Know the Truth, the Whole Truth, Nothing but the Truth

No matter what company you work for or what exactly you do, you are engaged in the very important matter of serving your customers to the best of your ability. When I comes to service, no truth is too small to be careless about.

If you do not know the truth about what your customer need and want, think and feel, you will not make he right decisions about serving them. Yet many organisations fail to make a priority of seeking out the truth. They prefer to spend their days in wilful ignorance, basking in the conviction that they know everything there is to know about their customers. Finding the truth is not always comfortable, because it can have sharp edges. But if you don't know about those sharp edges, they will cut you when you lest expect it. You will see the blood on the bottom line when your customers run for the hills.

One reason you have to dig for the truth, rather than expect it to come to you, is that people don't like to rock he boat. True, some customers are quick to complain when they are unsatisfied; these are the ones who stand out. But what about all the ones who don't complain because they are too timid or simply because they are nice people who don't want to get anyone in trouble? In fact most customers would prefer to settle for less-than-perfect service rather that get into a confrontation or spend their valuable time hassling, and they won't make the truth known unless something really egregious or costly occurs.

Oscar Wilde once said that "the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple." That's why we need to work hard to discern the reality beneath the facts, whether it's in regard to your personal relationships, public affairs, or business. That's a good route to follow when it comes to customer service. The real truth is what the customers genuinely feel, not what you or your employees think they feel.

Find your own facts and not just listen to one sided story. Remember this. It can be applied in your daily life too.

Treat Customers the Way You Should Treat Your Loved Ones

In a way, your customers are like your family; without their loyalty and trust, the road ahead for your business would be rocky indeed. That is why you should treat customers the way you would treat your mother and father, spouse and children, an other loved ones to be treated.

Many organisations designate certain customers as VIPs, a status that entitles them to special perks and attention. I would not agree to this. To me VIP means otherwise. It means "very individual person". Just like every one in the family has his or her unique personality, so is each of your customers, with individual wants and needs.

In a way, all the Customer Rule involve making your clientele feel like "the world" by treating them the way you want your loved ones treated. So here lets focus on 2 specific parts of the customer experience, the beginning and the end. I learned how crucial those 2 moments are from my mother, who once told me how she loved being appreciated and treated well from she first walked an then leave this specific boutique. It makes sense that first and the last impressions have a tremendous influence on a customer's lasting impression.

So I highly encourage people in all business, not just stores or hotels or restaurants, but any outfit - whether it's a law firm or a financial service provider or a corporate headquarters - to place a friendly, outgoing employee at or near the entrance. Don't keep customers waiting; in this high-speed era they want to be served quickly. It has also proven that when an employee looks customers in the eye and speaks to them, shoplifting goes down dramatically, especially in retail outlets. That alone might cover the cost of having an employee at the door.

And don't forget to conclude the interaction in a way that encourages a return visit. Whether or not your customer or client made a purchase, or closed a deal, or signed on the dotted line, make sure to walk him to the door and thank him for coming. Show that you are grateful that he or she stopped by and let he or she know that you hope he or she will return again and again.

Why Good Service Might Not Result in a Great Experience

Customer experience:

• Customers expect to receive what I promised without unpleasant surprises, which is harder to deliver than most companies believe
• Most customer dissatisfaction is not caused by employees but by international company actions and by customers who fail to read instructions, manuals, and contracts but who still blame you for the problem
• No news is not necessarily good news; receiving few complaints does not mean you are delivering a great customer experience. You hear from only a small percentage of unhappy customer, which results in both complacency and the inability to recover via great service
• Good service does not mean a great experience. The damage is often done by unpleasant surprises, and the revenue is often unrecoverable by the time service even gets involved
• Your current customer experience is leaving huge amounts of money on the table, which can be quantified to motivate your management to invest in an improved customer experience
• Technology, properly managed, can almost always make the experience effortless and memorable for customer and can be inexpensive for the company 

Components of a consistently great customer service delivery mechanism:

• DIRFT (Doing It Right the First Time) sets basic expectations for customer honestly and deliver the product or service as promised.
• Service access strategy breaks down the barriers to asking for service, keeps all possible communication channels available whenever customer need them, and makes them all easy to use.
• Service delivery makes an emotional connection with customers, prevents problems, and educates and gleans information while responding to the basic request for assistance.
• Listening and learning uses a voice of customer process to measure the end-to-end customer experience and presents it as an unified picture that provokes action.
• Technology can enhance the performance of your people and processes in each of the customer experience components via anticipation, proactive communication, and tailoring the experience to each individual customer.
• You cannot manage what you do not measure and few companies measure all customer experience components effectively.

Apologise Like You Really Mean It

When you make a mistake, telling a customer "I'm sorry" is necessary, but by itself it is not enough. How you say those magic words matters just as much. Sincere apologies cannot produced by formula, and they cannot be programmed into a computer. Apologising as though you really mean it is more of an art form than a science. That said, here are some general tips for making a genuine apology:

• Acknowledge exactly what happened. Do not issue a generic apology. It is important that the offended parties know you understand why they are upset.
• Take responsibility. Examine objectively how you personally contributed to the mishap, or what the people who report to you did, then own up to it.
• Time it wisely. Some apologies should be made as quickly as possible, while others ought to be delayed.
• Choose the right medium for your message. Where and how you apologise also matters. The main factor to consider when choosing the medium for your apology should be the strength and history of the relationship and of course the severity of the damage.
• Make it brief and unambiguous. No excuses. No elaborate explanations. Get right to the point.
• Reassure them that it will not happen again. You might not be able to guarantee a mistake-free future, but you can guarantee that you will take action  to prevent a recurrence of what went wrong in a specific instance.
• Offer restitution. Try to come up with something of value to help make amends.
• Be sincere. Nothing matters more than this. Make sure the customer knows you truly mean it.

Remember, a sincere "I'm sorry" is a small investment, and the returns can be huge.

Customer Service is NOT a Department

In the business world, customer service is far more than a department name or a desk that shoppers or clients go to with problems and complaints. It's not a website, or a phone number, or an option on a pre-recorded phone menu. Nor is it a task or a chore. It's a personal responsibility.

It is not the responsibility only of people called customer service reps. It is a responsibility of everyone in an organisation, from the CEO to the newest and the lowest ranking frontline employee. In fact, everyone in the company should be thought of as a customer service rep, because in one way or another each of them has some impact on, and bears some responsibility for , the quality of the customer experience. Even if you never see or speak to a customer, you need to treat everyone with whom you interact- your vendors, your creditors, your suppliers, and so on - with respect and sincerity. Great service serves the bottom-line business objectives.

Time and again, customer service has been shown to be the best way to distinguish an outstanding company or organisation from it's competitors. No matter what business you are in, great service is a competitive advantage that costs you little or nothing but adds huge value for your customer. And it is one advantage you cannot afford to pass up, because in today's highly competitive marketplace your customers will leave you in a heartbeat if your service does not measure up.

Don't get confused about the differences between the services you sell and customer service. Services are what consumers come to you for and pay for. Customer service encompasses the entire experience, from the moment a person log on to your website or walks through your front door until the moment they log off or walk out. It's what brings the human into a transaction. Emotional element is as important as or even more important than the money that changes hands. That is why it should be delivered not just competently, but with ultimate respect, sincerity, and care.

Therefore, everyone in a company should be considered part of the customer service department. Great service does not cost any more money than average poor service. Yet the returns it delivers are spectacular.

The role of technology in closing the global service gap

Technology is affecting positive global customer service and some ways in which service providers are using a variety of technology formats to meet the needs of their customers. Below are some key concepts that you can explore:

• Billions of dollars are being spent worldwide to create systems through which customers can access products and services to satisfy their ever-changing needs and whims.
• The wonderful thing about technology is that through the use of such innovations, even small organisations can create an image equal to that of their larger counterparts, since someone visiting their Webiste or contacting them would have no idea how many employees or assets they have.
• With the fast pace of today's world, customers have come to expect that an organisation will invest in service-based technology initiatives, customers and service providers benefit from such applications.
• Convenience, cost-savings, efficiency and enhanced information flow are some of the benefits of information technology use when delivering service.
• Integration of technology components and training of employees on effective usage and etiquette are key elements of successful organisational marketing and service strategy.
• Like computer, cell phones, and other technology, service systems re evolving at an extremely rapid pace. Tasks previously handled by people are now often completely automated. The key to implementing a service technology strategy is to recognise the extent to which it should be used.
• Just as with any other area of human interaction, in dealing with your customers, there are some basic rules of etiquette that you should consider when communicating through technology. If you fail to adhere to some fairly standard practices, you risk a breakdown in the service-provider relationship.

Addressing service breakdowns

As part of a successful business venture is the ability to predict, plan for, and deal with unforeseen breakdowns in service. Below are some strategies for potentially preventing and dealing with service breakdowns:

• Because humans are complex and bring a variety of backgrounds to a customer-provider encounter, even though a product or service delivered may function exactly as it was designed, it may be perceived as defective if the customer expected it to perform in another manner. This can lead to service breakdowns.
• There are so many potential reasons that something can go wrong when you are interacting with a customer or potential customer. By considering each when you deal with a customer, you can potentially avoid situations in which your customer, you can potentially avoid situations in which your customers become angry, complain to management, defect to a competitor, or take some other negative action.
• To help reduce emotion when dealing with a stressful customer situation, "sandwich" the emotional issue between 2 customer-focused messages.
• Service recovery efforts are made to salvage the customer-provider relationship and help ensure future customer loyalty when something goes wrong in the service process.
• Using the six-step problem solving model is one strategy for figuring out what customers need and what to do when they do not receive what they expected.