Smile, be nice and help out doesn’t seem like it’s that hard to do in customer faced roles, right? It’s really the basics of customer service – or so you’d think.
Don’t you love it when you walk into a shop and the shop assistant is behind the counter on the phone planning her night out or eating a sandwich rather than talking to customers? Doesn’t ‘assistant’ mean that she could be ‘assisting’ her customers or at least acknowledging them?
And then, you come across people who are absolutely amazing at looking after their customers and it becomes so easy to spend money. A lot of shops could be doing so much better if they trained their staff better or employed more suitable candidates.
Just last week, my husband flew back from Zurich to Sydney (while I stayed another week to enjoy European summer, someone’s gotta do it). Checking in at Qatar Airways, the lady asked if he had the credit card he used to purchase the flights. Unfortunately that card was back in Sydney, so the lady said: ‘well, then you need to buy a new flight!’. Excuse me? Are you for real? They’ve already taken the money out of the account and now decide that you need to buy a new flight only because we didn’t have that same credit card on us? Wow, that’s a whole new customer experience.
It’s so important for a business to train their team members on providing the best customer service possible. Especially in a world where people are talking on social media, instantly spreading the word about a company’s good or bad service. Having people talk about your company positively in public is extremely powerful and an effective marketing tool.
In our own business, we put a lot of emphasis on providing the best client service and one of our team members role is solely dedicated to looking after clients and prospects – making sure they are happy. It really isn’t that hard.
Yes, sometimes you’ll have painful clients and in this case I don’t believe businesses need to bend over backwards – but rather help them find another service provider, in the nicest possible way.
The good news is that excellent customer service will help a business stand out from the rest and attract loyal customers.
Luckily my husband was able to call our bank in Australia, thanks to their wonderful 24-hour customer service and get the credit card number faxed through. He got on the flight with five minutes to spare – phew!
Do you have any customer service examples, good or bad you’d like to share below? We would love to hear from you.
