Customer service – people research it; write PhD dissertations on it; publish articles and books about it; and even invent training programs and courses to empower other people to provide it. With all of this high profile attention aimed in the general direction of understanding and providing customer service, you’d think there was something mysterious or highly complicated about it. Actually, just the opposite is true! Excellent customer service is just good, old-fashioned “human” sense. By this I mean that the more you can offer your customers the kind of attention and service that helps them to feel respected and cared for, the more they will know that you value them as human beings instead of regarding them as numbers on a cash flow statement. The human touch – that is what customer service is all about!
For instance, a retired woman, single and living alone, goes to an appliance store to replace her 30 year-old washing machine that has finally worn out. She quickly discovers that the world of washing machines has expanded quite a bit since she purchased her previous machine. Feeling unsure of the best choice, she decides to purchase one of the large and more expensive models, assuming that it will have all of the best features and do the best job. Fortunately for her, a sales representative finds her about that time and begins to ask her some helpful questions. How many people in your household? What is a typical-sized load of laundry for you? What kind of fabrics are most of your clothes made of, and how soiled do they get (ground in dirt and grass stains from gardening, for instance)? The sales representative quickly concluded that this lady would be much better served with a smaller, simpler model. His advice saved her over $250! He could have simply taken her money and sold her whatever she asked for, but he asked himself, “How would I want my Nana to be treated if she were shopping for a washer?” He gave her the same care that anyone’s grandmother is entitled to; he treated her with “human sense.” He lost the chance to make the company an extra $250, but he made a friend for the company, and where do you suppose she will go when she has to replace her refrigerator next year?
Also, don’t be afraid to offer what are sometimes referred to as “customer-led services.” All this means is don’t be afraid to bend the rules a little to give the customer what he needs. What do you do when a small-business customer really only needs a half-pallet of shipping material? The company policy is to not split pallets, in which case you could very likely lose this sale and this customer. Better to take the risk of finding someone else down the line who could use an extra half-pallet than to risk losing this sale today. If necessary, it is acceptable to mark up the price slightly to the customer for the first half-pallet; just explain that it is to compensate for the fact that the company doesn’t usually allow you to do this at all, and the customer will understand. He is just glad he was able to purchase what he really needed. Later, you can throw in the extra-half pallet at a discount to someone who came in looking for a deal on an oversized order. At the end, you break even on the pallet and gain two new repeat customers, because you let the customers take the lead in purchasing what they needed instead of what your policy said you could sell them.
Finally, you run the customer service program, so don’t let the program run you. As I mentioned at the beginning, people invest a lot of time and energy into studying customer service, and many of these people end up designing customer service programs and selling them to companies. Unfortunately, there are very few customer service programs that are created strictly for the purpose of addressing the needs of the customer. Most programs begin by trying to figure out how to respond to the requests of the customer WITHOUT costing the company a lot of time, energy and MONEY. This is just another way of saying that most customer service programs are designed to put the needs of the company first, and the needs of the customer second (or even farther down the line.) I promise you, customers will figure out eventually that you aren’t really interested in their needs, and they WILL go somewhere else, taking their money (which could have been YOUR money) with them. If you start noticing that the customers are beginning to complain as much about the character of your customer service program as they are about the need they originally called about, ditch the program and find something that works better. And by “works better” I mean something that does a better job of letting the customers know you are putting them first.
Now that is “good, old-fashioned, human sense.”
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February Customer Service Quick Tip of the Month - Four Needs You Must Meet
It would be easy to assume that when a customer contacts your refund and return shipping hotline, she has a need to return something and get her money back. That is not exactly true. You can actually meet that need and still lose her as a repeat customer if you don’t meet four other needs she has that are even more important than the one she called about. These needs are simple and easy for you to understand. They are:
Don’t forget that anytime you interact with a customer, they have five needs, not just one. Meet all five, and you have made a friend for life.
