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Archive for the ‘Customer Service’ Category

Customer Service Agents are the frontline staff of the company they are who customers speak with first. Essentially, they are the voice of the company.

If a Customer Service agent is professional, friendly, and can solve a customers needs, that customer will have a positive impression of the company. This pleasant experience can lead to repeat business and even referrals increasing profitability.

On the other hand, if a Customer Service Agent is unprofessional, uniformed, and unable to solve a customers needs, the customer will hang up the phone in frustration resulting in a negative impression. Consequently, the customer will indeed talk about your company, but with a very pessimistic tone which can discourage customers away from you and to your competitor decreasing productivity!

As a leader, it is your responsibility to train the staff with proper telephone skills and company and product knowledge as well as the requisite customer service skills necessary to excel customer expectations. With this education, you are arming the Customer Service Agent with the power to better assist customers and increase productivity creating many positive first impressions along the way!

The Customer Service Representative

As the leader of customer service agents, you will engage with a wide variety of personnel, different backgrounds, different ages, and different skill sets including:

* The young employee who is starting his first job.
* The single mother who needs a second job for additional income.
* The recent college graduate who has not yet found his dream job, but needs a job to pay the bills.
* The middle-age mother who has gone back to work now that her children are grown just to give herself something to do.
* The business professional that has just been laid off from his real job due to downsizing.

These are just a few examples. Every Customer service agent has a different story and a different reason for working.

Your staff may or may not be excited to work at the company. For example, a recent high school graduate may be quite excited about his first job. Whereas, a single mother would much rather be at home with her children. It is your job as the leader to motivate everyone even the most disgruntled Customer Service Agent!

Every Customer Service Agent within your staff will have different skill sets. For example, the business professional may be quite computer-savvy, whereas the middle-age mother who has gone back to work may have very little knowledge of computers. It is your job as the leader to train everyone even the Customer Service Agent who thinks he knows it all!

A major component of your responsibility as a leader is motivating and training the Customer Service Agents so they are comfortable with the technological and people skills that are needed for the job. You also need to know what motivates each employee to keep them excited about being at work.

Call Center Challenges

As a call center leader, you face many challenges a day. Here is just a sample:

* A competitive workforce for qualified Customer Service Agents
* Lack of time to properly train Customer Service Agents
* High turnover rate among Customer Service Agents
* Technological challenges for Customer Service Agents
* Unmotivated Customer Service Agents
* Different skill levels of Customer Service Agents

What is customer service? Have you ever stopped to really think about this question? We have trained literally thousands of people and hundreds of organisations in customer service. No matter who the person or what the organisation, the answer to this question is always generic. They will say: “Customer service is about giving customers what they want” or perhaps “it’s about satisfying customers” some times they will say that it is about “making customers happy.”

While at first glance these answers may sound correct, nothing could be further from the truth. Say for example that you ran a restaurant. If a customer were to enter your restaurant and ask for some office supplies would you be able to give the customer what they want? Would you be able to satisfy a customer who was looking for some jewellery if you worked in a hardware store? No, it would be impossible. The best that you could do would be to politely tell the customer where they can go and get Jewry. Obviously, customer service is not about giving customers what they want, or even satisfying customers.

The same is true for the way we give customer service. When we ask the question: what is the most important thing for good customer service, almost everyone we ask will answer: smile. While this may be good in some cases it is not appropriate in all cases. Just imagine if a distressed mother came up to you and told you that she had lost her 2 year old child in your store. Imagine how she would respond if you were to smile at her? Or imagine if a customer told you that he/she slipped while climbing the stairs or escalator in your store and as they explained their excruciating injuries you smiled back at them.

The truth is that customer service is not about practicalities, it’s about principles. The practicalities may change but the principles stay the same. Staff are not meant to smile all the time, to give customers everything they want, or to satisfy all their needs. Staff are meant to promote the organisation and its values. If you want to increase the impact of your customer service teach staff to represent your organisation and its unique traits.

When we teach customer service training modules we first focus on what the organisation values, what it’s all about and what does it want customers to see. Once we have done this, we move on to how to serve in light of these values. This is a very easy way of getting staff to change the way they serve, it produces better results and is a lot more fun to teach.

Here is something you can do to help your staff engage in effective customer service. Take a black/white board and draw a very basic house. Ask staff to take a piece of chalk or the white board marker and to take turns to turn this basic house into your organisation/company. They may add pictures or words to the basic drawing. Some will add words like: quality, professionalism, friendliness, service, money, speed, or simplicity while others may draw things like customers and staff.

Now ask staff this simple question: in light of this picture, what does a good customer service representative do? The participants will now find it easy to see what customer service is really about in your organisation. They may say for example, in light of us being a friendly company we should smile. Or perhaps they will highlight the organisation’s professionalism and explain that it’s professional to stand up straight and to dress appropriately.

Instead of teaching staff practicalities teach them principles and the practicalities will follow naturally.

1.Be professional and polite: We all know that First Impression is Best Impression, so make it as best as possible. Lot of times we make some conclusions about people or the organisations within sometime after doing some interactions with them. Make your employees to be professional in handling customers and also polite. Provide them with adequate training and support in this area. This will not only boost their confidence but also helps make you more business efficiently.  

2.Be Knowledgeable of products or services: I have seen many times that the front-desk employees do not have enough knowledge about the products and services and when a customer enquires about them, either you will get the wrong information or no information related to it. Keeping your employees knowledgeable of your products or services, especially those who are interacting with customers like sales people and customer service personnel is very important if you want to deliver good customer service.

3.Consistently following the procedures and policies: Ensure the employees who are constantly interacting with outside customers follow the procedures and policies of your organisation like refund policies, warranty and guarantee policies, etc. In failing to do so, will cause unnecessary misunderstandings, chaos and other problems leading to poor customer satisfaction. Provide the employees with right set of tools and train them how to use those tools. You will have little time to provide the requested information to the customer, so make sure you have all the right tools and right training.

 4.Immediate resolution of complaints: It is very critical that you provide the solution to the Customers complaints as soon as possible. A poor timeline for resolution of problems of customers will lead to significant damage to company’s reputation and image, which will cause serious trouble to your business. Also document the complaints and their solutions for future reference, so that you can resolve those problems, if they resurface in future, immediately rather than reinventing the wheel.

 5.Taking feedbacks and putting them into action: The best way to improve your customer service and keep a touch with customers is to ask for feedback about your company, products and services. This way you not only know where you are lacking but also gets new insights about the expectations of the customers. Many organisations follow this method to stay competitive and improve their processes and products.

 6.Keep it Simple:Simplicity is the way to go in today’s businesses. You can see this approach in every business today. Take for example ipod, it has become popular mainly due to its simplicity in use. People love simple and good design products. Make your procedures and processes simple so that customers do not go through the complex processes to contact a customer service personnel or order a product or enquire about a product.

 Use the principle KISS: Keep it Short and Simple. Or in a funny way: Keep it Simple, Stupid.:) 

At the end I would like to conclude that it is not easy to accomplish the above strategies without the use the technology in today businesses. Invest in the appropriate technologies with clear goals as much as you can and you reap the benefits many more times than your investment (High ROI, Return on Investment). Providing a great customer service is only first step and to have you business growing you need to have Loyal customers, and you can check out 7 Ways to increase your customer loyalty.

 Follow the above steps and you will be on the fore-front of the Customer Service with Happy and satisfied Customers.

Customer Service Agents are the frontline staff of the company they are who customers speak with first. Essentially, they are the voice of the company.

If a Customer Service agent is professional, friendly, and can solve a customers needs, that customer will have a positive impression of the company. This pleasant experience can lead to repeat business and even referrals increasing profitability.

On the other hand, if a Customer Service Agent is unprofessional, uniformed, and unable to solve a customers needs, the customer will hang up the phone in frustration resulting in a negative impression. Consequently, the customer will indeed talk about your company, but with a very pessimistic tone which can discourage customers away from you and to your competitor decreasing productivity!

As a leader, it is your responsibility to train the staff with proper telephone skills and company and product knowledge as well as the requisite customer service skills necessary to excel customer expectations. With this education, you are arming the Customer Service Agent with the power to better assist customers and increase productivity creating many positive first impressions along the way!

The Customer Service Representative

As the leader of customer service agents, you will engage with a wide variety of personnel, different backgrounds, different ages, and different skill sets including:

• The young employee who is starting his first job.

• The single mother who needs a second job for additional income.

•  The recent college graduate who has not yet found his dream job, but needs a job to pay the bills.

• The middle-age mother who has gone back to work now that her children are grown just to give herself something to do.

• The business professional that has just been laid off from his real job due to downsizing.

These are just a few examples. Every Customer service agent has a different story and a different reason for working.

Your staff may or may not be excited to work at the company. For example, a recent high school graduate may be quite excited about his first job. Whereas, a single mother would much rather be at home with her children. It is your job as the leader to motivate everyone even the most disgruntled Customer Service Agent!

Every Customer Service Agent within your staff will have different skill sets. For example, the business professional may be quite computer-savvy, whereas the middle-age mother who has gone back to work may have very little knowledge of computers. It is your job as the leader to train everyone even the Customer Service Agent who thinks he knows it all!

A major component of your responsibility as a leader is motivating and training the Customer Service Agents so they are comfortable with the technological and people skills that are needed for the job. You also need to know what motivates each employee to keep them excited about being at work.

Call Center Challenges

As a call center leader, you face many challenges a day. Here is just a sample:

• A competitive workforce for qualified Customer Service Agents

• Lack of time to properly train Customer Service Agents

• High turnover rate among Customer Service Agents

 • Technological challenges for Customer Service Agents

• Unmotivated Customer Service Agents

• Different skill levels of Customer Service Agents

Throughout our training courses, you will learn how to deal with such situations, whilst your agents learn the critical success factors necessary to deliver excellent customer care.

When you open a dollar store you soon discover there are so many different, yet important aspects to the business.  There are so many responsibilities that must be dealt with on a daily basis that it can be very difficult to get them all covered.  Still other duties might come up weekly or monthly.  Yet they are often just as important.  One of the most critical responsibilities you face is customer service.  This is a 24×7 duty that cannot be forgotten even for a moment.  In fact it is among the most critical responsibilities you are charged with handling.

When you open a dollar store, success in the customer service arena involves not just your performance, but also that of every employee.  In this article I will present 4 critical questions to ask as a test of your overall customer service performance.  So let’s get started.

1. How skilled and competent are you and your employees at providing memorable service to each and every customer?  It is important to offer every new employee customer service training during their initial job orientation.  Be sure to set clear expectations regarding customer service at the same time.  Experienced employees should receive periodic reminders, updates and reinforcement through daily feedback and in writing on their performance reviews.  .

2. Is there true commitment, caring and satisfaction associated link to your business?  One of the real keys to becoming successful at customer service revolves around having a commitment and caring about the job, company and your work.  No matter how hard you try, if you or your employees are unhappy it will be reflected in the overall quality and success of your customer service.

3. Do you and your employees take deep pride in providing outstanding professional customer service at all times?  As mentioned above, when you open a dollar store with plans for success, you are committing to providing only the best of customer service.  Be sure to reward those employees who role model exactly the customer service you wish for your business.  Don’t forget there is great power in you role modeling outstanding customer service at all times as well

4. Let’s finish with the most important question of all.  How well do you and your employees meet the responsibility of providing outstanding customer service?  It is critical that each and every customer who comes in contact with your business receive the same high-quality customer service.  If there is less than top-quality customer service provided, overall satisfaction is jeopardized.

If you plan to open a dollar store know the quality of your customer service helps to determine your overall success. The measure of customer service includes many metrics.  Customer complaints and how they are handled is certainly to be included.  More positive measurements include customer retention, average sale size, sales volume, the number of sales transactions and frequency of customer visits.  Don’t forget to examine word-of-mouth referrals from existing customers as well.  These and others metrics provide the numbers to support your overall level of customer service performance.

To your dollar store business success!

Nothing’s worse than when a situation is more confusing and complicated than it needs to be, especially when it comes to your customer service experience.

Here’s an example: Say you have just purchased a pair of shoes for a sale price. However, when the item is scanned at the counter, the sale price does not come up. The regular price does.

Now, an easy answer to this solution would be for the customer service representative to already know why this is occurring and plug the sales price in without any hassles.

However, in most cases, what happens is another customer service rep is called over the intercom while you wait in line. Ten minutes later, the two customer service reps will question you and often you will be left to return back to the item and find the price tag with the sales price.

By then you are fed up and don’t even want the shoes anymore.

This is not an easy solution and is the perfect example of poor customer service.
Make sure this doesn’t happen to your customers by always providing them with the easiest methods possible.

•    When it comes to your contact informative, ensure that your customers know how and where to contact you. Include your email address, your phone number and your business hours on all websites, emails, directories, business cards, flyers and in the store front.

Make sure your customers know that you are there to help them, no matter what.

•    Opt for a Toll Free Number for your help desk. Toll free numbers do not collect unwanted costs for your customers. Sometimes customers choose not to call simply because there is no toll free number available.

Give you customer the option of calling Toll Free to make their customer service experience as helpful as possible.

•    Offer a Simple Refund Policy. Sometimes a refund is necessary and there is nothing worse than having to jump through hoops in order to return a product.

Ensure this doesn’t happen by providing an efficient refund policy where your customers do not have to prove their purchase with several pieces of documentation.

Instead, keep records of purchases, especially large ones, in a computer system. This will simplify the process for the customers and keep them coming back for more.

•    Answer the phone yourself rather than using a large phone service system. Although they may be convenient to you, often times your customers will disagree.

A confusing phone service will leave your customer frustrated and annoyed at the lack of personal care.

Instead try to answer the phone or hire a cheerful receptionist who can effectively transfer the calls without your customers being subjected to the dreaded automated service.

The most important thing to remember is that with a simple and efficient customer service policy comes a loyal customer base.

Want to learn more? Check out Customer Service Profits for your all-access pass to how to ensure your customers are 100 percent satisfied and guaranteed to return for more.