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Posts Tagged ‘customer’

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.

If you are ambitious to be successful in the field of business, you must be aware of the fact that customer service is one of the main factors, which plays a great role in bringing success in the business. Customer service happens to be one of these things that bring about the satisfaction of the customers. It is well known to all that if the customers are happy with the way you deal with them and id the products or the services that you provide to them are of a high quality.

If you want achieve success in customer service, you have to follow some main principles. You have to have a clear idea about how you would deal with the customers. If you are looking for some tips that will help you to attain success in customer service, here are the tips and some suggestions. Follow them and know how to be successful in customer service.

If you are having a conversation with the customer over the telephone or face to face, it is better for you to mention the name of the customer you are talking to. When the customer hears his name from you, he is going to have a different kind of dealing with you. It will also be easier for you to deal with him. End the conversation with a ‘thank you’.

If you are already experienced in the field of customer service, you must have had the experience of dealing with customers who are irate. Say ‘I apologize’ or ‘I’m sorry’ if you find some customer angry. Do not forget to take a follow-up with the customer. Contact him some time later. When you end the call, thank him. Before ending the call do ask him if you can do anything else for him.

There is a very tricky way to incur the interest in the customer that you deal with. After your conversation with him is over, you can leave a message for him. You may also ask for a feedback about what he or she feels after availing the customer service. The way you ask is also quite important. Instead of asking him how he liked the interaction you should ask him how he would like to rate the customer service that he availed. The answers in the second case are most likely to be more specific.

The most important factor in achieving success in customer service is the way of your dealing with the customer. You have to be very careful about not hurting the belief or faith of the customer. The pleasant features of your behavior of yours will surely impress the customer. One more obvious way to success in customer service is to provide them with the products or services of the best quality so that they have the least scope to feel unsatisfied. If the customers are happy with the products or the services that that are availing, it is much easy for you to gain success in customer service.

Quite a few organizations hire employees in internal positions such as human resources, marketing, sales, facilities, cafeteria, accounting or security without adequate training in customer service skills. Generally, unless a customer complains or compliments an employee their supervisor typically assumes that everything is being done well and provides positive feedback on their performance review.

Customer Services includes small and large details such as understanding the needs and purchasing habits of the customers, responding to all e-mail and phone inquiries, human contact and conversation, taking responsibility, to celebrate little triumphs with them, commiserate in their complaints and even get to know them. These customers once made will remain loyal customers forever.

By itself customer service is too vast to handle unless you are a large business with well defined sections in your office. Outsourcing customer service can allow a small or medium business to take care of its core competencies, while the customers are professionally and satisfactorily dealt with.

Online customer service is handled by quite a lot of call centers. The need for such service arises on two accounts.

First an online business is a 24*7 business. Your customers belong to the world and there are several time zones out there! Their hours and holidays are different from yours. Remember you lose a customer to your competitor if you do not respond to their calls.

Secondly, call response needs training and expertise handling. You cannot personally attend each call. So you need to hire employees. Each employee will need to be trained in your products, their handling and customer responses. So you will need to setup an entire process. The entire procedure is very time centric. If time is at premium (as it is for most of us) outsource it to the experts. Call center employees are trained in such procedures, responses come easier to them and they are trained to present a human face to the prospect.

Outsourcing customer service may have its pitfalls if the call center and business do not work closely in tandem with each other. The outsourcing company should work with the call center hand in hand to get customer feedback. The script flow must be based on previous experience of the company. The concept of personal attention to the customer is very important for closing a call. There some guidelines to be followed for ideal customer service assistance. Some of them are discussed here.

The customer must be put first as a person. The customer should be helped to make a decision and not pushed to buy. Respect him and he will respect you in turn and come back to you.

Listen to what the customer has to say. Clarify their doubts and answer the questions. The customer service employee should always have in-depth knowledge about the product or services. If unable to respond to a query immediately take the customers contact id and respond soon. Customers always have a tendency to look for a problem solver rather than an order taker

Learn about the customer in a casual way not as a marketing survey sort of thing. The easiest way to do this is to ask for them for feedback about their experience with the company or organization.

Respect the customers time. If a customer is in hurry be fast and friendly whatever the medium. In companies where the customer profile has senior citizens may want to talk a while. Give into them. They’ll come back to you for sure. It is also important to be fast and friendly.

If promises are made, should always be kept with the customers. If not, they should be compensated.

Lastly, review and feedback go a way in improving customer service. The staff can be asked about unusual requests or difficult situations. Reviews teach many important lessons.

In addition to the above points some do nots have to be kept in mind. Pitfalls such as incompetence, disorganization, unprofessional manners, lack of standard policy, delays and unreliability lose customers. It’s said that happy customers are the best and most effective way to find new customers. Let your prospects and leads rave about your customer services.

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.

We have a free, 2 hour course which you can download and run with your staff to help them improve their customer service, just visit www.griffin.ie.