The Psychology of Customer Service By Dr Brian Jude Introduction You ask for well done, and you get

it raw! You want to change a shirt for a larger size, and you're harassed about not having a cash slip. You order 100, and get 10 delivered. And then..... instead of a solution and an apology, you're given the age old favourite, "Don't blame me, I only work here." Sadly, we're all too familiar with stories like these and many others that spell out the sorry state of customer service, found so often throughout commerce and industry. Research has shown that it costs 5 times more to attract a new customer, as opposed to keeping an existing one. We pour literally thousands into advertising and promotion, and then lose the customer a short time later, due to poor, uncaring service. Every time that we're in contact with the client, it's a moment of truth, a point in the on -going relationship between us which is going to guarantee future business... or turn that customer over to our competitors. In researching and preparing this book, I was totally amazed at the amount of new material that has been published on the subject of customer service. Service has become the buzz word of the Nineties and into the new millennium. Everyone talks about it... and precious few get it right. The standard of service within South Africa today can be rated as indifferent at best, or very poor, to be brutally frank. In every market segment, from banking to retailing... from computers to clothing... the general trend is to treat the customer like a third class slave, as opposed to a king. The purpose of this programme is to change this sorry state, and make sure that the customer really is the KING. When it comes to customer service, just what is good enough? Good enough, is not good enough. If we hope to improve service, we have to start off by improving attitude. If management and staff are suffering from stinking thinking, then this will be reflected in the service levels being offered. Good enough means that it just meets basic standards. That is hardly good enough. If we hope to stay competitive and profitable, we have to knock the socks off our customers. If one examines the great names in customer service, world wide, we find that Excellence is the norm. Spectacular is the rule, and "good enough" is seen as a four letter word. As a consultant, I often facilitate customer workshops on behalf of my clients. One factor which comes up EVERY time is cost. And the interesting thing is, that cost is secondary to service. Without exception, people are more concerned with reliability, trust, value, dependability and after sales follow up, than they are with price. This doesn't mean that they ignore cost, but they are happy to pay for these intangibles that I've just mentioned. And it's these intangibles that add up to superior customer service. Often we cut prices so low, that we're unable to afford to offer service, and this might be costing us business. There are more books published on the subject of customer care than virtually all the other business books put together. Yet the problem persists. It appears that a lot of people are making a lot of noise about improving customer service levels, but practically speaking, on the ground, the situation is still pathetically poor. So then, what is the solution? In running customer care workshops and seminars around the country, I constantly brainstorm this question with the people that I train, to come up with workable solutions. Training clearly, stands out as a key area to be addressed, and this can be done in many ways. Live seminars, video training and books are the most common, and we do offer all of these solutions. Books are the least expensive, but at the same time the least effective.

The main reason why books are not a better medium is that many of the books on customer service are heavy, theoretical and difficult to read. So, to overcome this problem, this book has been designed as a readable, easy to use service manual, that is fun to use. The style of the book follows my live seminars, so as you read, just imagine that we are together in a training room, and sharing ideas, learning, and having fun. This book is a complete structured version of my seminar, The psychology of customer service, which has been presented to over 20,000 people so far. Learning, at all levels is easier if people enjoy the experience. This applies in a training room, in a lecture hall or reading a book. With this in mind, this book is meant to educate you, while keeping you amused. Many of the customer service horror stories that Ill be relating, will bring a smile to your face and a chuckle to your throat. As a public speaker and trainer, I have labelled myself as an EDU-TRAINER. That is a person that trains and entertains at the same time. As an author, I have tried to achieve the same balance. Enjoy the book.. but at the same time internalise the lessons that it contains. Customer service at all levels is an issue. We need to address the issue, and make sure that the expression, The customer is king, is not just a bag of hot air. The customer is king, and its up to us to make them feel that, and at the same time to know that inside our very bones, so that our attitude towards that person is always outstanding. So now, kick off your shoes, sit back, relax and open your mind to superior service, with a smile. The old believe everything.. The middle aged suspect everything.. The young know everything. Oscar Wilde

The Psychology of Customer Service By Dr Brian Jude I have never let my schooling interfere with my education Mark Twain. Chapter 1 - The overview It really happened... My company does a lot of printing, and we used to run a sizeable account with a large printing company. I was looked after by a very professional young lady, for about two years. As she was leaving the company to start a family, she phoned me to advise me that my account was going to be taken over by a new guy by the name of Alan. (names have been changed to protect the GUILTY!) She made an appointment for Alan to see me, and at this point I was still a perfectly satisfied customer. When Alan arrived to see me, he was twenty minutes late, which of course didnt make me that happy to start with, seeing that I had allocated him a half hour, and had another appointment directly after him. But what really blew my mind was his greeting. Now remember this is the first time that we are meeting, and his very first words to me were: Gee, the heats a bitch out there today. Youd think the company would get us air-cons for our cars hey? Now stop for a minute. Do you want to develop a long term relationship with Alan? I know that I certainly didnt.

WHAT IS CUSTOMER SERVICE? To be able to offer superior customer service, we have to start off by defining the monster. Once we understand what customer service is, we are then in a far better position to spoil, pamper, delight and satisfy our customers. Customer service is all about expectations. When you and a customer get face to face, or phone to phone, or connect in any other way, he has expectations about the encounter. How you measure up relative to those expectations - will determine whether your service is perceived as good or bad. Now youll note that I said PERCEIVED. It is not what you think that counts here, but rather what the customer thinks. Many times I hear people saying that they really did their best with a particular client, yet the customer is unhappy. You see, its not your best that determines customer satisfaction, but rather what the customer thinks he got, versus what he expected to get. THE EXPECTATIONS So having said that customer service is all about expectations, lets look at what customers actually do expect. Number 1: Customers expect a product or service to measure up to their demands. If I buy a kettle, I expect it to boil water. I dont expect it to play music, but certainly, I do want hot water. Number 2: Customers expect to be treated like persons of value... every time. A customer is NOT a number. A customer is NOT a line on a computer printout. He is a real live person with feelings, pride and dignity, and needs to be treated as a person of value. Number 3: Customers expect that if something does go wrong (and we all know how it does sometimes), that the problem can be rectified in an open, friendly and courteous manner. He does not want to be treated like the last of the great train robbers, being interrogated, questioned and attacked. It really happened... I was standing at the service counter at a large discount store, when a woman brought in a toaster that she had bought brand new yesterday. Now the first problem that we have right here in South Africa is a total lack of customer sensitivity regarding electrical products. Think about it for a minute. The vast majority of electrical products are sold in an UNUSABLE condition. They have no plug fitted. No thats no big deal you may be saying. To some people it is. Some people dont have the technical expertise to put on a plug, which means that they have to get someone in to do it for them. But that is not the point of this story.. This lady presented her cash slip to the counter hand, and explained to him that the toaster just didnt work. What did you do to bugger it up? was the challenge that she was presented with. In a nice, quite and submissive way she tried to explain, that all she had done was to put on a plug. Then you did it wrong and messed up the appliance, was the response. (Are you feeling angry reading this? I was watching it happen!) Customer service is all about expectations. That lady expected to get the toaster changed, without having to be exposed to the third degree. I believe that if customers expectations are NOT met, then they leave us, and go elsewhere.

REASONABLY SERVICE IS NOT OUTSTANDING SERVICE So then, if we meet our customers expectations, we have delivered good service, right? Wrong! At this point we have just delivered reasonable service. Reasonable service is about meeting our customers expectation. Outstanding service is all about EXCEEDING our customers expectations. On a scale of poor, mediocre and great, meeting expectations can only be classed as mediocre. Exceeding the clients expectation is what makes really great professionals. Look for the small opportunities that you can grasp, to really surprise and delight your customers, and you are well on your way to developing a group of customers who are dedicated to you, as their only source of product or service in your particular field. It really happened... I bought a camera for my daughter in a store at the Waterfront in Cape Town. The sales lady spent about twenty minutes with me, and was totally professional in the help and advice that she gave me. Then I started to negotiate. Obviously I wanted to get the best price, and haggled, as best I could. I managed to trim the price down nicely, and felt very pleased with the whole deal. I gave her my credit card, which she processed. Then she put the camera into a bag for me. Just as I was turning around to leave, she stopped me, and leaned behind her and picked up a small box of film, and said to me: Please would you accept this as a small token of our appreciation for buying your camera here. Now remember, this was done AFTER the sale was completed and paid for. What a lovely surprise. What a sweet taste that put into my mouth. And you can bet that Ive been back to that store many times since, even although I live in Johannesburg! TELL YOUR CUSTOMERS THAT YOU LOVE THEM While doing some stress counselling with a person within one of the companies that I consult to, the man who was having trouble at home asked me: Brian, when should I tell my wife that I love her? My reply to him was: Before someone else does! Now, while that is obviously very true in relationships, it is equally true in business. If you are not constantly holding your customers hand then beware, because someone else may come and do so soon. When a boy and girl meet, you see REAL customer service. He brings her flowers, opens the door for her, takes her out every other night, and in every way possible shows her how important she is in his life. Then of course they get married, and the whole situation changes. Now the only time that he holds the door for her, is when shes carrying the baby! One can see the exact same situation in business. When we first try to get in with a client, we do just about everything, to make a good impression, and show that customer how important he is. Once we have their business, (we are now married) we then tend to treat them like second class citizens. And thats when we lose them to our competitors. And we deserve it too. A CLOSER LOOK AT CUSTOMERS Customers are not only those people out there. The people who walk in through our front door, we recognise easily as our customers. The customers that are not so readily acknowledged are internal customers. Every department and person within an organisation, to some extent or another, is dependant on the other people and departments for their success or failure. We therefore need to be aware of the impact that we have on these internal customers. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Say for example you are in the finance department. Your performance is going to directly affect all other areas. If you are slow and lazy about approving

finance, then the sales department gets held up. If they are held up, this affects the installation and maintenance teams... and so the domino effect cascades down to all concerned. To strengthen the chain, we need to see each unit within the organisation as a customer. What can I do to help, not hinder? How can I smooth the way, not put up roadblocks? These and many questions like them, should be asked to ponder the possibilities of servicing this critical group of customers. It really happened... While training a group of computer technical staff on communication skills and conflict management, the following comments were made by delegates on the course, while we were brainstorming some of the problem areas: Why should we support the sales guys, they are so full of bull, that we have to correct all of their mistakes. If a salesman promises installation for a Monday, Ill deliberately delay till Wednesday. That takes the smile off their arrogant faces. Sales people dont think - they just promise. Its my job to bring them back down to earth. Now with that kind of dysfunctional conflict between two divisions, is it any wonder that the company was in trouble. The question that I would like you to ask yourself is: Do I have some of that same bad attitude towards people or divisions in my own company?

WHY IS SERVICE SO BAD? In surveys conducted, South Africa consistently comes up as one of the worst in the world for customer service. We tend to abuse, aggravate, antagonise and just generally harass our customers more than most other countries in the world. Why is this? Often in training seminars people say that its because we have become a third world country. Well that may be a valid argument, for today, but it doesnt answer the question why this situation has been in effect for the last twenty years! There are, I think, three main reasons for the poor service situation that we have in South Africa. 1. Our customers have become willing victims. 2. Our staff are not adequately trained. 3. Our staff are not properly motivated. Lets look at each one in turn. Customers have become willing victims. We have been putting up with poor service for so long now, that our expectation has become: poor service. How many times has it happened, that you order a steak rare and it comes well done, and you just put up, and shut up. And when the waiter comes around to ask you hows your steak, you give him a feeble grin and mutter Fine. Now I know that there are some people who do fuss and complain when dished up this sort of service, but in excess of 70% of people dont. Now, if we dont complain, we are setting ourselves up as willing victims. We are subconsciously sending the message that any old thing will do. Then we land up getting exactly that, Any old thing. Unless we as consumers become more demanding, and less accepting of our service rights, we will continue to get what were getting. Its well known that if you always do what youve always done, then youll always get what youve always got. So if youre not happy with whats being dished up to you, start demanding better service. If we all start to do it, it will change things FAST! Staff are not adequately trained. Would you let a brain surgeon loose in your head, after a ten minute crash course on the anatomy of the brain? Well I certainly hope not! Yet most people who work at the front line... face to face with customers... are given just that. A ten minute crash course on how to look after, satisfy, delight and spoil their customers. For staff to do this properly they have to be trained on company systems, on sales and service techniques, on communication skills, on inter-personal skills, and all of the rest of the anatomy of their products and industry, to make them into qualified customer service brain surgeons. It really happened... A large publishing company briefed me to improve the customer service levels of their Tele-sales department. They have a large team and usually staff are young school leavers. The average length of stay with these people was 26 days! As usual, one of the very first things that I look at is the current training programme. When I asked the sales director how he trained new people, he proudly told me that they spend the first morning watching and listening to an experienced operator, and then in the afternoon theyre on their own. WOW some training programme. Its no surprise that his people were pathetically ineffective, and demoralised. This of course was one of the reasons for the high staff turnover as well. People dont like to face failure and rejection on a day by day hour by hour basis, particularly when they have not had the training to do the job.

Staff are not properly motivated. For people to do well at anything they must be well motivated. Now motivation can by either positive or negative. These are the carrot or the stick approach to motivation. The positive side, or carrot side to motivation is where people get something for doing their job well. The opposite of this is negative, or stick motivation. This is where people are punished for not doing their job well. It has been clearly shown that a programme that combines about 90% positive motivation with 10% stick motivation is the most effective. Why any stick motivation you may well ask? People need to know that bad performance will not be tolerated, otherwise the organisation becomes like a country club, with everyone doing what they like. Morale is great, but performance is lousy. If a top performer receives the exact same amount of money and perks at the end of the day, as a shirker who is upsetting and losing customers, then what motivates him to do his best? And the obvious answer is nothing! He just becomes demotivated, and his People should be paid to deliver good service. Ideally only a small percentage of a persons salary should be fixed. The rest should be paid to reward good service. A commission or incentive scheme is the most positive way that we can make sure that our staff are motivated to deliver good service. In simple terms: Make it worth their while to do so, and intensely uncomfortable not to. When a persons back pocket is affected, attitudes change FAST! Of course the unions are going to jump up and down and scream Not fair. Well, its certainly not fair to the lazy poor performer, but it is exquisitely fair to the good performers as well as the customers. And whos side are we an anyway? It really happened... One of the organisations that I work with recently put their credit control staff onto an incentive scheme, that focused on both money collected as well as service to clients. Customer care levels were monitored by a separate division, which followed up each client at least twice a month. They found that after the introduction of the incentive scheme, that their outstanding book was reduced by 18% as measured in time, and that clients perception of service levels was up by 27%. SOME KEY QUESTIONS For anyone involved with customers, at any level whatsoever, there are some key questions that should be asked. As you have read this book to this point, I assume that you have a strong interest in offering better customer service, so these are questions that you should be asking. 1. Am I delivering good service? At the end of a cricket match, or any team game for that matter, the team has a de-briefing session. Who was man of the match? Why? Who played badly? Why? Who is showing strengths? What weaknesses did we pick up? These are the questions that are going to prompt them to make the necessary changes to improve. We need to do exactly the same thing. On a day by day basis, we need to ask ourselves how well, or how badly we performed that day. This will prompt us to become aware of strengths and weaknesses, and allow us to make the required changes. Complacency can often be a major enemy. We get so used to doing things in a certain manner, that we stop noticing whether its good or bad. Thats why we need to constantly be asking; Am I delivering good service? This leads us quite naturally into the second question...

2. How do I know? Its all very well to ask if you are delivering the goods, but you have some way of telling whether you are or not. Here are some of the ways suggested by people at our customer care seminars. These are ways that individuals, as well as management, can get a handle on service levels. Increasing sales. Greater profitability. More customers asking for you by name. Less customer complaints. Less returns. Higher morale. (A better feeling in the tummy at the end of the day.) Less staff turnover. Better time keeping and less absenteeism. More promotions from within the company. Customers just keep coming back. We will be doing a self test questionnaire shortly, that will allow us to quantify the level of service that we are offering to clients.

3. What does your company do? Now, before you assume that Ive lost my marbles, listen up. For people to deliver good service, they need to know what the company actually does. An obvious question youre saying... It really happened... Research that we did into 14 major companies, ranging from travel to courier service... computers to mining... highlighted a starting fact. A massive 38% of the people working at these 14 companies did not know what the company did. Now, we know that the sales and the front line staff knew, but a great big majority of the back room boys, support staff, maintenance staff, cleaning staff and delivery staff did NOT! It makes good sense to make sure that the entire team, and by that I mean the entire company knows, not only the name of the game, but all the rules as well.

4. Who are your customers?

To be able to deliver outstanding service, you have to know who your customers are. Every single person that we interact with in the business environment, is a potential customer. This applies to both external as well as internal customers. So if we develop an attitude of respect and caring for everyone that we deal with, we have to be on the right track. But we need to be a little bit more scientific than that. We need to be aware of whom our top customers are, and then to do anything we can to spoil and pamper them. It is a well accepted rule, that 80% of our business comes from 20% of our customers, and that 80% of our customers, only produce 20% of the business. With this in mind, we need to identify who is in that 80% that keeps us in business and develop strategies for offering them even better service. If we are woken at 3:00 am in the morning and are asked, Whom are our top ten customers? We should be able to rattle off that information, without even waking up!

5. What is the primary objective of your company? Usually when I ask people this question, they get a kind of blank look on their face and say: Well obviously, to make money. What do you think? Very often its not that simple.
It really happened... While working with the managing director of a computer company, he expressed the problem that he perceived within his organisation. He felt that nobody was working together as a team, and that everyone was doing his own thing. He felt that he didnt have a team, but rather fifteen individuals on the same field, but all running in different directions. I asked him, as the company CEO, to tell me what was the primary objective of the company. He told me that the company had gone through a difficult patch, and that profitability was the primary goal. In fact, he said, if we are going to be around in two years time, we had better watch that bottom line profit figure. Later, when I asked that same question to the sales team they told me that the company was in a growth phase, and that gaining market share was the number one. And therefore if a deal was marginal, they had to still push for it, because sales volume was the name of the game. Now, if the objectives of the CEO are that vastly misaligned to the goals of the players, then its no wonder that people are pulling in different directions.

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So to avoid these problems, its imperative that the man on the top communicates well with the entire company, so that the vision, goals and direction that he has is shared at all levels. At the same time, the secondary objectives of the company should be transmitted to all of the players.

6. What turns your clients on?

Do you know what it is that your customers love, and what they loathe? There are many small things that we can do, to really make a big difference with our customers. But, do you know the difference that makes the difference. This point is so important that we have dedicated the whole of chapter six, to discuss these issues.

7. What turns your clients off?

Just as its vitally important to know what turns your clients on, you also need to know what turns them off. Again, its often the small things that we are totally unaware of, that may just be giving our customers the heebie jeebies. Although this will be discussed in its own chapter, one point is important to mention here. That is, dont assume that what works or doesnt work for you, has the same effect on your customer. We need to get into their model of the world. We need to see the world through their eyes, as opposed to putting our prejudices and opinions onto them.

8. Which of your competitors delivers EXTRA good service?

This has to be one of the most valuable questions that you can ask. One of the most effective ways of learning anything, from riding a bicycle, to speaking in public and from skating to selling. If you want to learn how to do something then copy someone who does it well. This system of learning is called role modelling. There is clearly no necessity to re-invent the wheel. If someone else out there is doing the job well then role model them. If its good enough for you to notice them, then its also probably good enough to copy. This leads us logically on to the next point...

9. What is there about this competitor that you admire? What specific things are they doing, that makes them stand out in your particular industry. Why are they closer to their customers, and demand more loyalty than you do? You need to get into their kitchen and find out what recipe they are using.
If you play cricket and want to become a world class fast bowler, then watch Alan Donald. How does he run? His wrist position and all of the other small pieces that come together to deliver such a performance. Role model excellence and you will start to deliver excellence yourself. It really happened... One of the most successful companies that Ive worked with is a large courier company, which started out as a copy cat operation. They looked at what the competitors were doing, and then systematically took the best from the top four operators in that market, and went one better. Today their competitors are looking at them to see what they can copy, to try to catch up!

10. Which of your competitors delivers really poor service? As we can do positive role modelling, so we can also look for negative, poor behaviours, and avoid them. Just as we can learn from watching people doing something right, so too can we watch for and identify behaviour patterns that turn customers off. This takes us naturally into...
11. What do you dislike about them?

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Once you have identified a competitor, who is really known by the marketplace to be second rate, and then start to find out why. What are they doing to upset and annoy their customers? Again its good to be as specific as possible, pin pointing anything that may have a negative impact on clients. Now that weve done that we have to ask ourselves a mildly embarrassing question: Are there some things that youve identified in this area that you are doing as well. Almost always, when we do this exercise at our workshops, people admit to discovering some pimples on their own noses. Well, thats great 90% of the solution to these types of problems is identification. Once you know that a problem exists, you are well on your way towards overcoming it.

12. Describe good service in any industry. This is now just extending the work that we did in points number eight and nine, but now looking at all industries, and just our own. Think about a time when you were totally bowled over by amazing service. What did they do to you to turn you on in that way? What was there about that service experience that you can take away and incorporate into your own day-to-day business operation.
By taking an introspective look at these questions and the answers that they generate we are well on the way towards becoming top class providers of customer service. HOW GOOD ARE YOU? As mentioned earlier, we now have the opportunity of actually measuring how good, or how bad we really are. The important thing about this self test is that it is for your eyes only! Do not, I repeat do not show these results to your boss. They are purely for your own benefit. Just to allow you to quantify your own situation. It is not meant to be a test for the boss to use to hang you with. There is only one problem with this test, and that is that it does demand complete honesty. The results can only be as accurate as the data that you put in. So remember its for your eyes only, so be honest. That way you will know exactly where you stand, and can then get on with remediating the situation. With the following words, rate yourself using this scale: Score 1: for very poor. Score 2: for poor. Score 3: for mediocre. Score 4: for good. Score 5: for excellent. And remember be honest, otherwise youll only be fooling yourself. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Helpfulness Smiling Professional Enthusiastic Go the extra mile Empathic - Understanding Keeping promises Honest Listening Warm and friendly Score...... Score...... Score...... Score...... Score...... Score...... Score...... Score...... Score...... Score...... Score......

Now total up the numbers Lets talk about what your score means.

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If you scored between 10 and 15, this is very poor indeed. Perhaps you should read the book at least three times, and maybe also attend one of our live seminars - (twice!) You need all the help that you can get. If you scored between 16 and 25, this is just plain poor. Read the book twice and attend one seminar. A score of between 26 and 35 is mediocre. Dont go and slit your wrists, but no champagne either. This is kind of the minimum acceptable level, but read the book and come along to a seminar. A score of between 36 and 45 is good. You are going to get by well by reading the book. If you want to come along to a seminar it will be great to have you, but its not really necessary. If you honestly got a score of 46 or higher, this is excellent. I would like to congratulate you. Perhaps you should come along to one of our seminars to help me run it! Now lets move onto attitude... We learn from experience. A man never wakes up his second baby just to see it smile Grace Williams.

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The Psychology of Customer Service By Dr Brian Jude If we must disagree, lets disagree without being disagreeable. Lyndon B Johnson. Chapter 2 - Its all about attitude It really happened... I bought a computer encyclopaedia on CD, which I brought home and installed. This was when I run into my first snag. It didnt work. No trouble, I phoned the support line at the software company, where I was immediately asked for my customer number. Well I didnt even know that I needed one, never mind had one. When I told the operator that I did not have a customer number she asked me with utter impatience. Have you NEVER called us for support before? (Bad attitude). I said in fact that I had, but it was at least three years ago. Then you DO have a customer number! she howled back at me with absolute glee in her voice, now that she had me in her noose. (Bad attitude). I apologised that I must have mislaid it or something. She then told me that this made it VERY difficult for her. (Bad attitude). But I do have a NAME! I screamed back at her, losing most of the little composure that I had started off with. It then took her less than six seconds for her to find me on her computer screen. (Perhaps that what she meant by VERY difficult.) But now this was her moment of triumph. You DO have a customer number, and its 68047, and you last called us on the 20th February 1997. The call was logged at 10:42 am. I could easily detect the smug satisfaction in her voice as she not too gently rubbed my nose in it. (Bad attitude again) Now this person is in the front line of this large software company. She obviously has a chip on her shoulder, the size of a small forest, and me the poor sucker called customer is going to have to pay. Her attitude has badly soured my impression of the company. WHAT HAS ATTITUDE GOT TO DO WITH SERVICE? In looking at customer service, we have to start with self-esteem. The way that you feel about you, will affect the way that you project to others. Self esteem is the picture that you have of yourself and this can be positive or negative. Think about it for a moment, how do you feel about you? Do you feel okay, or not okay. Because the way that you feel... your self image is going to translate into the kind of behaviour you project through to your customers. Sadly most people suffer from low self-esteem. This is caused by negative criticism, by being put down, by being ridiculed... all of this comes together to create a negative self-image or negative selfesteem within people. And as we said, if you are feeling negative about you, that is being through to the person that you are talking to. Let's have a look at how poor self-esteem affects our service levels? When we are feeling down, our control of our emotions is usually quite poor. This sets us up as a victim and then if a client does have a complaint, we tend to take it personally. We need to understand that behaviour is a matter of choice, we are not born happy, we are not born angry or critical, we have a choice as to how we want to behave at any given time. We can choose to be happy or we can choose to be angry and defensive. In other words, you can choose your attitude! THE THIRTEEN ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS Recently I completed a research project, which looked into the lives of 210 people who were holistically successful. Successful within their home, environment, business environment,

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relationships, community and all other aspects of their lives. I found that there were thirteen attributes that were common to nearly all the people that Id interviewed. These attributes, which are all learnable, formed the content of my first book: Thirteen attributes of success. The power of positive thought. I dont want to present all thirteen here, (Id prefer you to go out and buy the book), but I do want to discuss just one of them: Positive thinking. Virtually all successful people that Ive come into contact with think in CANS and not in CANTS. They are not sitting back moaning about how bad the crime situation is, and how the economy is going to pot and the rate of inflation. They work with what they have, and do whatever they can to change what they can, accept what they cant and generally have the serenity to know the difference between the two. The power of positive though is all about how we view the world. When you see a glass that is half full of water, do you see it as being half full or half empty? People with a good attitude tend to see it as full, those with a negative attitude, as half empty. At the end of the day, your attitude is going to determine your altitude. It really happened... One of the people on this research project was the sales director at an office equipment supply company. Every time that she made a sales call with one of her sales people, she fully expected the sale to be successfully concluded. Her mind was so totally focused on a positive outcome that there was simply no room for the opposite to happen. When, as obviously it sometimes happened that they failed to make the sale, she was genuinely surprised. As you can imagine this attitude of hers rubbed off on her staff. She had taken over a team of about a dozen people who were demotivated, and had the limiting belief that unless you cut price, you would not get the business. As she worked with them, she concentrated about 80% on changing their attitude and only about 20% on their actual selling skills. The results were dramatic. By role modelling her enthusiasm, energy and positivity, they started to produce better results. This gave them more confidence and improved their self esteem, which allowed them to operate more effectively. The upward spiral towards success was in process. Bottom line was sales were up, profitability was up, morale was up and staff turnover dropped and price cutting virtually stopped. To walk into their Monday morning sales meetings was always a great experience for me. You could pick up the vibe and the energy. Attitude was the difference that made the difference. The winners attitude Winners have the firm belief that comes from deep within them, that IT IS POSSIBLE. Napoleon Hill was one of the first people to write on this subject, and in his now famous best-selling book, Think and Grow Rich, he said: Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. In other words, whether you think you can, or think you cant... youre right. If you can dream up an idea, and get yourself to believe in that idea, you have an incredibly strong chance of making it happen. Winners, with this positive attitude are like guided missiles, heading for their goals. Very much like the childrens story of the little engine, that was puffing up the steep hill, all the time saying I know I can, I know I can. As long as we approach everything that we do with an I know I can attitude, we are empowering ourselves to becoming successful. Attitude and self esteem

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Those people, with a positive attitude, like themselves. They have a higher self esteem. And its this high self esteem that leads to improved service levels. They dont have to prove that they are better than the customer, by putting him down. They have the ability to work toward win - win outcomes. This usually makes the customer feel more appreciated, cared for and comfortable. So, the key to improved self esteem lies in attitude. Start to develop a positive attitude towards your job, your company, your products and services and your customers and you will start to feel better about yourself, and start to have more fun. This will translate into better service for your customers. AVOID STINKING THINKING The opposite side of the attitude coin is negative, stinking thinking. When people are feeling negative towards life, this has a very dramatic effect on their self esteem. They tend to smile less complain more. Because they dont feel good about themselves, they need someone to make them feel better. Often this is achieved at the expense of the customer. Lifes a bitch, and then you die, seems to be tattooed on their forehead, and because of this, the world owes them a living. By seeing the glass as half empty, they are reducing their chances of success or happiness, and the end result is most often mediocrity. It really happened... While presenting a stress management programme to a company that supplies heavy machinery, I was approached at the tea break by a well spoken, intelligent man, by the name of Nick. He had been showing signs of stress and anxiety throughout the morning. He asked if he could make an appointment to see me in my rooms - privately. In talking with him it was obvious that he was extremely stressed. When he presented for his appointment, he broke down into tears virtually immediately. He was in an advanced stage of burnout. After a while I started to question him. It turns out that he had a nickname in the company. He was known as Negative Nick. To him every cloud had an even darker lining, and his definition of a good day was one in which not too much went wrong. He was on probation at work, as his work performance was poor. His marriage of sixteen years was about to fall apart and his health was so bad, that had he been a building, I would have condemned him! The problem? Attitude. His father had passed away about six years earlier, which had made him mildly depressed. This started to affect his work, which started to slide. This in turn began to erode his confidence, which created more stress for him. This made him start to take out his frustration on his wife and family. Can you see how that downward spiral can escalate? The self fulfilling prophecy This phenomenon is what causes us to bring about what we keep thinking about. This of course may be positive or negative. Think about it for a moment. If you have to make a speech at some function, and for days and weeks keep telling yourself about how BAD its going to be. How embarrassed youre going to feel, and how people are going to laugh at you. Probably, thats exactly how the speech will turn out - terribly. This self fulfilling prophecy is at work, to make it happen. Negative thinking creates its own negative spiral. We behave badly towards customers, because we think that ALL customers are out to get us. This then causes them to behave the way that we expect. This brings out more aggression in us, and down the spiral spins.

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BEHAVIOUR BREEDS BEHAVIOUR One of the most basic laws of psychology says the behaviour breeds behaviour. If you on a daily basis are meeting people who are hostile, unfriendly and not nice, I would like to suggest that you look into a mirror. Because Im prepared to guarantee that the person looking back at you is hostile, unfriendly and not nice! We tend to attract towards ourselves the behaviour that we put out. The exciting thing about this is that it works both ways. If you will behave in a manner that is warm, friendly, open and enthusiastic towards the people around you, the chances are good that that is what will be given back to you most times. And this includes our interactions with our customers. Treat them like kings, and they will probably behave accordingly. Treat them like scum, and stand back and wait for the venom and wrath to explode, because it almost surely will. WHOS DRIVING THE BUS? We need to take a long hard look at where we are and where we want to be. And more importantly, what we plan to do about it. As we said earlier, if you always do what youve always done, then youll always get what youve always got. So if youre not happy with where you are we have to talk about change. And thats where the problem starts. Many people believe themselves to be victims of the environment. Victims of circumstance, or the political system, or affirmative action or the company, or the boss, or.. or.. or.. The list goes on. As long as we believe that we are being controlled in this way we are not empowered to make the necessary changes. We have to firmly understand that WE are driving the bus and that we are responsible for our own destiny. We need to accept that responsibility and become empowered by the fact that WE and WE alone can make the changes, and not the company, the boss or anyone else. It really happened... I was counselling a person, who was really a VERY angry young man. He was getting into fights, and generally making a huge mess of his life. In talking with him I heard things like: The traffic coming into work drives me insane! The idiots in despatch make my blood boil! The stupid phone system makes me want to puke. (By the way, as this publication is meant for all ages, I have cleaned up the language DRAMATICALLY.) Now, as logical, rational and sane people, please tell me how the traffic, or the phones or the people in despatch can actually get into YOUR head and MAKE you feel angry, resentful or anything else for that matter? And the answer is that they cant. Oh yes, you can give them permission to do so, and then it all happens. But without you LETTING it happen, it cant. You see you really are driving the bus.

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BODY PHYSIOLOGY CHANGES FEELINGS One of the most effective ways of changing feelings and attitudes is through changing the way that we use our body. The way that we stand, the way that we walk, the way that we hold our head, all of this has a very big effect on the way that we feel. If you dont believe me, just try this little exercise. It will only take two minutes. Just sit for a moment they way that a depressed person would be sitting. Let your shoulders slump, let your head drop, stare vacantly at a spot on the floor, and allow your hand to lie loosely in your lap. Hold this posture for about a minute, and then ask yourself: How do I feel right now? Chances are very good that you are starting to feel mildly down! Lets try the opposite now. (It really wouldnt be nice of me to leave you like this now, would it?) Stand up, hold your head up high, bounce lightly on the balls of your feet, and SMILE! Keep this up for a minute and then ask yourself: How do I feel right now? Chances are that you are feeling a lot brighter and more alive.. more motivated. This is all because of the way that you used your body. Brain programming If you are standing in depressed mode, the brain is getting signals, telling it to feel depressed, and starts to deliver the goods. Stay depressed long enough, and then this of course starts to show up in your overall attitudes, and you become a negative person. This form of programming may take time, but its like a cancer eating away, slowly but steadily. (As we saw with Negative Nick, earlier, it took nearly six years!) This same type of programming takes place with kids at school. They are told things like: Youre no good at maths. Or Youre stupid. These programmes or scripts go straight into the brain, and get to work to destroy the self esteem of the person. As we are careful about the food that we putt into our tummies, we should also be careful about the programmes that we let into our brain. How do you project towards your customers? Think about it for a moment about how your customers see you. Do they see you as a positive, energetic and confident person that is in charge of their own destiny, and having fun on the way? Or do they perhaps see you as a negative person, lacking confidence, and being moved around like a pawn on the board? Are your customers enjoying their interactions with you, or do they prefer root canal treatment at the dentist? Just stand back, kind of outside of yourself, watching you. Does the movie turn you on and excite you, or turn you off and depress you. If you dont like what youre seeing, then change the way that you use your body physiology, by faking it... Fake it then feel it. Thats right fake it. If you will simply just stand up straight and pretend that you have all the confidence in the world, then a strange thing starts to happen. You begin to get the feelings that are associated with that body posture. So FAKE IT THEN FEEL IT! It really happened... I stand up in front of groups large and small, as a speaker and trainer. Sometimes I have an audience of several hundreds of people. Do you think I have butterflies in my stomach? You better believe that I do. But the secret here is to pretend that you dont. My audience sees me as confident, poised and relaxed, and within a very short space of time, the butterflies are flying in formation, and Im feeling confident, poised and relaxed.

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At the start Im faking... but soon Im feeling. HE WHO DOES NOT SMILE... There is a wonderful Chinese proverb that is enormously important to all of us who are involved in customer service, in any way. He who does not smile, should not keep shop. If you are not able to greet your public with a smile - ALWAYS - every time you see them, at any time of the day or week or month, whatever their needs or demands may be, then you should find some job that takes you away from the direct customer interface. Sincerity is the hardest of all things to fake. The answer then is not to fake it, but rather to feel it. If you will get into the habit of greeting every single person you meet with a wonderful, warm and genuine smile, you will have more than adequately earned your right to keep shop. It really happened... Tellers at a major bank recently were part of a study to determine how their behaviours could affect customer perceptions. They were asked to make significant eye contact with each client, and to smile and pass a friendly comment as they did so. Just about 3 - 4 seconds, prior to starting the actual transaction. A group of 2,500 people were treated in this manner, while another group were given the normal treatment (lacking these small courtesies of life). The two groups were asked to rate the service they had received after the transaction, on a simple three question test. The normal group scored 4, out of a possible 10, while the smilers scored NINE! Smile, and the world smiles with you... cry, and you cry alone. A COMMITMENT TO SERVICE PAYS One of the worlds greatest authorities on the subject of customer service is Tom Peters, the author of In search of excellence, and many other fine books since that one. He stood up at a seminar and said: A commitment to quality and service pays. How much more simple can you get. Theres no rocket science here. No brain surgery, just plain simple common sense. If you will wholeheartedly commit yourself to offering outstanding service, all the time, youll be successful as a customer service person. It really happened... A man was sitting talking to a wise old sage. What is the difference between involvement and commitment? He asked the wise man. To answer that my son, he replied, You have to look at a humble plate of bacon and eggs. You see in the process of producing that breakfast, the chicken was involved. The pig on the other hand was truly COMMITTED! (OK - so this one didnt really happen) THE COST OF GETTING NEW CUSTOMERS We tend to spend enormous amounts of money chasing new customers, only to lose them soon after, through poor service. We pour large sums into advertising, marketing, promotions and direct sales incentives, to attract new business, but we are then careless about maintaining it. Remember what we said earlier - When should a man tell his wife that he loves her? Before someone else does! It has been estimated that it costs about five times more to attract a new customer, as opposed to keeping an existing one. The lesson from this should be to spend more time, effort and attention

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spoiling, pampering and delighting our existing customers, which will mean that we do not have to spend that time and money chasing new ones. By all means look for new business and aggressively chase market share, but NOT at the expense of existing clients. WHY DO WE LOSE CUSTOMERS? Its a fact of life that we do lose customers. There are many reasons for this. Some beyond our control and some, very definitely, as a result of something that weve done or perhaps neglected to do. Lets have a look at some of the reasons why customers leave us for greener pastures. Michael LeBoeuf, author of the great customer service book How to win customers and keep them for life, presents the following figures for our digestion: 3% move to another area. 5% develop other friendships. 9% leave for competitive reasons. 14 % are dissatisfied with the product or service. 68% are lost due to an attitude of indifference by a member of management or staff. Now if we dissect those figures, it becomes clear that theres not a lot that we can do about the 3% that move away. If you have a garage in Johannesburg, and service Mr Carbunkles car, to his absolute satisfaction, this will not help much if he moves to Cape Town. You are most likely going to lose him. So, let us accept that we will lose some customers for this reason. The 5% that develop other friendships are also largely out of our control. If your loyal and dedicated customer who buys your Slick brand of extra sharp staples marries the owner of the supplier of the Blunt brand of not so sharp staples, then you are probably going to lose that business. Again, its out of our control. The 9% that leave for competitive reasons, may be somewhat influenced by what we do. These are the people that find your product or service cheaper elsewhere. Or, are able to get better delivery better terms... or, in some way improve their situation by switching suppliers. Perhaps with these customers we may be able to sharpen our pencil and either match or improve what the competition is offering. The 14% who are dissatisfied with the product or service may also be influenced to some degree. We may be able to change, modify, improve or in some way affect our product or service to once again fit in with the expectations and desires of the customer. The big one is the easiest of all. A massive 68% are lost due to poor attitude, by you or some other member of staff. And this is what this whole chapter has been about, ATTITUDE. By making small, relatively painless changes, we can do a whole lot to get this 68% back. Makes you think, doesnt it? Earlier we said that customer service was all about expectations. Meeting and then exceeding the expectations of our customers. A good question then, that has to be answered is how are we supposed to know what are the expectations of our customers? And the answer lies in communication... The man who is a pessimist before forty eight knows too much. The man who is an optimist after forty eight knows too little. Mark Twain

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The Psychology of Customer Service By Dr Brian Jude Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours. Benjamin Disraeli. Chapter 3 - Communication It really happened... While standing in a book store in a large shopping mall on a Monday morning, I was privileged to overhear the following interchange, between a customer and a salesperson. Good morning, I bought this book here on Saturday morning and... Im sorry Madam, but our store policy forbids credits or exchanges on books. I can understand that but what Im trying to tell you is that when I got home and examined the book, I found... Madam we often have people coming in and saying that they discovered that they already had a copy of the book at home, but our policy is not to credit or exchange. IF you would just listen to me for a moment, I will explain what my problem is. I... I know that its inconvenient for you, but please understand that if we were to offer credits and exchanges then people would buy books on Saturday, read them over the weekend and then return them on Mondays, so we just.. SHUT-UP.. JUST SHUT-UP and listen. I am not a thief, or a liar or a cheat. If you would shut-up long enough to hear me out you will understand. This book is faulty. It has about forty blank un-printed pages in it. I want to exchange it for a GOOD one, not cheat you. Can you hear that?! That was not a communication breakdown that was a complete de-railment. WHERE ARE WE GOING? Perhaps one of the most significant skills that we need in the customer service environment is the ability to communicate properly. Speaking, listening, using body language, gaining rapport are all part of this skill. If the salesman in the bookstore had some of these skills, in fact even basic listening skills only, then that disaster would not have happened. We said earlier that we need to meet and exceed the expectations of our customers, so it stands to reason then that we need to become fully aware of what these expectations are. Once we know them, we can then meet our customer in HIS model of the world, and give him what HE perceives is important. This chapter is going to develop these skills. Also, when customers feel that their expectations are not being met, they tend to become unhappy, irate or even downright enraged. Communication skills, are even more important for handling these delicately balanced interactions. SOURCES OF POWER As we look back in history, we can see that people were powerful, for different reasons. As political, social and other changes have occurred, so also have the sources of power changed. What gave a person power a few hundred years ago, may not give him the same degree of power today. Firstly there was physical power. If I was stronger than you, or could wield a spear better than you, or shoot straighter and better than you, then I had more power than you did, and therefore I was able to influence you towards my way of thinking.

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This changed to class power. Royalty was more powerful than the upper class, which was more powerful than the middle class. This of course meant, that if you were part of the lower classes, that you just did what you were told. You were powerless. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, money became the primary source of power. Many people pulled themselves up from humble, low class beginnings, and made it big. Because they had money... they had power. This once again changed, this time after the Second World War, and now Knowledge became the primary source of power. Education, degrees and learning was the focus. From the early Sixties, a significant change occurred, and communication became a primary source of power. Those people that were able to communicate well became prominent within companies and countries. The eloquent speaker, writer and communicator was able to wield power. Now, while obviously all the other power bases are still to some degree significant, it is this power of communication that is taking us into the new millennium. So lets see what we can do to effectively grow this power. It really happened... Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were all actually elected to the office of the President of the United States of America!

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COMMUNICATION DEFINED There is no shortage of good definitions to what communication actually is. My favourite is from Gordon McCloskey, a leading expert in this field. He defines communication as: The sending of a message, which is understood and leads to action or change. From this we see that there are three distinct parts to a communication. Firstly there is the sending of the message - This could be voice, paper, electronic, body language (Weve all seen those ones from angry drivers, out of their car window.) - easy to understand. Secondly there is the receipt and understanding of the message - also quite easy to understand (Not that easy to do though!) Lastly, the message needs to lead to some form of action or change. And this is the most important part of the definition. The message needs to in some way change the behaviour, or the attitudes, or the perception, or the understanding or something else within the recipient. If there is no change, then there is no communication. FIVE POSSIBLE MESSAGES When we send a message, there are really five different variations of the message that may be received. Now, you well say that there are five hundred and fifty five, but the do fit into five distinct boxes. Lets play with this for a moment, using the boy went to the swimming pool as our message. FIRST POSSIBILITY: The actual message, believe it or not, we do sometimes get it right. I send The boy went to the swimming pool, and you receive, The boy went to the swimming pool. Well done! SECOND POSSIBILITY: Message minus, that is receiving only half of, or part of the message. One person may hear that the boy went somewhere, but not pick up where he went. Another person may hear that someone went to the swimming pool, but not pick up whom. THIRD POSSIBILITY: Message - plus. That is actually receiving more than was sent. Now thats impossible, I hear you say. Not true, it happens all the time. Instead of the message a person hears, The boy went to the swimming pool for a swim. Now this may be true or not, but it was not the message. A piece has been added in. FOURTH POSSIBILITY: A different message, now you are probably becoming convinced that Ive lost my marbles, but again, this one is common. Instead of our message, a person hears: The girl went to the shop. Completely different. (Wait, when we explore the communication roadblocks, you will see how this happens.) FIFTH POSSIBILITY: Nothing at all, you dont hear boy you dont hear swimming pool or anything else. During the communication you were there physically, but your mind was in a totally different place and time. Lets see now why this happens. It really happened... During a training seminar I noticed that a young guy had left the room. He had a vague, dreamy look on his face, but he was clearly not in the room. I paused, and it took nearly twenty seconds for him to realise that the entire group was looking him.

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I had been talking about the effects of stress on health at the time, so I asked him what he thought of my last comments. He replied Music is good for the soul. The whole room just packed up laughing. Not only had he been a million mile away, but it was apparent that he still was. (No, Im not sure what he was smoking.) THE COMMUNICATION ROADBLOCKS We are going to look at nine reasons why the communication process gets off track. There are perhaps many others, but within the customer service arena, these certainly cover most situations. Inadequate vocabulary The first roadblock is the actual language itself. Im sure that most people reading this have listened to a person speaking in a language that is a second, or perhaps third language to them. Is there room for miscommunication? You bet there is. If your home language is English, and you are reasonably competent in Xhosa, Afrikaans or Zulu, you will find that while you pick up on 80 or even 90% of whats being said in this language, but there are nonetheless gaps. Here in South Africa the problem is exacerbated by the fact that while we have eleven official languages, we have at least fifteen common usage languages. So while Im speaking with you in English, you may be translating that into: Afrikaans, Gugerati, Hindi, Ndebele, North Sotho, Shangaan, South Sotho, Tamil, Telegu, Tswana, Urdu, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu. (Did you notice I have been very politically correct and have put them into alphabetical order.) Now, what language does your customer understand, and are you making sure that what youre saying is what hes getting? If the language itself is not enough to cause confusion, and then lets add another dimension and thats dialects and accents. Compare the English spoken by a South African with that spoken from a person from New York... from Liverpool... from Sydney. Very different arent they? It takes the ear time to tune in to the accent. And if thats not enough, add in the different Jargonese that we tend to use. If youve ever tried to buy a computer, you will have been exposed to a new language. Its all about bits and bites and RAMS and ROMS and DOS and motherboards. Leaves you a bit motherless doesnt it? It really happened... I frequently work with one of the large gold mines near Orkney, which is a predominately Afrikaans area. Recently the mine hired a new engineer from Glasgow, Scotland. We were in a meeting, and Dave, the Glaswegan had made a few contributions, all of which had gone right over my head, and Im English speaking. When I asked how the people on the mine managed to communicate with Dave, I was told that whatever Dave says, everyone just says Yes! Now thats a bit of a communication mine field if ever I saw one. Wrong assumptions The next roadblock we use to fill in those blanks. When we miss the odd word or two, we tend to fill them in ourselves. Sometimes correctly, sometimes not. Also we often make assumptions about people and situations. Based on their appearance we decide if they are good customers or not. We tend to make these assumptions, based on past behaviours. For example, if an employee has left empty coffee cups on the front counter, and youve spoken to them about it a few times. You walk in one day and see a dirty cup on the counter. Who did it? We tend to naturally assume it was the person who had done it before.

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It is dangerous to assume, as the word itself tells us. When you assume something, you may land up making an ASS of both U and ME! So dont assume what you client may want or need, rather ask. It really happened... My son, who loves playing soccer, had destroyed our lounge window on two separate occasions with his ball. After the second time I told him that should it happen again he was going to need the services of a good orthopaedic surgeon to put his knee caps back together again. He was about nine years old at this time. About eighteen months later, I came home, to be greeted by a great big gaping hole that used to be the lounge window. I got hold of son, and for the next five minutes threw my toys out of the cot. Giving him no chance to interrupt or say anything, I raved and ranted like a lunatic about the broken window. Can you imagine my embarrassment and chagrin when I learned that the maid had put the end of the ladder into the window, while cleaning? That is what we call a big OOPS. I had to spend the next six months apologising to my son! Strong emotions To communicate through strong emotion is to invite misunderstanding. We are all familiar with expressions like blinded with anger, or sick with worry. Sometimes people get so angry that that actually do see red and lose a major part of their visual ability for a short period. Also worry can cause some people to become physically ill, to the point of vomiting. The fact of the matter is that when we are in a strong emotional state it clearly prevents us from communicating properly. This emotional state could be positive or negative. For example, imagine for a moment that one of your employees had won the Sun City jackpot, of R1,300,00 last night, and by some quirk of fate was at work today. Do you think now would be a good time to discuss their work performance with them? Probably not. You may get some of that sign language that we spoke about earlier, usually associated with angry drivers out of car windows. Both at home and at work, we have all said things at a time of anger, which we wish we could take back. When a customer is irate he may well say things to us that really irritate. Its so inviting to snap back, but that is NOT what customer service is about. Rather control the emotion and defuse it. More about that in the chapter on handling unhappy customers. Distractions or noise Phones, paging systems, computer printers.. These are all sources of noise. Try explaining something to a client while you are being harassed by any of these external interruptions. Dont be too surprised if theres a communication glitch along the way. Under this heading of distractions, besides the auditory (sounds) noise, we may also be plagued by visual, or environmental distractions. Try talking to a customer when theres a TV close by, and its showing the last few overs of a South Africa versus Australia cricket match. Bad news for the communication (particularly if Australia is winning). Environmental distractions would include cold, heat, smoke or draughts. If youre a non-smoker youll relate to this. How well do you concentrate when you are sitting in a room with a smoker smoking next to you, and the side stream smoke is wafting gently into your left nostril? Not well - Id guess. It really happened...

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Working with mining companies forces me to occasionally go underground to analyse situations at the rock face. (Not that I enjoy being two kilometres under the earths surface!) Communication underground in the mining industry, has virtually all of these elements built in. Firstly the heat underground is often quite intense and then the humidity. They are spaying the dust down with water, which combined with the heat causes high humidity. Visibility is of course poor due to the lack of light. The noise when they are drilling is so powerful in that confined space that even good quality ear plugs dont help adequately. One of the complaints that I often hear is that miners underground just dont listen! WOW. Are you surprised? Prejudice and preconceptions Never judge a book by its cover. Weve all heard that one at least a thousand times, but let me ask you something. How do YOU judge a book? Probably by its cover. We do this with people as well, particularly customers. We look at them, and based on their appearance decide what they can or cant afford. Whether they should be treated like kings, or be sent around to the back door. We have a concept of good guys and bad guys, based on religion, colour, culture, sex, size and a hundred other prejudiced variables that we use to judge each other. For example, its well proven that physically attractive people get better service than do the uglies. A lot of you realise now why you get such great service... or not. It really happened... I was in a bicycle shop and was waiting to be attended to. The shop assistant was assisting a young lady of about 22 years of age. He was being so patronising, while he was talking down to her. He was sitting on the end of a counter, giving him a height advantage, as he rather arrogantly was questioning her about what kind of bike she wanted. His attitude was saying Why dont you send your boyfriend in for the bike - Dont you know this is a MANS shop? Now ladies listen to this, and think how you would react. He was calling her Dearie and alternating that with Lovie. Funny, hes never used those terms with me before! He had to take a phone call, so while he was away, I asked her if she got the feeling that he was being patronising to her. Yes she said gritting her teeth. I asked her why she was standing for it. Why didnt she just go elsewhere. She said that this was the third store she had been to, and had been subjected to exactly the same treatment at the other two. Im going to get my bicycle today, even if I have to eat dirt to get it. Was her statement to me. Kind of sad to subject the poor Dearie to this when she has R1,500 in her purse that she wants to spend with us! It really happened... While standing in a camera store in one of our better class shopping malls, a guy walked in wearing real grubby denims and a checked shirt. Certainly not what you would expect, in this larnie suburb. He spoke with quite a broad accent. I want to get a camera. He said in this thick continental accent. Our salesman behind the counter looked down his nose at him, and said What kind of camera. Obviously a bit put out to have his time wasted. I want a good camera. Was the reply. Well, how much do you want to spend. Was the best our salesman could come up with. I dont know, I just want something good. With obvious annoyance and exasperation the salesman leaned behind him and took a camera (at random) off the shelf. Is this what you want. Well I dont know, can you show me what it does? said the customer, the annoyance now starting to show. The salesman gave a sigh that could be heard

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in the banking mall 300 meters away, at which point the continental customer lost his cool. He put his hand into his pocket, and came out with the biggest wad of R50 and R100 notes I have ever seen, and shook them violently under the nose of the salesman, and shouted This is what you lose! and stormed out. As if to justify his behaviour, the salesman turned around to me and said Rude bugger, hey? I wonder who he was talking about - the customer, or himself. Selective listening Do you sometimes hear what you want to hear, as opposed to what has actually been said? Of course! We all do. Based on our self esteem, we tend to hear a communication either positively or negatively. If we are feeling down on ourselves, we tend to perceive things in a negative light. If we are feeling great we do the opposite. Theres a great Peanuts cartoon by Charles Schultz that I really like. In it Lucy asks Schroeder, the piano player, whether he thinks shes beautiful. He answers: I think youre the most beautiful girl the world has ever known. She thinks about that for a moment and then turns to him and says: You hate me, dont you? Now, what went wrong? You see Lucy has a low self esteem, and she had already answered her own question in her mind, before Schroeder even gave his reply. She selectively heard what she was expecting to hear. Often, when customers approach us we believe that they are going to be critical and disapproving. We are therefore on the defensive, hearing a critical interchange, where very often none exists. There are enough other factors that come along to mess up the communication without us putting our dreams and fancies into it. It really happened... A man was sitting on his porch one Sunday, when he noticed that his grass needed cutting. Too bad he thought, because his lawnmower was broken. Then he had a brain wave. Why not go next door to his neighbour George and ask to borrow his. While he was thinking about his great idea, he got to thinking that maybe George wouldnt lend him the lawnmower. Thats just downright silly. He thought. Were good friends. As he was getting to go and ask George, he was once again struck with doubts, What if George said no. He continued in this vein for over an hour having second thoughts, and twenty second thoughts. Eventually, in a total rage, he went roaring up to Georges door, and as George answered the door with a smile he shouted: You can keep your stinking lawnmower! (Perhaps this also didnt actually happen.) Talking, instead of listening We are often so caught up with what we plan to say, that we dont hear the other person. I know what I want to say and Im going to say it, so hurry up and finish so I can have my turn. It is clearly significant that we were created with two ears and only one mouth. This is meant to tell us that we should be listening twice as much as we should be talking, and not the other way around. Interesting, the more we shut up and listen to our customers the more we learn. The more we learn, the easier it is to meet his expectations. So the key here is to learn to shut up. Verbosity and verbiage This is using words that are too long, as well as using too many of them. It is also known as Government writing or Legal speak. If you ever get a letter from a lawyer, chances are that you

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will need another lawyer to decode it into plain language (This is the lawyers bid at job security.) There are so many herewiths, aforementioneds and clauses and sub-clauses that it boggles the mind. Now, while it may be good for your ego to use this gobledegook on your customers to confuse them, it does nothing to improve understanding between you. Feel like a fun exercise, try translating these into plain English: In the absence of the feline race, certain small rodents will give themselves up to various pleasurable pastimes. Simply... When the cats away, the mice will play. Impetuous celebrity engenders purposeless spoilage. Simply... Haste makes waste. Illegal transgression has no remuneration for its perpetrators. Simply... Crime doesnt pay. A condition characterised by tardiness is more desirable than one that is systematically marked by eternal absenteeism. Simply... Better late than never. As we can see, understanding is far more important than elegance. Differences in perception And the last of the communication roadblocks is differences in perception. We all tend to view the world through different coloured glasses. Some pink.. some blue.. some green. What you see perceive as being reality, and what I perceive as being reality may be vastly different (And then reality may be something else again.) Four people witness a motor accident in an intersection, each of the four standing on a different corner. When asked what happened, is it possible that you could get four different... yet honest accounts of the accident? Certainly, you see each one was viewing the situation from their own particular perspective. Thats why its so important for us to move around to the other side of the desk or counter, and try to see the world through the eyes of the customer. Get into their shoes, and see their model of the world. It really happened... I was at a shopping centre when a person grabbed a womans bag and ran off. It all happened very quickly, and the people standing around were trying to put together what happened. It was a coloured man... I saw clearly. Youre mad... It was a white woman. He nearly ran straight into me. It was definitely a man, he had long hair, but it was a man. This went on for about five minutes until all combinations of black, white and coloured.. man, woman (Or sexless??) were examined, with absolutely no consensus whatever. CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT WORDS One way of improving our communication skills is by being more careful about the word we use. Often we get ourselves into trouble with customers by using abstract language as opposed to concrete language. Take for example one of these words that is designed to cause trouble, SOON. What does

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that word mean to you? Ask a dozen people and hear a dozen answers. The word is so vague, that its left totally up to each individual to interpret it in their own way What may happen is that you tell a client that he can get delivery soon. Meaning next week, or, about Wednesday. He understands soon to mean tomorrow. Potential for a very unhappy chappy? In our communication classes, I will often ask people to write down a big number. When I ask for feedback I am presented with 99 - a big number. 60 million. - a big number. The number 1, written in very large size, taking up a complete sheet of paper. Whos right? They all are because the word big, is a vague, abstract word. So try to avoid these words and use more concrete ones. Replace soon with next week Wednesday. Replace with 22 meters. Replace cheap with R9.95. The bottom line is that the less specific, the more mistakes. The more specific, the less mistakes. THREE STEPS TO IMPROVED COMMUNICATION Three very simple and effective techniques that can make a dramatic difference to your communications with customers, or anyone else for that matter are: 1. K. I. S. 2. Keep looking for feedback. 3. Use empathy. 1. Lets look at them one at a time. K I S. This means Keep It Simple. There is no need to impress your customers. Rather concentrate on understanding each other, and simplicity is usually the best way of achieving this result. 2. Feedback. Communication is not a one way street, just me talking to you. It is a dynamic process, of give and take. So, while Im talking to you. You answer back, creating a feedback loop. The only way to know if you are getting through to a person is to ask for feedback. And when you do, dont ask Do you understand? because that almost always gets a nodding of the head, even if the person doesnt understand. Rather ask the person What do you understand from that? 3. Empathy. The North American Indians have a wonderful saying. The say: Never judge another man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins. This is really what empathy is all about. Its moving to the other side of the desk or counter, and seeing the situation through the other persons eyes. Feeling their feelings and understanding where theyre coming from, and where theyre trying to get to. If we would change our focus away from an egocentric I focus, onto an external you focus, we are well on our way towards offering customer service excellence. (As well improving our relationships at all levels.) THE COMMUNICATION BLUEPRINT Before building a house or building we always start off with a blueprint.. a plan of what we are trying to achieve. It would be foolish to try building without one. This is equally true to communicating with the significant others around you. Im sure youve heard the expression: Please engage brain before proceeding with mouth. Well, we need to see how. There are four steps in the blueprint

1. Know your outcome. Before you start a communication, know what it is that you want to achieve. If
you dont know where youre going you have little chance of getting there. So, know what it is that you are trying to do with this communication.

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2. Have sensory acuity. Open up ALL of your channels. See, hear and feel what the other person is
giving you back. Dont just listen to the words, rather put it all together. Well see more on this point in a moment when we talk about body language.

3. Develop flexibility. Change your style as required. If, what youre doing isnt working, then change.
Do something differently, anything. Dont keep trying the same communication strategy if its not working.

4. Be congruent. Make sure that both your words and your gestures are saying the same thing. Dont
for example say to the customer: Yes, thats a great idea. And at the same time shake your head from side to side. That is an incongruent message, which will probably leave them feeling confused.

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It really happened... Recently, while counselling a man for a stress condition, we were discussing his relationship with his wife. He had been, to quote: reasonably unhappily married for just under ten years. I asked him to describe how he communicated with his wife. He said: Well I tell her... I stopped him at this point and asked him if he always TOLD her or, whether he sometimes tried asking, explaining, or using any of the hundreds of options available. He said: Listen, if she doesnt do as shes told when I tell her, then, how do you expect anything else to work? (Shows great flexibility, doesnt it? I gave him the following metaphor: If you were in a completely pitch dark room, with no light reference, and you wanted to get out what would you do? He said that he would walk in one direction, and when he hit the wall, he would then take a step to his right and try again, and continue in this way until he found the door. Very good, I said, But why would you not continue to try to get through at the very first spot you tried? At this point he thought I was really dumb. He said Because I tried there and theres no door. Ah ha I said, and whats the difference with you and your wife? Have you found the door yet? LISTENING SKILLS One of the most significant parts of the communication process is listening. This is true of all types of communicating, but even more relevant in the customer service environment. We have a fun listening test that we use in our communication workshops, to determine whether you are in fact a good listener or not. Want to try it? OK, listen very carefully because Im going to ask you a question soon. You are a bus driver and you get into your bus at point A and you drive 4.4 km north. You then turn left and you drive 3.3 km west. You then turn left again and you drive 2.2 km south, you then turn left again and you drive 1.1 km east, you then stop and get out of your bus. OK You drove 4.4 km north, you drove 3.3 km west, you drove 2.2 km south and you drove 1.1 km east. Now, what I want you to do, based on the facts I have just given you, is to call out the age of the bus driver. Stop for a moment and give the matter some thought. DONT READ ON. Did you get the age of the bus driver? It really is quite critical. I told you sixteen times that you are the bus driver, and you get into your bus and you drive... So the age of the bus driver that you should have called out, is your own age. The only problem is that you were so busy "listening" to all the technical garbage that I was giving you, about the 3.3, 2.2, north, south, east and west that you weren't actually listening and as such lost the overall meaning of the message, which said: You are a bus driver. Listening is one of the most vital keys in providing good service. We need to learn how to listen. Eye contact To listen effectively, we need to look at the other person. Too basic you say. Well, research shows that 60% of commercial communication, and 80% of domestic communication is NOT done eye to eye. Think about it for a moment. Johnny comes home and tells about the most exciting game of soccer that hes just played, and Mommy is busy listening while stirring the soup, cutting the onions and peeling potatoes. How much eye contact is there. By looking the other person in the eye, we are connecting, and making them feel important. They get to feel that they are being listened to. Paraphrase

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Try to take what the other person has said, put it into your own words, and feed it back to the. For example: So, as I understand you, you would like to bring your car in on Thursday, and collect it at lunch time. Do I read you correctly? This can only get one of two answers yes or no. If no, you can then correct the situation there and then. Take notes Now, obviously this has to be where appropriate. Down walk down the passage.. ask me how I am.. and then make a note of the answer. But in a situation where there are details involved that could become confused, then write them down. Particularly, when a customer is not happy. The last thing that you want to do now is to mess the situation up further, so make notes as required. Avoid distractions Concentrate on the customer. Not the phones... not the other people around you... JUST on the customer. When there are interruptions and distractions, two things happen. Number one, the client does feel that he is being listened to (which of course is true,) and you tend to lose track of the communication. This leaves you open to make mistakes. Keep cool There are times that you can feel the red rising on the back of your neck, as the customer is being rude and abusive, and you are about to become very un-cool. Hold it down. These bursts of uncontrolled emotion, are totally unproductive, and are only effective as a tool for losing customers. Stay professional.. listen and do NOT lose control. Smile, think of a bunch of beautiful roses to sublimate your anger, and stay poised. Of course, once youve sorted out the situation you can go out back and kick a dustbin.. punch a punch bag or something else to vent your anger. Show that youre listening Do you sometimes get the feeling that the person youre talking with just isnt listening? Well it may be because he or she is not making listening noises. These listening noises are: The nodding of your head, Ah ha. I see. Mmm And all other sounds and gestures that give the customer the impression that you really are tuned in and listening. While these are important face to face, they become even more important over the phone. (No! Not nodding your head!) Listening skills are another of the many differences that make a difference. When the customer feels that hes being listened to, we have a far more docile, helpful and happy person to work with. It really happened... I was down in Durban working with a client and we were going into his building at about 8:15 in the morning. It was a large building with security turnstiles at the entrance. There was an altercation that I stopped to watch between a man trying to gain access, and a security guard. The Guard was saying that only people with special security cards could go into the building before 8:30. He was screaming back, that the last time he was there, the guard had promised him that he could get access before 8:30 I did not say that shouted back the guard. Yes you did shouted the man. This carried on for about two minutes. Neither one was listening to the other, each just saying exactly what they had said before. It was a bit like a comedy show, called broken record, but it showed so graphically how important listening skills are.

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I approached the guard, excused myself for interrupting, and asked the guard if it would be possible just this time for the man to gain access to the building earlier than usual. That we can arrange he said, but I didnt tell him before that he could come in. The whole argument between them had become whether he had said it or not, and the primary goal of getting into the building, had been forgotten by both parties, because they werent listening! GAINING RAPPORT Another one of the magical pieces of the communication puzzle is rapport. We have all dad the experience of walking into a room, meeting a person for the first time, and feeling that almost instant rapport... that bond with the other person. And, weve all had the opposite as well. We need to know how to develop this rapport fast and easily, so that both the customer and we, are working on the same side. What is rapport?, although it is a feeling, it is also a skill. It is a skill that can be learned and developed, and its is incredibly powerful as you are about to find out. Rapport is defined as an attitude of harmony, accord, conformity and affinity. When another person feels that you are in harmony with them. That you are seeing things the way they are and that there is a sense of commonality, then you have rapport.

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Mirroring There are many non-verbal ways that rapport can be developed. They all fall under a big heading called postural echo or sympathetic mimicry. The only problem that I have with both of those terms is there seeming complexity. They are simply fancy terms for mirroring. Mirroring the behaviour, that is being presented to you. When you copy the overall gestures of the person that you are with, they start to get the feeling that there is something about you that they like. You are echoing the gestures of the other person, so that they get the feeling that they are virtually looking into a mirror. There are many different gestures that we can mirror, but first we need to know how to match and lead. Match, match... lead To gain rapport, we have seen that we need to mirror or match the gestures of the other person. But this isnt enough. We want to be able to lead the other person across to our way of thinking. Once we have matched the other persons behaviours, we then need to start to lead them. This is done by first matching the other person twice, then we make an attempt to lead them. If this doesnt work the first time, and it probably wont, then you go back to matching, matching and then leading again. By the third or fourth time that youve done this process of match, match, lead, the other person will be subconsciously following your gestures. At this stage you have rapport, and can work together with the person to reach your desired outcomes. USING BODY LANGUAGE This one heading is enough to fill an entire book, which it has. So Id like to suggest that you buy my book Body language - The South African way which handles the subject fully. For the purpose of our discussion here, I would like to make you a little bit more aware of the body language messages that you are sending to your customers. So a few dos and donts. Donts Avoid negative, aggressive as well as defensive body language. Finger points, finger wags and jabs are a real no-no. They signal aggression, which tends to create aggression within the customer. Remember we learned earlier, behaviour breeds behaviour. Avoid putting hands into pockets, or flaring your arms by putting your hands on your hips. These are usually read as alternatively arrogant and aggressive. Avoid folding your arms in front of you. This is called a defensive block and is read as being closed and defensive. Dos Rather use your body to project openly and credibly. Either keep your arms at your sides, or use them as natural extensions to your body. Use open palms up gestures, which are usually read as trustworthy and open. Lean in towards your customer, which conveys active listening and cock your head to one side, which also indicates open listening. If you will improve your communication skills, not only will your ability to handle customers improve, but all of your relationships will improve, taking on a new flavour of success. And now onto what is a customer?... To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. Oscar Wilde.

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The Psychology of Customer Service By Dr Brian Jude There is no such thing as soft sell and hard sell. There is only smart sell and stupid sell. Charles Brower. Chapter 4 - What is a customer? It really happened... I was working with a store manager at one of the branches of a medium sized chain of stores. Because I needed to watch the way his staff were interacting with clients, we were on the shop floor. He and I were sitting at the desk of his floor manager, which was situated right in the middle of the store, with traffic moving around us all the time. Now, the reason that I was there in the first place was to address customer service issues. We had been interrupted at least about ten times by customers with queries. After the next customer walked away he turned to me and said: If it wasnt for all these @#*# customers, we would manage to get some @#*# work done!. When I questioned him about this possible attitude problem, I was told that customers were the responsibility of his staff. His job was to manage the store. Whoops - I think we have a problem here. WHAT IS A CUSTOMER? To avoid this type of attitudinal problem, I always put a section into my customer service seminars, that I call, What is a customer? As we brainstorm this question in the group, some weird and wonderful definitions come up. Lets share some of the more valid ones. The most important person A customer is the most important person in your work life. We all know that family comes first, and Im not for a moment saying otherwise.. BUT, at work the customer comes first. When you are with a customer, he is even more important than your boss. We owe him 100% undivided attention. I have seen many times, managers and supervisors calling people away from a client, to see to something that they believe is more important. What sort of message does that send? It says to everyone concerned... staff and customers alike that the customer is NOT important. Think about it managers and bosses. Put your ego and impatience away in your back pocket, close to your wallet, and wait your turn. When your employee is finished with the customer, then its your turn. Not before. (Unless of course, the building is burning down and you want to tell him to evacuate.) Remember, you can feed your ego or you can feed your pocket. By looking after your customers, you are looking after your wallet. A customer is NOT a number. You will recall earlier I told about a large computer software company, which had a bad attitude, demanding to know my customer number before talking to me. Well I dont know about you specifically, but I do know about me and about people in general. We love the sound of our own names. My name is Brian Jude, and I do NOT like to be known as Number 68047. Clearly, many of the modern computerised systems of tracking customers work with numbers, and thats not the problem. The problem is when we start to think of the customer as a number... Another line on our computer screen, and unless hes able to quote us that number, we give him the third degree. Unless your system is able to access the information that you need through the customers

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name, then it needs to be revised. So, by all means, ask your customer: Do you have your customer number handy? And if they dont have it, then simply follow up with: No problem at all, Ill just pick it up off the computer. It really happened... (I have taken a little poetic licence, in quoting the people in this story, as I didnt tape record it. But its very close.) Sitting in the canteen of the head office a large bank, I was privileged to overhear the following conversation between five young guys. Why are all of our customers so thick? I mean every idiot in this country has to come to us. Youre right and they just want to waste your time. Fumbling with their ID books, never having things ready, do they think that weve got all day! Dont they know weve got systems, and they must fit in. At least half of the people that come to my till dont have their account numbers. They think I must look it up for them. I just send them to information, and then they have to stand in the queue again. It makes some of them mad as anything. That will teach them! A customer is NOT an interruption! In fact a customer can not interrupt our work, for the simple reason that he IS our work. The only reason why we have a job is to service customers. The only reason the company is in existence is for the purpose of servicing customers. And if you have any problem with these statements, just think for a moment about you situation when all the customers go away. At that point you are unemployed and out of business. When we compare this attitude to what we saw with the store manager that I spoke about at the beginning of this chapter, we can see a marked difference. He (wrongly) saw the process as being the business. To him, the systems, the paperwork, and the stock control were the primary points of focus. With that focus, its obvious that the customer becomes an interruption. Friend not enemy The customer does not usually come to us with the express idea that they want to beat us to death, physically abuse us or in fact even give us a hard time. Most of them do not come in armed with assault rifles and hand grenades. So, why then do we have this concept of the customer, as the enemy? To a large extent this is an attitudinal problem that has developed as old fashioned courtesy has been replaced with hurry sickness. Adopt an attitude of the customer - the enemy, and he will probably behave that way. We saw that behaviour, breeds behaviour, so if we treat people like the enemy, then the chances are good that they will live up to our expectations. Treat him with the cordiality that you reserve for your friends, and watch the change in them. The suddenly become nice people. It comes down to attitude, yet again. It really happened... I was asked to speak to a retail salesperson, whose boss felt that he had an attitude problem. Wow, that was the biggest understatement Ive heard. I asked him to honestly tell me how he felt about his job, his customers and his company. Honestly? he asked. I told him we were completely off the record. He then started to repeat the same statement at least six times: I hate the #*//@* customers! I hate the #*//@* customers! over and over again. Certainly not the right attitude to have towards ones friends. Who pays YOUR salary?

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If you think that your boss pays your salary, you are wrong. He is just the one who signs the cheque. The person who does pay your salary is the customer. If you dont believe that, then just ask yourself how long your boss will continue to pay you, after the customers have stopped paying him. Are you generally polite, courteous, patient and well mannered towards your boss? Do you normally greet him with a smile and with a open friendly manner? (By the way if you answered NO to those last two questions, then we have a REAL problem!) You owe those same behaviours to each and every one of you customers. When you are with them, then they are far more important than the boss. It really happened... Some years ago, I was consulting to a large chain store. One morning, the managing director was in the same branch that I was working that day. He asked to do a floor walk. This is an inspection of all the departments. So, the MD, the store manager, three department heads and myself start off around the store. When we got to the photographic counter, the young man behind the counter was busy demonstrating a cheap little camera to a middle aged woman. As he saw all these big deals approaching his counter, he jumped nearly two feet high from fright. He excused himself from his customer and rushed over to acknowledge the managing director. Before he could even say one word, the MD said to him: You go straight back to your customer. She is by far the most important person in this store right now. Now, he could have bought and sold that little lady a few hundred times over, yet he didnt allow his ego to get in the way. He knew that she was the one writing out salary cheques, and she needs to be given much more respect than him. THE MOMENTS OF TRUTH Jan Carlzon became the CEO of the Scandinavian Airline, S A S at a time that the airline was losing money badly. He developed a notion of moments of truth, and with this philosophy, helped to turn S A S around, and become a first rate, profitable airline once again. He said that every encounter with a customer was a moment of truth. A time that the customer had to either, take the opportunity to make a decision to continue using your company, or to decide to change. Every time that we are face to face with a customer we are on trail, and at that moment of truth, the customer is both judge and jury, and has ultimate power. He can use you or drop you. Most people tend to believe that it is the big things that chase customers to our competitors, and of this is to a large extent true. But these are the massive clangers that everyone becomes aware of, and (hopefully) works towards correcting, so that they dont happen again. However, its the small things.. the little moments of truth, that nobody sees, except the customer, and therefore remain uncorrected. Jan Carlzon would use the example of a dirty tray table, as a moment of truth. If a passenger got onto an aircraft and found that the tray in front of him was dirty, he would probably assume that the engines on the plane were badly maintained, and this would cause him to have second thoughts about flying S A S again. Again, its the small things that often go un-noticed that can make the big difference.

W. I. I. F. M.
Perhaps the most important thing for all of us to learn is W.I.I.F.M. As we come face to face with a customer he is asking W.I.I.F.M. As we start our presentation, he is asking W.I.I.F.M. Right through each and every encounter that we have, the customer is asking W.I.I.F.M. Now at this stage you are probably asking what on earth is this W.I.I.F.M., and if youre not then its because you know what it is. W.I.I.F.M. stands for Whats In It For Me.

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Your customer couldnt care less whether your company is the next best thing to sliced bread. He wants to know: Whats in it for him. He isnt interested in the fact that you are in line to become the sales person of the year, or in fact whether your family is starving to death. Hes interested in only one thing. Whats in it for him. Remember its all about customer expectations. If you will constantly try to speak to your customers in you language, as opposed me language, you will be on the right track. So its not, I have the best gizmos on the market. Rather, You will save money by using our gizmos... This moves the focus away from you, and onto him. Think in terms of customer benefits. What can you, your products, your service, your company do for the customer. Perhaps save him money. Or save him time. Maybe give him additional safety and security, or prestige. These are all benefits that are tangible to the customer. So, indelibly engrave the letters W. I. I. F. M. onto your forehead (metaphorically speaking, or course) and always be aware of them. It really happened... A sales person that I trained in 1990 learned this W. I. I. F. M. principle at one of our training sessions. At the time he was experiencing moderate success. About six month after the training, the penny dropped, and he changed his approach from a me centred approach, to a customer centred (a W. I. I. F. M. approach.) How do I know about this. Well about seven years later I got a phone call, that went something like this: You probably dont remember me but I attended one of your training workshops when I was with XYZ company back in 1990. Well Im now the sale director here at this company, and would like you to come in and do some training with my team. I was only too pleased to oblige, and when I met him he said to me: Do you remember W. I. I. F. M. Of I did, as its very much part of any customer service or sales training that I do. That is what changed my life. He told me. Once I started to see the world through my customers eyes, I started to become a really good salesman. Now I ALWAYS ask myself: Whats in it for my customer! THE GOLDEN RULE Perhaps the simplest, but at the same time the most significant rule of customer care is: Do unto others, as you would like them to do unto you. No rocket science, just plain common sense. Sit down for five minutes with a pen and paper in front of you, and jot down the things that really make you, as a customer feel good. Try to list ten things that really turn you on. It shouldnt be difficult. Most of us spend a lot of our time being customers. Now, once youve done that, ask yourself how you think you may be able to change the behaviours of your customers, by implementing what youve just written down. Its so simple. What turns you on, probably will turn your customers on. What turns you off, will probably turn them off. Practice the Golden Rule, do unto others, as you would like them to do unto you.

T. E. A. M.
The word T.E.A.M. is an interesting one, because we can learn a lot about teamwork, just by examining the word. T.E.A.M. stands for Together Everyone Achieves More. If we will learn to work together... to pull, all in the same direction the company will grow we, as individuals, will

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grow, and the entire economy will grow. We need to avoid the fragmented approach seen in so many companies today, where everyone seems to be pulling in their own unique direction. The marketing and sales department is NOT the sworn enemy of the administration and accounts department. They are NOT there to harass each other, and certainly NOT there to create dysfunctional conflict, that rubs off on the customer. In organisations where inter-departmental conflict is high, research has shown that productivity, morale and customer service levels are lowered. A team has got many players, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Some can bowl fast, some can spin the ball, others are powerful batsmen.. but its the synergy that is created with all of them working together towards a common goal that gives them power. The same is true in a company. When the T.E.A.M. is pulling together, working towards common goals, for the good of the team, then they are unstoppable.

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It really happened... Recently, while working with the internal sales people of a motor spares company, I came to hear about how they manage to screw the external sales reps out of commission. These guys were responsible for generating orders by phone, and also for processing the orders brought in by the reps. What they would do is receive orders from the reps, then phone the customer and tell them that they were out of stock on certain items, which in fact were NOT out of stock. Being a time sensitive market, the client would then usually say cancel that part of the order. This they would do, and then a day or two later phone the client, and tell them that they now had stock, and would now try to generate a NEW phone order, that they then got commission on. The customer, the company and the sales people were the losers of this practice, and yet the people involved saw nothing wrong with what they were doing. There was no sense of TEAM in the company, so an attitude of anything goes, was left to prevail. This was an easy problem to overcome, by having ALL of the salespeople go away together on a team building exercise, and to change the commission structure to include BOTH groups within the same structure. Left unchallenged, this practice could destroy a company. Do you have any similar practices in your company? LIP SERVICE? Is customer service a true company philosophy, or does everyone just pay lip service to the concept? I get around to a lot of different companies, and in at least a half of them I see these wonderful mission statements framed and mounted on the wall in the reception area. You all know what they say. They are all pretty much the same and talk about, Our commitment to you the customer... the customer comes first... the customer is king... The word CUSTOMER is usually mentioned about 43 times! But, does that mission statement translate into behaviour from the front line staff or not? Sadly more often tan not, that mission statement is nothing more than hot air, while the staff continue to abuse and aggravate the customers. Ask people in the organisation, what is written in that mission statement and, most of them dont even know! For a company to becoming totally and positively customer driven.. For a company to have a successful customer service programme that ALL of the staff buy into, it has to be driven top down. That is the top man.. the managing director must not only preach good customer care but practice it, and be seen to practice it at all times. It cant be a case of Dont do as I do, Do as I tell you. It really happened... I was asked to work with a very large semi-government organisation, to improve customer service levels. During one of the early briefing meetings with the head of the organisation, we were interrupted by the phone. Now, of course I could only hear the one side of the conversation, which went: I told you I dont want to be interrupted. (I later gathered that it was his secretary on the line.) A pause... followed by: I dont care, tell her that Im busy. And with that he put down the phone. About a minute later the secretary knocked, and hesitantly entered with an apology. I know that you dont want to be interrupted but she is screaming mad and throwing her toys about, and DEMANDS to speak to you. Both you and her can #*%$?* *#$% - and you can tell her that from me! Now get out! Turning to me he said You know, youve got to keep these people in their place, (Im not sure if he meant the

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customer or the secretary??) otherwise, they start to take advantage... OK, we were talking about improving service levels with my people. Where were we? Wow! - Did we have a long way to go? CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENTS Now dont get too much of a shock with what Im about to say, but its vital. When I start talking about this point at our workshops, I always ask for those people who are from the service department of the company to put up their hands. I then proceed to tell them that I may well upset them, but its not personal. I then proceed to tell them: Fire your service department! That may sound like a total contradiction. You may well say, NO, do the opposite, get more customer service people. Let me explain. We should not have a customer service department. The company should be the customer service department, headed up by the managing director. Every single person in the organisation should be employed by the customer service department. Whats the difference, you may ask. The primary difference lies in the attitude of the people. In companies that have a customer service department, the attitude exists that: I dont have to worry about service, because we have a department that takes care of that. Angry, or an upset customer? No problem, just send them across to the customer service department, that way I dont have to become too involved. Customer service is not a department; its an attitude, an attitude that needs to be shared by every single member of staff, from the top to the bottom, and not just a select few. And now onto, promises, promises... When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him. Josh Billings

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The Psychology of Customer Service By Dr Brian Jude Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didnt spend half our time wishing. Alexander Woolcott. Chapter 5 - Promises, promises... It really happened... My company placed an advertisement in a magazine, advertising a series of seminars we were planning to run. The magazine was due to be mailed on the 3rd of February, which was perfect for us, as our seminars were starting on the 2nd of March. We have found that people usually need about three weeks advance notice to be able to plan their diary and get organised, to take a day out of their schedule for training. The advert was placed subject to the magazine going out on time. My nagging with the sales rep from the magazine, to be sure that the magazine was on time was met with promises and reassurance. Dr Jude, our magazine NEVER goes out late. I can promise you that it will be mailed on time. On the 6th of February, when the magazine was now three days late, my complaint was met with the firm promise that the magazine was being mailed tomorrow. These promises carried on for a week, every day becoming more strident and reassuring. At the end of the week, this was now on the 12th of February, I spoke to his manager, only to be told that the magazine had been delayed, and was not even printed yet. It was going to be mailed around the 22nd, at the earliest! At this point, with half of my marketing effort wasted, I asked why I had been promised each day that it was being mailed, by the sales rep. Thats just the way salespeople are. Was the reply given to me, by the manager, with not even a touch of annoyance, surprise, or admonition. We have to accept that from salespeople. I was told. Well, I dont know about you, but I certainly dont EXPECT that from salespeople or any other customer service people, so I just took my business elsewhere. PROMISES Often, to get rid of a pesky customer, people make promises. A golden rule should be to never make a promise, unless you are 100% sure that you can deliver. Understand that there are enough other variables that can mess things up, without you starting off with a false promise. Its the line of least resistance to promise, rather than stand up and tell it like it is. For example, the customer asks if it will be ready by 3:00, now we know that its more likely to be 4:30 or 5:00, but instead of confronting the issue up front we say, sure 3:00. Now that is a recipe for disaster, because when he comes in or phones at 3:00, hes going to become upset. By being assertive and not promising things that we cant deliver, we can prevent these sour moments of truth. I know its hard sometimes. Particularly when the customer has his pen poised about to sign an order that means a large commission for us, and looks up and says, I will get delivery by Friday, wont I. The desire to make false promises at that point is great, but we have to remember the consequences. TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT US

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Perhaps one of the most powerful forms of advertising is word of mouth. What people tell their family and, friends can be a great way of advertising, but the problem is that this works both ways. People tell about the good AND the bad. What are people saying about you and your company at dinners and cocktail parties around your town, or city? Theres a quaint sign that Ive seen in quite a few shops, restaurants and offices. It reads: If you are happy with our service, tell your friends. If youre not, tell us. While it may be quaint, it doesnt work that way. It actually works the other way around. It has been estimated that less than 10% of customers who are unhappy with our service actually complain (Tell us.) while the other 90% just go elsewhere, and take great delight in telling anyone that will listen, about their bad experience. (Tell their friends.) Research shows that the average dissatisfied customer tells at least eight other people about their experience. Understanding the power of word of mouth advertising, we can not afford this enormous crowd of people out there talking bad about us. What is the solution? Simple Dont give them the ammunition with which to arm the gun to start with. It really happened... At a wedding that I was attending, I overheard two real kugels gossiping in the corner. One of them, Sandra asked the other whether she had used the new butcher, who had recently opened up in the area. Used him, answered Mandy, You had better believe that Ive used him for the first and the last time. I got a leg of lamb from him, and it was so off that I couldnt even give it to my dog. I was furious. And to make matters worse he refused to refund me. I dont believe it said Sandra. And I was going to try him for a big order for a braai that were having next week. Im so glad I spoke to you. Just at this time another woman was passing by, and Sandra called her over. Gillian, just come and hear this, you know the new butchery down on Ninth Avenue, well Mandy was just telling me..... Without carrying on ad nauseum, during the ten minutes or so that I was eavesdropping, no less than five people had been told the same story. Talk about the power of advertising. This poor butcher is going to have to go a long way to repair this damage. CUSTOMERS VOTE WITH THEIR MONEY The only true test of a customers commitment is the colour of their money. Many times people may smile at us and tell us that they will be back, but its only after they have voted with their wallet (paid up) that we know that they mean it. One of the most common phrases that we face on a daily basis is: Ill get back to you in a few days. This is a variation of any of these: Ill have to think it over or Ill discuss it with my directors, or Let me talk to my wife and get back to you. They are all a variation of exactly the same theme. The question in the customers mind is: Will I get the sort of value and service that Im looking for. He perceives his money as a great big pile on the one side of the scale, and your products and service as a relatively small pile on the other side. And as long as there is an imbalance, he will remain undecided. We need to make quite sure that he gets the idea that our service is the absolute best going, and that we are going to be there for him through thick and thin. He needs to be convinced at both the head level (logical), as well as at the heart (gut) level. We need to convince him logically and emotionally. He must know, at the intellectual level that we are the best source of product or service for him, but at the

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same time we have to give him that comfortable, warm feeling in his gut, that we will be there. That is what will convince him to make a buying decision. Then he will vote with his money. It really happened... My company mails out about 10,000 letters and leaflets every month. Recently we decided to stop using computer labels and were looking for a dedicated envelope printer. We found a supplier that had a printer that did what we wanted, which was roughly in the price range we were looking at. We did the deal, and the printer was delivered. The salesman, the hardware support guy and the software support guy all came out for the installation. (Talk about getting a good feeling in the tummy.) Not only did the software man spend an hour making sure that my programmes worked with the machine, but the team stayed around, as I did my firs run of 3,000 envelopes. Now I was really reassured. But, during the run, we ran into a problem, with the ink not drying quickly enough, which caused light smudging on some of the envelopes. Well, this caused great concern with the team, and they came up with a variety of solutions. Get a new ink cartridge, change the settings, re-configure the software. It turned out that they were not able to solve the problem there and then, but what made me really feel good, was, no one asked for the cheque! The machine was not yet perfect, so as far as they were concerned, no money was due. At the time of writing, I have had them back each and every day for nearly two weeks, sometimes twice a day. They have phoned and faxed their supplier overseas, and we are much closer to a solution, and I feel confident that well be there in a day or two. But still, no one has asked for the cheque. This is what gives a person confidence. I just KNOW that they are going to get it perfect, and then, and only then ask for their money. PEOPLE BUY PEOPLE Whether we are in the computer business, the travel business, retail, wholesale, or any other form of business we need always to be aware that that part is secondary. Primarily, we are in the people business. People buy people, not products. If you were to try to sell me gold bars at R50 each, you wouldnt have a snowballs hope in hell of making the sale, unless I trusted you. I would think that there was some con going down. Trust The magic ingredient is of course trust. If we have it we can achieve anything with our customers. Without it, we can do nothing. Trust is earned with integrity. Customers have to get the internal feeling, that there is something about us that rings true. If we project honesty at all times, and use both our body language and our words to transmit this integrity, then we have a strong chance of being perceived and trustworthy. But this trust bond can easily be broken. If a customer catches you out, lying to them just once, then your credibility and trustworthiness take a massive dive. Trust is not a given, that you earn once, and then have for life. Its something that has to be worked on constantly through a relationship.

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UNDER PROMISE, BUT OVER PERFORM Promises - promises. Often we find people promising so much, yet delivering so little. We need to turn that one around and stand it on its head. We should rather be under promising, and over performing. If you promise delivery for Thursday, and phone the customer on Tuesday to tell him that his product has arrived, you will probably make a friend. Do it the other way round, and youve upset the customer. Actions speak so much louder than words. We have all become a little sick and tired of faded and jaded promises that are not kept. Its time now to speak less, and do more. High flying promises may get you the business at the beginning of your relationship with a customer, but if they are not met, they steal that business away very quickly. Lets get used to an open and honest approach that allows our word to be our bond, which is well respected by the people that we deal with. It really happened... Your job will be ready on Friday the 5th. This was the promise made to me by Gerald, the salesman from the printing company. This was cutting things fine, so I tried to squeeze him for a better delivery date. He said that he would try his best, but could not promise any earlier. But, yes, he could guarantee delivery on Friday. He phoned me on Wednesday morning, telling me that he managed to pull out all the stops, and he had my job ready. Can we deliver it to you this morning? Hey great, that took a bit of pressure off me. How do you think I felt about him and his company now? What he did was to under promise, and to over deliver.

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PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE To be able to deliver really world class service, you have to have an exceptional knowledge of your products, your company systems and the industry that you work in. To be unprepared in these areas is a recipe for disaster. Customers have the right to demand professional knowledge from you, in the same way that they demand it of a lawyer, doctor, plumber or any other professional. We owe it to ourselves and to them to know what we are doing. Without this knowledge we will be wasting his time. If every few minutes we have to say: Ill just go and ask my manager if we have any, then the customer would rather speak to the manager, not to you. Time is a precious commodity. We can NOT afford to waste any of the customers. How do you feel when you are sitting in an aircraft, and the pilot announces that his assistant will be flying the plane today, or if your surgeon says that hes letting his apprentice do the surgery today? Not that comfortable, I would imagine. Well thats the way our customers feel when they are dealing with a person who they perceive doesnt know what theyre doing. Product knowledge training and internal systems training, needs to be a constant ongoing process. This makes sure that all of the staff are in touch, in tune and up to date. This then allows them to be the chief pilot as opposed to being the appy. It really happened... I phoned the car rental company wanting to hire a car for four days. I asked the young lady if they had any specials on at this time. Hang on and Ill find out. (I wasnt that sure how I was to hang on, but did wait patiently for about a minute and a half.) She came back to me with: Weve got a special on a class B car if you take it for four days. I asked the unaskable: What is a class B car. Hang on (Not again - I thought this was an easy one.) At least my delay was only about a half minute this time. After telling me what cars were in this class, I asked her what the special offer was. So, she gave me a price. I needed to know, does this include unlimited mileage or not. By now the predictable: Hang on. (This time I was left out in the abyss of space for a full two minutes.) Once she got back to me with that pearl of wisdom, I explained to her that I would be fetched from the airport by a colleague, and that I would need to have the car delivered to my hotel. Can that be organised? I asked. Guess what? Hang on. I never did find out if that could be done or not. After another two minutes of hanging, I lost patience and did the ultimate hang, I hung up. Now, the price that she had quoted me was probably about 20% cheaper than what the next competitor was offering, but I had so little faith and confidence in her by this time, that I naturally assumed that her level of incompetence was to be mirrored in the cars that they hired. THE IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING This leads us logically into the need for good quality training. Now, you may say that Im biased in this area, because training is my business, and you may well be right, but lets explore the need for training. Training can be broken down into three primary types, Number one being product training, this weve discussed. Number two is systems training. Again we have seen the importance of this already. Thirdly there is what is refereed to as soft skills training. Soft skills training

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This is what you are involved in right now by reading this book. This includes training in customer service, selling skills, inter-personal skills, communication, management development and the many other areas that are all indirectly responsible for better customer service. These skills are not specific to the photographic industry anymore than they are to the motor car industry. They are the generic skills that make people into better people, and in so doing, also better managers, supervisors, salespeople, nurses, secretaries or husbands or wives. There are many different ways to get this type of training, depending on your budget how much time you have available and where you are situated. The least expensive form of training is through books of this type. They allow you to get a good understanding, but dont allow you to see whats happening. So the next best is video training, where you are exposed to the material both visually and auditorily. This allows for better understanding and retention of the skills learned. It allows you to see and hear, which is twice the input that you get from just reading. But the disadvantage is that both books and video are not inter-active. You cant discuss anything with the screen So the next best thing is live training. This is now of course also audio-visual, but you can now interact with the presenter, with the group, and become more involved with the material. This way you can ask questions when things arent clear, and you can benefit from the group interaction. There is a good amount of both written and video material available in South Africa, and also many good seminars and training programmes available. If you need any information please give my office a ring, the phone number is in the front of the book. The bottom line is to make sure that you are exposed to as much training as you can. The more you hone your communication and inter-person skills, the better equipped you are to handle your customers, in all situations. The more you learn about selling and service, the easier it is to deliver really top class service. You would not try to run the comrades without good quality training before you started. The same thing is true in business. We need good quality training, before we can adequately run the marathon. OUR INSTANT WORLD We live in an instant world. A world of instant coffee, instant burgers, instant pasta and instant gratification. People want it all and they want it NOW. More and more, our customers are demanding faster response times. The days when we could tell a customer that wed get back to him next week are long gone. Customers want answers fast and accurately. They are not content to wait till tomorrow, never mind next week. Well as we already know, customer service is about meeting customer demands. So if our customers want faster response times, we have to make sure that we deliver. And with the technology available, we can become extraordinarily fast. USING TECHNOLOGY I interrupted writing, for just about three minutes now, to advise my top forty customers of a special offer we are running. The whole process took me just a few minutes, and they will have the information on the desks already. All forty were sent simultaneously, and all for the cost of a local phone call. (The wonders of these new computers!) All of this was achieved with e-mail. We have computerised systems, Internet, cell phones and every kind of software imaginable to speed up the communication process and to be able to gather information. We need to plug into this massive powerhouse, and use this technology to deliver those fast response times to our customers. Whether we

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need to speak to someone around the corner, or around the world, we can do it now with ease. Lets put that technology to work, to bring faster, more affordable solutions to our clients. High tech - High touch There is however a big danger lurking. And that is the tendency to become so locked into the technology, that we forget that the customer is in fact a person. Jacqueline Dunckel and Brian Taylor, in their book, Keeping Customers Happy, have come up with a delightful phrase. They say: Combine high tech and high touch. This really sums it up well. YES, use all the high tech systems to speed up your service, but at the end of the day remember, that the customer is a person, with real human needs. Use all of the wonderful soft skills that we spoke about earlier, together with the electronic wizardry of Bill Gates, and your customers will have both the speed and efficiency which they are demanding, as well as the feeling of trust, rapport and well being, that reminds them that they are residing on planet earth. It really happened... A large computer software company has without doubts, one of the most sophisticated customer care programmes ever created. When you phone, they can tell you within seconds when you last called, what your problem was, and who you spoke to. The can also tell you how the problem was resolved, and exactly, to the second how long it took. If you need information about stock availability, they can tell you exactly, where in the world a product is, if its not currently in stock. They may well tell you that the product left Amsterdam on flight number SA 468 at 17:45 on Wednesday, and will be landing at Johannesburg in four hours and eight minutes (Give or take five minutes I guess.) These systems are meeting the customer in his model of the world, and delivering what he wants. But without the high touch to back it up, we all start to lose our identity and become robots. Now lets move onto what customers love and loathe... Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing that you have to, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned. Thomas Huxley.

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The Psychology of Customer Service By Dr Brian Jude I do not have a psychiatrist, and nor do I want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed. James Thurber. Chapter 6 - What customers love It really happened MY family and I went to visit Disney World in Orlando, Florida, in the United States of America. From the very moment that we arrived, we got the impression that it was the dedicated and committed task of every Disney employee to see that we had a good time. Nothing was too much trouble, and everything was delivered with a smile. As we were driving into the vast campus, there were large signs, telling us to tune our radio to a particular frequency. When we did we were given directions to the nearest parking place on the radio. After parking, there were small busses cruising the area to take us to the front gate. At the gate there were about 900 check-in booths, to make the delay as short as possible. (Perhaps I exaggerated with the 900, but there were a lot.) Once we got inside, Donald Duck and Goofy came and hugged my kids, and wished them a good time. And this was just the beginning. It just kept getting better and better all the time. Do we want to go back? Youd better believe it. WHAT CUSTOMERS LOVE AND LOATHE My company produces and distributes a wide range of training videos, on subjects ranging from customer service to sales training inter-personal skills to body language. One of the most popular titles we have in the entire range is a video entitled: What customers love and loathe. This video looks at twelve things that really turn customers on, and twelve things that are guaranteed to drive them stone scatty. During this chapter we will be looking at the twelve customer loves, with the understanding that if we can duplicate this excellence in the way that we treat our customers, that we can become service legends in our own lifetime. We spoke earlier about learning through role-modelling, and how effective it is. If we will simply study excellence in others, and then copy it, we have developed a learning strategy, that can be used in any, and all aspects of our life. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of customer service. Lets look then at what customers really love, firstly COURTESY One of the most important of the customer loves is good old fashioned courtesy. The sort of courtesy that was commonplace thirty or forty years ago, but which seems to have been forgotten in the rat race that we live in, showed respect for our customers. It treated them as well loved and respected friends, not as someone to skin, and make a quick buck off! It was seen by the time that was given to a customer. He was greeted, and even spoken to, before DEMANDING to know what he wanted. The pace was slower, and the hurry sickness of this new millennium had net yet began to infect people.

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Courtesy is about caring... about showing genuine interest in your customer. Its an attitude that says that you the customer are not just a meal ticket, but an important part of my life. Hows your wife? How are things at work these days? Whats your news? And not only asking these questions, but listening to and caring about the answers. Difficult to do? I dont think so, if we all just slow down a little. (Well probably live a little longer as well!) It really happened Some time ago, I was going down to the Drakensberg to do a little hiking. I needed to pick up a few things at the chemist, and also a small gas canister at the hardware store. I decided that seeing as I was going through Harrismith anyway, that I would stop there. I literally run into the chemist, where I met one of the most courteous shop keepers ever. I got such a shock, that I nearly dropped in my tracks. He asked me how I was feeling today, and gave me the real feeling that the answer mattered to him. He asked me where I was from, and we chatted cordially for a few minutes. I got what I needed, and left him feeling much more relaxed that when I went in. (My holiday was starting already. Who needed the mountain air?) From there I went to the hardware store, where I met his brother! Well it must have been. One town could not have TWO people who were so courteous, unless they were twins. This man was as friendly and warm as the chemist. I was in total shock by this time. As I left, I started to realise that perhaps in smaller towns, there was not the same degree of rushing and scrambling to make a buck, as Id got used to in the major centres that I lived in and visited. We need to develop that small town attitude towards our customers, which shows up as a deep feeling of courtesy.

CLEAN COMFORTABLE SURROUNDINGS When a customer walks into a place of business he expects, and deserves an environment that is both clean and comfortable. He should not be expected to climb over boxes, step between the debris, and get his clothes soiled, just for the privilege of doing business with you. Not only should the environment be clean and comfortable, but it should be safe as well. Free from toxic fumes, broken glass and any other potential hazard, that could come to cause him harm. Remember he is a friend that we are inviting into our home. We need to treat him accordingly, and keep him comfortable, clean and safe. It really happened My wife visited the butchery where we had been dealing for about three years together with one of our young daughters, who was about seven at the time. We had an account at this store, and used to have meat delivered once a week. While in the store, my daughter cut her finger badly, on a broken glass display case. Now this is inexcusable, because this broken glass case was at the exact right height for a child to touch. My wife was being attended to by the owner of the store at the time this happened. She asked him to give her some paper towelling that was on a roll in front of them, wrapped the childs hand in the towel, and rushed the child off to the doctor, to have six stitches put into her finger. For a moment, think what you would have done after this incident, if you were the store owner. If it was me, I would have gone out and bought a great big teddy bear. Decorated it with as many little

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chocolate bars and sweets as possible, and then delivered it myself to the house. (Remember he does have our address.) Then I would phone both the mother and the child, twice a day for a week, to find out how she is. This is not only about customer service, its about common decency. Well we still havent even heard from the store owner, and this story goes back many years. Not only did he not have the decency to find out how the child was, but he also didnt bother about losing quite a large meat account. This is a case of not only dropping the ball, but of tripping over it once its dropped. I am pleased to report that he went out of business, a few years after this incident, so it appears there is justice after all! BEING PAMPERED AND SPOILED Im trying to think of something profound and deep to say on this point, but its just so simple, that I will have to be content with saying: Pamper and spoil your customers. We all love to be looked after. We enjoy having attention lavished on us... so lets do exactly that to our customers. PROFESSIONALISM Customers love to know that they are dealing with a professional. It gives them a feeling of confidence, and the peace of mind to make good, sound decisions. Now, professionalism demands a full and thorough knowledge of your products, systems and procedures. It demands 100% knowledge, and not just a seat of the pants, fair grasp of what youre doing. Think for a moment. If you were scheduled for brain surgery tomorrow morning, and you asked your brain surgeon how was his knowledge of the anatomy of the brain. His reply: I guess I have a fair grasp of whats up there. I rate my knowledge of the brain at about 75% - Fair but not perfect. Do you feel confident with this person opening up YOUR head? I bet that you demand 100% from your brain surgeon, and rightly so. And that is exactly what your customers should demand from YOU! Less than that is just not acceptable. It really happened I needed to buy a reasonably good quality angle grinder, so I went off to one of the large chain stores that has a big hardware and DIY department. Not knowing exactly what I needed, nor which brands were good or not, I sadly put my fate in the hands of a salesman. (I discovered too late, that his knowledge was even worse than mine!) I told him that I was doing some paving work at home, and that I needed something that could be used to cut slate. He showed me a few models, but was quite insistent that I take one particular model. I mentioned to him my concern, that it seemed a little small and light for the job. No - No he insisted, this model was ideal for what I had in mind. Having brought it home, I started to cut some slate slabs with it. It burnt out on the third piece of slate. Not without much whining, screeching and protesting before it did. I, of course took no notice of the noises, because I knew that the angle grinder was the right one for the job. (Didnt that nice salesman assure me that it was?) When I took it back for replacement, (at this stage it was three days old) I was told that I had abused it and that they would have to charge me to repair it. When the head of that department heard what I had tried to do with the angle grinder, he actually laughed in my face. What made you think you could do that with this TOY, he laughed. When I told him that it was recommended by one of his sales people,

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his reply was, Never, it couldnt be! So now, besides being an abuser of small angle grinders, I was also a liar! As you can imagine, I no longer buy from that chain of stores. BEING ATTENDED TO IMMEDIATELY The next of the customer loves, is being attended to immediately. Ever have the experience of walking into a store, and the sole attendant is on the phone. In a few seconds you pick up that its a private call to the shop assistants boyfriend or girlfriend. And as you are standing there with your money in your hot little fist, just dying to spend it, you are listening to a whole lot of: Yes, Doll... No doll... Wont be a moment Sir... Yes Doll I love you too... How does that make you feel? When a customer walks into our place of business, we need to stop whatever we are doing and attend to him immediately. Remember what we said when talking about what a customer is? He is the real work. The paperwork, stock control and the rest of the systems are just the accessories. HE is the reason why we are there. What to do if you are on your own and already attending to one customer. Just look at the new customer, acknowledge him, and say: Im sorry Sir, I wont be a moment. As soon as Im finished here, Ill be with you. Dont just ignore him! ENTHUSIASM I dont know about you, but I certainly have enough of my own problems, without having to inherit the problems of the people that I do business with. We as customers love to deal with people who are enthusiastic. People, whom are not only having fun, but show you that theyre having fun, doing their jobs. When we are greeted with enthusiasm, we subconsciously register in our minds that this interaction is going to be fun. When we are greeted by people who are ratty, irritable, depressed and lethargic, we would rather go home than have to continue dealing with them. We need to get a spring into our step, and a buzz into our attitude, which will make us come alive. Think of each day as a challenge, as another step towards the realisation of your goals. (But of course you have to set those goals first.) See yourself as a company of one, that is in business for yourself, and making each moment of truth count towards the development of your business. It really happened While writing this right now, Im sitting in a hotel in Cape Town. I came down here from Johannesburg to do a series of seminars at this hotel. Unfortunately, what I didnt know was that Mr Murphy must have been on the same flight as me, because anything that could go wrong with the hotel - did go wrong. The overhead projector was faulty... there were not enough tables... they had run out of note pads for the delegates... the room wasnt ready... All of this and more. Yet the lady that was responsible for the conference rooms was such a dynamic ball of energy and enthusiasm, that I felt reassured that we would get the problems sorted out. As each disaster became apparent, she said: No problem, Dr Jude, Ill get that sorted out in a jiffy., and with a little whirlwind of energy got to work on the problem. Next problem... Dont you worry Dr Jude, Ill get Cathy onto that immediately, and with a great big smile, a puff of energetic magic, the next problem was being sorted out. We were due to start at 8:30 that morning, and at 7:45 I was prepared to guarantee that we had no hope at all of doing so. Yet with smiles, enthusiasm and dynamic energy (which I didnt know they had in

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Cape Town,) at 8:25 we were ready to run. And at no stage did I feel that I was being unduly stressed. WOW - The power of energy and enthusiasm. I can see myself coming back here again. AN EXPLANATION For some reason, we tend to treat our customers like mushrooms. We keep them in the dark, and feed them manure! Customers love an explanation. You will find that you can get away with an enormous amount, if you will just keep your customers advised as to whats happening. Now an explanation is not an excuse. Excuses are usually things like: Oh dont tell me that those idiots in despatch messed up again! An explanation gives reasons as to why things are, or perhaps why things are not, going the way they are. Explanations need to be given openly and honestly. With the appropriate body language that makes them believable (See my book, Body Language the South African Way.) At the same time its important to advise the customer, realistically, about when his product or service will be delivered. If we have rapport and trust, we will be believed. It really happened I was anxiously looking forward to taking delivery of a new laptop computer. I ordered it on a Wednesday, and I was told that it would take 24 hours to assemble and configure. First thing on Thursday morning I got a call from the computer supplier, telling me that hed goofed. They were out of stock of the particular chip needed for my computer. He told me that they were being air-freighted from the States, and that they would be here over the weekend. This meant that my computer would only be ready for delivery to me, late Monday afternoon. The way that he told me was so congruent and believable, that I sighed with mild frustration, and said OK. Now, obviously I wasnt happy about the delay, but the way that it was handled, left me feeling reassured and content. EMPATHY Next on the list of customer loves, is empathy. Please come across the counter or desk and stroke me on my round little bald head and tell me that you understand me. Perhaps the most significant words that we can use with customers are I understand. We all crave to be understood. We all want people to see things our way, and this I what empathy is all about. Empathy is that ability to not only understand how the other person feels, but also to make him feel that he is being understood. If your customer can feel your empathy, he will want to deal with you, and will put up with a lot on the way. Another strange thing happens when you do move across to his way of thinking, and empathise with him. Quite often this new perspective changes the attitudes and opinions that you previously had, and may well land up seeing it totally differently. That is seeing it from his point of view. Think about it. The worst thing that could happen is that he could be right, and you could be wrong. If so isnt that great... you can now apologise, and change direction. Not so bad, is it? Empathy is one of the keys to trust and relationship building. When we are shown empathy, we allow ourselves to develop far deeper rapport with the other person, which in turn leads to improving the relationship. EASY TO READ SIGNS AND DIRECTIONS

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We are all familiar with the term user friendly, and if I were to ask you whether your place of work was user friendly, you would probably say yes. Yet, this is clearly not always true. Often some of our places of work are far more user vicious, than user friendly. Think about the signs and directions that you have for the convenience of your customers. Are they for the customers benefit, or yours? Do they help him or hinder him? Are they big enough to see, or does he need a magnifying glass to read them? Often the friendly signs are more like dictatorial commands and injunctions. Queue here. (Would a please be out of line?) NO cell phones allowed. (Our banks love this one.) And what about this beauty, which is so inviting to the customer. Lovely to see, fragile to hold. But if you break it consider it sold. Within those sweet, friendly words is the threat that if you break our stuff well either take your money, have you arrested, or just taken out back, and given a good beating. Or just the more direct approach DONT touch. Are you inviting customers in, or chasing them away. Signs should be large... well placed... easy to read and phrased in friendly language. You can say, For the sake of your health and ours, we would appreciate you not smoking in the restaurant. It does beat NO smoking. Doesnt it? Make it easy for customers to see these signs, and if there are any directions involved, make them big, and easy to follow. If your place is difficult to find, be prepared to fax a map, or directions to your clients. And make sure that the directions are clear and easy to follow. It really happened I needed to see a radiologist at a medium sized clinic in Pretoria. He worked in the x-ray department at the clinic. I walked into the clinic, and as I approached the reception area, I was looking frantically for the sign, directing me to x-ray, which I knew, just had to be there. After careful study, I accepted the fact that it was not there and resigned myself to asking for directions. When I asked the receptionist (Whose job it is to give out directions), she rather snottily told me it was down the passage, just as the sign in front of her stated. In looking down, I saw the sign the she was talking about. It was approximately six centimetres long and about three centimetres wide, and on this vast expanse of space were written the words x-ray - xtraal, and an arrow! With my reading glasses on, I had difficulty reading it. I wonder how many times she had been asked for directions to that department, a few hundred maybe? By now one would have thought that they would have replaced the sign. But on the other hand, why should they? It is only the dumb sucker called customer who suffers, so who really cares? AN ASSURANCE OF QUALITY I work hard for my money, and I assume that you do to. When I spend that money, I like to get that comfortable feeling in my tummy, which tells me that Ive done the right thing. We, as the purveyors or service are able to give this assurance of quality to our customers. And they appreciate it when we do. This ties in a lot with empathy. At the time of exchanging money for some product or service, the customer is unsure, and hesitant. Empathy demands that we understand this, and help him to feel confident and reassured. Simple words like, I know that you are going to be happy with your widget-gizmo, Dr Jude. We have sold and installed over three hundred of these this month, and we are getting nothing but compliments, and phone calls thanking us. It really is a fine quality product. Now, how much do those words cost? Cheap, but so powerful. Its little assurances of quality like these that oil the machinery of customer service interactions. KNOWING WHO THEYRE TALKING WITH

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The next of the customer loves is being called by name, and having a name to call the other person. Lets face it, we all love the sound of our own names. They have a kind of a musical ring to our ear. We need therefore to call our customers by name. Just the other day, I purchased some flowers at a fruit and flower store. The entire transaction only took about two minutes, but I was quite delighted when the cashier said to me: Thank you Dr Jude. Enjoy the rest of your day. It took me a few seconds to realise that she had picked up my name from my credit card. Nice touch. I left the store, vowing to come back again. From the opposite side, customers like knowing who they are talking with, so name tags are a great idea. And remember what we said about easy to read signs. Make the large enough so that both the young lady and I dont become embarrassed, as I try to read her name on her chest tag. User friendly environments use names, so that we can become more friendly. Before getting too carried away, exercise care as to which name you use. Call a person Mr Smith and a can NOT offend him, call him George, and you might. You have to earn the right to use a persons first name. If you have the right, use it. If not, practise safe communication, and use his title. It really happened The phone on my desk rang, and a voice on the other side said DR Jude. Good morning, my name is Colin, and Im from the XYZ phone company, and we can save you money. Well, thats quite a good start. Like most people, Im interested in saving money. What switchboard system are you currently using? Well, I am a kind of cagey sort of person, so I told him that I had no desire to give out that sort of information to someone on the phone that I dont know. Whats your first name? came back a firm and imperative command. Well that left me stone cold. Who is this person? I replied: My first name is Brian, but you can call me Dr Jude. Now, what do you want? I strongly advise people to be assertive, and we will be talking about that a bit later, but this behaviour wasnt assertive, it was downright arrogant and rude! I asked him to fax me his details, but as you could guess, that was the last that I heard of him. A PLEASANT SURPRISE The last of the customer loves, is a pleasant surprise. We should not only meet the expectations of our customers, but rather exceed them. Lets call this the WOW experience. Just when the customer has got exactly what they think they should get, give them that little surprise that brings a WOW to their lips. It doesnt have to be something big, it just need to be thoughtful. Im not asking you to give away profits, but rather to buy a little loyalty and commitment from your customers. Perhaps just leaning a bit closer to the person and saying something like: Thank you for making my day, by coming in to the store today. But be sincere. If youre faking it, it sounds that way. So, be sincere. And now onto the customer hates We have just enough religion to hate but not enough to make us love one another. Jonathan Swift. .

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The Psychology of Customer Service By Dr Brian Jude To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.. Josh Billings. Chapter 7 - What customers loathe It really happened. I took my six year old daughter off to see the doctor, because she was running a high fever, and had a very hot, red looking throat. Unfortunately, our usual family doctor (who actually still makes house calls) was away so we had to try another doctor in the area (who of course didnt make house calls.) I phoned his receptionist and asked what time I could come in. Nine oclock sharp! I was commanded by his sergeant major. (I think she also doubled as receptionist.) I had the audacity to ask her whether the doctor usually ran on time. This is a medical practice, not a car wash. Doctor does the best he can. I was told. (Now, if I was the sick one, at this stage I would have told her where to get off - But oh, what we dont do for our children.) When I arrived at 8:55, I asked whether the doctor was in yet, because there were five other patients waiting. No he gets in at Nine. The dragon told me. Is my daughter his first patient, I asked figuring that if he comes in at nine, and that our appointment is for nine, that we would be his first patients. You most certainly are not, she yelled at the top of her voice. You will wait in line like everyone else here. They have also got nine oclock appointments. At 9:20 he arrived, and spent the next ten minutes telling dragon, behind the counter about the pathetically poor service he had to put up with this morning, when he took his car in for a service... WHAT CUSTOMERS LOATHE In the previous chapter we had a look at twelve things that really turn our customers on. Now we flip the coin and have a look at twelve things that really turn them off. These could be called the cardinal sins of the service world. While we go through them, ask yourself if you are guilty of any of them, and if so, what you can do to change. ITS NOT MY JOB Two statements that are heard very frequently in commerce and industry today, that are sure to drive customers to the wall, are: Its not my job, or I only work here. When I walk into your place of business, or have you visit me, as a representative of your company, and I hear one of those statements, I want to conclude our relationship right there and then. If I have something that I want to talk with you about, and youre not the right person to speak to then rather say something like: Jane, our product manager is really the expert on that area. Would you come with me and Ill take you to her now. Certainly beats Its not my job! A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If everyone in the organisation takes this its not my job, attitude, then the whole company can slide gently into oblivion, with everyone losing their jobs in the process. (Which they didnt really deserve anyway.) We need to be proactive with our customers, and make sure that anything that the customer needs becomes our job, until we can personally pass him onto another person, better equipped to handle that area. (I did say PASS him onto someone, not PALM him off on someone.) A good question that we should ask ourselves from time to time is: Am I perhaps that weakest link? Whose job is it?

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There is a wonderful little story that illustrates this problem: This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybodys job. Everybody thought that Anybody could do it but Nobody realised that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done. I only work here. What sort of miserable, feeble excuse is that? If you work there, then your job is to see to your customers satisfaction. That is the reason why you work there, so dont make an excuse of it. If you are really that embarrassed about working there, then get out, but dont make it an excuse or an apology. It really happened While consulting to a very dynamic motor dealer, we discovered that his switchboard operator suffered from an infection of Its not my job disease. (I think it must be a disease, because it makes people sick.) Often customers, who have a problem, will pick on the first person they can get to, and this often turns out to be the switchboard lady. Now if you want to be technically correct, then a boot that will not close is not her job. However, telling the customers this wasnt helping to build long term relationships. We exposed her to two days of training, which dramatically changed her communication pattern. At the same time we motivated her by making her pay a fine of five Rand, every time someone over heard her saying Its not my job. (She never had to pay that fine.) Four weeks after the training, in interviewing her she told me how much better she was feeling about both her job and herself. She said that she had now taken ownership of her job, and that she now felt proud to be doing what she was. If it happens here at the garage, its MY job. Everything here is MY business, and Im proud to be helping to make the business a success. (Bit of a change in attitude!) BROKEN PROMISES We had an entire chapter on promises, and I certainly hope that we are all totally sold on the importance of under promising and over performing. Because high on the list of customer hates is broken promises. When a customer is promised one thing and then delivered another, it is bound to make him unhappy. Under this heading we also have to include un-returned phone calls. Dont you worry Dr Jude, I will call you back by three oclock. You have my word on that. We all hear those sorts of promises, virtually on a daily basis, yet how often is that promise kept. The only thing the person DIDNT say was which DAY he would call back! SMOKING, EATING, CHEWING GUM AND PRIVATE PHONE CALLS Eating When a customer walks into your place of business, and you are busy finishing you lunch of fish and chips, and the whole place stinks of vinegar, THAT is a big turn off. It is so unprofessional to be eating in the same area that you attend to customers. And then to make matters worse, to stick out a greasy, grubby hand to shake hands with the customer. When you want to eat, then you have to go to the back of the store, or out of the store to do so. To greet a customer in this way, with a mouth full of food is just not acceptable.

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Chewing gum Another unprofessional bit of behaviour is chewing gum when attending to customers. It somehow seems that when people do chew gum, they always have to keep their mouth open, so they can let everyone have the wonderful visual stimulus of whats in their mouth. Chewing gum is fine for social settings, but NOT while with customers. Smoking Another side of this same hate is smoking. It is not acceptable to meet with a customer while you are smoking. Many people (more and more each day) are passionately anti-smoking, and when they walk in and see you smoking, it turns them off instantly. You are forcing them to smoke your second hand smoke, which is certainly not what customer care is all about. Even people, who do smoke, often find this offensive. It shows perhaps a little arrogance towards the customer. At the same time, if you are going to be smoking at the place you see customers; it is going to make the place smell. That smell of stale smoke is not pleasant, so we should not force our customers to endure it.

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Private phone calls If we are involved with a private phone call, and a customer walks in, we must terminate it immediately. This is another of the pet hates that customers have: standing waiting, while we are having a private conversation. It really happened My wife and I went shopping together to Sandton City. She saw an outfit in the window of a smallish boutique that she wanted. We walked into the store, which stank like a fishmonger that had not been cleaned for a week. The attendant was sitting behind the counter having fish and chips, which were literally soaking in vinegar, so much so that there was vinegar running on the counter top. She didnt as much as stand up. She just licked her fingers clean, while asking, Can I help you? I turned to my wife and said Lets get out of here. But she really liked the outfit, so she asked the attendant how much it was. Seven hundred Rand was the price, muttered to us through another mouthful of chips. Do you feel that shes offering R700 worth of service? WHEN A JOBS NOT DONE PROPERLY You take your car in for a service, and report on four items that need to be attended to. When you get your car back, you find that only three of the four were done, forcing you to come back again. Does that sound familiar? Its my guess that its not only familiar, but also infuriating. Its sad that people always find the time to jobs over, but dont find the time to do them right the first time. Time is a precious resource that few people have enough of. If we are going to waste and abuse the time of our customers, its going to make us enemies. For this reason we have to be very particular, to attend to ALL a customers requests, efficiently and properly. If we need more time, then lets rather be up front about it and tell the customer, rather than making one trip into three or four. It really happened I bought a good quality 14 speed bicycle from my regular dealer. I was very proud of my purchase, even although it had been expensive. On my first ride on the bike, I found that it would not access all of the 14 gears smoothly. It was jumping and making awful noises when I changed gears. I phoned my dealer and explained the problem to him. He explained that it was just a small adjustment, and if I brought the bike in, he would see to it while I waited. This I did, and very excitedly got onto the bike that afternoon.. only to find that the problem was exactly the same. This time when I phoned him, I told him that I was going to leave the bike there for them to test properly, and not wait. I wanted them to have as much time as they needed to get it right. The following day they phoned to say that it was ready. I asked whether it had been checked, and was assured that it had. Guess what; thirty seconds into my next ride, the problem was right there where it had been all along. This time I took it back, and asked what was going on. They put it onto a special bike stand, and showed me that the gears worked perfectly. Obviously, I wasnt using the gears properly. (So now after nearly thirty years of cycling, I dont know how to ride anymore!) Raving now a bit like a lunatic, I said that I didnt care if it worked on the stand, it didnt work on the road. I insisted that the mechanic ride my bike, while I rode on another bike, to actually experience the problem. Within 200 metres, he turned to me in absolute surprise, saying: Hey, theres something wrong with these gears, theyre not changing properly. Well, Eureka. At last he is seeing the problem. But did we need that many visits to get it right?

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QUEUES Im not sure whether this one should not have been the first on the list. Customers really hate queues, and being kept waiting. One group that generally is most guilty of this crime is the banking industry. It seems to be part of the customer insensitivity programme, that at least half of the banks staff are given leave for the last two days and the first two days of each and every month. This means that there are only one or two tellers on duty during this critical and busy four day period. That is so that poor suckers like you and me can spend our entire lunch hour standing on line, just to deposit our miserable salary cheques! We need to be aware of busy times, and proactively change our internal systems to cope with these times. To expect customers to queue up for long periods, is in fact nothing short of rudeness. If customers have to queue for more than three minutes, then youre doing something wrong. PREJUDICE This pet hate of customers was looked at in the chapter on communication. Let me just add that EVERY person that you come face to face with in business, deserves exactly the same treatment. And that is solid gold, first class treatment. Male or female.. Black or White.. Pretty or ugly.. As potential customers, they all have the right to 100% of YOU. As we move into the new millennium, the New South Africa is not that new anymore. We have to forget the old ways that said that some people were better and others were inferior. We need to bury the prejudices of the past, and understand that the future of this country depends on all of us working together, shoulder to shoulder, to build a better future for us all. UNTIDINESS There are two sides to this customer hate. On the one hand there is the untidiness of your place of work, and on the other hand you personally. The place We need to make sure that the area that we are working from looks smart, neat and inviting. Avoid dirty ashtrays on the surfaces. Crumpled papers all over the place, and empty colddrink cans scattered around. The customer is our friend. Think of how you tidy your lounge when expecting special friends, and do exactly the same thing at work. Make the environment a place that says: Please come in, and not a place that would make a pig feel at home. The general tidiness (or lack of tidiness) reflects on the products or services that you supply. If the place looks sloppy, then I guess that the service will match the place. So, lets reverse this and give the customer exactly the opposite impression. The person Now, to get a bit more personal... We are now talking about you. At all times you should look like the price and the value of the products and services that youre selling. If you are dealing in fifty cent carrots or cabbages, then you can afford to look like fifty cent cabbages. Other than that, look smart. When you look smart, the customer expects to get good service. (Now you wouldnt want to disappoint him, would you?) Please read my book, Body language, the South African way, for a more comprehensive look at this important subject. LACK OF PUNCTUALITY An appointment for 2:00 means 2:00 and not 2:05. When we keep a customer waiting, we are showing an enormous attitude of not caring. Some people become quite angry when youre late for an

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appointment, as Im sure many of you have discovered. People can be divided into four primary types or styles. They are called Amiables, Expressives, Analyticals and Drivers. Amiables are more laid back, and would probably not bother too much about you being late. Expressives will probably get mad, and Analyticals will probably get very uptight, tense and even more closed and introverted than they usually are. Drivers will not only get mad, but will tell you as well. If you are more than about twenty minutes late with them, and dont have an incredibly good excuse, they will probably just cancel the appointment. All in all, it appears that time keeping is reasonably high on most peoples agendas, and for that reason we need to be punctual. (ALL of the time.) It really happened A salesperson from a stationery company was due to see me at 4:00 pm one afternoon. As I spend a lot of my time out of the office, I have to be very economical with the little time that Im in. When he made the appointment, I asked him how long we would need. Oh, half an hour will do it was his reply. With this in mind I booked my next appointment for 4:30. When he arrived at 4:22, without even an apology, I told him that I could not see him, as Id run out of time. He was totally taken aback. Im just a few minutes late, he said. What are a few minutes between friends? (As this was the first time wed met, I didnt quite feel like his friend. Then, to make a bad situation even worse, he became abusive. Do you think Ive come all this way for nothing? He started raving. I quickly interrupted him with: Bye my GOOD friend forever! EXCUSES Our supplier let us down. The manufacturer made it in the wrong colour You know what the postal system is like. Every day customers are bombarded with these and other excuses like them, which just makes them see red. The whole world is to blame. But not the person were dealing with. There are a dozen different reasons and people responsible for the foul up, except of course the one thats in front of us. We keep hiding behind the big protective apron of the illusive THEM. Dont agonise, rather solutionise. Instead of offering excuses to our customers, rather offer them solutions. It doesnt matter who messed up. What counts now is what can we do to correct the problem? Accept the responsibility without hiding behind others. Simply apologise, and start to solutionise. Work the customer contact towards a solution driven conclusion, rather than a blaming session, to see who we should hang for the crime. More about this just now, when we look at how to handle unhappy clients. RED TAPE User friendly, or user vicious? This applies equally well to the way that you run your business. When you ask a customer to fill in a simple form, is it just that, a simple form. Or is it perhaps the sort of form that you need a masters degree first, to be able to work out whats being asked. We need to streamline both our forms and our systems to make sure that our customers can handle them easily, and without embarrassment. Think carefully about what information you need, and what you do with it, and then ask only for what you need. Make the paper work as short and painless as possible.

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Try to avoid situations where your systems demand that a customer queue at one counter to do one thing, then at another for something else. Red tape is only designed to upset, and denigrate customers, not welcome them in. It really happened I needed to find a hotel, to run a series of seminars. I found one that was suitable, but then met THE GENERAL MANAGER. She had more rules, regulations and red tape than any government department could hope to have. She gave me a form to fill out, that actually asked for my previous address. I have been living in the same house for nineteen years, and could not see the relevance of this. When I asked her, she said that they have to have that information from everyone. Then the section on credit references, most companies ask for three, and on occasion, Ive been asked for four. They needed SIX! They wanted my bank account details (which I can understand), but then also details of any savings accounts that I may have. Then the real clincher... After filling in all of this nonsense, Im told that she will need a 75% deposit, before booking! 75%, is she playing with a full deck? After much protestation on my part, she said that if that wasnt agreeable, I would have to sign a contract. I said fine, let me see the contract. No, it would first have to be drawn up. The contract ran for three and a half pages.. At which point I lost interest.

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LIES Isnt it amazing how the little white lie that you tell at 9:00 am, comes to bite you on the back at 3:00 in the afternoon? There is always a reasonable chance that if you lie, you will get caught out. And when you are caught, any credibility and rapport that you may have developed, goes straight out of the window. Customers demand, and have the right to demand honesty and integrity. We have to deliver that. There is a golden and non-negotiable rule that we have to obey, and that is NO LIES. Tell the truth at all times. ARGUMENTS AND RUDENESS The last of the customer hates, is rudeness and arguments. Its easy to prove the customer wrong. Most times we know much more about the products than he does, so we can really rub his nose in it and make him look foolish. And the more conclusively we prove him wrong, the worse is his humiliation. Not only are you wrong, but I can prove it to you in black and white. (Read that as: Now Im going to make a fool of you.) Its so easy to win arguments, but each time we do, we stand to lose the customer. Again, who cares whos fault it is.. rather, what can we do about it. As for rudeness, it is important at all times to maintain an attitude of respect and equality. There is never an excuse for talking down to others. By doing so we are trying to elevate ourselves above him, by knocking him down first, so that we can stand tall, on his back. It doesnt work, we can never stand tall, by putting others down. Rather we should help to pick them UP, and that way everyone feels good. And now, onto handling unhappy customers... One of the weaknesses of our age is our apparent inability to distinguish our need from our greed. Anon.

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The Psychology of Customer Service By Dr Brian Jude Dont ever slam a door; you may want to go back.. Don Herold. Chapter 8 - Handling unhappy customers It really happened Having ordered a hire car to be waiting for me at Cape Town airport, I was reasonably irritated to find that they did not have the correct class of car available for me, because the car that I was meant to get was involved in a minor accident, and was not in a fit condition to be used. Now, this has happened to me a few times before, and in those cases, I was automatically upgraded to a better class of car, at the same price. This time however, I was downgraded to a smaller car, without an airconditioner. (This was, by the way, in mid summer.) As I mentioned, I was irritated already, and this didnt help much. But I held onto the little cool that I had left, and told her that the car was not acceptable, as it didnt meet my needs. Well did I get a mouth full. We are NOT charging you the higher price. We have downgraded BOTH the car and the COST, so you should be grateful. Well Im sorry, but I didnt see that as a great big concession, and shared my feelings with her. At this point she got real nasty. I know, you expect me to give you the best car in the whole world at the same price, and Im not going to. This is what you are getting... take it or leave it. With this, the last little bit of cool that I was hanging onto so desperately snapped, and I told her what to do with both her car and her company, and went to another company. Now you know and I know that that is not the way to treat an unhappy customer, but when I phoned their head office to complain, I was called a liar! Well not in that language, but I was told quite plainly that all of their staff receive full training, and would NEVER treat a customer that way. Needless to say, I will NEVER use them again. UNHAPPY IS NOT IRATE Firstly, an understanding of the difference between unhappy and irate. An unhappy customer is still hanging in there with us, looking for a solution that will allow a win - win situation. While clearly not angry YET, he has the potential for going either way. Treated well, we can win him back reasonably easily. Treated badly, he swings across to irate so fast, that it often gives us whiplash! The irate customer is no longer thinking in terms of win - win. All he wants to achieve is to crush you, and of course get his needs met. At this point they become rude abusive, personal, aggressive, unreasonable and intensely difficult. An irate customer is a perfectly sure way of ruining a good day, and should be avoided at all costs. HANDLING UNHAPPY CLIENTS So the secret is to try to catch the customer BEFORE he becomes irate, and in that way avoid the problem. When he is just at the unhappy level, he is a lot easier to work with, and to placate, than when hes mad. Lets have a look at how to treat the unhappy customer. Listen We discussed earlier, in the chapter on communication, the importance of good listening skills. A review of that section would be a good idea at this stage. The key here is to show interest and empathy. If the client picks up the feeling that you are not really interested in either them or their problem, they

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may become angry quite quickly. If on the other hand they pick up a real genuine interest and concern, we have a far better chance of resolving the problem. Empathy is that feeling of being understood. Of being taken seriously. When a person projects that form of empathy, the load seems so much lighter. So, with all of the listening skills that we have, we make sure that the customer gets the feeling that they have been heard. Now, dont just hear - Listen! Listen for facts, not feelings. Often, when a client is unhappy, he tends to use more emotional language. This often hides the real message. We need therefore to sift through the emotional camouflage, to be able to hear the actual, factual parts of the message. Apologise This one point is always sure to inspire more debate at our seminars, than most of the others. If the customer is unhappy, then you MUST apologise. Does this mean that you must apologise if the customer is in the wrong as well? You better believe it. People say to me that there is absolutely no way that they will apologise to a customer if HE is in the wrong. Why should they? Well I strongly believe that if my customer is unhappy, for any reason at all, then I AM SORRY. It doesnt matter whose fault it is, but rather the fact that the customer is not happy. And if that is the case I will tell him, honestly and genuinely that I am sorry! We spend to much time and effort trying to find out who is right, and who is wrong. Who cares? As long as the client feels that there is a problem, then that problem is real. If he perceives the fault to lie with me, then it is up to me to correct the problem, not prove him wrong. It really happened Some time ago I was having a problem with one of our computers at the office. It was at the time that the Internet became popular, and we had one of our machines connected via a modem to the Internet. The person who did the installation for me set up all the programmes to run correctly and do what they were supposed to do. Well, at least that is what I thought. For the next three to four days we battled, with very limited success to use our new system. Eventually, in desperation I phoned the computer specialist who installed the system, and in a very agitated and caustic manner told him how useless, pathetic and stupid his system was. He immediately apologised for the problems and difficulties that I was experiencing, and in a calm and gentle way, asked me and guided me through the process. It became apparent after a few minutes, that due to lack of expertise, I was the one that was messing up the system. The installation was in fact perfect. Yet at no time did he rub my nose into it, and tell me that I was an idiot. The phone call ended with the problem having been solved, and him apologising once more for the trouble that Id had. Now thats what I call professional! Take notes Remember the customer is already unhappy. Any small thing may tip him over, so you dont want to go making any mistakes at this stage. The easiest way to avoid mistakes now, is to take notes. Make sure that you have the problem well defined, and that all of the details are correct. It needs only a tiny error to make him irate.

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Perhaps he ordered 24 and you delivered 36. But while youre talking, you mix them up and say something like: OK, so you ordered 36 and we only delivered 24. He is likely to blow his top. By making notes, you lessen the chances of these errors occurring. Also when you are face to face, and he sees you making notes, it gives him the impression that you really are serious about his problem. Restate the situation To avoid him moving across into irate, we need to be sure that we are fully aware of the situation and the pertinent ramifications. The easiest way of doing this is by restating the situation. So Mr Jones, as I understand the situation, you ordered 24, and we delivered 36. And this means that you have no space to store the additional 12. Is that correct? At this point the customer will either agree, assuming that youve been a good listener, or tell you where youve gone wrong. Its far better to clear up any potential misunderstandings now, rather than compounding the error by acting on incorrect information. Ask for suggestions Often, if you ask your customer what he would like you to do to resolve a problem, he will come up with a reasonable suggestion that you can meet. I will agree that equally often their suggestions are unreasonable, but if the suggestion is in line with what you are able to do, then its best to give the customer what he wants. By meeting the customers demands you are restoring any ill feeling that may have been created, and you show the customer that you really are on their side. The customer feels well satisfied, and the chances of resuming a good working relationship are high. It really happened I bought an exercise machine from a store, and took it home, really looking forward to working out on the machine. It only took about four sessions on the machine to realise that it didnt give me anywhere near the exercise value that I was looking for. In fact, although it advertised itself as the complete cardio vascular training solution, I wasnt able to elevate my pulse over 70 beats a minute. This meant that the machine was simply not doing what it was meant to. So that night I lay in bed a while, thinking of the fight that I was going to have the next day at the store. Next morning, I loaded it into the car, and driving to the shop, psyched myself up for a real screaming match. When I got face to face with the salesman and told him what I thought of the machine and that it simply didnt work. He smiled at me and said: Sir, what would you like us to do to resolve this problem for you? I told him that there was only one solution, and that was a full credit. Certainly Sir, Lets give you a credit on this, and well find something much more suitable for you. All at once, all the wind was taken out of my sails. I had absolutely nothing to say. (I was so impressed that I landed up buying something else at nearly twice the price.)

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Propose alternatives Clearly, there will be many times that you are unable to grant the customer his specific desire, so what do we do then? This is where we propose various alternatives. Instead of just saying NO. to the customer, lets rather tell her what we can do. Sir, Im sorry that I cant exchange your 22 month old toaster with a new one, but what I can do is either give you a 15% discount off a new one, or alternatively have your toaster repaired at a nominal charge. Which would you prefer to do? This way you are not dictating what will happen, but rather involving the customer in the decision making process. This way the client tends to be more pliable and giving, than when TOLD what will and will not happen. Get agreement Once you have decided to go along with the customers suggestion, or he has agreed to follow one of the alternatives that you have proposed, its important to make sure that all parties are in agreement with the decision. This is NOT the time for any misunderstandings, so make sure that you have the clients agreement that the solution that you are going to implement is fully in line with his expectations. So at this stage we may say: So we are in agreement that we will send your toaster in for repair and that it will be returned to the store by Friday the 17th, and the cost to you will is R45-00 including VAT. Are you happy with this? If hes not, then we will need to go back and re-negotiate an agreeable outcome, rather than just go ahead regardless.

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HANDLING IRATE CLIENTS If youve been dealing with customers for more than thirty days, you will know that it doesnt always work out that way. There will be times that customers jump from unhappy to irate, despite all we try to do. Or in fact they may come to us irate to start with. So lets look now at how to handle irate customers. Dont interrupt Most people are familiar with a pressure cooker. This special pot has a small valve that sits on the top of the cooker, to cope with a build up of steam. If you constantly push the valve down, and prevent the steam from escaping, you are likely to have the most marvellous mosaic of stew, decorating your ceiling. This same concept holds true for angry customers. The first and most important rule for handling irate customers is to let them blow off steam. Dont interrupt them. Often, just blowing off steam is enough for them to get back in control, and they then may even apologise to you saying: Sorry I blew my top like that, but I just had to get it off my chest. If on the other hand you interrupt, and prevent this process from taking place, you also may land up with more than just stew across your ceiling. Remember your listening skills. Just listen and show care, interest and empathy, without interrupting. Dont take criticism personally When a customer has a problem and becomes angry, he becomes anti the company, anti the product and anti anything else in his way. It is of course difficult for him to attack and lash out at the company, so he attacks you. The closest thing to him. Often when customers are mad they become very rude, abusive and aggressive, and say personal things to us that are hurtful and degrading. The key is not to take this criticism personally, even although the client becomes very personal indeed. Understand that he is mad at the situation, and not specifically at you. He is using you as a lightning rod, to vent his anger. As a professional, dont allow this to get through to you. At the same time understand and expect him to find and exploit any potential weakness. For example if you happen to be a blonde, dont be too surprised to hear him making derogatory comments about blondes. He is angry, and will try to find your Achilles heel, and exploit it. It really happened I was working with a courier company, improving their customer service levels in their telephone queries department. I would listen in to both sides of the conversation, with specially designed headsets. After each interaction, I would then counsel the employee on how they handled the call. The customer care agent that I was working with was a really professional guy, with a slightly high pitched voice. We had one call from a man whose parcel had got mislaid between Benoni and East London. He was in such a rage, that he used more foul language in his first thirty words than the average sailor hears in a month. He demanded to know who he was speaking with and the agent told him that his name was Guy. Well this really got him going. Hey I thought you were a woman! Then he started demanding to know if Guy was a Fairy, or a Mophie, or what. As if to prove that Guy was a sexual deviate and because he was he had probably delibrately set out to hijack his parcel. It might sound funny, but when a customer gets mad he is looking for that weak spot. The key is not to take the criticism personally.

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Get him out of the way If you work in an environment where there are many people around, then this one is a must. If you have an irate customer, try to get him out of the main stream of customers. Nothing is worse for business than a customer making an unpleasant scene in the middle of the store. By all means, we want him to blow off steam, this we said just a few minutes ago, however, we dont want this to become like a circus for the entertainment and delight of the entire store. It really happened I was walking through a large store, when I overheard a man at the customer service counter at the front of the store. (I didnt have to try hard to overhear him, because he was shouting at the assistant.) He was demanding that they replace the dinner service that he had with him. The lady explained to him in a really pleasant and professional manner that they could not replace a dinner service that had been used for three weeks, because his wife no longer liked the design. He became more abusive, DEMANDING that it be replaced, and at the same time picked up a plate, and threw it into the air in front of them. It came down with a shattering smash, which attracted a crowd of at least about twenty people. This side-show carried on for about another two minutes, attracting more and more people all the time. After he threw his third plate, she said to him You win Sir, we will replace the dinner service. Now, if he were upstairs somewhere, out of the stream of traffic, Im sure that the situation could be handled differently. On the shop floor, you dont want that kind of bad advertising. Dont lay blame It doesnt matter whose fault it was, all that matters is the solution. By telling the client that those idiots in despatch messed up again, doesnt solve problems, it just makes the entire team look like fools. A team is as strong as its weakest link. If you are laying blame on others, it fouls your own nest, and brings the whole company down. Every time you talk about those idiots, you are actually referring to you and your team. Dont argue It is well known that you can win arguments, but in so doing you often lose customers, but people just let their ego get in the way. Not only is that fool of a customer wrong, but Im going to prove it to him, and in so doing put him in his place once and for all. Interesting, the more wrong he is, and the more convincingly you prove this to him, the more chance you have of losing him. Even if the customer is 100% wrong, dont argue with him. Rather look for points of agreement and solutions. That way you can arrive at a win - win solution, and nobody looks bad. Warm and friendly At all times be warm and friendly. We know the behaviour breeds behaviour. If we are warm and friendly toward the customer, chances are good that he will cool down quickly and respond in the same manner. The customer is a friend, treat him like one, even when he is angry, and we have a far better chance of winning him over. Professional at all times

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Dont swear, shout or cry. Having been there myself, I know that there are times that you really want to let go and let the customer have the full force of your wrath, through both barrels. Its just not worth it. If we have chosen to deal with customers as our profession, we must be professional about it. This means no swearing or shouting at the customer from an aggressive base, and no sitting down and crying, off a submissive base. A warm understanding attitude is likely to defuse the situation much quicker than a shouting match. Just because the customer has become abusive, is no reason for us to drop down to the same level. Lets rather pick him up to our level as opposed to stooping to his. It really happened I was in a chemist in Johannesburg when I overheard a customer berating a young shop assistant in a really unpleasant and abusive manner. The young lady had obviously had a rough day, and just burst into tears, at which point the shop owner came over and started berating the customer in the most vulgar and rude manner possible. He made the customers remarks to the young lady seem gentle. Who the *#//%* do you think youre *#//%* talking to her like that? Who the *#//%* gives you the right to come in here and treat my staff like that? This came from the professional pharmacist, which only served to enrage the customer further. He then answered back with much the same sort of comments. There were three or four salvos fired in each direction, at which point the customer leaned over the counter and punched the pharmacist. The end result of this physical abuse was that a charge was laid, and to the best of my knowledge the case was still alive and well five months later. Now let me ask you, who was the winner? No false promises When the customer is irate and screaming, we often just want to get rid of him, and one way to do that is to promise that his problem will be solved. Now, thats fine if you can keep the promise, but please, please dont make false promises, just to get rid of him. At this stage, if hes lied to he is only going to come back a lot more angry than he was to start with. The temptation to make false promises is hard to resist in the face of an angry and aggressive client. Nonetheless we have to. Rather make sure that your word is your bond - that you have credibility in the eyes of the customer. That way your customer will know that hes able to trust you, and this will always pay off in the long run. TURN COMPLAINTS INTO OPPORTUNITIES Ask most people about customer complaints and they will tell you about lost customers. This is simply not true; in fact the opposite is far more likely. If a customer comes to you with a complaint, and you resolve that complaint quickly, efficiently and properly, you actually are creating the opportunity for more business. Most times customers dont mind it if we drop the ball. This is human nature. Its how we pick up the ball again that will determine if the business is lost, or turned into goodwill. Its at these times that we need to offer extraordinary and fantastic service, to change the situation into a business opportunity. We have the customer in front of us, or on the phone, once again. If we are able to resolve his problem to his complete satisfaction, and do this quickly and competently, we can then suggest other products or services to him that may be appropriate. A satisfied customer is likely to buy again. A dissatisfied customer will not only go elsewhere, but will also poison the people around him to your company.

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It really happened A client of ours ordered a video which he wanted to use at a sales seminar. He phoned on a Thursday, totally frantic, and to say the least unhappy. Somehow a gremlin had got into the works and although the video he received was correctly boxed and marked, the actual video was a completely different title. His call came through at about 3:30 in the afternoon, and his seminar was scheduled to start on Friday morning. He was really abusive on the phone, and demanded to know What the hell we were going to do about it? I immediately reassured him and told him that I would personally check a video, to make sure that it was the title that he wanted, and have it delivered to him that day. Then I asked him where he stayed. It turned out that his house was only about a ten minute drive from my own home. I suggested that if it would be convenient to him, I could drop it off myself at his home at about 7:30. He said that would be great. By this time, he was completely cool and relaxed. I then asked him about the seminar that he was running, and what he was hoping to achieve with it. He told me that it was a sales conference for all of his sales team, and that they were looking to motivate and improve the skills level of the team. A wonderful sales opportunity for me. Bells started ringing in my head. I suggested to him, that a wonderful and cost effective way to achieve his objectives would be to give a free copy of my book Selling 2000 to each of his sales people. What a great idea, he agreed. The end result was a sale for 24 copies of the book. And all of this because of a complaint! Look for times where you can turn complaints into opportunities. ASSERTIVENESS Assertiveness is perhaps the most useful skill that we can have to help us work with difficult people. It is an enormously useful conflict management tool, in that it allows us to learn how to handle conflict in an acceptable way. Also it reduces stress. Today most people are highly stressed, and any methodology that can help us to reduce this stress has to be useful. And lastly it improves interpersonal relationships. It allows us to relate better to other people. Often people tend to misunderstand what assertiveness is. In the workshops which I run, I will often ask people for their understanding of assertiveness, and its amazing how often people describe it as: pushing your own way through or always getting what you want or even this one: telling people to go to hell in such a way, that they look forward to the trip. Now these definitions would fit aggressive behaviour, but certainly not assertiveness. So, lets get a better understanding of it. Assertiveness defined A good starting point is to define assertiveness. And to do this we use the word: HOAD. This stands for: Honest, Open, Appropriate and Direct. Any time that we are expressing our wants feelings needs and desires, in a way that is honest open appropriate and direct, we are being assertive. The three different behaviours We have a choice of 3 different behaviours, and they are Submissive on the one side Aggressive on the other side, and Assertive in the middle. Lets have a look at what these behaviours mean. Firstly: Submissive behaviour. This is I lose - You win Behaviour, as opposed to:

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Aggressive behaviour, which is I win - You lose behaviour, and then Assertive behaviour, which is I win - you win behaviour. Behaviour where we have two winners at the end of the interaction. Now, people tend towards one of these behaviours, most of the time. For example, people tend towards submissive on the one side or tend towards being aggressive on the other side, and sometimes we find people who tend to be assertive, and they're in the middle. It's also important to note that people are not assertive ALL the time, any more than some people are aggressive or submissive, ALL of the time. Behaviour is not constant. What we will find however, is that people do tend to choose one of these three behaviours, most of the time. So therefore a person who behaves assertively, or submissively MOST of the time, we will describe as either an assertive, or a submissive person. By being assertive more often, and avoiding both aggressive and submissive behaviour, we are well on the way to getting along better with all the people around us. Even those angry, irate and difficult ones. And now lets conclude... Life is a voyage that is homeward bound.. Herman Melville.

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The Psychology of Customer Service By Dr Brian Jude As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more. Jules Renard. Conclusion It becomes clear to us at this point that the whole concept of customer service is tied up with people skills. If we will develop better skills at dealing with people in all the areas of our lives, we will automatically provide better service to our customers as well. Lets summarise then with some dos and donts of customer service. DOS 1. Acknowledge people immediately - dont keep them waiting. Time is a prescious commodity, and we dare not abuse the time of our customers. 2. Greet customers warmly, and with an enthusiastic smile. Treat them like dear friends that you are inviting into your own home. 3. Look at them while you are talking and listening. Nothing is better designed to get people to feel that you care, than when you make significant eye contact with them. 4. Try to get their name and use it, and at the same time ler them know your name. When we are able to speak to one another by name, it makes the contact warmer and more personal. 5. Build rapport by showing empathy. Rapport is those feelings that makes us like, trust, and feel comfortable with another person. When we have it we have a bridge from them to us. Without it we have a chasm. 6. Non-verbal attending. While we are listening to the customer, we need to let him know that we are listening. Nodding our head... The small Oks and I see... all give them the idea that they are being listened to. 7. Treat them like you friends, and they will behave that way. DONTS 1. Forget the term Thats not company policy. Rather think in terms of customer policy. If its important to the customer, we need to find a way to meet that need. Now, as we said, we dont have to give things away. If the client wants something that is not usually provided as part of the package, we can happilly charge for it. Just dont send him away with: Thats not company policy. 2. Forget the term Thats not my job. We need to make everything that affects the customer our job. The customer must see an attitude of care and committment towards the company, and this translates into good service to him. 3. Dont carry on paperwork when a client arrives. The most important thing that you can have in front of you, when in the work environment is the customer. The paperwork can wait. The primary reason why you are employed is to look after customers. Once thats done, you can worry about the paperwork.

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4. Dont carry on private phone calls or conversations when a client arrives. Its the height of rudeness to make the client wait while you are rearranging your social life. 5. No eating, chewing gum or smoking when you are with customers. If you would be content to let your heart surgeon eat a hamburger while dangling a ciggarette out of the corner of his mouth while operating on you, only then can you be allowed to subject your customers to that behaviour. If you dont want your surgeon to do it to you, then dont do it to your patients. 6. No defensiveness, anger or blaming. Its not important whose fault it is, but rather what we can do about it.

P. R I. D. E.
To be a good and happy client service person, you need to have PRIDE. To conclude then, I would like to use the word PRIDE, to help us remember how to offer spectacular service at all times. The P in the PRIDE formula tells us to be POLITE at all times. Even if youre having a bad day, the customer deserves the best. No predjudice, no arrogance, no defensiveness - just politeness. The R in the PRIDE formula stands for RESPECT for the customer. We need to treat him the same way that we would treat our boss, or even better. He is the one paying our salary. The I in PRIDE stands for IMPORTANCE. The client is king. He is the most important person in our work life and should be treated like royalty. Products are important. Stock is important. Systems are important - but they all pale into insignificance next to the customer. The D in the PRIDE formula stands for DELIGHT. Enjoy what youre doing. If you are not enjoying yourself, the customer will probably not enjoy his encounter with you either. Behaviour breeds behaviour. If you are having fun, then theres a good chance that the customer will as well. The E in PRIDE stands for EFFICIENT. Do your job, and do it well. Make sure that its done right the first time - every time. Dont force your customers to come back two and three times to get things done. Perhaps it could happen Once upon a time a young man and his new bride walked into a store to buy furniture for their new home. The salesman greeted them with a warm smile, introducing himself to them, and immediately he gained rapport with them. With an understanding attitude and loads of empathy, he soon determined what their needs were and the budget that they were working to. After deciding what they wanted to buy, the salesman assured them that they had made good choices, and promised delivery for Friday at 2:00 pm. He thanked them warmly for coming in, gave them his business card and told them to please call him if there was ANY problem at all. With a fuzzy feeling of satisfaction the couple left the store. At 1:58 pm on Friday, the delivery man was ringing the bell of their flat. He explained how worried they must be about the furniture getting into the flat without being scratched or damaged. With understanding and empathy he told them that he was going to be very careful and look after the furniture like his own. Together with his delivery team, they put everything exactly where the young bride wanted it.

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Just as they were about to leave, the bride changed her mind and asked if the furniture could be rearranged. With a warm smile, that showed his obvious pleasure, the delivery man gladly agreed to do so. After another fifteen minutes of moving things around, the delivery team was once again ready to depart. As they were leaving, the delivery man produced a bottle of good red wine, and asked the young bride to accept it with the compliments of the store, and to enjoy it together with her husband when he came home, and with that departed. When he got back to his vehicle, he called the salesman from his cell phone, and told him of the progress. The salesman immediately phoned the bride, to make sure that she was happy with her new furniture. She, of course was in her seventh heaven... A fairy tale? I think not. It really can happen if we try hard enough to make it true. At the end of the day, there is no rocket science involved in delivering good service. Just do to your customers as you would like to have done to you, and the chances are that you will be very successful, makes buckets of money, and live happily ever after...

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