Customer Service – ‘The Irritating Lack of Consistency’

A Professional is an excellent question asker and not a person teller.

This is the the heart of Customer Service.

If you have been following along with these articles, by now you know how much emphasis on Communications a Professional in this job description must have.

A person who lacks Communications skills, chiefly the ability to listen, is a dead duck. Second to listening is the ability to ask questions. Third in that list of desirable Communication skills is the ability to shut up.

If you can master those three key skills, you will absolutely make 5-10 times more money than everyone else you know. And you will be a happier well adjusted person, even if you are not one now.

Why? Ever talk to someone who seemed to know it all and just couldn’t wait to tell you, and in fact interrupted you so that they could impart some of their superior knowledge and wisdom from their obviously higher perch? How did that make you feel? You just wanted to sock ‘em in the face to get them to shut up.

The important thing to remember is this. If your gums are flappin’ when you should be listening you are losing the Customer Service game and making it very difficult for you to help your Customer. Start the process by learning to close your yapper and open your ears. It is easier said then done for a lot us. (I am including myself)

Once you have listened first and generously, you can you can begin to ask questions that will get you the information you need so you can devise a solution that will lead to an action that leads to that exchange. You know, money exchanging hands.

This is really very, very simple. You merely use the information the Customer has provided you and ask if you have it right. Crazy, isn’t it.

So, it might sound like this. “Mr./Ms. Customer, I would like to ask a question. I heard you say that your personal pleasure device stopped working when you put it away for the evening, is that correct?” Then wait. This is the part where you shut up. Your Customer will tell you what you need to know if you just wait it out.

Now suppose you decided you knew exactly what the Customer was going to say before they said it and you started off the conversation like this…..

“Mr./Ms. Customer, all we need to do to get your personal pleasure device back on the road is jump start the battery. I have seen a bunch of these here in the last week or so, and every one of them just needed a jump start. I have a funny story about the time I went to ride mine and forgot to …”

Can you see the difference folks? Question Asker vs Person Teller?

In the second scenario there is not one shred of useable information from the Customer, and that is exactly whom you need the information from! Without it, there cannot be a service or product exchanged for remuneration.

No info, no dough.

Professionals are excellent questioners. They use the information provided them and ask qualifying questions that lead them to new information or confirmation of the information provided to devise a solution that leads to the exchange of service or product for remuneration and a feeling of satisfaction by the Customer.

Be Professional.

(Some of you might need a definition of the words “personal pleasure device” used in the scenarios above. It is a motorcycle.)

Hey, you! Yes, you there, on the other side of the screen. I’m talking to you! It’s time to do something about your Leadership, Management or Customer Service situation. You came here looking for solutions, didn’t you? Alright then. Just below is the contact information you will need for Leonard. See it? Now all you have to is contact him at his email or his telephone to get started with Targeted Specific Training. It’s really quite simple. And it’s time to take action. You didn’t read all of this for nothing, did you? The road to Success is paved with Action. This first step is yours. So, get busy and get in contact with Leonard as soon as possible!

Contact him here! leonard@bizprotraining.com
or call 760-529-5635.

Seminar Leader since 2006 providing Leadership, Management and Customer Service Solutions.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leonard_Buchholz

A few weeks ago I was working with a group of course delegates on a community project. We were spending a couple of days re-furbishing a classroom for a primary school.

Having worked quite hard we were naturally flagging a little and fancied a quick pizza for our lunch. We jumped in a couple of cars and headed off to the local out-of-town pizza restaurant that we knew served a buffet all day. We got there at about 2:45pm, so after the lunch time peak period, to find adjacent tables cluttered with debris from previous customers, cold and unappetizing pizzas for sale and a general lack of apparent care. To be fair to the staff they did slowly rustle up some fresh pizza for us but as far as I was concerned the edge had been taken off of lunch.

This got me thinking about what in particular had made me disappointed and I put in down to something I’ve called “an irritating lack of consistency”.

There was no consistency between our experience and that (probably, although I don’t know this for a fact) enjoyed by customers of the restaurant only a couple of hours earlier. I suspect then that the pizzas would have been fresher, more varied, and the adjacent tables would probably have been laid out properly. We were receiving a sub-standard service although the restaurant advertised that it opened all day, the menu was (in theory) identical and the prices were the same.

This made me think that where a business is advertised as being open all day then the customer experience should be the same whether they visit early, peak time or late. They shouldn’t be irritated by an inconsistent and sub-standard experience. Even with their highly franchised business model, McDonalds generally manages to provide consistent, value-led, fast food irrespective of the time that the customer visits.

This made me reflect on how I run my business and I made a customer service commitment to:

1.Do the simple things consistently well.

2.Provide a consistently high standard of customer service irrespective of the time of day or the day of the week. I tend to work better later in the day rather than earlier, so my challenge is to overcome this inbuilt blockage on my performance in order to consistently help all of my clients.

3.Ensure that my clients receive a consistently high standard of stimulating material whether they interact with me via. my blog,podcast,newsletter, articles, talks or join one of my telephone seminars

4.Ensure that each course delegate’s experience is equally positive whether they are attending one of my corporate programmes with their colleagues or as an individual on one of my open courses

5.Continually ask for feedback from my clients to ensure these levels of consistency are being delivered.

Are there areas in your business that could also be suffering from “an irritating lack of consistency”?

Do your customers receive the same high level of attention and service irrespective of when they call or visit?

Have you checked with them that this is the case?

If so…..great …keep it up!

If not…what do you need to put in place to make this happen consistently?

Gary Gorman works with sales teams to help them improve their business performance and negotiate better deals.To get a FREE information pack “How to sell almost anything to almost anybody” please visit http://www.salessolutions-uk.com
or http://garygorman.blogspot.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gary_Gorman