Good Customer Service made simple

Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business. You can offer promotions and slash prices to bring in as many new customers as you want, but unless you can get some of those customers to come back, your business won’t be profitable for long.

Good customer service is all about bringing customers back. And about sending them away happy – happy enough to pass positive feedback about your business along to others, who may then try the product or service you offer for themselves and in their turn become repeat customers.

If you’re a good salesperson, you can sell anything to anyone once. But it will be your approach to customer service that determines whether or not you’ll ever be able to sell that person anything else. The essence of good customer service is forming a relationship with customers – a relationship that that individual customer feels that he would like to pursue.

How do you go about forming such a relationship? By remembering the one true secret of good customer service and acting accordingly; “You will be judged by what you do, not what you say.”

I know this verges on the kind of statement that’s often seen on a sampler, but providing good customer service is a simple thing. If you truly want to have good customer service, all you have to do is ensure that your business consistently does these things:

Earlier to my current assignment, I was a Branch Manager at a leading Private Life Insurer in India. My main profile was in servicing external as well as internal customers. Good customer servicing need not be with the one who buys your product and walk into your premises. They can your inter-departmental colleagues, intra-departmental peers or managers. I had the privilege of meeting customers who are unhappy to people who were extremely happy. Please remember that I regret using the word “IRATE” as no customer who speaks loud or shouts are irate. This is one good lesson I learned from Indian Financial services industry.

I would like to highlight one of the best experience I had with an unhappy customer. This customer was aged and had a problem in his auto-debit facility. He was getting transferred to different parts of India. He had his bank account in Bangalore and had given his standing instruction from this account. After few months there was problem in debiting his account for technical reasons. He was not aware of it as he got transferred and not able to keep track of his policy status. He had inquired on the problem with one of the branch in the next month and had given request to re-debit. But again the debit was not effective. Since its outside the purview of the insurer to analyze as the onus is with the bank, the earlier request was futile. He came to my branch with this problem but was unhappy that monthly premiums can be paid by auto-debit only. He wanted to cancel the policy but the same cannot be done as the policy is nearly an year old. He is fine to forgive the money paid for few months. We tried to convey the product terms that surrender is not possible. But he was slowly increasing and on the limit.

I roped in and took charge of the customer from the executive. I made him comfortable in a separate room and offered him water as it was shining outside. I already analyzed the problem before meeting him and not asked him on his problem. I was listening to him and not uttered a word when he was talking. I made him comfortable by introducing myself and assured him first that I will be able to give him a solution. I asked him that the problem requires some more time and asked for it. Few days later I called him, updated the status of the problem and made him understand we are here working on the problem. That made him feel happy as this was out of the bound. On the day before the promised date, we called him though he was out of station and updated the necessary solution.

He was extremely happy for the servicing provided by us and had become a repeat customer. Even this day whenever I had a chance to meet him outside office he speaks friendly and inquires on health. As you see the customer who was unhappy earlier can be made a more loyal customer. There are some basic etiquettes which a customer might or might not expect from us. But doing them pro-actively can win customers. The important thing to note here are

Ø Understanding the customer problem

Ø Make him feel comfortable

Ø Assure him that we are here to service him.

Ø Buy comfortable time and make promise.

Ø Update status in spite of within delivery time or not.

Ø Deliver as promised.

1) Answer your phone.

Get call forwarding. Or an answering service. Hire staff if you need to. But make sure that someone is picking up the phone when someone calls your business. (Notice I say “someone”. People who call want to talk to a live person, not a “fake recorded robot”.)

2) Don’t make promises unless you WILL keep them.

Not plan to keep them. Will keep them. Reliability is one of the keys to any good relationship, and good customer service is no exception. If you say, “Your new bedroom furniture will be delivered on Tuesday”, make sure it is delivered on Tuesday. Otherwise, don’t say it. The same rule applies to client appointments, deadlines, etc.. Think before you give any promise – because nothing annoys customers more than a broken one.

3) Listen to your customers.

Is there anything more exasperating than telling someone what you want or what your problem is and then discovering that that person hasn’t been paying attention and needs to have it explained again? From a customer’s point of view, I doubt it. Can the sales pitches and the product babble. Let your customer talk and show him that you are listening by making the appropriate responses, such as suggesting how to solve the problem.

4) Deal with complaints.

No one likes hearing complaints, and many of us have developed a reflex shrug, saying, “You can’t please all the people all the time”. Maybe not, but if you give the complaint your attention, you may be able to please this one person this one time - and position your business to reap the benefits of good customer service.

5) Be helpful - even if there’s no immediate profit in it.

The other day I popped into a local watch shop because I had lost the small piece that clips the pieces of my watch band together. When I explained the problem, the proprietor said that he thought he might have one lying around. He found it, attached it to my watch band – and charged me nothing! Where do you think I’ll go when I need a new watch band or even a new watch?

6) Train your staff (if you have any) to be ALWAYS helpful, courteous, and knowledgeable.

Do it yourself or hire someone to train them. Talk to them about good customer service and what it is (and isn’t) regularly. Most importantly, give every member of your staff enough information and power to make those small customer-pleasing decisions, so he never has to say, “I don’t know, but so-and-so will be back at...”

7) Take the extra step.

For instance, if someone walks into your store and asks you to help them find something, don’t just say, “It’s in Aisle 3.” Lead the customer to the item. Better yet, wait and see if he has questions about it, or further needs. Whatever the extra step may be, if you want to provide good customer service, take it. They may not say so to you, but people notice when people make an extra effort and will tell other people.

8) Throw in something extra.

Whether it’s a coupon for a future discount, additional information on how to use the product, or a genuine smile, people love to get more than they thought they were getting. And don’t think that a gesture has to be large to be effective. The local art framer that we use attaches a package of picture hangers to every picture he frames. A small thing, but so appreciated.

And the best part? The irony of good customer service is that over time it will bring in more new customers than promotions and price slashing ever did!

Remember always “CUSTOMER IS KING”

Imagination vs Knowledge

Complexity is the walk of life. The world greets us with numerous problems which are obvious but solutions are always hidden. More humorous is the fact that solution to this question is irony. The other well-known “which came first-hen or egg” simple question is difficult to crack. More tiring than to crack “Da-Vinci code”. Why are we dealing with this now? Our argument of Imagination is important than knowledge or not is more intelligent to argue. I have the privilege to argue on it.

People have dreams. Some dreams come true. Not necessarily the “early morning” dream of becoming a billionaire. Long before anyone would have dreamt of flying, one person was exemplary. He was old but optimistic. He was aged but agile. He was musician, artist, physicist, architect, painter etc. He had the knowledge. But more importantly, he was imaginative in creating things. He was an harbinger and never ever people believed in him. Wondering whom am I talking of? He is none other than Learnado Da Vinci. Much before Wright brothers built the first aero flight, Learnado Da Vinci had a master plan using his imagination than knowledge. Do remember that there was no doctorate or PhD or modern simulation techniques or technology available during his time to aid him in designing. Imagination had precedence.

At present times, imagination is not as obvious as was in medieval times. The people uses technology as vital as breathing air. The life does not exceed the boundary of obvious circle of creative imagination which may be reality. Every coin has two sides. Needless to say, we are also good imagination put to good use. Take the example of fashion industry. World over the designers have their imaginary bird fly high than knowledge. Shirts and trousers we wear and dresses they design are the by-product of grinding work of designers' imagination and fascination of color-mix than knowledge of manufacture. Take the success story of APPLE IPOD. For years people used cassettes with walk man and then CD were used in CD man. But the trend was to store more data in a compact and reusable format. Apple had the imagination and could come out-of-the-box to design something which is more a PRODUCT than the BRAND. Now a player that plays mp3 is called as Ipod than an mp3 player. Thats an exemplary virtue of imagination. The same also applied to XEROX.

Are we trying to prove a point that imagination scores higher than knowledge?. May be yes and no! There are ways to gather knowledge step by step by way of education. One may have numerous degrees behind his name but they are trivial if not put to use in designing things by imagination. Finally, KNOWLEDGE can be attributed as an engine which is invaluable unless fitted into a vehicle called IMAGINATION. Is IMAGINATION is important than KNOWLEDGE? Now the choice is yours to choose which is obvious!

What takes priority?

Treat the other man's faith gently; it is all he has to believe with. His mind was created for his own thoughts, not yours or mine. – HENRY S HASKINS

I had a dream. You have a dream and everyone has one. Is it that dream can take you to what you want to achieve? Most say YES!! Some say affirmative NO!! I’m one of the “some”. The very simple reason to the defense is that supportive action must be there to achieve dream. To do that supportive action, one must have the eagerness to do. Above this, one must have the knowledge on thing to act upon. Mere knowledge would not suffice to do action. Necessary skill is required to acquire the knowledge. Knowledge is bottomless. To reach the desired milestone, with skill and knowledge, attitude is foremost importance. If you think that I’m going to stress on Attitude, then you are terribly wrong.

Let me walk through a couple of examples on what this article is going to talk about.

Charles Blondin, his real name was Jean-Francois Gravelet was sent to Lyon when he was just 5 years old. After 6 months training as an acrobat, he made his first public appearance as “the Little wonder”. His superior skill and grace as well as the originality of the settings of his acts, made him a popular favorite. Blondin especially owed his celebrity and fortune to his idea of crossing the gorge below Niagara Falls on a tightrope, 1100 feet (335 m) long, and 160 feet (50 m) above the water. This he accomplished, first on June 30, 1859, a number of times, always with different theatric variations: blindfold, in a sack, trundling a wheelbarrow, on stilts, carrying a man (his manager, Harry Colcord) on his back, sitting down midway while he cooked and ate an omelette. There was something Blondin’s Manager exhibited on Blondin. Let’s keep the subject matter in disguise for a meanwhile.

Let me give another example from a famous animation movie “THE PRINCE OF EGYPT” which I like the most and revolves on the subject matter.

The important person in the Bible was Moses who exhibited the subject matter as well as others who reposed the same. Moses was born in Egypt which was ruled by the Pharaohs. During that period Hebrew were slaves under Egyptians. The tradition was that Hebrew might grow in population and rise against them. Hence they slaughtered new born male children. But Moses was a pharaoh and came to understand later that he was Hebrew. At later stage he was chosen by god to deliver them. Moses did not believe in himself that he can do the job as he was a pharaoh. Neither people did. But God chose him and was with him to deliver Hebrews.

As one can see there was something more fundamental bonding on the action of Colcord on Charles Blondin and by God on Moses. Many people saw Blondin walk across the gorge below Niagara Falls on a tightrope, and believed that he was capable of carrying a man on his back safely across. But only his manager Harry Colcord had enough faith to allow himself to be carried.

By now you must have got to know what I was trying to emphasize. Yes. That’s Faith!! The word seems short but the meaning is magnanimous.

What is faith? Is it praying to god on a night before the exam to clear it? Or seek god’s help in winning the lottery? Or seek help to clear the interview? What are we doing here in real life situation? We seek somebody’s help in our favor for an event to happen to our benefit. If the event is unsuccessful, we desecrate the other entity. Is it correct? Many will say NO. Successful events and unsuccessful events happens everyday and night. Some may succeed and some may fail. It is illiteracy on our part to blame when we do not succeed. Life is full of uncertainty. If success becomes 100% then there would be no winner at any contest as all participants in a running race will win. The reason being that all the people had faith they would win. Imagine a world with 100% success. There is no essence. The point that I am trying to emphasize is that faith does not necessarily lead to positive results. Positive people have faith irrespective of the event outcome.

Going back to the Moses example, Hebrews did not believe that they would be freed. But their faith still remained. That proved the essence of faith. The fruit of happiness would be tremendous when success comes after many failures with faith intact. Faith is to commit one to act based on sufficient evidence to warrant belief, but without absolute proof. Mere belief on the basis of evidence is not faith. To have faith involves an act of will.

Faith may be to trust on an action. It may be also to believe without reason or believing based upon social traditions. Faith is the development of pathways through doubt. With certain resistances to life, wishing to obtain more life force causes us to develop means and methods to overcome the resistance. When something is wanted and there stands doubt between your current condition of need and the thing desired, systems of faith are employed. A person will first work existing pathways already established by faith. If they fail, they will seek to develop other pathways by faith, not knowing for sure if the path they pursue will provide the object they seek.

The desire for things dominates the application of faith. Many of those actively applying faith to specific pathways seek less tangible things, such as love, peace, harmony, or even eternal life. Faith is an individual path. Just because it worked for one person, doesn't mean it will work for another. Faith has to be realistic. One cannot have hard faith to fly in air one day by himself. Faith sometimes make ingenuity seems illiteracy. Numerous news has been heard of scientists having faced many failures before reaping the fruit of success. The success recipe is pure faith and confidence in them.

Faith is based upon the interpretation of the intangible (feelings, emotions, etc.) instead of the physically tangible.

According to the Bible, "faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see".

As we knew in real life positives always have negatives as appreciations have criticisms. One may also see blind faith. This is too dangerous. I would not like to go on this part as the subtle scene as of now goes misty. A certain number of religious rationalists, as well as non-religious people, criticize implicit faith as being irrational, and see faith as ignorance of reality: a strong belief in something with no evidence. The issue is more than theoretical. Defenders of faith say that belief in scientific evidence is itself based on faith — in positivism; yet they do not themselves defy reason by walking off cliffs out of faith in divine intervention. When one has constructive belief and faith and does his act to the full, no result would be undone.

Unless we have faith, we may become isolated in mind and world. In all walks of life, one may experience it. When we travel in an airplane or in a public transport bus, we have faith at the pilot or driver to drive us safe to our destination. Some may exhibit the character explicitly by praying god before travel. Mostly it is implicit. We do not question the pilot on their success in driving but we do travel. Imagine. Leverage your thinking.

Another interesting term in sync with faith is trust. It’s up to you and everyone to experiment on situations where they apply and derive benefits. One can be said for sure is that success comes at any stage. If one has commitment, confidence and faith to do, success is rest assured. Ask anyone. They will heed to it. Before sign-off, have faith in life!!