Top 2 Ways to improve Customer Service

‘2  Ways to Improve Customer Service'

If I was asked to choose the top two tips from all the, ’10 of the…’, ‘8 Ways…’, ‘The 12 absolute…’ lists, guides, acronyms that you come across within Customer Service I would choose:

1.       Apply the message within Maya Angelou’s (American Poet, 1928-1914) quote: ‘I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’  The key here within customer service is how you make people ‘feel’.  We always remember good and bad customer experiences through our memory recall, and these recalls also invoke the feelings we felt at the time.  So, to ensure a good, positive customer experience we have to ensure that our behaviours, attitude and environment provide a pleasant experience for the customer.

2.       ‘Seek first to understand, then be understood’ – Stephen R. Covey, 5^th Habit of his ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’.  Ensure you know what the customer wants, by understanding their perception, expectation and reality.  Only having understood these can you then go onto deliver on their expectation, or manage their expectation.

5 Reasons Why Your Customer Service is Failing

The 5 key areas that I have come across when dealing with clients and running customer service workshops with regards to failing customer service would be:

1.       By not applying the top two tips above!

2.       Becoming over complacent, and not respecting your customer.

3.       Not delivering, or not following up or explaining why you couldn’t deliver.

4.       Bad manners and being un-professional.

5.       Not taking ownership of the issue, that is, leaving the customer with the feeling that they are on their own.  The key word in customer service is ‘service’ – i.e. ‘'the action of helping or doing work for someone'.   Somehow this message in some organisations seems to have crossed purposes in training!  In a lot of cases you are often made to feel that they are doing you a favour and you are the one that should be eternally grateful!  Again, we can see how strong Maya Angelou’s message is – because this is all about how you make people feel.

In essence, the PROUD principles, within the book: ‘PROUD: Achieving Customer Service Excellence’ encapsulate all the above, and more.  This is achieved by utilising one of the most emotive and inspirational words to produce a memorable acronym, providing the aspirational goal within customer service.  It’s an holistic model that can be applied to any discipline, organisation and level, including your own personal life and self-development.  It really could be the only customer service acronym you will ever need.