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For leaders and teams to create trustworthy customer service, they must step up and deliver especially when the customers are having difficulty. More and more research shows that customers want service to be easy for them. The more effort it takes, the less they like it. This sounds like a no-brainer. Then why do so many leaders and teams step aside in tough moments instead of stepping up? How and why do they burden the customers?

Trustworthy Customer Service: Leaders & Teams Step Up Not Aside. Image by Marco Verch via Flickr.

Image by Marco Verch via Flickr Creative Commons License.

Trustworthy Customer Service: Step Up, Not Aside

There are so many times when leaders and teams burden the customers. Instead of stepping up and making it easier for customers, they step to the side.

Leaders and teams burden customers when …

• They themselves are afraid of conflict. Yet the customer sees this as abandonment. Now they have to solve their issues themselves.

• Customers are squabbling with each other. Leaders and teams don’t want to lose either customer so they tell customers to work it out for themselves. This drives customers away since there aren’t getting trustworthy customer service.

• They they are tired and stressed. Guess what? The customers are tired and stressed too. They expect service providers to be there for them anyway. Else they don’t think you deserve their trust.

• Customers aren’t clear. Yet customers need your knowledge and assistance just to explain the trouble. Trustworthy customer service steps up and assists!

Trustworthy Customer Service: How to Unburden Customers

1. Give them your full attention right from the start.

2. If other customers are intruding on them, set limits. Let everyone know you will serve them in turn.

3. Put customers at their ease. Diffuse their tension and frustration with great listening and empathy.

4. Determine the problem or request. Take ownership and don’t blame them.

5. Use your knowledge and expertise to deliver a solution without patronizing them for their initial emotion.

When you step up and unburden customers, they experience true care and trustworthy customer service. If you burden them with your assumptions, expectations, and side-stepping maneuvers, you are not worthy of their trust. They have a reason to look for better care elsewhere.

Exercise: Reflect on how you and your teams may be burdening customers. It could be your attitude, your terminology, your impatience, your assumptions, your expectations, your rigid ways, etc… After that, get busy and unburden them!

Related Post:
Are You Your Customers’ Advocate? If not you, who?
24 Tips to Make Customer Service Easy for Customers

©2017 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.

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Tags: accountability, communication, customer, Customer Care, customer loyalty, easy, leaders, Leadership, ownership, People Skills, retail, service, service desk, trust, trustworthy, Ultimate Customer Service