results, the organization will achieve less. Why can’t we all step it up and achieve more?”

Success lies in both. Put limits on the demeaning behaviors, like verbal abuse, and train support staff, as we did, to work from the high achiever’s view. It transformed attitudes, performance, respect, and teamwork!

So to answer the initial question — Do brilliant minds breed bad teamwork? No. A difference in expectations, drive, and goals, does.


From 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 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.

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.

The call came in from a Human Resources training manager at a major pharmaceutical company. The IT department had reorganized technical support teams and their customer service and teamwork had taken a tumble.

She and her experienced HR trainers had tried yet they and the IT professionals didn’t click. She called, as other managers have, because my years in IT (information technology) uncover the unspoken teamwork and service challenges as I teach and facilitate. It has been a recurring theme in my business.

When you want to train technical support in customer service and teamwork –beyond the surface of certification– it’s critical to understand the technical mind.

So much customer service training is focused on training people whose natural focus is other people.

You must use a different approach to develop a strong people focus, cross teamwork, and customer service skills in professionals with a rigorous occupational focus — technology, finance, medical, and legal.

Although medical schools are starting to screen applicants for both scientific and people-skills aptitudes (New for Aspiring Doctors: The People-Skills Test), this dual focus is not an established selection criterion in all the technical fields.

Nonetheless, technical support teams are very capable of outstanding adaptable people-skills for teamwork and customer service. Some have it naturally, a few struggle, and most respond very well when taught in a way that makes sense to them.

When will they most need specialized customer service and teamwork training?

1. In times of great change like reorganizations, mergers, or new executive leadership
2. Before high pressure initiatives that also pressure their customers like major technology or operational shifts
3. In readying to support high performance business units – the executive suite, sales, revenue critical operations, life/death situations in healthcare, and a highly mobile workforce
4. Before centralizing or expanding for global technical support

I look forward to working with you during these transitions to ensure outstanding IT customer service and teamwork.

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, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers workshops, keynotes, and consultations that inspire the ultimate interaction with teammates and customers. Her prior career in IT and extensive technology focused customer base make Kate the perfect choice for training technical teams in people-skills for teamwork and client service. See this site for workshop outlines and customer feedback.

To us as customers, satisfaction is very Gestalt. The “whole” is greater than the sum of its parts. We experience customer service not as a series of details and transactions but as one total experience.

The companies who get customer loyalty – gestalt it.

Behind the scenes, they manage a myriad of details and transactions across all channels and for multiple customers; with the customers, they focus on a unique total experience for each one.

1. They adapt to each customer instead of pretending that each customer is the same.
2. They make the process and interaction easy. The customers and their happiness come back to them.
3. They move through the procedures to solve the problems; they don’t highlight the procedures to the customers.
4. They prevent the upset customer knowing that positive breeds more positive and negative seeks a large empathetic audience.

They also know that each time they interact with a customer, it continues and adds to the experience.


A Recent Story.

A business hotel conveniently located has served me for years. +
They empower whatever I need to do. +
They remember me each time I go back. +
They have made it a home away from home. +
They offered to reinstate expired reward points. +
They just gave me outstanding interpersonal treatment as I made a new reservation.
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TOTAL: A continuously positive experience not a series of positive experiences. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts!

The continuous whole creates emotional loyalty that individual transactions do not. It prevents the question mark in the customer’s mind. “Why wonder if there’s something better when I already know I will be cared for?”

There is no end to the customer loyalty you can build if you continue to build one whole. Get loyalty — gestalt it!

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


©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want 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, delivers customer service and teamwork training and improves your company’s customer loyalty quotient. Preview and purchase her unique DVD Customer Service USA – Regional Differences That Matter.

Professionals with great people skills (soft skills) win big in sales, customer service, teamwork, and leadership. They tend to lead better because they understand people, collaborate more easily, sell more by hearing what customers aren’t saying, and shine by anticipating customers’ needs for service.

How well you can read people and interact with them determines your professional success. I was reminded on New Years Eve of how great people skills can help you win big in other ways.

The Funny Story!

As we waited for the clock to strike twelve, someone suggested we play the board game Apples to Apples – this new game of funny comparisons. I had never played. My sister Mary Ellen had and explained the rules.

In each turn there is a question and a selector who decides which card/answer of all those played is the winning answer. The person who played the selected card/answer wins the point.

Ooh — my how to read people skills went into overdrive. For each question, I thought about the selector, what s/he cares about and how s/he makes decisions.

Point after point went to me. They started saying, Hey how are you doing this? I replied “Beginner’s luck?”. I won the game. It wasn’t luck and I am not psychic. I simply thought first about the decision maker and what matters to her/him. That drove my actions.

“Seek first to understand then to be understood.” ~Saint Francis of Assisi

Win Big With Great People Skills

1. To lead and inspire innovation, get comfortable with diverse personality and natural conative styles. Tap innovation where it lives — in your team members’ minds!
2. To collaborate better on teams, see how others see things and how they see you. Present your unique ideas in ways they can understand.
3. To change careers, explore how that new discipline sees things differently then add your experience. You will win big.
4. To increase sales bridge the gap between your outlook and your customers’ and then make them successful.
5. To deliver truly memorable customer service, step outside of your own perspective and into theirs.

Develop your people skills to win big in life.


What win have you had in your personal or professional life from great people skills? Please share your story in the comments section below to help and inspire others.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, inspires people to growth and professional success in leadership, customer service, sales, and teamwork through her keynotes, workshops, DVDs, and consultations. See this site for the stellar success she has fueled.

Customer Service Valentine

Dear Customers,

Customer service work was not my life’s goal. I did it to make money and pay the bills. Then came the surprise — you served me!  So here’s my reflection and valentine to you.

When you yelled, you taught me about your pain and how best to ease it.

When you took forever to decide what you wanted, you taught me patience and that has served me well.

When your views were so different from mine, you taught me about diversity and made me grow.

When you were disagreeable and nasty, you taught me to cherish the true joy in my life.

When you told me your whole story, you expanded my horizon.

When you told me how to deliver better service, you invested in my future.

When you asked to speak with someone else, you made me believe in teamwork.

When you called, you showed me what trust is all about. You could have called another business.

When you called back and also told your friends, you taught me the true meaning of thanks.

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I now offer you this valentine of deepest thanks because — you served me. I owe you one!

[©2011 Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ.
If you would like to re-post or re-publish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission. Thank you.]

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Leaders, what changes do you want to effect? Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach has inspired leaders and staff in countless industries and professions to the heights of customer relations, teamwork, and leading change. Her inspiration and insights transform all those she teaches. Call now to schedule Kate.

Customer service teams, technical support teams, help desks, customer care centers, and call centers have one critical customer service challenge in this decade — adapting to customers’ needs and preferences.  It takes more than just multiple customer service venues (channels) or the latest technology and knowledge management to satisfy diverse expectations of customers around the globe.

It takes empowered CSRs, technical support reps, help desk analysts, and call center agents that are allowed to innovate without fear of failure or punishment.

Companies in every sector are touting innovation as the top focus for continued success yet not implementing this empowerment at the front line.  Necessity is the mother of invention (innovation) IF fear of failure or punishment is low. Otherwise the front line sticks to a pre-determined routine and set of rules that fall short of  superior service to diverse customers.

Innovate Customer Service at the Front Line

1. Communicate the purpose, values, and mission of customer service. On that basis, trust staff to make appropriate judgments and in-the-moment decisions on adapting to customers. Nordstroms and Zappos successfully empower their front line.
2. Use staff meetings to develop a culture of continuous improvements. The front line knows what each customer is thinking. Encourage them to innovate by tapping their knowledge and ideas for improvements.
3. Foster and recognize the front line for their innovations that deliver great customer service.

BONUS: In addition to higher customer satisfaction ratings, the front line achieves greater job satisfaction. Doubtful?

Studies at MIT and University of Chicago, as summarized by Daniel Pink, DRIVE: Motivation Beyond Carrots & Sticks, show that autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the motivators of great performance and seeds of job satisfaction (except for purely mechanical tasks).

Customer service professionals are very purpose driven. The best seek jobs in enlightened companies that tap their commitment and give them autonomy to innovate and deliver the best possible service. Attract the best talent and they will deliver the best service!

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Questions:

What else will encourage the front line to innovate for better service?

What else can customer service leaders do to increase performance and retain the best staff?

Customer Service Reps (CSRs), call center agents, customer care associates, technical support & help desk analysts, are often tethered to a desk or a pager. The best ones are key links in the chain of service or sales and don’t see it as a life in chains.

How do they achieve this zen like state working in what so many others consider to be a stressful and confining job?

Here are the answers I have collected over the last 20 years of teaching these inspired CSRs and technical support professionals:

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• Chained to the desk or a pager means you are focusing on yourself. Remembering you are a key link in the chain keeps you focused on the customer.
• Satisfaction comes from knowing that you helped — made their life easier, found the solution, made the experience fun, lifted them up.
• On tough days, I take pride in how great I am under pressure.  Other CSRs buckle, I don’t.
• I never let envy of other jobs rob me of the joy of my current life.
• Before working as a Technical Support analyst, I was in the Coast Guard patrolling in the Gulf of Mexico. I was shot at daily by drug running boats.  Trust me, tech. support work is not stressful!

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Service is different than servitude (a life in chains). The former you choose that latter you don’t.

Choose your attitude every day.  Why let angry or rude customers change your choice?

Choose to see the value in what you do — a key link in the chain.

Choose to educate yourself about business success by learning directly from the customers.

Choose to be a CSR, Help Desk or Technical Support Analyst at an enlightened company.

Choose, as leaders, to enlighten your organization’s approach to customer service and to help change your industry with your enlightened view.

Choose to evolve and grow every day of your life.

Which mindset will you choose?

or

A Key Link in the Chain of Success

You can choose to be a strong link for others if your mindset is one of service — not of servitude!

©2010 Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ.
If you would like to re-post or re-publish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, continues to inspire legendary service attitudes and behaviors across generations, industries, and professions. Her keynotes, workshops, and DVDs re-energize commitment and delivery of outstanding service. Authentic, intelligent, and humorous — book Kate Nasser to transform your next service initiative.

National Customer Service Week is approaching quickly.  As you prepare to celebrate with your customer service, customer care, help desk, and technical support reps, consider giving them the greatest gift of all.

Procedures and policies that you use with customers need to be both achievable and respectful of customers’ time and needs. Here are two recent concrete examples that teach volumes from the not so friendly customer service procedures.


EXAMPLE #1

NJ Transit system now uses double-decked trains. The upper level has racks above the seats for luggage and other items.  The lower level has no racks or storage of any sort. Space under the seat is not large enough for luggage.  NJ Transit trains stop at the Newark Liberty International Airport stop to drop off and pick up travelers.

I have witnessed travelers with standard to large size luggage board the train and come to the lower level to find a seat. Once there they realize there is no accommodation for luggage. They leave it in the aisle leaning against the seats. The conductor comes through and states the policy: “You must move all luggage out of the aisle and away from your feet.” The customers look up, around, and sit there staring in disbelief. The policy is actually not achievable and definitely not customer friendly. NJ Transit has its struggles with finances since the governor reduced subsidies. It wants us all, including travelers with luggage, to ride the trains. In that case, it must address the needs of its customers with achievable customer friendly procedures.


EXAMPLE #2
NJ American Water requested by mail that each customer call to schedule time to replace the old water meter with a new water meter. I complied and scheduled an appointment three weeks ahead. A few days prior, I called to confirm it and said simply, “I am calling to confirm my appointment this Friday for the new water meter. Do you have me on your list?” The customer service rep asked me for my name and my account number to verify my identity. I complied.

In her dull routine voice, she then asked me for my street address, town, and zip code. She then asked me for my phone number and backup phone number! Meanwhile she hadn’t addressed my question. I was very annoyed and said, “I’ll make you a deal — you tell me whether or not I am on your list and I’ll tell you my phone numbers. She replied “Yes, you’re on the list.”

Out of professional curiosity, I then asked, “Why are you going through every piece of data before offering me any help?” She replied, “We are required to update your customer record when you call.” Trapping customers into playing 20 questions to update records before helping them is not great customer friendly service. Even in technical support, questions for updating records should come after helping the customer unless it is critical to solving the customer’s current problem. First help then update your records.


Give your service and support teams the greatest gift — an opportunity to deliver true customer care with customer friendly procedures and policies.

National Customer Service Week Challenge: Have all reps brainstorm customer friendly improvements to breed passionate commitment to superior customer service.

What customer friendly changes would you like to see?

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers workshops and consulting for truly memorable customer service and teamwork. http://katenasser.com/workshops. On Oct. 4, 2010, she will deliver an info-packed webinar through the Help Desk Institute on spotting and adapting to your customer’s personality type. Email info@katenasser.com.

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National Customer Service Week is the first week of October. This special week brings well deserved attention to dedicated customer service and technical support reps and all that they do. I offer this post to celebrate the people skills of all the great CSRs and TSRs who deliver great service.

Celebrate People-Skills. As your customer service teams celebrate with contests, parties, and picture taking, celebrate people skills (aka soft skills) with a thought for each day! Here are five of mine and one from Tristan Bishop.

1. An authentic smile changes everything. On the phone, in person, and even the words you use in text, chat, emails, and your website design should smile at the customer.  It helps ensure that the customer interaction goes well.
   
2. Treat people the way they want to be treated — not the way you want to be treated.  I call this the diamond bond of customer service!
3. Be the sun, not a thorn. Even with thorny difficult customers, be the sun.  Shine light on the problem to be solved and fix it.  More ideas on this topic: 5 Things to Remember w/Tough Customers.
4. A plane flies well on auto-pilot mode. Customer service doesn’t! Adapt to each customer — personalize and localize including personality type, culture, geographic differences, and generational differences.
   
5. Empathize before you analyze! Show customers you care and they will care enough to help you help them.
   
6. Kindness transcends constraints. ~Tristan Bishop There are obstacles and challenges in customer service and technical support. Kindness to the customer ensures a continued bond while you work to overcome the challenges. To read more: Kindness Transcends Constraints by The Knowledge Bishop.
   

Continuously improving your people skills prepares you to effectively handle any customer service interaction with dignity and success.

What thoughts would you like to add to this list to celebrate improved customer service people skills?

[FYI: If you are looking for the first post in this National Customer Service Week series, it is The Folly of Being Defensive].

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, shines her energy, inspiration, and experienced insights about truly memorable customer service and teamwork on teams in the Fortune 500, governmental agencies, and non-profits. Preview her new training DVD on customer service regional differences in the USA at http://katenasser.com/training-dvds.

National Customer Service Week starts Oct. 4th, 2010. It is a time to celebrate customers, customer service, customer service agents, technical support reps, and to highlight key behaviors for truly memorable customer service.

I will write many posts for the next five weeks in anticipation of National Customer Service Week and today’s topic is — “The Folly of Being Defensive” when customers criticize your service.

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Picture It! A customer tells you that your team didn’t get back in touch with them, has been unresponsive, missed a deadline, gave them an incorrect answer, was rude and non-empathetic, or a host of other negative information.

What Some Teams Hear. You are no good. They then explain to the customer why the customer service was bad in an attempt to recover their image. Being defensive like this is pure folly. Why? It has the exact opposite effect.



What the Customer is Really Saying. Help me and rebuild my trust. The truly memorable response includes empathy for the inconvenience, attention to fixing it now, and in some cases, compensation for the inconvenience and trouble. Once you have solved the issue in question, you might provide information on how this error will be prevented in the future if it was a serious error.

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The folly of being defensive in business is that it reduces trust, makes working with you difficult rather than easy, and demeans your professional image. Avoid this defensive dribble.

You will regain customer’s trust when you take ownership of your mistakes, offer a sincere apology for the trouble, and fix the errors. It sends out a cheer of integrity, caring, and professional competence. It is worth celebrating. It is truly memorable. It will echo for quite some time. It delivers progress to your business and sets you apart from the average.

What else makes for truly memorable customer service? What do you expect as a customer?

©2010 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, is widely known for transforming customer service from average to truly memorable. Her workshops, webinars, and DVDs distinguish from others in their ability to activate behavior changes in your global customer service teams. Preview Kate Nasser’s new training DVD on regional customer differences in America http://katenasser.com/training-dvds.

In my previous post I chronicled a recent service experience with a promoter of National Customer Service Week to highlight a common problem of mistaken empowerment with disastrous business results. I recount the same story here, now with a focus on the challenges that customer service and technical support teams face in times of great change.  Here is what happened and customer service insights on change, change resistance, and rebuilding trust.

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The Service Experience

A company actively involved in promoting National Customer Service Week approached me to be an advertising sponsor.  This was the first year they decided to sell advertising sponsorships. They sent information explaining levels of sponsorship, cost, and what each level of sponsorship gave me.  Initial discussions went well. We agreed on the size of the online logo ad pretty easily.  He asked me to send a short paragraph about myself for their first email bulletin. After receiving my text, he replied that the paragraph looked great and they would run it as is. The service experience was easy and well paced.

Things suddenly changed when he sent a proof of the bulletin. I was shocked to see they used only one line from my write-up. To make matters worse, they changed my verbiage into bland, boring words.  His question to me was “WOW, doesn’t it look great?” No it didn’t. I called him and asked what happened? He said, “Don’t worry we want you to be happy. I’ll get back to you.” Before he hung up, I said if we are limited on the number of words, I will be happy to rewrite it. However, the words must reflect my brand.

He emailed me a new version that was slightly longer. Sadly, the words were modified again. To me this was strange behavior and a blatant downward shift in service. It was after hours so I waited until the morning to call him. I left this voice message. “Since I don’t understand what is going on, can’t get any answers, and have no trust that the remaining advertising activities will be handled appropriately, I am going to pass on the opportunity to be a Gold Sponsor.  I wish you continued success.”

He sent me an email saying the source of yesterday’s struggle was the editor of the email bulletin who insisted the bulletin have the same look and feel as it had for the last 10 years! He offered me a discount on the membership and said they would print my paragraph the way I wanted it.  What he didn’t address was the loss of trust from the daylong confusion. When I asked him if he could assure me that my remaining ads, my time, and my brand would not be affected by their internal struggles, he emailed “Evidently you have a bad taste in your mouth about this and it’s best we terminate this relationship”.   

This company, one of the official promoters of National Customer Service Week, undertook a big change – selling advertising sponsorships. What they apparently did not do was change their mindset from continuity and tradition to the new business of representing sponsors for a fee.

Insights

• This economy presents sudden and intense changes that require flexible agile teams.  Nimble teams win business. Lumbering, slow teams lose. Teams that are intensely focused on procedures — like many customer service and technical support teams – may find themselves in the lumbering category and ill-equipped to deliver superior customer service.  How agile are your customer service and technical support teams? There are ways to become nimble and the time to learn is well before the change. Software development teams are transforming to be more agile: Agility Community Summary.
  
  
  
  
  

  Resistance to Change Hurts Customer Service Image:Jorgempf

• When struggles erupt internally, think long and hard before pretending to the customers that things are progressing normally while projecting confusion. As you string business customers along you are impacting their businesses. They walk away for the sake of their businesses. Are change resistant employees costing you customers, reputation, and revenue?

• Rebuilding trust after difficulty requires more than one attempt and is not done well through email. Business customers and consumers will take time to trust you again.  When you have broken the trust, talk to the person – don’t write. He mistakenly chose email to communicate rather than the phone. He claimed he emailed to give me time to think.  Yet his second email immediately terminating the relationship disproved that claim. He wanted to be in sole control of rebuilding the trust. He wanted to define the only issues that mattered – price and verbiage in the bulletin. He wanted there to be only one offer.  When I didn’t immediately say “OK”, he severed the sales and service relationship. You can rebuild trust if you share control of those moments with the customer. Prove your value on the issues that matter to the customer not just those important to you.

Customers remember moments. How do you want to be remembered?

Please share your insights about delivering superior customer service during times of change. I welcome your comments below.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, has for 20 years delivered customer service and teamwork training for dynamic teamwork and the ultimate customer experience. See footage of her workshops at KateNasser.com and preview her new customer service and sales training DVD about American regional differences.

The best language for superior, truly memorable customer service is the language your customer understands. If your reaction is “no kidding”, please give this topic another moment’s consideration. I am not speaking purely about languages like English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Swedish, Arabic, etc… I am not even speaking just about avoiding the use of slang expressions or your company’s many acronyms to ensure superior customer service.

The best language for superior customer service is language that describes your knowledge in ways that the customer can truly understand. It doesn’t matter whether you are delivering internal customer service to employees of your organization or external customer service to those that buy your products/services. If your customer doesn’t understand what you are saying, it isn’t superior customer service. I wouldn’t even call it customer service.

What does describing your knowledge in language the customer understands truly include?

A. Explaining everything from the customer’s perspective and interest vs. your expert view.

B. Using online and print forms that speak to the customer not from your software system’s design. Have you seen many well designed forms — those that don’t need explanation?

C. Designing bills and other financial statements that present info a way a non-financial expert thinks. Bank statements often prominently display “average daily balance” at the end. The number I want to quickly see is ending balance not average daily balance. A hotel bill I once received at Mohonk Mountain House resort displayed the information as double entry accounting — credits/debits. My reaction was “Are you joking?”. Most non-financial people don’t think in terms of double-entry accounting and many don’t even understand double-entry accounting. The makers of Quicken financial software built their business around this simple fact.

D. Presenting website information — especially the online buying process — with words that customers understand vs. words that the finance and technology departments use.

Superior customer service requires that you communicate all your knowledge in ways the customer understands.

What other examples would you add to the list?

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, addresses all the frontiers of communicating with diverse customers for superior customer service. Her newest training DVD Customer Service USA – What They Expect Coast to Coast & Everywhere in Between (click to preview) covers the regional differences throughout the USA and Canada to truly satisfy North American customers.

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