It’s popularly thought that the best customer service people are warm and friendly; they go out of their way to build rapport. But what if you’re out of milk and running to the market, in the rain, at 11 PM, while wearing your pajamas (with two sick kids at home)? Wouldn’t you want customer service that was quick and to the point?
Customer service is situationally and contextually driven— there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. And the best leaders teach their people how to make customer service more intelligent by helping employees develop a deeper understanding of what drives the customer population.
Leadership IQ has identified several major things that most customers want. Here we share three along with some tips on how you can get started today, helping your employees do a better job at giving your customers what they want.
#1: Customers want Individuality: One of the best ways to recognize customer individuality is by using a communication style that speaks directly to a customer’s needs. It’s easy to find out what that style is by asking (we’ll teach you exactly how to do that in our upcoming webinar), but avoid scripted questions like “How’s it going today?” which typically fail to get real answers and can damage customer service interactions. (For example, if someone is calling a tech support line, asking “How are you doing today?” is probably not going to go over great).
Instead, teach employees to get the customer service interaction right by asking intelligent and fact-collecting questions like: “What information can I share with you today?” If they get a response like: “My computer just crashed and I have 30 seconds to get to an important sales meeting” it’s a clear sign to skip the small talk and get right to the point. Quickly being able to assess a customer’s preferred communication style and having the ability to gracefully adapt to it makes a terrific impact on delivering an improved customer experience.
#2: Customers want Understanding: Once you know how, understanding is easy to deliver. Begin by teaching your employees to approach every service interaction with an emotionally intelligent framework (instead of the scripted: “How can I help you today?”) that lets the customer know they will be deeply understood and listened to. For example, they might start a customer interaction by saying: “My job is to listen to you, gather some information and then help you (diagnose, fix the problem, etc.). Next steps are to really listen and then let the customer know you heard and understand what they said by repeating back their words. (Warning: that doesn’t mean paraphrase what they just said, which is actually dangerous and can harm customer relations).
#3: Customers want Truth: Our best people strive to do their work with minimal error, but there will still be misunderstandings and mistakes that negatively impact your customers. When things start to go badly in a customer interaction, teach employees that the best thing to do is to own up to it by using one of these two modes of apologizing:
If you don’t know if you’re at fault: “I’m so sorry you experienced this. Here’s what we’re doing______.”
If you know you’re at fault: “I’m so sorry. I made a mistake, it was my fault. Here’s what happened______ and here’s how it’s being fixed_____.”
Helping employees understand that customers are individuals and teaching them how to develop a deeper understanding of each customer’s needs allows employees to give the best customer experience.
Make your customers feel like they get a high level of truth and transparency from your organization by attending by webinar “7 Psychological Secrets of Great Customer Service”.
Related Posts:
What Does Great Customer Service Look Like?
Use Truth to Save a Customer Service Experience Gone Wrong
If Doctors Stop Listening 18 Seconds In, How Do You Think Your Call Center is Doing?
How Do Great Salespeople Get the Best Results?
Consider these 4 Communications Styles When Delivering your Next Presentation
Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ
An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.
Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.
Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.
