One of the hallmarks of a great customer service rep is someone who knows his/her customers so well, s/he can understand what the customer may need, often before the customer does. This is not an easily taught skill. I learned some of what it took from various jobs.
Rebecca Morgan
Are your staff doing your customers a disservice?
No one wants to be pushy or smarmy. No one wants to irritate or alienate customers. However, nearly everyone likes to help others.
So why do customer service reps — who probably have the most frequent contact with your customers — find it challenging to suggest additional products?
You think you have some tough customers?
I was stunned at the stories — all true — of demanding, self-absorbed customers. The customers all had one thing in common — they’d stayed at one of several elite hotels in a major European city.
Regaling me with outrageous tales at dinner, a dozen concierges entertained, but I also found it sad. The stories not only showed how truly helpless some of the richest people in the world can be without their attendants, but also how poorly they can treat those they’ve enlisted for help.
The stories included customers who:
Huge customer service for giant apple
For the past 10 Christmas’s, my sister and nieces have given me a 3-pound apple covered with carmel, chocolate and almonds. The yummy treat lasts a long time as I slice off a morsel or two for dessert.
The magic of Turkish tea
Even if you don’t understand the language being spoken, you can comprehend much of a conversation by the voice tone, facial expressions and gestures. So I watched carefully as my Turkish friend and owner of English Test School in Eskisehir, Tamer Ozdemir, navigated a tricky situation by using tea as a tool.
While we breakfasted on the school’s patio, Tamer shared with me his annoyance that a small car was parked illegally in front of his school, making it difficult for others to pass. To show his displeasure, he set the windshield wipers sticking out — making the car look like a bug with antennae.
Confessions of a leadership-training agnostic
Many of those delivering leadership training have an almost religious fervor in their conviction for it. These ardent fans can be staunch if they’ve grown up in organizational cultures that didn’t allow or encourage any push back or critical thinking about the premises on which the leadership training is based. It’s considered nearly blasphemy to voice a concern that most leadership training is not effective Folks think anyone who’d doubt that leadership can be effectively taught must also deny that the world is round. They can’t believe people like this — leadership Luddites — are in the business world.
I am one of the few who have publicly doubted if leadership training is effective, as I have not been convinced that leadership is teachable via traditional methods. That is not to say it can’t be learned. Let me explain my take on the difference.
Are you coachable?
I do a lot of 1-on-1 executive and entrepreneurial coaching. Which means I have a lot of pre-engagement conversations with people who would like to create bigger results and think coaching could help.
But some aren’t coachable — yet they don’t know it.
Why do I say this?
Be someone’s angel
Nearly every day we have opportunities to help someone — often strangers. Yet do you take this opening to make someone’s day, even if it means delaying your own path a few minutes? Sometimes we’re too busy scurrying to an appointment. But if you have the flexibility, you may have a much bigger impact on … Read more
How to alienate loyal customers
A favorite restaurant is an exemplar at using email and social media for customer retention. They send weekly customer appreciation 1/2-price deals to their email list and Facebook fans.
For years, they’ve had a loyalty card where you’d get one punch for every $10 purchase. You then submitted completed cards for free food.
Recently, they switched to a plastic card that is swiped for every purchase. You can check online to see your accumulated points.
Additionally, you got a $10 certificate if you visited the restaurant 5 times with the first 5 weeks of the card’s activation. Since I frequent the restaurant about once a week, this would be easy for me.
However, I ran into two problems.
You may have more influence than you think
Sometimes we go about our business and don’t think about if others are paying attention or not. Generally, not many people notice us or our behaviors. But sometimes we’re being observed and, unbeknownst to us, admired. We are unwitting role models. Or even held to a higher status than we believe we have.
This became apparent from a brief conversation I had during my recent speaking tour in Turkey. In between engagements, I hung out at my friend Tamer Ozdemir’s English Test School in Eskisehir. I got to know the English teachers there, including a young Turkish man named Aykuk. After a week of visiting with him and his students and his hearing of my speaking engagements in Turkey and beyond, we had this exchange: