As I spend more time online for blogging, for business, and for personal purchases, I am struck by how many websites show no customer focus.

They show selfishness, desperation, and an insatiable craving for market research data.

It’s as if these websites have one people-skills message:

We are selfish!

Would you stand in front of a customer and say that to deliver an oustanding customer experience?

Pop-up ads at the very beginning, hidden contact information, squeeze pages that immediately ask for name and email, surveys that interrupt — all break 3 important rules of outstanding customer service experience:

1. Make it easy for the customer to find what they want and to contact you.
2. Listen and help before asking the customer to help you.
3. Deliver value to capture loyalty; don’t desperately capture the customer.

It reminds me of an in-person experience I had at a L’Occitane store.

---

I walked in and picked up the exact moisturizer I always used. I went to the checkout and the sales associate asked me if I needed anything else. I quickly said “no thanks and I’m in a hurry” and handed her my credit card. She held it in one hand and then picked up another product to upsell me. And then another all while holding my credit card hostage!

When I asked for my credit card back, she suddenly rang up my one purchase. I never went back and stopped using their products. Out of curiosity, I just checked their website and guess what — a pop-up squeeze page appeared right away.

I clicked twice to exit.  I don’t pay to be trapped.

---

Companies that think customers owe them information before buying, have the customer service experience backwards.  Perhaps if they experience a reversal of fortune, they will reverse course and deliver value to capture customer loyalty.


Every website has a people-skills message and a personality. What is your website’s message? Is it selfish or giving? Does it capture the customer’s attention with content and value or does it just try to capture the customer?


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


©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

---

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes on customer service and teamwork, turning interaction obstacles into business successs. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

Twenty years of planning and delivering customer service training have produced this advice for leaders. You can do much to ensure and extend the value of any expert customer service training.

Make the training stick and create a new movement for the ultimate customer service experience with these steps.

Extend Value of Customer Service Training. Image by:KimbManson Graphics

STEP #1. Before selecting any training, write down what you want your customers to experience. Use customer feedback and your business goals in this process.  Communicate with all leaders and staff — not just the customer service front line.  Look for and resolve the discrepancies in the definition. If you are not of one mind, training participants will interpret and use the skills purely from their own definition.

STEP #2. Prepare your staff on how to learn from an expert. Customer service staff often develop an emotional attachment to the way they have handled customers — especially the challenging situations. They hold onto their methods as a life vest or buoy yet these methods are more protective of them than helpful to the customers. A simple statement from you at the beginning of the training — encouraging them to open up to the expert’s experience — is very effective!

STEP #3. Be the initial champion of the movement to improve customer service. Communicate what you expect of all staff in making the ultimate customer service experience come to life. Why should staff change behavior if you aren’t exhibiting this commitment and importance of the change?

STEP #4. After-session visual reminders of the skills are standard and effective. Visual reminders of customer service spirit and the ultimate customer experience turn the inspiration generated during training into a customer service movement. Shirts, buttons, signs, daily start huddles, peer coaching, frequent use of customer feedback, weekly lessons learned, and celebrating commitment, make the skills come to life every day.

If staff strongly resist this last step, you may be facing either a deeper morale issue or a reflection of your leadership style. Perhaps you have created a democracy rather than empowered teams all working toward the organization’s vision and goals.

To extend the value of training, develop a culture of visible spirit and learning. It inspires, engages, and encourages teams to deliver the ultimate customer service experience.

What other steps have you taken to create a highly effective customer service culture?

---

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, is widely respected for her insight, expertise, and skill in inspiring and delivering advice and training for the ultimate customer service experience. See this site for what others have said about the training and for workshop outlines.

A VP of Human Resources told me that the ONE trait companies seek in people they hire is flexibility, also known as change ability.

A company’s success depends on its ability to change and the employees must show change ability to be hired, retained, and promoted. Those that resist change and cannot adapt are a drain on and a risk to the company’s success.



Key Question:
How do you show your change ability without seeming unreliable?


The right mindset (growth and/or innovation) and using the professional people skills noted below will strike the balance.



“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” – General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, US Army

---

Show Your Change Ability:

1. Innovation and growth are driven by a thirst for exploring and learning. Invest some of your own time in learning and contribute that knowledge in the workplace. In this way, you show that this thirst is truly a part of you while contributing to the status quo.


INNOVATION Image by:Seth1492

2. In your daily work, offer creative ideas to solve existing problems, and help implement whatever idea is selected. In this way, you exhibit both flexibility and reliability.
3. When changes are announced in your company, replace your fear and comments of resistance with questions on how best to contribute during the transition to the new situation.
4. During job interviews, ask what balance of innovation (change) and maintaining the status quo does the company expect and the job require? Demonstrate in your questions that you realize both are needed. Recount how you have done both — in your life and previous jobs.
5. Develop and exhibit excellent conflict resolution skills. Many people can picture temperamental creative geniuses who come across as unreliable when they jump ship in the face of resistance and conflict. Ironically, in this moment they are also inflexible. If you can both innovate and deftly work through resistance and conflict, you are very valuable to the business.

Change-able is not fickle. It is not unreliable. It is not erratic, inconsistent, nor indecisive. Change ability is a skill of balance during growth.

How have you developed your change ability? I welcome your thoughts in the comments field below.

©2011 Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, Somerville, NJ. For permission to re-post or republish, please email info@katenasser.com.

---

Business owners seem to inherently know the value of a customer.  If not, they generally go out of business.  As businesses grow and hire more people, the employees don’t inherently know the value of the customer.

As part of National Customer Service week, I wrote The Customer Value Creed for organizations of all sizes to use as ongoing inspiration for quality customer care.

This creed includes the two winning entries from the customer value contest.  Congratulations and thanks to Kalin Bracken and Joan Koerber-Walker for their winning entries (#12 and #13 below).

The Value of Customers

1. Customers spark innovation through their demands. Embrace your innovators.
2. Customers give you an advanced education about people. Respect your “teachers”.
3. Customers pay for your performance.  Give your best show.
4. Customers keep your company alive. Feed your blood.
5. Customers blow your horn. Herald your trumpeters.
6. Customers are your future Wikipedia. Make many entries.
7. Customers are your tweeps on Twitter.  Tweet them right.
8. Customers are your reputation. Protect it.
9. Customers are gold. Mine for it.
10. Customers are your greatness. Cherish and nurture it.
11. Customers are human. Help humankind.
12. Customers are your muse. Be inspired. ~Kalin Bracken
13. Customers share their remarks with others. Be remarkable. ~Joan Koerber-Walker

I welcome your additions to the customer value creed in the comments section below.

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

©2009-2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

---

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

As The People-Skills Coach, I am sponsoring a contest to come up with TWO additional entries for my Customers Value Creed (noted below).   Two winners will each receive a $30 gift card to http://amazon.com.  Winners will be announced on Twitter in National Customer Service Week 2009 which starts Oct. 5th and their winning entries and names featured on the updated blog.

To Qualify: Submit your original short one or two sentence entry in the comments section below by Aug. 31, 2009 and tweet the following text on Twitter: ”#Customers Value Contest spons. by @KateNasser The PPL-Skills Coach, http://tinyurl.com/ng2g75 RT apprec.”

Customers Value Creed

1. Customers spark innovation through their demands. Embrace your innovators.
2. Customers give you an advanced education about people. Respect your “teachers”.
3. Customers pay for your performance.  Give your best show.
4. Customers keep your company alive. Feed your blood.
5. Customers blow your horn. Herald your trumpeters.
6. Customers are your future Wikipedia. Make many entries.
7. Customers are your tweeps on Twitter.  Tweet them right.     
8. Customers are your reputation. Protect it.
9. Customers are gold. Mine for it.
10. Customers are your greatness. Cherish and nurture it.
11. Customers are human. Help humankind.

Using the guidelines provided at the top of this post, please submit your additions to this list in the comments section below. 

Also consider reading the other customer service posts on this blog and signing up for the always free newsletter Smart SenseAbilities in the upper right corner of this page.  I do not sell or share your email address – period.

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

---

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

Yours in service … Kate