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 Great customer service can differentiate any business. As most small business owners will tell you, whether a company succeeds or fails depends on its level of customer service. Customers will return to a company where they are made to feel welcome. On the other hand, 68% of these same customers will not return if they are treated poorly. No matter how large or complex the business is, it usually comes down to one employee serving one customer, one day at a time.
In The Spirit of Service, iLead's Customer Service Refresher Program, participants learn that each employee has the power to create a positive experience with the customer. The fact is that most employees in your company already know how to treat a customer well. Great customer service begins in a place with which we are all familiar - the home. We all know how to take care of a guest in our home, we welcome them, we take care of their needs, thank them for coming, and invite them back. A customer in a business is exactly like a guest in the home. Providing top-notch customer service means treating each person who walks in the door like a guest.
For the manager, improving customer service means more than just implementing a new policy. It means changing behavior. Each time a customer calls or walks in your door, employees must decide whether they're going to treat them as an interruption or as a welcomed guest.
We have three key learning objectives for the first section of The Spirit of Service:
1. To introduce basic guidelines so that employees understand the vital importance of treating customers like guests.
2. To provide specific examples so that employees believe that they already possess the skills necessary for providing top notch customer service.
3. To open lines of communication so that employees begin to feel personally empowered to put high level customer service practices into place in their organizations.
We accomplish these objectives by covering these five key points:
1. Welcome them
2. Use their name
3. Take care of their needs
4. Thank them
5. Invite them back
In the second section of the program, we talk about dealing with difficult customers. Participants are asked to classify their customers as being either internal or external. Most customer service representatives deal almost exclusively with external clients but others must think more specifically about internal customers like Accounting, Human Resources or even their bosses. We then work through an exercise which identifies those customers with whom we have the greatest struggle.
We discuss the L.A.S.T. technique to show us how to deal most effectively with difficult customers. This technique has four steps:
- L isten to your guests carefully.
- A pologize for their inconvenience.
- S olve their problems quickly and efficiently.
- T hank them and invite them back.
We also spend time talking about the three different kinds of difficult guests:
1. Distracted Guests
2. Disappointed Guests
3. Disruptive Guest
Each of these difficult guests has a unique set of problems that requires expert attention and handling.
We wrap up the Spirit of Service Training program with a discussion about creating a culture that supports excellent customer service. The FISH video is a crowd pleaser which emphasizes four main points.
- Play - finding creative ways to make work fun and interesting.
- Being there - both mentally and physically attending to your clients.
- Make their day - looking for ways that will provide memorable positive experiences.
- Choosing your attitude - deciding early each day whether you wish to be upbeat or glum.
The results of this program have been very positive and rewarding. One of our clients is a dentist's office that claims that this program helped them dramatically increase their business. Another client is the City of McKinney who liked the concept so much that they put all 400 of their employees through it. Could your office, department or staff improve the way they treat their customers? If so, please join us on either July 23rd or 25th for one of our public programs on this topic. If those dates are inconvenient, call us and we'll be glad to preview this program for your team.
TDP
7/16/02
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