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.

Improving Interpersonal Communication Skills

Ways to improve communication and relationships with your customers. Below are some key concepts:

• It's almost a certainty that on any given day you will interact with a customer who speaks another native language.
• People from other parts of the world, or who are different from you, will have a communications style and preferences that differ from yours.
• Effective communication skills can lead to more positive customer-provider relationships and stronger interactions in your personal life.
• Service breakdowns cost your organisation money and should be avoided whenever possible. Take proactive steps to correct any situation immediately.
• You can help ensure service success when interacting with all customers by simply focusing on their needs, wants, and expectations and delivering the same quality of positive global customer service. 
• Generalisations are often made about others as a result of perceptions that you might have.
• Stereotypes are typically based on partial truths, misinformation, and assumptions about another group. There is no place in today's business environment for stereotyping.
• No mater what your personal beliefs or feelings are about a particular person or group, you have a responsibility as an organisational representative to focus on customers in a manner that sends a positive message about your employer. 

Creating a Professional Service Image

What it takes to create a positive professional image and the various aspects that can influence your customer's perceptions of you and your organisation. Below are some concepts:

• Factors like tone of voice, responsiveness, knowledge, ability to help resolve an issue, and manners can often impact the outcome of a customer interaction.
• First impression are crucial and often lasting.
• From the time you first come into contact with a customer until the time a transaction ends, you are sending messages about yourself and your organisation.
• Your degree of professionalism and enthusiasm when you greet customers can leave the feeling excited about working with you and your organisation.
• In a multicultural world, you also have to remember that people from many cultures have specific expectations related to employee appearance.
• The manner in which you present yourself through grooming and hygiene and your manner of dress send a powerful message of either indifference or professionalism.
• In many instances tattoos and piercings not only raise some eyebrows but also can cause a negative customer reaction based on stereotypes of people who have such things.
• If your organisation has gone to causal or dress-down days, remember that the word casual should not be interpreted as sloppy.
• Unlike many other nonverbal cues used around the world, the smile I one of those, with a few exceptions, that can universally signal friendliness or friendship and acceptance.
• Simple eye contact can alert customers to the fact that you see them and are ready to respond to their needs, answer questions, or assist them if needed.
• Simply by using your customer's name, you may put your relationship with the customer on a positive track.
• When working with customers, your goal should be to build rapport and trust and create a situation in which you are both on the same wavelength.
• One strategy that you can use to develop rapport with customers is to apply concepts from the field of neurolinguistic programming.
• Gestures can send powerful positive or negative messages.
• Matching a customer's rate of speech is crucial to understanding.
• Basic expressions of good manners such as "please" and "thank you" are simple tools for demonstrating that you value and respect your customers.
• Demonstrate patience by listening to what your customers have to say to the point where you understand the issue and can assist them effectively.
• Your central focus should be on creating a positive environment in which customers have to say to the point where you understand the issue and can assist them effectively.
• Your central focus should be on creating a positive environment in which customers can satisfy their needs and experience positive global service.
• Credibility and believability are crucial aspects of the quality service equation.
• You do not have to be a supervisor or manager to assume responsibility for helping a customer of handling a situation.
• When customers perceive unethical behaviour, there is a good probability that they will not remain loyal to your organisation if something goes wrong.
• In today's global business world, people expect that you will provide products or services in a timely manner and better than your competition.

Delivering positive global service in a diverse world

Doing business in a global world in which you might encounter people who are different from and yet similar to you. You can also explore some of the possibilities fro providing positive global customer service to those customers, includes the following below:

• Diversity is not just cultural; encompasses human characteristics that are different from one's own but that occur within other culture and diverse groups.
• In our highly mobile, technologically connected world, it is not unusual for many service providers to encounter within the course of a day a wide variety of people with differing backgrounds.
• You must know and comply with various laws related to dealing with people, both internal and external, in variety of protected diversity categories. If your employer does not provide training on these laws, ask your supervisor about them and do research on your own to ensure compliance and equitable treatment of others.
• Positive global customer service involves being willing to do the extra little things that project a customer-centric attitude.
• As a service provider, you are the face of your organisation. What you do or say from the time you greet the customer until the transaction ends will cement an image in the customer's mind.
• Trust typically equates to customer loyalty - vital element of a positive global service environment because without it, you have no customer - provider relationship.
• It is crucial that you under promise and over deliver so that customers are pleasantly and consistently surprise with the level and quality of products and services they receive.
• For people from many countries, building a strong interpersonal relationship is extremely important and in many instances must be accomplished before business is conducted.
• Values are the "rules" that people use to evaluate issues or situations, make decisions, interact with others, and deal with a variety of situations.
• Although many cultures have similar values and beliefs, specific cultural values are often taught to members of particular groups starting at a very young age.
• The key to positive global service success is to be open-minded and accept that someone else has a different belief system from yours that determines his or her needs.
• Often, a sense of modesty is instilled in people at an early age, and a customer can display modesty in many ways.
• You do not have to agree with beliefs and practices related to gender roles, but you will need to take them into consideration when interacting with customers from countries in which these practices are common.
• Strive to recognise your own biases toward other people and groups and keep your personal preconceptions in check. This can help reduce the potential for disagreement.
• Often, expectations of privacy will vary from one country or region to another.

How to stay in tune with our customers

Staying in tune with our customers requires service providers to communicate effectively, with the proper usage of inquiry and advocacy. When service providers are able to listen intently to understand what customers are trying to say, with respect, and are conscious about their inner voices  that suspend judgement, they will be in better position to connect with customers. However, when service providers and customers come together simply to advocate different points of view, the outcome is likely to be disastrous.

How do we get our message across in a conversation? There are 4 points to note.

1. Empathise - think of how the receiver will interpret the message.Often, when we consider the avenues through which we receive information, we think only from our own perspective. We frequently fail to note that different people have disparate ways of processing information. Empathy is a crucial aspect of putting across a message. It also involves putting ourselves in the shoes of the other person.
2. Repeat the message - there are many ways to put a message across, and one of the ways to ensure that the message is put through thoroughly is to paraphrase and reiterate.
3. Share the message at the right time - everyone has their own preferred timing for receiving information. There can be a myriad of responses to the same message, depending on the current disposition of the recipient; effective timing helps the message to be brought across effectively.
4. Describing the message - one should focus on the key issues and not on the person or his/her character. Lest ego gets in the way of amending an otherwise easily remediable situation.

As much as we expect others to receive the message we are trying to put across, there will be times when we are on the receiving end as listeners. How can we ensure that we engage in active listening?

The key is to never, ever interrupt when the other party is speaking, because interruption prevents a seamless flow of the message from the other party. Apart from the implicitly rude connotations, interruption also cause us to be distracted, increases our inner voice, and hence deprives us of the chance to suspend our own judgement. As much as we want others to empathise when we speak, we also need to empathise as listeners, to try to understand and really capture the essence of what the speaker to continue to engage in the conversation meaningfully, and it encourages true sharing from the speaker.

Overall, be conscious of your own inner voice; avoid screening out information, filtering and making judgements. And each time you sense that you are making judgements, remind yourself to suspend your judgement and maintain an open heart and mind to receive the speaker's message.

Must maintain a communication balance between customers and us. This will lead to effective communication.

Feedback Management System

What constitutes a good feedback management system to facilitate the free flow of input from customers? A good feedback management system has the following features:

1. It welcomes and receives both negative and positive feedback.
2. It takes action to resolve negative feedback.
3. It keeps records of all positive and negative feedback for action and for follow-up.
4. It tracks the feedback patterns and trends, giving the organisation a sense of direction in the way it manages the feedback, especially the negative feedback.
5. And finally, it provides learning in the areas in which service can be improved.

Take a look at your organisation at the moment. Is there a feedback management system? Does the system feature the points mentioned above? If yes, treasure them, as complaints do not come easily. So treasure your customers and welcome their feedback, be it complaints or compliments. Unless you continue to engage your customers to her both their positive and negative feedback, chances are that you may lose them in a matter of time.

 

It is worthwhile for organisations to embrace complaints as feedback, as free lessons and as coaching from their customers, so that they can continue to thrive in the competitive business climate.

Feedback is GOLD

" Complaint" or " negative feedback" seem to be terrible words in the context of service. But a company that embraces complaints in a position light will begin to appreciate them for what they truly are - a pot of GOLD!

Taken negatively, complaints are simply expressions of dissatisfaction. Seen positively, complaints can be feedback that are as scarce as gold, voices coming from genuine customers who care for the improvement of a service provider.

Feedback constitutes identification of the service gaps that customers hope to see fixed. Feedback can also include affirmation for organisations that have done well. Be it positive or negative feedback, organisations that pursue real service see feedback as gold, and hence treasure it. Those that do not receive feedback miss out on great opportunities for free lessons from customers, and they ultimately lose out on improvement opportunities. The benefits of feedback include being a low-cost source of customers' information, being an avenue to meet customer needs in areas in which a service provider initially falls short, and putting the service provider in a position to service recover in the venet of a breakdown.

A good feedback management system welcomes both positive and negative feedback and keeps records and tracks trends while providing learning for staff in the areas where service can be improved.

Real service providers embrace customer feedback that is as scarce as GOLD.

Surprising services

Surprising services are something extraordinary that only you provide. A service provider that is among the first to pioneer a service standard brings delight to customers.

What are the benefits of having delighted customers? They include loyalty, positive word of mouth and increased purchases, leading to greater profit, rewards for staff, etc. The benefits of delighting customers go on and on. In the context of delighting customers, satisfied customers are not necessarily loyal customers, because they can attain their satisfaction elsewhere. Conversely, delighted customers re loyal customers.

Despite such a list of benefits awaiting organisations that delight customers, surprising services are not consistently demonstrated by most organisations over time, as they lose focus on delighting customers. They lose touch of engaging what is changing in the environment, what is changing with customers' expectations and what is changing in the activities of their competitors and in technology. Given the intense competition in most industries, industry players tend to emulate each other as they compete for the market share.

As per the figure above, the inner circle represents expected or basic services, which competitors will contribute to provide to the marketplaces in their respective product categories. If there are more players within the smaller circle providing the expected services, soon they will just compete among themselves on pricing. In order for organisations to delight customers, there is a need to expand the circle. In order for customers to receive more than just basic services, we need to expand the boundary with innovative products and service offerings, as represented by the outer circle services.

The outer circle services are also known as surprising services, because they take the lead over the competition, being the first offerings in the marketplace to delight customers. Thus, surprising services will achieve their purpose in delighting customers and in doing so, will differentiate themselves from expected services.

Companies that provide surprising services will continue to lead the pack in how they serve customers by keeping them happy beyond contentment - delighting and surprising them by providing such positive experiences that customers will have much to share with friends, colleagues and people in their social networks.

Real Service Providers provide surprising services to lead the pack in how they serve customers.

Fix the problem from the root cause

A key role of customer service providers is to fix customers' problems. The question is, do problems get fixes once and for all, or do problems generally resurface? We should approach and explore how to solve the problems in such a way that we fix a problem, we eliminate the probability of recurrence.

What are some of the strategies that service providers can employ to nip problems in the bud? The main concept involves looking beyond the obvious solution. Therefore, there are two strategies we should look into: (1) extending the cause and (2) extending the fix.

In extending the cause, the service provider will consider additional problems that could come from the cause; this means looking for root causes to eradicate the problem.
In extending the fix, service providers consider the possibility of new problems arising as a result of the fix. 

Nipping the problem in the bud allows service providers to solve customers' problems beyond what is apparent, such that when the problems are fixed, there is no chance of recurrence. This can be done either through extending the cause or extending the fix. The former involves looking for the root cause of a customer's problem and the additional problems that might come along with the initial problem; by beyond the surface to understand root issues, service providers are better able to eradicate the problem completely.

Extending the fix takes into account the new problems that might arise as a result of the fix, so that the fix is not simply taken at face value as the ultimate solution. Certain additional fixes can be applied to ensure that service issues will not recur. These include changes to the organisation's service culture, philosophy and values, rewards and recognition, and internal customer service support.

In solving customers' problems, service providers eradicate problems at the root cause.

Mistakes in Customer Service

Organisations make mistakes from time to time. After all, organisations are created by people and comprises of people, and people are imperfect. However, in the eyes of the customers, a mistake made is a blemish on the record. And as expectations rise over time, customers expect a service providers to recover from the mistakes initially made. Unless organisations conduct service recovery to make amends for their mistakes, they stand to lose their customers. One of the key things that great organisations do is to embark on loyalty recovery programmes to win the hearts of the customers.

The two main components that are often found in a loyalty programme are:

1. Customer loyalty maintenance
2. Winning the faith and loyalty of lost customers

Organisations can choose to dismiss lost customers as insignificant, or at the other extreme, can go all out to win every lost customer back. So, if your organisation wants to win every lost customer back, we have to begin by equipping your customer service providers, engage them in customer service dialogues, reward service excellence behaviour and promote people who are service champions. Empowering your people, the front-line service providers, is the first step that you may want to consider.

Ten principles of Empowerment:

1. Trust - it is essentially the foundation of effective empowerment.
2. Respect - is about embracing diversity.
3. Defined responsibilities - clear sets of direction and KPIs.
4. Authority - the degree of service recovery amount or action
5. Goals and standards - motivations and core values of the organisations.
6. Staff development - constantly upgrading service excellence skills
7. Information sharing - information is power itself
8. Feedback - self reflection
9. Reward achievements - recognise service excellence
10. Permission to fail - executing new things will require some elements of failure

Service providers need to be empowered to do a great job.

Traditional versus exceptional problem solving

The traditional view advocates that we solve problems only as they arise. Such an approach to problem solving is reactive; we only react when we see a problem, only scramble for the extinguisher in the midst of the blaze.

In the exceptional view of problem-solving, service providers anticipate problems. To anticipate is not to guess - to anticipate is to be observant and to use the five senses. People who adopt the exceptional view of problem solving are often proactive in both mindset and actions. Above all, they take control of situations instead of having the situations control them.

Service providers who engage in exceptional problem solving will know how to work cooperatively with the customers instead of focusing on who is right and who is wrong. The first step of exceptional problem solving in customer service is managing and building realistic customer expectations.

Solving customers' problems effectively means working them out right the first time. This requires quality and critical thinking on the part of service providers. Customers deserve the best of our attention. It is the customers who justify the existence of our jobs.

Real service providers anticipate and prevent potential problems from happening.

Facing challenging customers

In context of customer service, challenging customers are often dissatisfied; dissatisfied customers are often difficult; and difficult customers are often illogical and angry. The top reason why customers get upset and perhaps appear difficult is the feeling that no one is listening to them. Customer interface is about a customer service provider having face-to-face interactions or phone conversations with the customer to try to understand his/her needs, concerns, problems or issues. Customers want to be listened to, and in moments of dissatisfaction when their needs are not met, they do not want to listen to anybody.

Research shows that customers can become boiling mad when service providers are rude to them. No one in the right frame of mind can stand someone who is rude to his/her face; especially not customers who are paying for service from these providers.

Communications comes in the form of verbal expression and, in what constitutes a surprising majority of communication, the non-verbal. 55% of our language comes from our non-verbal expressions. Customer service providers often come across as being rude to customers without saying anything: this is usually expressed through the providers' non-verbal behaviour, such as facial expressions, intonation, withdrawal, body language and all other types of signals or gestures that they use to represent their involuntary feelings. Customers are sensitive to every gesture and every word said by a service provider. Hence, any rudeness that is put across to the customer will be received and will immediately be reciprocated.

Another contributing key factor that makes customers challenging is when service providers do not deliver on their promises - a consistent winner amongst the list of most common customer complaints. The most challenging customers manifest certain behaviours, either verbally or non-verbally, in the way they express themselves or engage with service providers. Many times, however, the service providers perceive customers as challenging when the facts show otherwise.

When customer get angry, they become illogical. One key point to note is the illogical customers do not respond to logic; illogical customers respond to emotion. Therefore, the key is to resolve the customers' emotional issues before resolving his/her problem through logical explanations. When customers know that their complaint has been received and acknowledged by service providers, they calm down due to positive feelings of being understood. Hence, it is important for service providers to listen and be sensitive to resolve the customers' emotions before resolving the problem. When a service provider is able to manage his/her verbal and non-verbal when faced with a difficult customer, he/she will be on the way to managing the customer better.

Challenging customers calm down when their complaints have been received and acknowledged by service providers.   

Technology versus customer service

Customers often feel a loss of control when they are dealing with an organisation or service provider over the telephone. Today's technologically driven yet somewhat impersonal culture has caused customers to experience what is commonly described as a loss of the "human touch" from their service providers. High technology coupled with a genuine personal touch factor serves as a good combination; however, when technology is mixed with low personal touch, it can be disastrous.

A lack of human touch can cause us to lose our customers, especially if customers feel a sense of loss. Indeed, in any form of contact with our customers, what they wish for is a human presence - someone to understand their needs and concerns, someone who is able to solve the problem directly without having to transfer the customer from one department to another. This principle of seamless transitions is otherwise known as One Voice.

One Voice refers to a system that provides the customer with the convenience of sharing his/her inquiries or predicament relating to a product or service just once with the service organisation's reception; the customer is subsequently put through to the relevant department to receive immediate measures for a solution.

I am sure you have experienced this before as a customer, having to reiterate the same story across a few departments within the same organisation, only to be misunderstood or cut off in the transfer process, which puts customers in fear and gives a sense of loss and frustration. It is important to note that customers want to have control. Customers often feel a sense of loss when they have been transferred from one department to another, and they need assurance of their sense of control during the process of connecting to the right party.

Some steps to help customers retain a good sense of control include the seeking of permission before transferring their call, getting back to customers on hold within 20 seconds, informing the colleague from the relevant department about the nature of the customer's call before transferring, and offering to call the customer back later to verify whether they have received the help requested.

A seamless connection will prevent customers from feeling a sense of loss. 

Customer Satisfaction

Achieving customer satisfaction requires service providers to have a clear understanding of the customers' expectations and the perceptions they are getting through their experience of a particular good or service. Excellent service providers bring about experiences that exceed the customers' expectations, leading to positive perceptions and the building up of brand loyalty.

In reality, organisations cannot afford to infinitely increase service standards without suffering from the rising costs that result from higher standards. This calls for a fine balance between optimising service standards and catering to customer satisfaction.

When service providers maintain their confidence and assertion when making their points, they actually get to protect their company's interest without compromising the interests of the customers. Therefore, being assertive with what service providers can and cannot do, and keeping the promises that are made to customers must be realistically balanced.

In conclusion, customers have their own moods, so called "weather" and feelings from time to time. Understanding the concepts of expectations and perceptions will help service providers offer an ESE (exceptional service experience). Given the rising expectations of customers, it is challenging for service providers to cope without increasing costs. Learning to manage customers' expectations remains the key to providing an ESE without imposing further costs on the organisation.

When positive perceptions exceed customer expectations, the customer has an ESE.   

Customer Loyalty

How loyal are your current customers to you, your products or your service? Customer loyalty is not something to be taken for granted. It is not a given; it needs to be earned. The word "earn" denotes that service providers have to work hard to achieve customer loyalty. A satisfied customer will not necessarily be a loyal customer, for the simple reason that a customer can easily be satisfied elsewhere - unless under extraordinary circumstances - with the competitors' products and services.
Earning customers' loyalty requires hard work and must come from a planned approach from customer service providers to implement initiatives that will make customers delighted so they will ultimately stay with the brand, products and services.

Service standards are usually defined as a whole to a customer, therefore every service touchpoints is equally important. If the customer had a positive experience overall from all touchoints, then they would enjoy a totally real service experience that is positive. Positive touchpoint experiences help to delight customers, and that builds up loyalty.

Building on the touchpoint concept is the secret to creating best impressions. The saying goes that "the first impression is the last impression". By creating a good first impression, you can be sure that your customers' last impression is also the best impression. Impressions can either retain customers or drive customers away.

Impressions are customers' perceptions which can lead to their coming back as loyal customers or to their leaving you for another service provider. The secret to creating the best impressions involves service providers taking steps to partner the customers, develop  positive attitude towards customers and communicate effectively with customers.

Positive touchpoints contribute to an excellent Total Real Service Experience, making customers feel great and building customer loyalty.   

Word of Mouth

The act of word-of-mouth is often preceded by an actual positive service experience. Essentially, service providers need to work on the customers' hearts and minds before they can gain word-of-mouth. The share of heart concept suggests that delighting customers is the key to connecting with the hearts of customers. Share of hearts refer to the extent to which the customer is emotionally linked to the service provider in response to the verbal and non-verbal acts of the service provider.

The share of hearts marks the start to how a service provider engages the customer., in the sense that customers form an emotional linked to the product, service or even service provider. Service providers need to work on the customers' hearts and minds before they can gain word-of-mouth.

Service mindfulness suggests that service providers are alert to both the spoken and unspoken needs of customers.

Service providers win the share of customers' hearts through their heartfelt and caring services, triggered by their service mindfulness. The sustained efforts of service providers move customers towards the share of mind, navigating into their subconscious and resulting in top of mind recall when they are again in need of the service. The share of voice is earned when customers are willing to testify about the goodness experienced from the acts of the service providers. Gaining the share of heart, share of mind and share of voice is becoming progressively more important in light of ever-increasing competition.

When customers are delighted, they become brand ambassadors and give their heart, mind and voice to the brand.

New perspectives to customer service

Traditional methods of gaining competitive advantage over other service providers have become less effective in this new era of social media empowered services. To succeed, service providers need to take on an entirely new paradigm when it comes to customer service: one which seeks to put customers first, is willing to go far beyond their expectations and strives to delight and surprise them. This change in service begins with a change in perspective.

Excellent customer service starts from within an organisation - from the way that service providers function within the organisation when working with internal staff and systems. The 3 important aspects that determine how well an organisation fares internally are its systems and processes, internal communication and personal support for staff. Excellent service begins here - getting these aspects right means a step in the right direction for the organisation.

Real Service Providers serve their customers as they would serve their grandmothers - wholeheartedly, with tender loving care to delight them.

 

How to facilitate feedback from employees?

"If you do your job correctly, there will be sufficient ongoing communication so that all your employees know what is expected of them and how well or poorly they are doing."

Below are 6 steps approach to facilitate feedback:

1. Identify successes and failures - Be specific. Don't tell an employee he or she is too often. Instead, tell him the exact number of times he or she has been late during a defined period. Be equally specific when offering praise, such as the amount of money or time a worker has saved the company. When talking to employees, focus on the action rather than on your conclusions.
2. Stop talking and start listening - Ask employees to respond to your observations and pay careful attention to their words and body language; ask questions as necessary to make sure they have had a full opportunity to get their views across. If you don't listen to what an employee has to say, it's less likely he or she will listen to what you have to say.
3. Discuss the implications of behaviour - If you are dealing with problem behaviour, convey the probable outcomes in clear and unmistakable terms. Likewise, let performing employees know if they are on target to receive a bonus or other recognition. Specific information about consequences provides employees with benchmarks against which to asses and adjust their behaviour.
4. Link past accomplishments to needed changes - Look for areas where the employees has been successful and point out how the traits that led to those successes can be applied to areas that need improvement. Don't just offer exhortations; build an employee's confidence by letting him know exactly why you think he or she will be able to handle whatever tasks are at issue. Explain how current workplace requirements are related to his previous accomplishments.
5. Agree on an action plan - Ask employees what steps he or she can take to address issues that have been identified. Solicit his or her suggestions. This is a powerful tactic because people are most likely to follow through on their own ideas than on what they are told to do by someone else.
6. Follow up - Set a date and time to meet again for a formal review on progress related to the action plan. But don't wait for that date to stay engaged with the employee. Instead, use the development of the action plan as the starting point for the more regular, informal feedback sessions that distinguish a good manager. Let employees know when they are on plan and when they might be falling short.

Instead of continually reprimanding your employees, who are fighting the battle for you in the front line, talk quite specifically about how that employee needs to improve. Give employee a goal to work toward, not a legacy to overcome. Your ultimate goal "is to energize and excite people about the role you need them to play and the development they need to go through".

Remember: Employees are your core asset in a successful business.

The Mystery of the Missing Wow!

Why it's difficult to find delightful experiences or even just good service out there?

There are hundreds of posters on company walls with quotes on the customer and how they should focus on them but very few act on them.

Why?

Here are several possible reasons:

1. Never experienced it before - positive experiences are not painted for them and they are not trained to recognise them and deliver them. If they have not had the chance to experience what it feels like to be delighted as a customer, they would not know.
2. Leadership focus - leaders should see connecting not delighting the customers as a necessary focus in order to grow the business. Resources should therefore be channelled to the right places. Training and equipment that will help deliver a positive experience to the customers will be a better investment.
3. Leaders not walking the talk - some leaders do tell all staff members that the customer is important and they should always put the customers' wants and needs first, but they may not act accordingly themselves.
4. Measures differently - many companies that preach that the customer is the most important being and that staff members must go to great lengths to please or delight the customers, but they measure staff members against all other indicators that are not related to the customer.
5. Many service staff don't have basic manners themselves - often it's not about 'service' or an 'experience'; it's just plain manners!
6. The "What's in it for me?" culture - a culture that calculates what we put in and expects the same or even more in return, we will be sorely disappointed. A true blue customer-focused person is a true giver-one who gives more and expect less.
7. Perception of the people - organisations focuses on getting its people equipped with what is necessary to deliver the positive experience and at the end of the day, appreciates their hard work and efforts and rewards them accordingly is necessary too. 

The Employee Wow! Experience

To deliver The Wow! Experience, one must first experience it.

The point is that staff who are managed well and given the best environment to do their jobs, in tun do their best to delight their customers.

Leaders of organisations who want to deliver The Wow! Experience must focus relentlessly on providing the necessary environment to make their staff positive and happy.

What does the company need o do to ensure The Wow! Experience for the employees?

1. Select the 'Best Fit' not the 'Best' - It is also very important to hire people who are positive about themselves and the world around them. They must, firstly, like themselves.
2. Equip them - Resources channelled into developing people are never a waste.
3. Empower them - Empowering builds a sense of ownership in the staff. This leads to them seeking the best for the customer and the company.
4. Recognise and reward positive behaviour - Recognition for the staff can come in many forms- a simple 'thank you', a pat on the back, an award given during the company dinner.
5. Involve them, build ownership - Front liners should not be looked upon solely as implementers of corporate strategy. They have valuable insights that could save the company thousands of dollars in market research activities.
6. Trust them! Trust them! and still Trust them! - Communication is the key in building trust.

The Customer Experience

Good service is not good enough. Today's customers are different. Their tastes are different, their demands are varied and they have raised the bar. Companies that want to make it have to open their eyes and ears and realise that the customer service landscape has changed dramatically.

The Wow! Experience is one where the customer's expectations are met and exceed at every stage of his interaction with you - from the beginning to the end. There is an emotional connection with the customer which cause him to respond positively in a way that helps grow your business - he buys, he returns and he tells others about you. Your engaged customers become loyal and choose to return and even become your 'salesperson' as they tell others about you.

The Wow! Experience involves the 3Cs:

1. Customer first focus - the key focus of the strategy is centred on the customer and how to connect with her. The people, place, product and processes are focused on the customer.
2. Customisation - tailoring and personalising components to suit the customer's specific wants.
3. Complete - an end to the experience - meeting and exceeding the customer's expectations at every stage of the transaction - from beginning to end.

Companies which get their customers to say 'Wow' are those which strives to go beyond and to exceed expectations at every stage. Emotional engagement makes these customers return, and tell others about you. Your business grows.

The Wow! Experience involves engaging the emotions over and above meeting the 'given' expectations of speed, quality and the like. Customers today are willing to pay a higher price for such experiences because they are rare. They also make customers feel like individual and specific needs.

The 4 Ps of the Wow! Experience

1. People - quality leaders who hire the right staff who are then trained diligently in the different products until they are truly skilled and confident.
2. Product - high quality and easy to use.
3. Place - appealing décor and a comfortable space to conduct business in.
4. Process - processes are developed with the customer in mind; efficient and consistent.

The Wow!Experience is about meeting and exceeding the expectations of the customer at every contact point to create something that is unique and memorable.

So from today onwards, make an effort to stand out from the crowd and be noticed - it pays to be different in a way your customer value.

Positioning Customer Service as a Profit Generator

It can be difficult for executives to consider the impact on customer service when making strategic decisions about their companies. They often lack direct contact with customers, and the limited customer service data they have is not as comprehensive, easy to understand, or reliable as the financial reports they are so comfortable using. However, leaders must understand that outstanding customer service is not a  cost to be minimised; it's an investment in future profitability.

Below is a summary of the solutions:

• Executives must capture and analyse customer satisfaction data to ensure strategic decisions are not based solely on financial metrics.
• Customer service leaders should dig deeper into their financial statements to understand the true cost of poor customer service.
• The long-term benefit of customer service investments should be carefully understood before implementing cost-cutting measures that might drive customers away.
• Investing in the right number of qualified, well-trained employees pays off when the employees are able to drive sales and customer satisfaction.
• Self-service technology can be tempting because of the promised cost savings, but the expense of lost customers and lost revenue can be high if the technology doesn't function properly or customers find it irritating or difficult to use.
• Executives should carefully consider the impact of any price or fee increase on customer retention, revenue per customer, an referrals before making a final decision.  

Helping Employees Overcome Emotional Roadblocks

Customer service is an emotional job. There are highs associated with knowing you helped someone, and there are lows that come from working with challenging customers, co-workers, or even bosses. Helping employees avoid or manage negative emotions is essential to creating an organisation that consistently serves its customers at the highest level.

Below are some solutions:

• Make employees, not customers, the top priority for the organisation. The employee-first approach fosters a supportive work environment, promotes a sense of belonging, and encourages self-esteem.
• Meet with employees - in a supportive and non-judgmental way - after they have encountered an angry customer to help them learn from their experience and develop skills for handling similar situations in the future.
• Encourage employees to develop friendships with their co-workers, so they will find more enjoyment in their work environment.
• Ensure that supervisors apply a positive and supportive leadership style that encourages dedication and commitment from employees.
• Make your company a place where employees can easily leave their personal troubles behind and look forward to coming to work each day.
• Help employees identify their personal attitude anchors to help them maintain a positive outlook or recover from a negative encounter.   

Helping Employees Demonstrate Empathy with Customers

Empathy does not always come naturally to employees, but they can learn to understand and validate their customers' emotions. Below is a short summary of solutions:

• Help your employees develop relevant, related experiences they can use to empathize with customers, such as giving them the opportunity to be customers themselves.
• Share stories and testimonials from real customers to remind your employees how delivering great service can make their customers feel understood and acknowledged.
• Hire employees who use your product or service, so they can easily relate to the people they serve.
• Train employees to understand how customers feel when they encounter a problem by asking employees to recall a similar experience they have had. Have them describe how the experience made them feel, then discuss ways they can help their customers avoid those negative feelings.
• Teach employees to use the pre-emptive acknowledgment as a technique to diffuse the negative emotions of customers before they explode.
• Show employees how to deliver service from their customers' perspective; you can start by demonstrating the correct way to hand change to a customer.
• Demonstrate empathy toward your employees when they experience negative emotions, to validate their feelings and prevent them from taking out their frustrations on a customer.
• Eliminate the sources of employee angst that could cause them to fail to identify and react to their customers' negative emotions. 

Helping Employees Establish the Right Roles

The service that employees provide is often dictated by the role they are playing. Great things can happen when employees understand their primary role is serving customers at the highest level. getting employees to make that commitment requires a conscious decision and the right working conditions.
Here is a summary of the solutions that can help your customer service representatives make the right choice:

• Align employee responsibilities with your company's service philosophy so that they will naturally deliver outstanding service when they are doing their jobs correctly.
• Have employees write a description of their jobs and the value they provide to their customers.
• Use the "thank-you note" exercise to help employees integrate a customer focus into their daily activities.
• Take extreme measures, if necessary, to avoid poor customer treatment and to compel your customer service reps to find new ways to achieve results. Avoid creating working conditions that could lead employees to subject their customers to poor treatment by maintaining a direct connection to customers and frontline employees, acting as a steward of your organisation's customer-focused culture, and understanding when to prioritise service over short-term cost efficiency.    

Helping Employees Pay Better Attention

Customer service should be priority number one for customer service employee, but as we have learned, actions speak louder than words. Employees often need help to pay careful attention to each customer.

Below is a summary of the solutions:

• Develop work processes and procedures that discourage employees from trying to complete more than one task at a time.
• Create automatic reminders that capture employees' attention at the right moment such as a pop-up screen that reminds an employee to return a customer's call.
• Establish and reinforce clear customer service priorities so that employees know where to focus their attention.
• Reduce the number of task customer service employees are expected to complete, so that they can devote more attention to serving customers.
• Help employees put customers first by maintaining an expectation that they proactively greet anyone who is in their vicinity.
• Train employees to use active listening skills when serving customers.
• Provide appropriate staffing levels so employees aren't tempted to compromise service quality in an effort to serve more people. 

Creating a Customer-Focused Culture

Employees are powerfully influenced by their workplace culture. Delivering outstanding service requires organisations to develop a positive, customer-focused culture - but it also takes more hard work, discipline, and dedication than many organisations realise. Here is a summary of the solution discussed below:

• Ensure that your customer service leaders act as role models who actively demonstrate a positive customer-focused attitude and encourage their employees to do the same
• Work closely with persistently negative employees to help them change their behaviour, or else remove them from the team if they are unwilling or unable to do so. These employees can be detrimental to both customer service and team morale if their behaviour is left unchecked
• Create a clear definition of your customer service philosophy so that employees receive clear direction and can easily understand how they can contribute
• Develop customer service goals that help motivate employees and keep them focused on providing the highest level of service possible
• Win the moments of truth that define an organisation's true culture 

Avoiding Mutually Assured Dissatisfaction

The best customer service organisations make it incredibly easy, instead of impossibly hard, for their employees to provide outstanding service.

Below is a summary:

• Take action to identify and address operational issues that contribute to customer service failures and frustrate employees
• Include employees in your organisation's efforts to continually improve customer service
• Engage employees by sharing customer service goals, then enlisting employees' help toward achieving them
• Avoid becoming blind to reality by avidly searching for icebergs - the small signs that could be indicators of big problems
• Approach operational problems by asking questions and gaining a true understanding of what's going on before jumping to conclusions about the solution

Avoiding the Creation of Double Agents

The double agent problem comes from a conflict between the company and the customer, with the employee stuck in the middle. The ultimate solution for any company trying to provide outstanding customer service is to identify these harmful pressures and neutralise them as much as possible. It should be easy and natural for an employee to want to do the right thing for both the customer and the company.

Here is a short summary to help employees avoid becoming double agents:

• Avoid policies that are certain to anger customers and require your employees to face their displeasure
• Whenever possible, allow employees to use their discretion when carrying out corporate policies; give them the flexibility to meet the needs of the company and the customer
• Look beyond a single transaction to consider the lifetime value of a customer when setting restrictive policies or implementing new fees
• Trust that the vast majority of your employees and customers are not trying to take advantage of you
• Make sure employee are adequately monitored so that you can guide their performance
• Identify and eliminate incentives that may cause employees to act against the company's best interests
• Spend considerable time interacting with employees and customers, to avoid becoming insulated from reality when making policy decisions

Getting Employee Buy-in

Aligning employees' motivation with their company's interests can be a challenging task, but it's an essential part of building an organisation capable of delivering outstanding customer service. Companies should strive to put employees in a position where their intrinsic motivation leads them to the right action, rather than try to manipulate employees through incentives that may have negative side effects.

Summary of solutions:

• Hire people who will love their job and love your company, so they will naturally want to do what you ask them to do
• Involve frontline employees in decision making and problem solving so that they will take ownership of company goals
• Frequently monitor employee performance so that you can recognise positive achievements and correct mistakes
• If you must use financial incentive such as commissions or tips, be sure to align them with team goals rather than individual accomplishments
• Do not assume that commissioned or tipped employees need less supervision than employees who aren't paid by their performance. They require the same monitoring and coaching as anyone
• Make employee recognition an unexpected event and offer it only after good performance. This approach shows employees they are appreciated while keeping their focus on customer service rather than earning a prize. Use broad service guidelines rather than detailed standards to allow for more flexibility and personalisation

Overcoming Challenging Customers

Understanding the role that customers play in their service experience isn't an excuse for poor employee performance. As you can see, poor customer service can often be attributed to poor employee performance, poor leadership, poor policies and procedures, or all of the above.

However, customer service leaders must understand all the reasons it can be so challenging to make customers happy - including the fact that the customers isn't always right.

Some solutions:

• Create generous, customer-friendly policies that make it easier for customers to be right
• Train employees to avoid placing blame when a customer makes an error, and to focus on finding a solution instead
• Avoid arguing with customers in public forums such as Twitter, but publicly acknowledge their feelings and offer to address the issue in private
• Identify new customers and take a moment to let them know what they can expect so that they won't encounter any unpleasant surprises
• Remember that customers tend to hear what they want to hear, so be careful not to be overly optimistic when setting expectations
• Operate by the Platinum Rule: Treat customers the way they want to be treated
• Learn how to get better results with self-sabotaging customers by conducting a Circle of Influence exercise
• Invite abusive customers to take their business somewhere else to prevent them from draining resources, driving away other customers, and discouraging employees

Carquest Standards of Service Excellence

The Hazards of Subcontracting Your Hellos and Good Byes

Be cautious about subcontracting your greetings and your farewells. Of course, subcontracting is often a necessary part of business: properly handled, it can be appropriate and desirable. But such arrangements can also be Trojan Horses, filled with enemies of your cause who ransack the precious goodwill of your customers - sometimes even before the customers quite make it at your doorstep.

We are being melodramatic in our language about this to make sure you mark our words with special care: The quality of the subcontractor's entire staff, their selection process, their training standards, their appearance and grooming, their code of conduct - everything - has to be absolutely integrated with your own. From the point of view of customers, if employee wears the company logo or answers their calls or opens the doors for them, that employee is your employee.

To make matters much worse, so many of these subcontracting - gone wrong happen at hellos and good byes. the rationales do not help:" Oh, he works for the security company"; "Oh, they are the parking subcontractors"; " I am sorry she barked at you on the phone- she is a temp."

In essence, such statements are a way of coaxing customers to accept the idea that "that is not us". To your customers, such statements are just infuriating baloney. "If I buy a product from you", explained one such customer, "and it's serviced by somebody else you hired, well, I am sorry; to me that is your service." And if that rough service happens at an entry or exit point, it is harming a critical, emotion-filled moment that has a strong hand in shaping your customer's perception of your brand.

Excellence Service Tips Part 6

1. You basically have 2 choices when it comes to growth: do more of what you are already doing, or do different things. In our framework, doing more of what you are already doing means growing the existing service model. Doing different things means building new service models.
2. If you want to grow your existing service model, you must first take control of it. This typically means that you have to increase your standardisation. Most organisations, it turns out, have to give up some degree of responsiveness to the needs of some customers if they want to scale the business. This does not have to mean, however, that you must sacrifice overall quality. You can use various strategies to defy the expected trade-off between standardised operations and the level of service a customer experiences.
3. An alternative growth model is the multi-focused firm, which means that multiple service models within the same organisation are each individually optimised for a distinct operating segment, each strategically good or bad at certain things. These models often show up as distinct brands or at least distinct business units. From a structural standpoint, the multi-focused firm is a shared-service platform where multiple service models share at least some of the same back-office services.
4. Multi-focused firms succeed when their individual service models create some kind of mutual benefit for each other, either economies of scale or economies of experience. Organisations that achieve economies of experience are good at sharing and leveraging knowledge across service models.
5. There are 2 primary barriers to making the multi-focused firm work. The first is a lack of political will to draw the line in the right place, that is , to optimally determine which service will be shared and which will stay within control of the individual service models. The second barrier is the willingness to tolerate uncompetitive quality or pricing in the company's shared services.

Excellence Service Tips Part 5

1. It's not enough to design your service model right. Uncommon service is achieved when great organisational design meets a culture of service excellence. A basic way to think about it is this: service excellence is a product of design and culture
2. The right culture is not an universal concept. Your right culture is a distinct asset that must be consistent with your organisation's service model
3. One way to understand culture is to break it down into its relevant components. Edgar Schein's culture framework, which loosely divides a culture into artefacts, behaviours, and shared basic assumptions. As he argues; to change behaviour, you have to change the way people think. To change the way people think, start with the underlying assumptions that drive that thinking.
4. Great service organisations tend to do 3 things well in their relationship with culture. They have a deep clarity about the organisational culture they must cultivate in order to compete and win. They are effective in signalling the norms and values that embody that culture. And they work hard to ensure cultural consistency, alignment between the desired culture and organisational strategy, structure, and operations. 

Take Control of Good Byes

Good byes are often rushed - or skipped altogether. After all, you are frequently so relieved to have gotten one job wrapped up successfully, and to be able to move on to the next one. So a transaction often ends with an invoice. What a wasted opportunity! If your customers are happy, the good byes is your last, and one of your most notable, chances to bond with them, to add an important final chapter to the service story.

Try to close each interaction with your customer in way that is memorable and sincere. Too many otherwise-fine service experiences come to a miserable close that consists solely of handing back a credit card or "OK" or "next". How much hard-earned good will is lost that way? A lot.

So, try to never close an interaction without providing a personalised farewell and an invitation to return. If handled properly, this farewell will be personal, resonant, and long lasting - but before you move to the closing, make sure you ask a final question, slowly and sincerely: " Is there anything else I can do for you?" If the answer is "No, thank you," then move to the closing, as follows:

• Personalise it: Use the customer's name, for starters. Offer your business card, if appropriate for your type of business. Beyond these obvious things, customise your language to fit this customer's history with you. For example: if this is the last day of a convention or holiday, add your sincere wishes for safe travel. If you are a retailer, express your hope for satisfaction with the item purchased.
• Make it resonant: If appropriate, give a parting gift. It can be a lollipop for customer's child, a vintage postcard, or a book. An ideal gift I something that is emotionally resonant with your brand as well as appropriate to the customer. Invite your customer to come back again as she leaves.
• Long lasting: Unless inappropriate for the type of purchase, send a follow-up note. Persona and handwritten is better than pre-printed - this is the best $1 investment you may ever make.

Your good bye at the end of successfully resolving a customer's trouble call should never morph into an attempt to make an additional sale. Trouble calls need to be about just one thing: solving the customer's problem. Customers feel especially vulnerable and dependent on you during these calls, because you are the only one who can help them. Since they feel one down, for you to sneak in a sales pitch at the last moment can come across as having their arms twisted or being bait-and-switched. Yes, they may buy whatever you are pitching at that moment, but they will often resent you for it later.

The customer May come in Contact with You Earlier Than You Expect

Remember that service begins as soon as the customer comes in contact with you - but only the customer gets to determine when that first moment is, and it may be much earlier than you think, or would wish. For example, suppose a customer parks his car in a retailer's parking lot, and the first things he sees are broken chain link fencing and cigarette buts strewn all about. In this instance, the first contact has occurred, unbeknownst to the retailer, who now must struggle to overcome this negative impression, It's unfair, but it's reality. This is why every carefully managed resort pays attention to the arrival sequence: the flowers, the signage, the friendly security guard at the gatehouse, the doorman. By the time you get to your room, you should feel gently transported to another world.

Excellence Serivce Tips Part 4

1. Service customers don't just purchase a service; they also participate in creating it. Among other things, they make the service faster or slower, better or worse, cheaper or more expensive to deliver - for themselves and for other customers. They are active producers of the value they end up consuming.
2. Customers can be more or less involved operationally, depending on your industry and your specific design choices - for example, how much self-service you build into your model and whether you involve your customers in your improvement efforts.
3. The more dependent your service business is on the behaviour of customer-operators, the more important it is to manage them successfully. Similar to employee management, the four components of a successful customer management system are customer selection, training, job design and performance management.
4. Not all customer-operators are alike. When compared with each other, they are faster slower, smarter, pickier, later, earlier, or more or less prepared to perform their operational roles. This diversity increases the cost and complexity of running a service business.
5. Assume that you don't know exactly how your customer re affecting your operations or how well your efforts to manage them are really going. Reframe any certainties as hypotheses that need confirmation. Test them. Fortunately, the data you need is usually right at your fingertips.

Which Level of Service Do You Provide? Let Them Know from "Hello"

One of the first things a greeting does is convey the level of service a customer may expect from your establishment. Are they going to get non-compliant service, compliant service, or anticipatory service?
Non-compliant service will push away customers every time. They asked for a glass of water and received nothing - except a grudging set of directions.
Compliant service is pretty much the baseline for the contemporary business world. It doesn't offend customers, but it won't win them over either. Complaint service can be well-executed, but it's not going to build loyalty for your brand.
Anticipatory service is extremely rare. But as we have discussed, this is where customer loyalty is created. When customers' wishes are anticipated, they get to bask in the magical feeling of being cared for. That feeling crates loyalty, which builds strategic value for your company.
SO, if you can tip your hand at the front door that this exceptional level of service is what they expect - if you can manage to literally "have them at hello" - you will predispose your customers to think well of you throughout the rest of the service experience

Why Efficient Processes Can Transform Service

We understand why service-focused teams tend to be sceptical about the relevance of systems like Lean Manufacturing. After all, to stand out and inspire confidence, we strive to anticipate - to meet customers' needs ahead of time -  because "just in time" can mean too darn late. We insist on keeping "excess" inventory, because it means we can maintain our high service standards even when unexpected demand occur. We even encourage our employees to make "repetitive" motions on behalf of customers precisely because willingness to be inefficient on their behalf is read by our customers as caring. More generally, we often need our employees to be "inefficient" in their caring for customers, because it enhances the customer's valuation of us.

For these reasons, our kind of enterprise seems more easily reconciled with a second principle of Lean Manufacturing: Value is determined by your customers. If it takes a thousand "inefficient" experiences to create loyal customers with confidence in us, so be it. Yes, It's slow, hard work to provide the kind of lavish, painstaking attention that produces unqualified positive reactions. But when our customers' satisfaction and loyalty are high, they value us highly. And when we are highly valued, we earn more. Hard measurements such as defect reduction metrics are important in service as well as in manufacturing, but there is something more here as well: In service-focused businesses, our customers don't tend to quantify the source of their happiness with a generalised glow, a vague feeling that they like us and want to return, and a desire to tell their friends about us. That is the only sort of "value assessment" our loyal customers tend to assign to superb service.

so can the "efficiency value" concept really help us serve our customers better? It can, we believe - so long as you restrict its territory a bit. We do want to be highly efficient - especially behind the scenes. Improving behind-the-scenes efficiency also serves our customers well by reducing errors, improving delivery time, and keeping staff fresh and alert.

Similarly, in online commerce, behind-the-scenes streamlining of customer choices through analysis of customer patterns increases value for company and customers want to proverbially "help out in the back" by doing their own account management, this can increase your efficiency and help you provide faster service at a lower price. We recommend such self-service be voluntary in most business contexts, or that you at least include systems that monitor customer frustration levels an provide them with many escape hatches - like effective, well-staffed online support chat and a toll-free hotline, just in case they get stuck. 

Write-Offs lead to Write-Offs

It doesn't always feel good to go to extreme lengths to pacify a customer. It can be hard to remember the upside, to know that your work is ultimately going to pay of. So here is an overriding philosophy which can help you through thankless moments: Individual customer are irreplaceable. Regardless of the size of your market segment, once you start writing customers, we can predict the day in the future when you will be out of business. Think you have a huge market and it is okay to kiss off customers and replace them down the road? Making this assumption will let imports chip away at the edges until there was little remaining as a core.

My suggestion is that you think of every one of your customers as a core customer - and treat the loss of a customer as a tragedy to be avoided.

Who should handle customer complaints?

Everyone should handle customer complaints. Of course, not everyone is going to be equally involve in customer service, nor should each employee be trained in the most specialised service. We do believe it is important that all employees participate to some degree - to the extent of their trainability and the extent to which they interact with the customers.
But who should handle cases that can't be resolved by a staffer on the front line? In other words, who should serve as "the manager" for a customer who demands to "speak with a manager"? Here are a couple of guideline:

• Empower your employees to be able to resolve the issue whenever possible without getting to the "manager" level.
• When unavoidable, you need the designated "manager" to stand out in 2 areas: as a sharp and eager problem solver and as a virtuoso at connecting empathically with people. If you have hired and trained appropriately, all of your staff will have some strength in these areas. But only about 1 in 10 will be unusually gifted in both areas. Those 10% should be your designated service "manager" - if indeed you choose to have such a position.

If you are going to involved the whole company in customer service, you should involved them fully: entrust them with broad discretionary powers to respond flexibly, creatively, and intensively to service errors.
So in order to keep customers happy, your people will need to be able to respond in an empowered and immediate way to service failures - without waiting for a manager's okay. This carte blanche approach has grown even more important in these days of customer rebellions Twittering out of control: Only with immediate and broad discretionary powers is there a chance your frontline employees will be able to defuse complaints before they get posted online.

Excellence Service Tips Part 3

1. The goal of an excellent service organisation is to deliver outstanding results with average employees
2. Many companies design service models for employees they don't have - for a payroll filled superstars when, in fact, there's a healthy range of talent and initiative on the team. Capture this reality in the design of the business model
3. Successful employee management systems have 4 main components: selection, training, job design and performance management. These components must be internally consistent and aligned with the rest of the service model. There's no such thing as good or bad selection. The issued is whether it's consistent with the rest of the employee management system and whether the system is consistent with the rest of the service model
4. IT solutions can help or hurt your employees' productivity, often in dramatic ways. IT tools that work are sensitive to the employee experience, including how and when data is entered in the rhythm of a particular job. The best solutions are developed in tandem with the role itself - not piled on after a job design is already in place
5. The average service employee is overwhelmed by the increasing complexity of his or her job. When a company identifies a gap like this between operational complexity and employee sophistication, it has 2 choices: train and hire differently or redesign the job so that your current team can do it

How should you compensate a customer for a service or product failure?

It depends. And that variability, in fact, is what's most important. Customers have diverse values and preferences- so your people who placate disgruntled customers need to be given enormous discretion. Still, there are principles that apply:

• Most customers understand that things can and will go wrong. What they do not understand, accept, or find interesting are excuses. For example, they don't care about your org chart. You mentioning that a problem originated in a different department is of no interest to them.
• Don't panic. Customers' sense of trust and camaraderie increases after a problem is successfully resolved, compared to if you had never had the problem in the first place. This makes sense, since you now have a shared experience. You have solved something by working closely together.
• Avoid assuming you know what solution a customer wants or "should" want.Ask. And if a customer makes a request that sounds extreme or absurd, don't rush to dismiss it. Even if it seems on its face impossible, there may be a creative way to make the requested solution, or something a lot like it, happen.
• Don't strive for "fairness" or "justice". Our archetypal doting Italian mama doesn't investigate whether her bambino obeyed the sidewalk speed limit before comforting him, and a customer's warm feelings for a company aren't about fairness. They're about being treated especially well.
• Learn from customer issues, but don't use them as an opportunity to discipline or train your staff in front of your customer. This may sound obvious, but it happens quite often. Watch out for this flaw, special when you're under stress.
• Don't imagine you are doing something special for a customer by making things how they should have been in the first place. The chance to get it right the first time? It's gone. So re-creating how things should have been is just a first step. You need to then give the customer something extra. Mam bandages a knee and offers a lollipop. If you aren't sure which "extra" to offer a particular customer, just make it clear you want to offer something. If the customer doesn't like red lollipops or doesn't eat sugar, she will let you know. Then you can decide together on a different treat.
• Keep in mind the lifetime value of a loyal customer. A loyal customer is likely worth a small fortune to your company when considered over a decade or two of regular purchases. Research shows that the lifetime value of a loyal customer to be up to $100,000 and occasionally more. It is well worth figuring out that number and keeping it in mind if you ever feel that temptation to quarrel with a customer over, say, an overnight shipping bill.

Excellence Service Tips Part 2

1. Service excellence must be funded in some way. If not, you risk delivering gratuitous service, service features that are donated to customers but never paid for in any way.
2. There are 4 ways to fund a premium service experience: (a) get customers to pay you extra for it, (b) reduce costs in ways that also improve service, (c) improve service in ways that also reduce costs, or (d) get customers to enjoy doing some of the work for you.
3. Extra service fees aren't inherently good or bad. Their success depends on the specific contract you have with customers.
4. A loyalty program is one way to get paid for  premium service experience. True loyalty programs-programs that increase customers' willingness to pay a premium price- are rare, largely because most loyalty programs are mislabelled retention programs.
5. For self-service to be part of an uncommon service experience, customers must prefer self-service to a full-service alternative. 

CEO of Zappos saying

In 2009, the CEO Tong Hsieh spelled out the company's approach more explicitly:

We view most of the money that we put into the customer experience as our marketing dollars. The number one driver of our business is repeat customers and word of mouth, so most of the money that we would have spent on paid advertising we put toward things like free shipping both ways, surpeise upgrades to overnight shipping, our call centre, and our warehouse, which run 24/7- which isn't actually the most efficient way to run the warehouse. The most efficient way is to let the orders pile up, but because we run it 24/7 to get our orders out as quickly as possible, customers can order as late as midnight Eastern(time), and it is on their doorstep 8 hours later. That creates that 'Wow!" effect, and they remember that for a long time. And then they tell their friends.

The saying above shows us that such revenue doesn't strictly comes from marketing strategies or even advertising. Most of all, it comes from service which makes people keep talking about it and it tends to sink into your customers first thought.

Excellence Service Tips Part 1

1. To achieve service excellence, you must underperform in strategic ways. This means delivering on the service dimensions your customer value most, and then making it possible-profitable and sustainable-- by performing poorly on the dimensions they value least. In other words, you must be bad in the service of good.
2. The primary obstacle to service excellence is not the ambition to be great, but the stomach to be bad. This is an emotional obstacle.
3. It's difficult to compete without understanding your customers' needs and how well your competitors are meeting those needs. Fortunately, customers are typically very willing to give you that information. And it's cheap and easy to ask them for it.
4. There is an important distinction between marketing and operating segments. Marketing segments tell us how to identify and communicate with different kinds of customers. Operating segments tells us how to serve customers differently. There is rarely a one-to-one mapping between these segments.
5. There are 2 key ways to improve service: (a)meet your customers' existing needs more effectively, or (b)convince your customers that they need something you already do well.
6. There is a different between financial models and service models. Service companies need to be "bilingual" to excel. 

The secrets of superior service

Giving good service in tough times makes good business sense. But how do you actually achieve it? Here are 8 proven principles you can use.

1. Understand how your customers' expectations are rising and changing over time. What was good enough last year may not be good enough now. Use customer surveys, interviews and focus groups to understand what your customers really want, what they value and what they believe they are getting from your business.
2. Use quality service to differentiate your business from your competition. Your products may be reliable and up-to-date, but your competitors' goods are too. Your delivery systems may be fast and user-friendly, but so are your competitors. You can make a more lasting difference by providing personalized, responsive and extra-mile service that stands out in an unique way your customers will appreciate and remember.
3. Set and achieve high service standards. You can go beyond basic and expected levels of service to provide your customers with desired and even surprising service interactions. Determine the standard for service in your industry, and then find a way to go beyond it. Give more choice than the usual, be more flexible than normal, be faster than average, and extend a better warranty than all the others.
4. Learn to manage your customers' expectations. You can't always give customers everything their hearts desire. Sometimes you need to bring their expectations into line with what you know you can deliver. The best way to do this is by first building a reputation for making and keeping clear promises. Once you have established a base of trust and good reputation, you only need to ask your customers for their patience in the rare instances when you cannot meet their first request. Nine out of ten times, they will extend their understanding and the leeway that you need. The second way to manage customers' expectations is to under promise, then over deliver.
5. Bounce back with effective service recovery. Sometimes things do go wrong. When it happens to your customers, do everything you can to set things right. Fix the problem and show sincere concern for any discomfort, frustration or inconvenience. Then do a little bit more by giving your customer something positive to remember- a token of appreciation, a discount or  free upgrade. This is not the time to assign blame for what went wrong or to calculate the costs of repair. Restoring customer goodwill is worth the price in positive word-of-mouth and new business.
6. Appreciate your complaining customers. Customers with complaints can be your best allies in building and improving your business. They point out where your system faulty or your procedures are weak and problematic. They show where your products or service are below expectations. They point out areas where your competitors are getting ahead or where your staff is falling behind. These are the same insights and conclusions companies pay consultants to provide. But a complainer gives them to you free. And remember, for every person who complains, there are many more who don't bother to tell you. The others just take their business elsewhere and speak badly about you. At least the complainer gives you a chance to reply and set things right.
7. Take personal responsibility. In many organizations, people are quick to blame others for problems or difficulties at work: managers blame staff, staff blame managers, Engineering blames Sales, Sales blames Marketing and everyone blames Finance. This does not help. In fact, all the finger-pointing make things much worse. Blaming yourself does not work, either. No matter how many mistakes you may have made, tomorrow is another chance to do better. You need high self-esteem to give good service. Feeling ashamed doesn't help. It doesn't make sense to make excuses and blame the computers, the system or the budget, either. This kind of justification only prolongs the pain before the necessary changes can take place. The most reliable way to bring about constructive change in your organization is to take personal responsibility and help make good things happen. When you see something that needs to be done, do it. If you see something needs to be done in another department, recommend it. Be the person who makes suggestions, proposes new ideas and volunteers to help on problem solving teams, projects and solutions.
8. See the world from each customer's point of view. We often get so caught up in own world that we lose sight of what our customers actually experience. Make time to stand on the other side of the counter or listen on the other end of the phone. Be a mystery shopper at your own place of business. Or become a customer of your best competition. What you notice when you look from the other side is what your customers experience every day.

Finally, always remember that service is the currency that keeps our economy moving. I serve you in one business, you serve me in another. When either of us improves, the economy gets a little better. When both of us improve, people are sure to take notice. When everyone improves, the whole world grows stronger and closer together.

Time to start now!!!!