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Celebrate and Share Your Customer Service Efforts – with Worms
Customer service and satisfaction consultants often advise clients to share and celebrate our successes. It’s wonderful when someone on our team has done something far above and beyond their responsibilities to deliver excellent service for a customer. I advise clients to do this on a regular basis during every staff meeting.
By sharing successes, it opens up the creativity of the other team members as to how to surprise and delight their customers. Many of us stumble in our efforts to come up with a new idea, so I highly recommend repeating what someone else has done successfully. Call it copying, but if it works in the best interest of the customer, everyone wins.
The challenge comes when we have a few team members who are not used to recognizing their strengths or something that they’ve done well. While a herculean effort always makes for a good story, it is usually the smallest efforts and gestures made under the radar or behind the scenes that are most appreciated by the customer. So when we have those instances when no one can think of something that went well, I like to inject a little bit of fun.
“The Gummy Worm Award”
The Gummy Worm Award promotes Excellent Customer Service
When someone can’t think of something that they did well for a customer, give them an award of a bag of sour gummy worms. No one will want to have that bag of gummy worms for long, so the next meeting, they will most likely have more than one example of something they did well for a customer.
This is all in good fun, but reinforces the fact that we all need to recognize that simply by doing our jobs well, we make a difference in the minds of our customers. It doesn’t even need to be something directly job related. It could be that you made a phone call to your customer’s next appointment and informed them that the customer is on their way. It could be that you made an unscheduled proactive phone call to a customer about an issue they’ve been dealing with. Maybe you sent your customer an article that caught your attention because it relates to their industry.
I hope you get the point here. The above examples are small acts that make a big difference to a customer. None of them may seem monumental, but any one of them could be the difference that makes the difference to the customer and gets them to return to your business or renew their account with you. We need to reinforce to our teams that the small things count and will keep the focus on the positives, not the negatives that arise from time to time.
By having your teams share what has worked for them, it gets them to recognize what they do well, gives examples to others to follow, and keeps the focus on the positive aspects of customer service and the difference it makes to our current customers. When they try some of the strategies that have worked for their peers, their level of customer service improves, as does their feeling of empowerment and ownership in the company overall.
I’d love to hear your comments and strategies you’ve found useful in getting your teams to recognize their efforts.
Hire Right – Crucial for Customer Service and Satisfaction
Hiring the right people is the single most important factor in delivering the best customer service. In this video, I explain why and what you need to take into consideration……..
How has your hiring process helped or hindered the service your company delivers?
Empathy Counts with Upset Customers
Managing upset customers revolves around one thing – empathy. Instead of offering solutions first, identify with your customer and recognize that they are upset about the inconvenience and hassle in fixing the issue much more so than the issue itself.
Also, remember that the issue itself does not define you or your company, the way you respond to it does. Watch this short video for a real life example taken from a client meeting earlier today…..
Customer Service Week – All Done? No Way!!
So, now that you’ve received some strategies to increase your customer service and raise the satisfaction levels of your customers, now what?
Keep the Momentum Going!!!
Just because Customer Service Week is over, by no means should you stop paying attention to your customers. If anything you should strive to treat them better every day from now on!
Remember, customers are buying the relationship, not your product or service. They feel it’s a good relationship when you treat them as if you truly value and appreciate them.
Customer service and satisfaction efforts need to be a continual process, not just a one time event. Customers like consistency and will pay for it when you consistently treat them well.
By continuing to focus on your customer service expectations and efforts, you are sending a strong message to your teams that this is a priority for your business and that you, as an organization, are determined to stay ahead of the competition and serve your customers better than anyone else will.
A Valuable Resource to Keep Improving Everyday
To help you in your continued efforts of raising the bar in service, I’m including this link for your benefit. Five Steps to More Loyal Customers will change the way you interact with your customers the very same day you use it! When used as a tool for team development, the results are inspiring. You’ll get everyone talking and involved on how to make the customer experience so much better.
Five Steps to More Loyal Customers will put you in the category of Walking the Talk when it comes to delivering excellent customer service!
Improve Customer Satisfaction by Getting to Know Your Customers
There are two main reasons for getting to know your customers. Many businesses are thrilled for the sale and make that happen easily, then move on to the next customer. Here are my two reasons why it’s essential.
It’s Good Business
You need to find out who your customers are to make sure you are tapped into their needs. You need to get to know your customers on a more personal basis to find out how they use your product or service. Make it a common practice to get to know your customer’s names, their function in their company, what their challenges are, what they feel they do well, etc. What benefits do they receive by using your product. What is their business model and how do you fit into that? How do they earn the money to pay for your product or service?
By asking your customers these questions, you’ll determine how to best serve them and make sure they are buying the most appropriate products from you and using them correctly.
An additional benefit to you is that your customers will feel that you truly are engaged with them and are looking out for them. They’ll know that you want to help them be at their best in their world. You’ll have an advantage over your competition because most businesses are so set on the “next customer” that they neglect their current ones.
It’s the Right Thing to Do
I truly feel that getting to know the people who keep you in business by spending their money with you is the right thing to do. When people give you the gift of new and continued business, they do so by choice. Smart companies recognize that people are more discerning in their purchases and are more likely to continue doing business with those that value them.
Remember, customers make their buying decisions based on emotion and them back them up by logic. Get to know them personally and forge a relationship with them based on trust and the fact that you made a point to get to know them.
