KateNasser.com

For decades, leaders have heard the same outcry from customer service, call center, and technical support teams: “We have to treat the customers well even when they are yelling at us. Why do they get treated better than they treat us?”

Service and support leaders, managers, and team leads ask me: “Kate, how do we counter that?  Beyond our efforts to treat team members well, what’s the answer to this endless outcry?”

It depends on what you think the team members seek. If you hear it as an outcry for equality and fairness, you might be tempted to say “because they are the customers” or the old standard “the customer is always right.” Your reply affirms that it is not an equal relationship.

Well fairness and equality may be part of what customer service and tech support teams want. Everyone deserves to be treated with basic human respect and most organizations do not tolerate true verbal abuse on either side.

Nonetheless, the outcry continues.


I can affirm, after 23 wonderful years of training these teams, that the other part of the outcry is envy. 

It’s understandable how agents, reps, analysts, and associates could envy the customers’ privilege of:

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1. Showing anger and dissatisfaction; they can’t.
2. Receiving help; they give it and often don’t get help from other teams.
3. Participating in industry conferences; they rarely see the light of day.
4. Attending training for professional growth; they have limited access.
5. Having time to work projects completely; they are expected to perform well while simultaneously clearing the queue.
6. Working a regular schedule with holidays and weekends off; they often work shifts or are on-call.
7. Being respected and valued; few top leaders recognize service and support as vital to the organization.

Leaders, The Impact of Envy in Customer Service
The risk and impact of this envy is worthy of your attention.

• It stops teams from consistently delivering the ultimate in customer service. If their heads and hearts don’t love being in service, they won’t.
• Unchecked envy emphasizes the feelings of unworthiness and diverts valuable focus from service to the imbalance.
• It impacts the teamwork critical to delivering outstanding service.
• Unaddressed envy can fuel high staff turnover. Some turnover is healthy for service teams. High levels are a warning sign of a service organization in trouble.

Understanding this has given many leaders and me the chance to cultivate a non-envy culture that inspires and delivers service greatness.

Through workshops, we have helped the front line managers, supervisors, team leads, and staff to replace envy of customers’ privileges with pride in:

• Breath of knowledge
• Continuous learning through experience
• Great ease and style in working with people — not everyone has this prowess
• Multi-tasking and ability to work under pressure
• Professional skill of being empathetic and objective — many doctors don’t even have this
• Inspiring yourself and others to excellence

To build and sustain a non-envy service culture, it is necessary to help service team members discover a sense of fulfillment. I rarely hear the cry of envy from service team members who are fulfilled in other ways.

Fulfillment squelches envy whether it comes from their family life, years of work experience, inner peace, gratitude for having a job, comparison to previous jobs, or a tremendous high from reaching results in the face of adversity.

Leaders, showing appreciation and recognition for service team’s work and helping them build a positive service team identity feeds fulfillment. Working with your peer leaders of non-customer facing teams to build the cross teamwork necessary for mutual success feeds fulfillment.

Declare your vision to your teams and ask them for their insight on how to achieve it. Telling does not engage excellence; asking does.

Offer training to develop their professional skills. Budget for temps to cover service demands while service team members present a case study of their achievements at an industry conference.


Face team problems, like envy, stress, and morale, and your teams will achieve success.

I look forward to helping you take your customer service and tech support teams from inspiration to action.

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

Related Posts:
Leaders, 12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement
The Ultimate Customer Experience – Challenge of Excellence (video with sound)

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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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. For 23 years, she has turned interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer testimonials and results.

Delivering a super customer service experience is all about the choices. Simply great choices can create it! Poor choices can destroy it.

Frustration with the customer is often at the heart of those poor choices. In fact, frustration with customer behavior can make poor choices very tempting.

The best in customer service find something else even more tempting — the strength and skill to resist temptation and choose greatness!

Frustration, Temptation & Simply Great Choices

The strength to choose service greatness rests within your professional identity.

How do you want to be known? What do you picture as greatness? If service is not in that picture, your attitude and behavior will yield to frustration.

If you want to create super customer experience, here are 7 common frustrations, temptations and the simply great choices!

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1. Your Frustration: The customer wants to speak before you or more than you.
   Temptation: Seize control of the conversation and talk over the customer. Poor choice.
   Great Choice: Let them talk! Your response will be far more accurate the more you understand.




2. Your Frustration: The customer wants something non-standard. This takes time, thought, effort, and takes you out of your normal pace.
   Temptation: Show your exasperation and label the customer as difficult. Poor choice.
   Great Choice: Show your interest — even excitement — in doing and learning something different. This is the chance to WOW ‘em.




3. Your Frustration: You want the customer to completely populate your contact database before you help them and they want some information without being locked in your detailed procedure.
   Temptation: Ignore their preference and continue on with your questions. Poor choice.
   Great Choice: Get basic identifying information like name, account # and then focus on what they need! Once you have the solution underway, validate or get other personal information for your database. Focusing on the customer delivers a super customer experience. Focusing on your database doesn’t.




4. Your Frustration: The customer is upset and venting their anger.
   Temptation: Lecture to them (i.e. There is no reason to raise your voice, I am trying to help you). Poor choice.
   Great Choice: Let them vent. When they are done, empathize and take action. Fix the situation, not the customer! If you don’t, your competitor will.




5. Your Frustration: The customer waits until the last minute for help and has an urgent need.
   Temptation: Tell the customer they should have called you sooner. Poor choice. Criticizing them for poor planning leaves an emotional scar on them that will burden you next time — if they come back.
   Great Choice: Determine whether or not you can meet this urgent need. If yes, do it. Being the customer’s hero is a super customer experience! If you truly can’t, let them know that and refer to other resources that might be able to help them. Expressions of good will and effort build future trust.




6. Your Frustration: Customer doesn’t follow an important procedure and it causes the customer, and you, repeated problems.
   Temptation: Patronize the customer with an insipid rhetorical question like do you remember I said to enter your account id not your phone number? Poor choice. Patronizing the customer is professionally immature and disrespectful.
   Great Choice: Simply give the customer the answer again. Courteous honest answers help and don’t hurt. After you have helped them, ask if there is anything you can do to make it easier for them next time. You might also review any written instructions or online design to see how to make it clearer.




7. Your Frustration: The customer wants to ask questions along the way and you want to go through your whole presentation or explanation first.
   Temptation: Tell the customer to wait until you are done. Poor choice. You are telling the customer that you are more important than they are.
   Great Choice: Dialogue with the customer; put their needs first. You will meet your needs through theirs and deliver a super customer experience.

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The feeling of relief from venting your frustration on the customer is very short lived. It ruins your company brand and your personal and professional reputation.

When you choose great listening, adaptability, patience, reasonableness, competence, and agility for sudden needs, you deliver truly memorable and super customer experiences.

Question
What other frustrations do you have with customers? Add them in the comments section below and I will help you deliver a super customer experience. I deliver the antidotes to your frustration!

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

Related Post: Be Plentiful & Ready to Deliver Super Customer Experience

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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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.

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.

Businesses, large and small, both want to deliver super customer experience. Two steps can take customer experience from good to great — be plentiful and ready. And it’s the best PR.

The trigger reaction of many leaders to the idea of being plentiful to the customers — “that costs money!” Well, it doesn’t have to be free to customers or expensive for your business.


Being plentiful and ready gives customers:

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Comfort. When people think of a shortage, the feeling is discomfort. In retail, some leaders believe that shortages can wield greater prices and yield more profits. Customers experience shortages as loss and void. Especially in service businesses, having a plentiful supply gives customers comfort.

For business to business, it is critical. Suppliers are invaluable when they deliver plentiful supplies of what you need when you need it. It builds trust.

Ease. Customers love it when you make it easy. On a recent stay in a Sheraton hotel, I asked to have four towels each day instead of two. Yet I had to call and ask for extra towels every single day. Why not just supply the plentiful towels each day when cleaning my room? Be plentiful and ready to make it easy for the customers. Making an exception is great; sustaining it is super!

Success. When your business can handle last minute overages and is ready for sudden needs, the PR is tremendous. You can just imagine referring a catering company to many others if it helped your special event be successful especially with last minute needs.

Conversely, I recently did a team building program with the theme of plug in and adapt. I found a small electrical adapter plug online and needed to buy hundreds. The supplier’s website would only let me order 50 so I called to check on quantities and availability. The customer service rep told me they had plenty but I could only buy 50 at a time with a maximum of 100.

How odd. They had plenty but weren’t ready or interested in selling me a large quantity. Meanwhile the print shop I used for the session handouts was ready. The staff produced and shipped not only the initial 500 booklets but also 50 extra at the last minute when my customer expanded the project. Success!

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For Super Customer Experience Today

Be Plentiful in:

1. Positive, can do, make it work attitudes.
2. Low cost welcoming gifts.
3. Experience.
4. Information and knowledge.
5. Advertised products.
6. Last minute alternatives and solutions.
7. Communication and behind the scenes teamwork.

Be Ready With:

1. Courtesy and care.
2. Culture that considers customer experience as a business driver.
3. Information rich well designed websites.
4. Inter-cultural knowledge.
5. Easy to use self-serve portals that address complete needs.
6. Mechanisms that enable you to quickly adapt to change.
7. Proactive listening, follow-through, and follow-up.
8. Thank yous and gratitude.

Be (P)lentiful today and (R)eady for tomorrow — the best PR for your business!

In what other ways should we be plentiful and ready? What would you add to this list from your 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 first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Related Post: Super Customer Experience: Customers & Us in Harmony

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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.

This year for National Customer Service Week, I ask each of you to look behind every customer.

For a moment, don’t look at metrics, scripts, forms, procedures, the structure, the flashing queue light, the long line, or the clock. Look behind every customer to discover the true need, the future, and success. Our future is behind every customer.

Graphic by: Kimb Manson


Customer Service – Stripped to the Core

1. Behind every customer is the unknown yearning to be known. That’s our future of customer loyalty.

Empathize!



2. Behind every customer ID number, is a person with a name whose needs we can fulfill. That’s our future. That’s success.

Ask for their name before their ID number!



3. Behind every customer question – odd, crazy, simplistic, or repetitive — is a chance to move them to the future and success.

Listen with an open mind!



4. Behind every customer is another person whom we impact with our actions. Our care is growth for both. That’s our future and theirs.

Follow-through!



5. Behind every impatient customer is our future success with the tough times of life. That’s a future of skill and ability.

Study up!



6. Behind every customer are the factors that define great service to them. Look behind the customer to reach that future.

It’s a one-to-one match!



7. Behind every customer is limitless potential. Cultivate the future.

Go to the well!



8. Behind every customer is the heart of our success. It beats for our future.

Maintain heart health!



9. Behind every customer is a wealth of knowledge free for the taking. Learn!

Is there a #10? What would you add to this list?


Lead the future of customer loyalty …

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Listen
Emapthize
Assess
Deliver

Don’t leave it behind!

Offer: Subscribe to this Smart SenseAbilities™ blog and download your thank you gift poster of Our Future is Behind Every Customer. Print it and hang in your customer service area for continued inspiration!

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 consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes for customer service and teamwork — that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshops outlines 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 rule, the customer is always right, has survived over a century as a quick way to instill a strong sense of customer in all employees.

Despite its detractors, it has breathed life into customer service and sales and filled the gaps during uncertain moments.

As new graduates enter the workforce, many will be glad to know that customers’ views breathe life into this old being right rule.

The customers’ views about the following are always right — always count:

1. Urgency. – Theirs not ours.
2. Business or personal impact. – To them before us.
3. Critical factors. – From their perspective over ours when there is disagreement.
4. What they expect of us. – Work hard and smart to achieve it.
5. How they want to be treated as people. – Completely right.

The key to living this old rule in today’s world is to remember that we may disagree or say no even when the customer’s view is right for them.

Whether we say no for ethical reasons, legal restrictions, limited capabilities, or strategic mission, we must still treat the customers’ views with respect. They have insider insight we will never have regardless of how well or how long we know them. The decision of where to buy is theirs.

Their views are the lifeline for our success. Respecting their views preserves that lifeline for the long term. Acting as if we always know better, suffocates the customers’ views and could forever sever our lifeline of insider insight.


Benefits of The Customer Is Always Right Rule

It helps establish a customer centric culture.

Guides all employees to sell to and serve the customer well within the strategic mission of the business.

Increases our listening especially when our experience tries to drown it out.

Keeps us in service mode even when business is booming.

Fills the gaps during uncertain moments.

Shows constant gratitude and desire for future business.

Expresses respect for the customers’ insight and perspective.

Builds trust for current and future business and often with more openness for our views and expertise.

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Basically, it keeps customers coming back and interested in what we have to offer. Not a bad payoff for one old rule.

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, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times. See this site for customer service workshop outlines and business results. Fill the gaps in customer service and teamwork with business wins – book Kate now.

With 8 People-Skills Steps!

Customer service in most cases is a case of sudden relationship. Often it is a startling sudden relationship in a tough moment. Longer term relationships like account based sales provide advantages that sudden relationships don’t have.

This comparison sheds light on the challenges that customer service reps (CSRs) and technical support analysts face on every contact.

Sudden Relationship Challenges

• No existing rapport for interaction with
• Little or no prior knowledge of expectations and
• No history of results thus
• Little trust or confidence to smooth the way


Trust and Openness of Longer Relationships Image by:Liz Smith

Longer term relationships develop and enjoy:

• Understanding from observing people’s patterns of behavior with
• History of results that develop a working comfort building
• Time-based trust and openness that allow for more candor

Because the startling sudden relationships of customer service lack the longer term bonds of understanding and trust, the CSRs, reps, agents, and technical support analysts must adapt to each customer.

They are developing a relationship, solving a problem, and building trust all at the same time! This is why they cannot candidly say whatever they want. It is too startling to customers.

Instead, the best CSRs and technical support analysts turn sudden relationships into bonds.

Here are the 8 people-skills steps they take:

1. Greet courteously with the respect of formality and the sincerity of some informality.
2. Create quick connection by spotting the customer’s personality type and adapting to it.
3. Capture attention by detecting the customer’s listening style and using it.
4. Make it easy to communicate by using the customer’s jargon and language.
5. Close the gap by paraphrasing the customer’s perspective.
6. Smooth the emotion by caring without taking anger personally.
7. Show urgency appropriate to the situation.
8. Deliver help and solutions.

Sudden relationships with customers can turn into bonds of satisfaction, loyalty, and referrals when you make the moment easy, productive, and memorable. Well worth it for the business and truly appreciated — when you are the customer.

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, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times. See this site for customer service workshop outlines and business results. Fill the gaps in customer service and teamwork with business wins – book Kate now.

Working on the front lines of customer service can be wonderful or terrible. It depends on your mindset – on what you picture — not on the customer. Surprised?

It’s actually good news. What happens when you interact with others is not completely random. Success is within your grasp because what you picture, you create!

It’s not voodoo. It simply that what you picture or think about, you focus on, say, and do.

Customer service starts with picturing that you can make a positive difference.

If instead you picture difficulty or conflict, you will focus on being right, being heard, and being in control. All of this creates the difficulty you pictured at the start.


The Story

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I walked into the airport luggage service office when I arrived at my destination and my luggage didn’t. As the line inched forward toward the service rep behind the computer, I noticed that each person leaving the office was surprisingly calm.

When I reached the service rep, he handled my problem with empathy, accuracy, and calm confidence. Before I left the room, I said to him: “I teach customer service to large corporations and reps tell me how stressed out they are. How do you stay so positive with so many people in here complaining?”

He replied: “Kate, if they’re smiling when they come in here … they’re in the wrong room!”

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He understood what people would naturally feel and he became the picture of a man making a difference.

Picture the positive and you reduce your fear. Result: Increased listening that guides the interaction to success.

Picture the positive and you feel influential with no need to control others. Result: A collaborative success instead of a target shoot.

Picture the positive and you project empathy and connect sincerely. Result: You make a difference and that is great customer service.

One informed rep with a positive attitude and one customer-friendly policy of delivering luggage created a positive customer experience instead of a social media rant.

What you picture you create!

What will you and your teams picture before you all start work tomorrow? I hope that it’s caring for customers and making a difference.

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


Related post: Customer Service, Key Link in the Chain not Life in Chains

©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 customers. Leaders have been booking Kate to bring both her customer service experience and intuition to their success — repeatedly. See this site for customer results and 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.

What customers experience before, during, and after they interact with you holds the secrets to sales, service and customer loyalty. Today it seems most leaders focus primarily on the after to build the before for next time.

In my corporate career and now for many years in business, I have held two questions in my mind when dealing with customers:

What did the customer experience before this?

What do I hope the customer will think after?

Customer Experience the Before & After Way

Image by: MikeBlogs

Using the before & after way, you gain insight to make the sale and deliver great service. Customer loyalty emerges from the bond initiated at the beginning. Start with insight not procedures.


BEFORE
A sampling …

1. What specifically has driven the customer to seek assistance now?
2. What obstacles has the customer experienced that brings us to this moment?
3. What successes or failures has the customer had prior to this?
4. What effect has this had on the customer?
5. What loyalties has the customer formed and why?
6. What loyalties has the customer broken and why?
7. What has changed in the customer’s world that delivers energy to your efforts?
8. What has remained stagnant that will retard and drain the momentum of your solution?

From your experience, what would you add to this list?

AFTER
Write three simple clear sentences that you hope the customer will say about you after. Then ask yourself, does the customer care about those things? If not, rewrite your after expectations and then make them happen.

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 customers. Leaders have been booking Kate to bring both her customer experience and intuition to their success — repeatedly. See this site for customer results and book Kate now.

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.