Telephone (or E-mail) Customer Service How to Lose Your Customer by Bonnie Turnbeaugh for Communication Concierge © Communication Concierge 2012 Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support. You may have a small business and think this doesn’t apply to you….CHANGE YOUR MIND! Any business runs the risk of falling into some of these customer service traps – don’t let it be yours! • Overcomplicating Processes • Scripting • Inflexibility • Lack of Empathy • Failure to Follow Through • Leaving out the Little Extras • The Art of Apology Small business owners often think they need big business ways to be successful. While this may be true in some aspects of your company, it is NOT true in customer service. Customers love the feel of doing business with the mom and pop store on the corner. Give it to them. Make every customer feel as if he or she is the most important person in your company’s world. This will help you grow. Remember that in this information age it only takes an instant for the disgruntled customer to literally tell thousands of people that you did them a disservice. Let’s look at these traps individually. Overcomplicating Processes Technology is amazing and can help streamline many of your daily tasks. But if you have only two customer service agents, don’t make your customer go through twenty menus to get to one. The point of interactive phone menus is to route the caller where he needs to go. If Agent A handles billing and Agent B handles troubleshooting, then those are the only options your customer needs to select from. By the same idea, you don’t want to oversimplify either. If you have commercial and non- commercial customers but only one agent can deal with the commercial customers, you want to break it down a little further. The point is that when your customer gets that all-important human voice, the route he took to get there should not be adding to his frustration. Scripting We’ve all heard that dead-sounding monotone voice on the other end of the line. “This is Mary agent 700 for ABC Company. Can I get the serial number of the product you are calling about?” Where is the “Hello Mr. Peterson. I hope you are having a good morning. How can I help you?” Scripts are for 911 agents. They have to follow a script to ensure the person on the other end of the line is performing CPR correctly. Your agents aren’t performing CPR - they’re assisting your customers. They need to be themselves within guidelines. Instead of a script, give them guidelines. “You need to greet the customer by name and offer assistance.” “You need to verify xxx.” “Be sure to thank them for their business.” “Ask if there’s anything else you can do for them.” Let the agent have a personality when they respond to the customer. There’s a bonus to avoiding scripts – happier employees. Remember they are people too, and they do not want to squeeze into the mold someone else set. I’ve seen both scenarios – strict scripting and loose guidelines. Turnover in the call center with loose guidelines was less than half that in the call center that required strict scripting. Inflexibility “It’s not our job.” “We aren’t allowed to do that.” “It’s against company policy.” There are many different ways to say no. We should never use that word in ANY form. Instead of “It’s not our job” your agents should say, “I would love to help you with that, but because your monitor was purchased from a retail store, they have to replace it. If you would like, I’ll be happy to speak with the manager of the store where you bought it and authorize the return.” “It’s against company policy” is a term you never want to use. Company policy should look like this: 1. Our customer is the bottom line. 2. If in doubt see number 1. There is no policy that should prevent you from stunning your customer with service. This does not mean you have to give away the farm. Rather, it means you have to make him think you will. For instance, say you run a cellular phone service. Last Monday, due to a fire, your phone services in Fresno were unavailable. Your customer is upset because the outage caused him to miss an important call, and he lost a lucrative contract. He’s now on the phone, extremely angry and threatening to take his company’s business elsewhere. Your agent has explained what happened and tried to appease him, but he’s having none of it. He’s demanding a free month of service for his entire company (50 lines). Your agent should say, “Let me see what can be done.” Even if you have given her great latitude, she can place him on hold* for a very brief period. Let’s just say each line of his business is charged at $50 a month. This man is asking for $2500 worth of free service. Now, during this call and the threat to move his business elsewhere he has mentioned that he was thinking of buying that new FancyPhone (retail $500, wholesale $250) because he’s really excited about it. He was hoping to add his wife to his business account (another line….more income still) and buy two of the phones for them. Now let’s think about this, two FancyPhones (minus the fee for the extra business line) vs. $2500 of business class service. The agent comes back on the line (mind you, she has never gone to a supervisor because you have given her the latitude to think for herself). She tells Mr. Big that she’s sorry for the delay and that she can’t provide the free service. However, she remembers he mentioned the FancyPhones and would like to offer him two activated phones free of charge. She could even sweeten the deal if he hesitates by offering the first month of service on his wife’s new line free. The agent was flexible and gave him a lot, but not nearly as much as he asked for. You have a happy customer, and the business will likely be yours for a very long time. Lack of Empathy I recently had a customer open the call with “My fiancé was just killed on the job, and I need to cancel his car insurance policy.” Many agents might say, “I’m sorry but your name isn’t on the policy so I can’t process the cancellation.” This lady is in mourning, and you have to pull out every skill you have to turn this around. If you don’t, chances are you’ll show up on the five o’clock news as the heartless company that told a grieving bride-to-be to shove off. The IMMEDIATE response should be “I’m so sorry for your loss. I’m sure you are dealing with a lot right now.” After she’s had the opportunity to unload a little the agent can lead her around to what is required to cancel the policy. She isn’t our customer, but she is a potential customer. We need to help her for that reason alone – not to mention for our own humanity. Failure to Follow Through This is simple. If you tell a customer you’ll do it, then do it. Call back, send the part, contact a supervisor, send an email. Whatever it is you say you’ll do – do it. Even if you think it’s minor, failing to do what you say will cause a customer to lose faith in your company. In a great many of our dealings with customers, we’ve been given high praise simply because we followed up and even went the extra mile for the customer. It might have taken us only five minutes to make it happen, but the customer feels important. They will pay you back in powerful word of mouth advertising, and that is the best advertising for your business. Leaving out the Little Extras Please, thank you, the customer’s name, handwritten notes, etc. These are all minor things, easy to manage. In the world of business they are priceless. Mr. Arnold purchased three new cell phones from you last week. This week you notice that he hasn’t yet activated them. Today you call him up and asked him if the phones are satisfactory, and is there anything else you can do to help. Mr. Arnold just became your lifelong customer, because you took five minutes out of your schedule to make sure that he was satisfied. Another little extra that many companies don’t think about is offerings. Offerings are ways to get an angry customer to work with you. Instead of simply proposing solution after solution, ask the customer what he would like you to do. A sincere request for input from the customer has the ability to instantly turn the conversation in your favor. It often stops the customer dead in their tracks. They were expecting excuses. If you ask them how they would like you to resolve the situation, you may come up with an idea you hadn’t tried before. You may also find that you were prepared to give your customer the moon when all he wanted was a few grains of moon dust. The Art of Apology I have heard from far too many business people that you never apologize. Apology is an art. Don’t just say “I’m sorry.” Say, “I’m sorry that your computer isn’t working right. I’ll be happy to help you find a solution to the problem.” There are two vital points to this. • We haven’t admitted that the machine is faulty. • We have engaged the customer in finding a solution. The art of apology is in how you phrase the statement. Just saying “I’m sorry” is not enough. You need to include an offer meant to fix the issue. After you offer to help Bob find the solution to his faulty computer, he will be much more interested in working with you instead of screaming at you. If the problem really is your company’s fault, do not hesitate to apologize and make it right. “I’m sorry Bob, it appears that the computer you purchased has a bad RAM chip. We will correct this right away.” Then you offer Bob several options to get it fixed. In this case, I would offer (depending on his level of expertise) sending a new chip that he can use to replace the bad one, authorizing immediate pickup of the faulty computer and next day air of a new one or contacting the store where he bought it and authorizing them to send someone to repair it. *A little note about hold Many companies eschew hold. Don’t. It can help as long as you are careful with it. Hold is a great tool for the angry customer. It can help an irate customer calm down a little, but only if it is used correctly. It gives them a moment to think about what they want without uncomfortable silences. There are some ground rules. • Don’t make the customer wait more than two or three minutes without updating them. • Don’t put your angry customer on hold mid-rant. • Always ask if it’s okay, make sure you have a callback number in case, as often happens, the customer hangs up and thank the customer for being patient when you return to the call. • Be prepared when you come back on the line with the answers and help the customer needs. The Bottom Line Customer service is really a lot less complicated that many people think. It’s about giving your customer the service he needs to make him feel confident in your ability to help him. If he trusts you, he’ll be back and bring his family, friends, co-workers, etc. with him. In the face of an irate customer, let him vent and then speak firmly and politely. Put him on hold so you can gather your thoughts and then come back with a viable solution or let him offer one. Remember that it is far less expensive to keep a customer than to get a new customer. As business people we need to spend our resources wisely so why not spend it on a little customer service. The impact could help make your business a Fortune 500 company! ### Communication Concierge wants to help you provide the finest customer service possible. Please visit our website to learn more about how we can help your company grow. Communication Concierge – Optimizing your Customer Relationships We do much more than Customer Service! • Customer Relationship Management • Newsletters • Content Management • Social Media Marketing and Management • User Guides and Manuals • Proofreading and Editing • Project Management Subscribe to us on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/communicationconcierge Follow us on Twitter – http://twitter.com/yourconcierges Follow us on Pinterest – http://pinterest.com/commconcierge . Telephone (or E-mail) Customer Service How to Lose Your Customer by Bonnie Turnbeaugh for Communication Concierge © Communication. your company, it is NOT true in customer service. Customers love the feel of doing business with the mom and pop store on the corner. Give it to them. Make every customer feel as if he or she. help the customer needs. The Bottom Line Customer service is really a lot less complicated that many people think. It’s about giving your customer the service he needs to make him feel confident