Customer Service Skills - It’s The Little Things That Count
Business performance, for most of us, is often dependent on how well we compete in the marketplace and whether we posess better customer service skills than our competitors. For most, it is difficult to really stand out in any one area.
There is no one big thing in which we can claim to be far superior to our competition in Customer Service Skills. But there is still a way that we can outshine our competitors despite the lack of a definite advantage. That is to be just a bit better in many small areas. In competition, as in life, it is often the little things that count using great Customer Service Skills.
There are many areas where we can focus our attack. However, by far the most effective areas concern those almost insignificant activities which involve our customers. When we can find small ways to provide better customer service and exceed their expectations in a number of areas, we create the perception that we must be superior to our competition in all ways.
The fact that many of the interactions we have with our customers are seemingly insignificant may cause us to become complacent and pay less attention to these Customer Service Skills than we should. However, some of the personal experiences I have had with a number of companies over the past few weeks will indicate the importance customers place on these interactions.
 The situations I will use to illustrate this message arose as a result of a move to a new home. Anyone who has undertaken such a move will understand that moving is stressful time and there are lots of things to organise.
One of the biggest differentiators in how my interactions with suppliers made me feel was in how the contact person took responsibility for solving my problem—or not. In some instances, the person took charge, used their initiative and suggested what they could do to help me solve my problem easier.
In other cases, the person commented on how they couldn’t do what I wanted and ended up by making my situation more difficult. In some cases, this has resulted in me not doing business with their company any more, or deciding that I will never refer that company to anyone in the future. When I receive better customer service, I am very much disposed to telling everyone what good service I received and that I would highly recommend that company. The lesson to draw from this is that it is important to empower your people to be problem solvers with their Customer Service Skills and not to set up systems or allow your people to behave in ways which present problems to your customers.
One of the stark contrasts in the customer service skill levels I received was in relation to changing my broadband internet connection from our old home to the new one.
In my dealings with my old supplier, I was told about how the old company's system made it difficult for the operators and that I would have to call when we got to our new place to arrange to have our broadband connection set up there. The whole downtime would be about 10 days.
As I do a lot of work from home, having broadband internet capability is very important to me. But the problem was not with the system, but with the way I was given extra work to do to bring about the solution. If the operator had taken charge of the whole process and made it easier for me, by having an internal system which kept track of what had to be done for me, instead of handing this problem to me, I would probably still be using that provider. However, the problem I had been given caused me to look for an alternative.
As it happened, I very quickly came across a provider whose contact person provided better customer service by making it his responsibility to solve my problem and get my internet up and running very quickly. I was even given options to try to see what suited my new situation before I committed to a specific service plan.
The result: I now have a new broadband internet provider, when I initially had no intention to change. The fact is, I was happy with the service the old provider had given me, but they created a problem for me which someone else had no difficulting in solving for me with better customer service.
Another example of how easy it is to lose business comes from the way we were treated by our removalist.
As we were only moving a short distance, we decided to use a company that had recently moved our friends, and pay them by the hour to move our furniture and boxes to our new home. As it happened, both my wife and I had come down with a bad dose of the flu during the weeks before the move, with the result that we were not quite as organised as we would have liked to have been by moving day.
We still had a few boxes to pack when the removalists arrived and it looked like we were not quite ready. However, everything was basically ready to go and we knew that by the time everything else had been loaded, we would have had time to complete the packing. (Why we were doing our own packing is another long story about previous poor customer service in this area, but we won’t go into that now.) As it happened, the removalist complained about us not being ready as soon as he saw the job in front of him and his crew and made us feel bad.
He didn’t even stop to consider our circumstances. He just saw that his job would be harder. I didn’t think this would matter, as we were paying by the hour anyway. As it worked out, the job did go according to plan and the original time frame, as I expected. However, the way we were treated at the start of the day soured the whole experience for us in such a way that we will never refer that company to any of our friends.
 What could have been an opportunity to be even better customer service and exceed our expectations, was turned into a negative experience by the person who became part of the problem instead of taking charge and becoming part of the solution.
There are many areas we can work on to develop better customer service skills, but these examples illustrate two factors which need to be considered when we look to make improvements.
One is in establishing systems which make it easy for the customer to deal with your company and your people. Think about how you can solve customers’ problems throughout the process of dealing with your company and how to exceed expectations in every instance.
The second is to empower your people through training and development to have an attitude of being problems solvers, rather than to be just doing their job. What a difference it makes when someone has the attitude that says, “How can we fix this?” instead of, “Sorry, that’s a problem.” As much as we try, our systems will not always provide the solution our customers want.
We need to have people who can respond to these situations with some flexibility and look to how they can help the customer get what they want, rather than saying it can’t be done. Even in cases where it works out that it can’t be done, the customer will normally appreciate the efforts of someone who has taken the intiative to provide superior customer service and try to solve their problem. Compare that to the feeling you get when everything seems to be too hard for someone and they refuse to go out of their way to help.
So make sure you pay attention to the small things in the way you operate and make them count for you in your battle against your competitors.
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