In today’s economy and competitive marketplace, it is important now more than ever to excel at developing strong relationships and partnerships with your customers. Of course, we all know the best way to do this is by providing superior customer service. So, what does it take to deliver SUPERIOR customer service? It’s more than just being an effective listener, being responsive and answering the phone every time. It’s even way more than being positive, professional and pleasant to work with or having strong attention to detail. While all of these traits are very important and key aspects of providing good customer service, we need to challenge ourselves to be more than that… to go above and beyond.
1. Be Accountable: Know your organization and your product or the service you provide. You must also know your customer and what makes them tick. What is their culture, their history? What are their concerns? How does the service you provide meet their needs? Being accountable also means that you must deliver on everything that you say you are going to do and in the timeframe you say you are going to do it in. If you miss a deadline or make a mistake, own up to it and figure out a way to resolve the issue. Failure to be accountable causes your customer to lose faith in you and the services being provided.
2. Be Innovative: I like to think my relationship with clients as a boat floating on the water: We just set sail, everything seems to be going great and we are sailing along without a care in the world…Everyone is happy. All of the sudden, we spring a leak! Our gut reaction is to quickly plug the hole and stop the leak, right? Well, wouldn’t you know it, five more leaks spring up! Why is that? Maybe we were too hasty in our attempts to stop the first leak that we didn’t realize the potential problems it would cause later on. Isn’t it better to take the time to get to the root cause of the problem rather than just continuing to “plug holes?” Challenge yourself to think outside of the box and propose brand new solutions or process enhancements. You never know….you may just be the one to revolutionize your business and the way your company operates! And guess what? You made your customer happy in the process!
3. Over-Communicate: Providing your customer with as much information you can is definitely better than nothing at all. However, there are limits, and sometimes too much information can be a bad thing. Be careful with communicating with your customer, you don’t want to end up sounding like Charlie Brown’s teacher! (“Wah, wah, wah, wah.”) My point is that you should put yourself in the customer’s shoes and anticipate the questions that you might receive. If you know what questions/objections you might encounter up front, then you can address them before your customer has a chance to bring anything up. Your customer will walk away feeling confident that you’re the right person for the job and that they are in good hands.
4. Don’t be afraid to say “NO”: The customer is always right…. Right? Not always. I recently read a blog entitled “Saying ‘No’ To Customers Can Save Your Company” where the author stated that “many businesses fail because their leaders lose focus while trying to incorporate all (or many) of their customers’ suggestions.” We do this because saying yes makes the customer happy. Additional he writes that “making customers temporarily happy while destroying your company is, in Crowdspring’s opinion, an unacceptable cost. No company has unlimited resources and when you say yes to customers – you’re committing – and often, over-committing – those resources.” There comes a time when the customer’s expectations of your product, service or turnaround time becomes unreasonable. The balance here is knowing how to let the customer down easy. Be prepared to share the reasons why you are turning their suggestion down. After all, we are the subject matter experts and the customer hired us for a reason, right? It is important to focus on providing an alternative solution to satisfy their needs.
Going beyond what traditionally constitutes quality customer service is what will set you apart from your competitors. In addition to having a very satisfied customer, you will have earned their respect, demonstrated an innovative and reliable customer service experience, and you will have just re-branded yourself, and your company!
The author of this post, Melissa Belardi, has been with Allegis Group Services and part of the Cummins program since March of 2010. She has nearly 7 years of recruiting and staffing experience within various industries including Light Industrial, Automotive, Admin/Clerical, Pharmaceutical Sales, and Clinical Research.
Click here to find out more about Melissa.