Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary
208
Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary
208Paperback
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Overview
Discover the hidden ways to raise your organizations' customer service experiences from ordinary to extraordinary.
If you want to know how strong your company's customer service is, ask your employees to describe what their work entails. Then pay attention to whether they simply list their duties and tasks or if they speak to the true essence of their job--to create delighted customers who will be less price sensitive, have higher repurchase rates, and enthusiastically recommend the company or brand to others.
The latter should be every employee's highest priority, because when it's not, your customers are merely the recipients of a transaction, not an experience, and transactions do not make for a lasting impression or inspire loyalty. In Delight Your Customers, customer service expert Steve Curtin makes a compelling case that customer service managers need to shift from monitoring service activities to modeling, recognizing, and reinforcing the behaviors that create happy and returning customers. Things such as:
- Expressing genuine interest
- Offering sincere compliments
- Sharing unique knowledge
- Conveying authentic enthusiasm
- Providing pleasant surprises
- Delivering service heroics when needed
Simply based on their own personal experiences, everyone knows that great customer service is rare. So why wouldn't you want to provide a unique, caring, and beneficial experience for all your customers to rave about with others? With the real-world stories, examples, and strategies shared in Delight Your Customers, you can take the customer service experience you offer from ordinary to extraordinary.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780814432808 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AMACOM |
| Publication date: | 06/11/2013 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Introduction Years ago, I worked in New York City with an English woman named Karen who had a unique work history. During graduate school in England, she had worked on an assembly line in a factory that manufactured dolls. Karen's job role was to attach doll heads to each of the torsos as they passed by on a long conveyer belt. As she described it, as the torso approached, she would lift a doll head from a large bin, pop the head on the torso, and twist it firmly until it locked into place. One by one, Karen would lift, pop, and twist the dolls' heads into place—each one like the last one—until her quota was met or her shift ended. The next day, she would return and repeat the process over and over again: lift, pop, twist . . . lift, pop, twist . . . until the end of another workday. I can still hear Karen describing her job duties in her refined British accent: "Leeft, paup, tweest . . . Leeft, paup, tweest . . . Leeft, paup, tweest . . ." To this day, whenever I observe an employee who is simply going through the motions, I'm reminded of Karen's job at the factory. I refer to this demeanor as a factory mentality. Perhaps you too have observed this outward behavior by service industry employees. It's easy to spot, characterized by indifference and a transactional approach to serving customers. Expressionless, robotic behavior devoid of any personality may be permissible in a factory or warehouse environment where there are no signs of real, live, paying customers (as long as certain production quotas and delivery schedules are met). However, in a customer service job role, employee behavior must be different. This is not a book about how to "WOW!" customers by continually surpassing their expectations and exceeding their needs—which is unsustainable. Most people don't want "outrageous" or "over-the-top" customer service at every turn. In everyday service situations, most customers simply want to be acknowledged and appreciated. Delight Your Customers is about doing the little things that convey to customers that they matter and that their business is valued. It's about breaking with routine by consistently providing the "little extras" that leave lasting positive impressions on customers. After all, the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little "extra." Part I sets the stage for delighting customers by identifying the two dimensions of every employee's job role and identifying three truths of exceptional customer service. Whether you are new to the service industry or a seasoned veteran, this section will expand your definition of employees' roles and is likely to influence the way you manage service providers. Part II introduces seven concrete behaviors that will enable you to immediately improve the quality of customer service you provide or influence. These seven simple ways to raise customer service from ordinary to extraordinary are natural and intuitive. Rather than offering scripts or a prescriptive acronym that requires employees to be someone they're not, these behaviors encourage employees to be themselves at their best! Part III provides fresh thinking about incorporating your organization's highest priority into existing employee functions so that exceptional customer service, however it is defined by your particular organization, occurs consistently rather than being left to chance. Throughout the book, you will see references to customers, clients, guests, shoppers, passengers, patients, members, and more. The lessons in this book will apply, regardless of how you refer to your customers, even if your "customer" is an employee, owner, vendor, or other stakeholder. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that these lessons also apply to the "customers" you serve in your personal life, whether that means a spouse, children, friends, neighbors—even complete strangers. Each chapter concludes with a bulleted summary of key insights to assist you in raising customer service from ordinary to extraordinary, followed by a brief application exercise in which you immediately record top-of-mind ideas about applying lessons from the chapter in your world of work. It's no secret that the customer service quality most of us experience in our daily lives tends to be pretty mediocre. (And sometimes that assessment is being generous.) It's my aspiration to contribute to the conversation about raising customer service quality—and this book is a start. To continue the conversation, I invite you to visit my blog at http://www.stevecurtin.com/blog/ or email me: steve@stevecurtin.com
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction 3
Part One: Function Vs. Essence
Chapter 1—Three Truths of Exceptional Customer Service 9
Exceptional Customer Service Reflects the Essence of Every Service Industry Employee’s Job Role 11
Exceptional Customer Service Is Always Voluntary 17
Exceptional Customer Service Typically Costs
No More to Deliver than Poor Customer Service 20
Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 24
Applying Three Truths of Exceptional Customer Service 26
Contents
Part Two: Seven Simple Ways To
Raise Customer Service
Chapter 2—Express Genuine Interest 29
How to Express Genuine Interest 32
Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 49
Applying Genuine Interest 52
Chapter 3—Offer Sincere and Specific Compliments 53
Be Attentive to Opportunities to Offer Compliments 54
Factors Influencing the Offering of Compliments 57
How to Offer Sincere and Specific Compliments 59
Recognize Coworkers 64
Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 69
Applying Sincere and Specific Compliments 71
Chapter 4—Share Unique Knowledge 73
Unique Knowledge Brings More Value to the Customer Experience 74
The Benefits of Unique Knowledge 75
How to Share Unique Knowledge 82
Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 88
Applying Unique Knowledge 91
Chapter 5—Convey Authentic Enthusiasm 93
The Role of Leadership in Fostering Authentic Enthusiasm 95
How to Convey Authentic Enthusiasm 99
Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 108
Applying Authentic Enthusiasm 110
Chapter 6—Use Appropriate Humor 111
When to Use Appropriate Humor 113
When the Use of Humor May Be Inappropriate 123
Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 125
Applying Appropriate Humor 126
Chapter 7—Provide Pleasant Surprises 127
How to Provide Pleasant Surprises 129
Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 142
Applying Pleasant Surprises 144
Chapter 8—Deliver Service Heroics 145
Two Types of Service Heroics 146
How to Deliver Heroic Service to Solve Customers’ Problems 152
Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 161
Applying Service Heroics 163
Part Three: Incorporating Job Essence
Into Job Function
Chapter 9—From Ordinary to Extraordinary 167
Why Ordinary Customer Service Is Common and Extraordinary Customer Service Is Rare 170
How to Raise Customer Service Quality from Ordinary to Extraordinary 173
Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 186
Incorporating Job Essence into Job Function 188
Index 189