Good Customer Service Checklist

Customer service is a great way to reach customer satisfaction and attract new clients. This Good Customer Service Action Plan presents a range
of tasks your personnel can do to attract new clients and retain existing customers. All tasks are divided into the following categories:
 Necessary Skills
 Communications
 Conflicts
 Process Flow

1. Necessary Skills.
 Politeness – a talent to be courteous, polite and positive when communicating with clients and prospects.
 Communication – a suite of skills and abilities to establish and hold effective communications with prospects and existing
customers.
 Conflict resolution – an ability to avoid possible conflict situations and handle existing conflicts efficiently.
 Listening – an ability to listen to a customer and hear what he or she really says and wants.
 Asking right questions – an ability to ask a question that stimulates a customer to do a desired action and find a solution for an
exiting problem.
 Problem solving – an ability to understand a customer problem and find one or several solutions.
 Decision making – an ability to mentally generate possible scenarios and choose optimal one.
 Time management – a set of skills to plan and consume working hours in an efficient manner.
 Computer user – special knowledge and skills to use computers and computer software.

2. Communications.
 Try to keep your focus on service excellence.
 Make eye contact with customers.
 Shake hands when meeting a customer.
 Use age-appropriate greetings when entering communications.
 Never rank your customers. Service all customers at the same way regardless of their age and appearance.
 Demonstrate competence and knowledge when handling customer issues.
 Interact well with all customers.
 Have good listening skills and be patient.
 Read body language to see if your customer needs some help.
 Ask right questions that guide customers through their problems.
 Express your readiness and interest in assisting customers.
 Never discuss a customer’s issue in front of other customers.
 Record customer comments, suggestions and other feedback to improve customer service.
 Try to respond to e-mails, telephone queries and complaints with minimized wait-time possible.
 Treat communications with your customers as pleasant and efficient as possible.

3. Conflict Situations.
 Avoid getting involved in conflict situations.
 Stay polite, courteous and positive at all times.
 Never let your feelings expose. Keep your emotions in check.
 Keep yourself cool and calm during a conflict situation.
 Hold customer communications within the chain of command.
 Always plan your actions in the context of diffusing or alleviating the conflict.
 Try to explain the reasons of the problem but never blame the customer (even if the customer made a mistake and caused the
problem).
 Understand who has enough rights and authorities to resolve the conflict.
 Get authorization of that person to resolve the conflict.
 Resolve the conflict in a fair and equitable manner.

4. Process Flow.
 Record the customer’s contact information, including full name, company name, phone number and email address.
 Record details of the customer request, including date of filing and main issues.
 Assign code number to the request.
 Classify the request by urgency and type.
 Determine the recipient of the request. For example, the request may be addressed to Sales Dept., Support Team, Administration,
Web Design Team, Transportation Division, etc.
 Define supportability of the request. It means you need to determine if the request can be really supported by the recipient.
 Try to resolve the request by using available support instructions and standard procedures.
 Involve the whole team to brainstorm the request and seek for a better solution if standard procedures and instructions are failed.
 Confirm the resolution and prepare a formal reply to the customer.
 Send the reply to the customer by email.
 Call the customer to get confirmation that the reply has been successfully received.
 Request the customer for effectiveness of the reply (whether the reply is helpful to the customer and whether there are some other
issues occurred).
 Thank the customer for the patience and good will.
 Close the request.
 Report to senior management.