Are you looking for a way to inspire your staff to provide an excellent customer service experience to each and every customer they interact with? The book “The Simple Truths of Service” by Ken Blanchard and Barbara Glanz is exactly that inspiration. Based on the story of Johnny the Bagger, a boy with Down Syndrome who changed the culture of his workplace forever, this is a book that will remain in your thoughts and cause anyone to look at customer service in a new way. If you are looking to inspire your employees to give more than the customer expects, then this is a brilliant way to illustrate it. The Simple Truths of Service is available to purchase from nightingale.com.
Customer Service Tips
The Simple Truths of Service
Sep 13
Remember the old adage ‘the customer is always right’? Well it seems United Airlines are learning it all over again, after a disgruntled customer posted a unique complaint on You Tube. It is apparent that the complaint letter, the rant to the call centre, the negative blog or the ‘less than positive word of mouth’ are no longer the way to see a large corporate listen and see the error in their ways. Simply write a catchy song and post it on You Tube… they’ll listen!
When Dave Carroll had his favourite Taylor guitar broken by less than careful United Airlines staff, I’m sure he thought it would be an easy fix… that the airline would replace the damaged item and apologise. When this was not the case, Dave simply wrote a song and made sure it was publicly available…. to 2.5 million viewers… so far!
Lesson:
Listen to your customers and appease them quickly if you can. Dave was apparently waiting months with no guitar after what seems to be a blatant mistake on behalf of the airline. If you don’t, no longer may you see ten of your customers closest friends talking negatively… you may have 2.5 million You Tube viewers, Twitterers, Facebook users or some new social networking site spreading your worst public relations nightmare at lightning speeds.
To United’s credit, they are now playing Dave’s You Tube clip to their staff as a way of training them on how to provide better customer service. We all make mistakes, it’s how we learn from them quickly that will determine our future.
If United play this right, they may actually do quite well out of this. They now have a huge public awareness of their brand! Just a shame it isn’t necessarily positive.
Be fair to your customers, that they may be fair to you.
Surprise your customers with over the top service! They’ll appreciate it and may just brag about you to others!
Recently I engaged the services of an interpretive service. I needed a simple translation of ten English words in to Vietnamese for a promotional banner stand. What I didn’t expect was the level of service Kate from Chin Communications gave.
From my initial contact, she was professional and courteous, only to willing to help, even if it was only 10 words. She spoke using my name and made me feel like I was talking with a long lost friend, rather than someone I had not spoken with before. Her follow up phone calls to check if we were going to use their service, as well as to check if we were happy with final product continued to impress me.
Finally, the clincher that brought me to the point, where I could no longer resist telling others about the excellent service I received, was the final closing of the transaction. In the mail, a day after receiving the translation, I opened a letter from Kate, thanking me for our business, an invoice and a bag of exotic tea. While I don’t drink tea, I gave the tea to a colleague and bragged to him about just how good my experience with this company had been.
Will I use Chin Communications again in the future? You bet. Why? Because Kate went above and beyond, she astonished me with her high levels of customer service and genuine care for my project. Don’t underestimate it, good customer service does not go unnoticed.
One of the best sales people I have met is also one of the best customer service professionals I have met. I’m talking about my real estate agent. Don’t underestimate the good feeling that engulfs a customer when they realise that you remember them, that you remember the small details. Are you in business, and looking for a point of difference? Are you looking for a way that makes you stand out, attracts more business, keeps its current customers?
Our real estate agent Read the rest of this entry »
Tip #1 – Make it right
May 21
Ever noticed how you react when you receive good customer service? You feel good about the experience, you think to yourself, I think I’ll come here again, buy this product again, use this service again. Good service will keep you coming back. Excellent service will not only get you back, but also get you talking about your experience and sharing it with your friends, colleagues, family, anyone you meet. Unfortunately, so will bad service. We love to share good bad service stories. We’ve all heard about that steak that wasn’t cooked right, how rude the waiter was, how long we were on hold to our telecommunications company, how we were ignored by the shop attendant.
As a customer service provider, how do we combat this?
How can we turn a piece of bad customer service in to a positive experience?
Simple. Make it right. I was taught this simple principle when Read the rest of this entry »