Make Customers Smile w/ These Guaranteed Steps | #CX #CustServ
by Kate Nasser | 6 Comments »
Do you make customers smile? Do you want to? Before you start training your team members to make customers smile, define what you mean by that. Do you want them to be entertaining and fun like this waiter at Cracker Barrel?
Or does make customers smile mean exceed their expectations and wow them. In the first example, how to be entertaining is pretty evident. Yet, how to wow customers and make them smile needs further explanation. Here are guaranteed ways to do that!
Make Customers Smile. Image by Mike Nusbaum via Flickr Creative Commons License.
Make Customers Smile w/ These 13 Guaranteed Steps
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Show interest in them not just their money and potential profit to you.
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Be highly knowledgeable and use that knowledge to make them successful and happy.
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Make every interaction easy not hard and stressful.
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Trust customers and give them the benefit of the doubt vs. mistrusting them.
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Be consistent vs. confusing them with contradictions.
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Help customers and show gratitude during interactions with them not just at the end.
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Be humble and confident. Don’t pretend to know things you don’t. Learn from the customers!
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Work as a team. Customer care is everyone’s job.
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Close the gaps between teams – fix the problems and educate everyone. Customers love teamwork and competence.
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Offer options. Customers like options not mandates.
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Take their burdens from them. Make life easy and you make customers smile!
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Show integrity. Take ownership of your mistakes, apologize without excuses, and make amends.
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Love your customers. They are the reason you are still in business.
The Test of Time!
I’ve been advising leaders and teaching customer service for 25+ years. These guaranteed steps to make customers smile are time tested. And even with new generations of customers, they still work because your customers are all human beings. I have true life illustrations and examples for each of these steps. Contact me for more info on how to make customers smile.
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
Additional Inspirational Resource:
Use This Customer Value Creed to Inspire Your Teams
©2019 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission and guidelines. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.
Get more inspiration and actionable tips for high engagement results!
Buy Kate Nasser’s new book Leading Morale (Amazon.com).
I recently went on a trip with my daughter and we went into more stores than I can count. Unfortunately, most of the stores had terrible customer service. I swear some of the people who work there pretended that they couldn’t see or hear us. Unfortunately for them, we would have made a purchase but chose to leave instead. One store we walked into stood out above all of the others. I had never heard of the brand Huffer before but thought my son would like their clothes. We went in for a browse and were blown away by their sales team. They talked to us, laughed with us, shared who they were and were curious about us. I never felt the pressure to buy anything and in fact we left the store only to come back 20 minutes later and make a purchase. They used a lot of the components you’ve outlined here. When I got home, I looked them up and love the philosophy I found from their the CEO: “Dunstan encourages Huffer’s retail staff to approach customers in a relaxed way, prioritising friendly interaction over sales: “If they just want to come in and have a talk, you can have a talk.”
Thanks for leading the charge on the importance of making customers smile!
Alli
Hi Alli,
I could hear your remaining happiness in your email! It makes all the difference in the world when staff engage in a warm friendly way.
Thanks for another great example.
Kate
This blog grabbed my attention right away! A long time ago, I used to work at Cracker Barrel. One thing they always told us was that our smile was part of our uniform. A smile is contagious. And, a HUGE must for any face-to-face customer service interaction. Great article, Kate!
It surely it contagious Jessica. Just the other day I was walking into a grocery store and evidently had a big smile on my face. Someone actually stopped and said … “Such a great smile — makes me feel good!”
And I thank you for sharing your story about Cracker Barrel’s motto. It’s wonderful.
Kate
Love your short and to the point posts! Great points to read about and remember easily!
Thank you Natalya!!