What Every Employee Should Know About How to Prevent Customer Service Conflicts
There are five techniques that have been proven to be effective in resolving, minimizing, and preventing conflicts. And by conflicts I am referring to any of the following that may take place between two or more people: misunderstanding, miscommunications, arguments, disagreements, mixed messages, fighting, etc. A. Active Listening: Use this approach when you want to let the customer know that you're truly paying attention. Do so by totally involving your eyes, ears, and body. Pay attention to his body language, move close, cup your hand over your ear, lean forward, etc. Be patient to let the customer fully explain himself. Avoid interrupting and asking questions in a rapid spitfire fashion. (Doing so might cause the customer to feel like a crime victim being interrogated by the Police.) If you do have to interrupt (sometimes this is necessary to take charge of a rambler), do so politely and professionally by asking permission first. Say, for example, "To better serve you, would you mind if I ask a question or two?" B. Paraphrasing: Use this approach when you want to make sure you did not miss what was said. "So, if I understood you correctly, you said there were only 5 spaces." (This works extremely well with the next technique, but can be extremely effective if not overused.) C. Summarizing: Use this approach when you want to break up lengthy complaints into smaller pieces that you can remember and understand. Rather than let the customer ramble on about what is wrong with the product or service he bought, take control by asking him to tell you about each portion/phase/section of the complaint before moving on the next. D. You-Message: Use this approach when you want to reflect to your customer what you're observing. * Reflect the customer's emotion. (Identify and name the emotion you are observing.) Say directly to the customer with a smile and pleasant tone of voice, "Mr./Ms Customer, you seem rather angry, mad, provoked, etc. about your situation." (This puts the customer at ease. It defuses his/her emotions from escalating into angry shouting matches or something worse. Be patient and wait for his response that might be an angry agreement with you: an A-HA Moment! You've connected!) E. I-Message: As a last resort, use this approach to communicate with the customer when: * your communication and that of the customer might become hostile; * the communication might become a shouting match; or * the words might turn to physical confrontation. Now put your I-Message into action by following these sequences of steps: 1. Get his attention. (Address the customer in a positive, polite, and professional manner.) 2. Identify your emotion. (Identify and name the emotion you are feeling.) "I feel happy/am excited to serve you, etc. when you approach me . . ." 3. Name his misconduct. (Identify the behavior that is offensive.) "... however when you call me names, throw things at me, spit at me, etc." 4. State the consequence(s). (Identify the consequence that you wish him/her to change. And stop! Be extremely cautious not to ramble because by doing so you run the risk of throwing a spark on the cinders.) "... it makes me feel disrespected, etc." Put it together and it should sound like this: "Mr./Ms, I feel happy/am excited to serve you, etc. when you approach me; however when you call me names, throw things at me, spit at me, etc., it makes me feel disrespected and incapable to serve you, etc." (Stop! Wait for a response!) Research has shown that the response is 95-98% non-confrontational or non-aggressive. Remember: This approach lets the customer know that, although you disapprove of his (or her) conduct, you still care to help and serve him. Now put the five techniques together by SOARING to the top of the Mountain by: * Summarizing a conversation that is becoming too lengthy. * Observing to see if the customer's body language matches the words spoken. * Actively listening to what is being said by making eye contact. * Reflecting on what you thought you heard. * Indicating that you truly care about the customer and not his deed. * Naming the misconduct to bring it out into the open. * Going beyond the emotions to get to the facts. Remember: When you maximize your potential; we all win. When you don't, we all lose. © Etienne A. Gibbs, MSW PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in ezines, newsletters, and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Although advance permission is not required, please notify us at execandgroup-consulting@yahoo.com when you use this article. Etienne A. Gibbs, MSW, Management Consultant and Trainer, conducts seminars, lectures, and writes articles on his theme: ... helping you maximize your potential. He offers management, marketing, and parenting resources at his Maximizing Your Potential blog.
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Making Your Contacts Work For You
The best way to explain this concept is to tell you a story. While calling for lease purchasing property, I spoke with an older widowed woman. I went through my script and when I asked her why she thought her home hadn't sold, she said to me, I just don't know, I put it in the paper. I then asked her if she had a FSBO sign in her yard, or if she had posted any flyers around the neighborhood or in the nearby markets. She said, why no, I haven't. To make a long story short she said she would ask her granddaughter to help her do just that. She thanked me profusely and I told her to call me if she needed any help!
The Importance of Good Customer Service
Do you have good customer service? Even for your free giveaways?
A New Way To Handle Complaints, Or Is It?
What a lot of money we have been wasting on dealing with customer complaints.
Customer Service - How Good Are YOU?
At 8.30 am a wealthy client (on his way to make a presentation to the local council at 9 am) walked into a store that sells photocopiers. They also provide a copy service. He wanted to make a back-up copy of his lengthy presentation.
11 Moments of Truth
These moments come when a customer or client?
What Every Employee Should Know About How to Prevent Customer Service Conflicts
There are five techniques that have been proven to be effective in resolving, minimizing, and preventing conflicts. And by conflicts I am referring to any of the following that may take place between two or more people: misunderstanding, miscommunications, arguments, disagreements, mixed messages, fighting, etc.
Customer Service A Chickens Way
Anyone who knows me knows my favorite fast food restaurant is Chick-fil-A. Aside from the fact their chicken is especially good and I can always get sweet tea, I have a valuable business reason for eating there ? they serve up amazing customer service. And these lessons aren't just served in my nearest location. But in any city, any town, any time I have been to a Chick-fil-A, I have left feeling like the most valuable Customer.
Caring for Your Customers
You probably think I am going to say something like, "The customer is always right." Right?? Wrong.
Minimize The Pain of Check Recovery
$350 million in bad checks are written each and every week. That fact alone makes bad checks a serious problem for American businesses. It is almost inevitable that, if your business accepts checks, you have been affected by this. As well as being stuck with bank fees for depositing a bad check - and the very real possibility that the bad check could impact your bottom line - there is the time, aggravation and cost associated with recovering the funds. It is often the case that recovering the check can incur more in costs than the value of the original debt. Inevitably, many smaller businesses write off bad checks, believing that they cannot afford to pursue the debt. However, there are a number of ways your business can fight back and minimize the pain of bad check recovery.
Putting The Serve Back Into Customer Service
Good service is easy to spot and hard-to-find. Mediocre service
occasionally stands out but only because it's the cream-of-the-crap.
Customers Who Rave About You and Your Service
According to customer service studies by marketing gurus of the world, here are the following qualities, which must be present in your life and your business in order to develop raving fan customers who are not just satisfied but completely loyal to you over the long haul.
Customer Service Is Dying - and Im Not Feeling So Good Myself
Have you ever called a company and been greeted with the phrase "Hold, please"? How do they know you can hold? They don't even know who you are. Maybe you can't hold; maybe you have 10 seconds of juice left on your cell phone and your hair is on fire. Then you finally get someone on the phone, only to be told, "I can't actually help you; I'm just paid to apologize, and I'm really sorry about that."
Customer Satisfaction and the Service Business
The relationship between customer satisfaction and success of a service business is a direct one. Customer satisfaction measurement, however, is a much more complex matter. Customer satisfaction is a qualitative assessment of the services you provide, and therefore it is a surrogate measure of the value of your services to your customers.
Breaking the Ice and Winning Over the Client!
Wherever you turn these days you'll find articles covering every business strategy and tactic available to man, from how to make a great presentation to strategies for success all the way to negotiations and prospecting and getting a client to commit. But hardly anyone touches on the subject of breaking the ice with a new client and winning them over.
Customer Service - A Lost Art?
Is customer service a lost art? Before you answer that question, take a moment and think about the last few times you have gone shopping or out to dinner. Okay, now that you have really thought about it, is your answer any different?
Why is it that when we actually DO receive excellent customer service that it makes such an impression on us that we usually choose to go back? Why - because the occurrences are so few and far between!!!
Should I Have My Company Mystery Shopped?
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said to me, "Oh, you do Mystery Shopping; I always wanted to do that!" I think most people do find the thought of posing as a customer and reporting back on how they were treated, rather intriguing. But there is a lot more to it that skulking around in a trench coat and spy glass!
Passing the After-Sales Test
Some time ago a major UK food retailer decided to branch out into non-foods. Well, they all do it now, but in those days it was unheard of. Alongside the fruit and vegetables, meat and tinned foods they sold refrigerators that they had purchased at very low cost from an eastern European company (these were the days when East and West Europe rarely traded with each other).
These fridges were very cheap ? and they worked! The retailer passed on much of this low cost to grateful customers who purchased them in great numbers.
What the retailer didn't consider was that fridges ? unlike tins of beans ? occasionally need spare parts. They sometimes breakdown or are damaged. What the retailer forgot was AFTER SALES.
It was entirely understandable the customers would make the assumption that the retailer would have this in hand. Trouble is, they didn't. The parts - and the engineers who knew who to fit them - were in Poland. So, to many customers, what seemed like a bargain turned out to be a problem. This retailer is now very successfully selling non-food goods alongside food products and I am sure they did the decent thing by refunding their disgruntled fridge customers of many years ago.
Not all companies are so good with their customers. Some will sell products as a one-off transaction and will not be interested in what happens from the moment the product has been sold. "We don't do repairs and we don't sell spare parts. Contact the manufacturer." This is not a lot of good if you live in the U.S. and the manufacturer is in Shanghai, for example.
Of course, some products and are not designed to be repaired or refurbished. The manufacturers simply expect them to be thrown away at the end of their life, even if that life is relatively short. An example is the microwave oven. Who fixes yours? Nobody, I suspect. They are usually repairable, but rarely is one ever repaired. No, they just end up in landfill alongside many other goods that are also thrown away rather than "made good". No wonder many countries around the world are introducing legislation to limit the extent to which such goods can be tossed away so casually.
So, next time you are considering a purchase, especially the purchase of an expensive product or a mechanical product, consider the following tests:
1. Is it built to last?
2. Does it come with a guarantee?
3. Is there evidence of the product's durability?
4. Is it designed to be repaired?
5. Are spare parts available?
Remember also, that repair is better for the environment than replacement. Of course, old products do need to be replaced eventually, but why replace prematurely just because you have purchased a product that failed the tests above?
One group of products that pass these tests with flying colors is Insect-o-Cutor Fly Killers. Have a look at www.flykiller.net and you will see them there.
Let's put them to the above tests:
1. Insectocutor Fly Killers are made of steel. Their solid construction is one of their best selling points.
2. They come with a 5-year guarantee
3. Go to any restaurant or commercial kitchen and you will see Insectocutor fly killers that have been there for 20 years ? and still going strong!
4. Insectocutor fly killers are constructed in a logical way making repairs straightforward. Insectocutor also provides support for repairs.
5. Insect-o-Cutor sells a range of spare parts for all of their fly killers ? even for models that are no longer in production. And their best UK distributor, Arkay Hygiene ? at www.eeeee.co.uk - is always happy to provide these spares as well as replacement u.v. lamps and glueboards
After sales is just as much about the customer as it is about the product. Making a sale is not the end, it is just the beginning. Insect-o-cutor is a good example of a company that demonstrates its concern for it customers through the long-term support offered for its range of products. Just think on that one when you are next down the municipal dump with your broken down microwave!
Customer Service Tips - Is Your Business A Leaky Bucket?
Customer service and customer service training are vital for any business.
What Exactly is Customer Relationship Management?
The defintion of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that I favor is "CRM is the business strategy that aims to understand, anticipate, manage and personalize the needs of an organization's current and potential customers"
Customers - What They Really Want - 6 Secrets of Customer Service
What customers really want can be divided into two areas.
|
