Customers more a nuisance than reason for firms to survive

Customer Service Skills
One of the most important customer service skills you can develop is the ability to understand and effectively respond to the customer’s needs and concerns. For a long time, sales have been perceived to be mostly about trying to convince the customer that he needs the product. Excellent customer service starts by first taking the time to get to know the customer, his situation, his vision, his frustrations and his goals.

Is customer service outdated?
According to research, 70% of customers hit the road not because of price or product quality issues, but because they did not like the human side of doing business with the provider of the product or service. The research also revealed that 45% of these customers said they switched to another company because the attention they did receive was poor in quality.

Customers today are often treated like a nuisance, instead of the reason that a company is in business at all. Products and services continue to increase in cost. Customer service, on the other hand, continues to decline. Dealing with surly cashiers who seem to have more important things to do than ring up your sale are the rule rather than the exception. Having a product delivered to your home means giving up hours out of your day to wait. It seems that businesses today have forgotten how valuable customers actually are. Without customers, no one earns a paycheck.

It’s sad to say that, customer service of some of our companies are far behind those of countries like UK, USA, Australia etc. We, Sri Lankans have a wonderful smile than anybody else in this world. But when you go to some ‘big’ shops, you can’t find that smile from the staff. Thousands of books and articles are written on the topic of customer service. Executives constantly tout the importance of providing superior service, and everyone seems to agree that it is essential to long-term business success, especially in today’s competitive marketplace.

Providing great customer service is not difficult. IBM founder Thomas Watson says: “If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.” Words to live by! Customers want to work with those businesses who demonstrate a sincere desire to help them with anything they need, and they are willing to pay for it. Yes, they want products to work and services that meet their needs. More importantly though, they want someone to care when something goes wrong.

They motivate and reward employees who deliver outstanding service. Bonuses and raises can certainly be tied to customer service performance. Or, employees can be rewarded and publicly acknowledged when they put service about all else. Both approaches make it crystal clear that service to the customer is the organization’s number one priority.

Based on my own professional experience, I have defined four rules crucial to delivering winning customer service:

Rule 1: Listen! When customers complain there is a reason. More importantly, it is an opportunity to learn something, so hear them out without interrupting or arguing.

Rule 2: Don’t take it personally. Customer complaints are about products or service that did not live up to their expectations or the marketing hype. Taking it personally, getting defensive, or getting angry only makes the situation worse.

Rule 3: Offer a sincere apology for the inconvenience. Put yourself in your customer's shoes. Remember what it feels like when something you have purchased did not do the job it was supposed too, or caused an even bigger problem than the one it was supposed to solve.

Rule 4: Never say, “It’s not my job or my department or my responsibility.” If you work at the company that made the product or sold the service - it is your job! Make a personal commitment to do whatever it takes to fix the problem even if it is not in your job description.

Customer service today has many new challenges. It requires the most contemporary and most professional people skills available. Customer service representatives must be able to differentiate themselves in a crowded indifferent world. It is essential they increase customer service without becoming cynical with difficult customers. Yet study after study reveals three critical findings every employee, especially those interacting with customers, must consider:

1. It costs, on average, 6 - 10 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one
2. Existing customers account for a majority of sales
3. Referral business generated from satisfied customers is substantial

Regardless of the title held, every employee is selling or unselling his or her company every hour, every day. If the customer is king, the second most important person in the kingdom must be the person who has a direct interaction on a daily basis with the king. No other position impacts the customer, or the bottom line, more. Consequently, excellent customer service must be the desire, not the duty. If reversed, the result can be devastating.

The writer works in the UK as a marketer. He could be reached at cboteju@yahoo.co.uk