Chances are, whether you have direct client contact or not, you and your team members are providing some sort of customer service. You may not be dealing with outside clients, but in almost every situation you have some sort of internal client (another team, accounting, human resources, etc). Regardless of who your client may be, you need to have the customer service skills necessary to make your customers happy.

But how do you offer great customer service, from a management standpoint?

• Start by hiring a great group of people. We’ve spoken quite a bit about interview skills – so use them. Make sure you aren’t only hiring people who can get the job done, but who can get the job done while remaining friendly and interested in their work.
• Make sure you outline a clear set of customer service standards for your team members to follow. They should dictate how they speak to customers, how they act in the presence of customers, and how they respond (in both attitude and time frame) to the needs of their customers. Once you’ve set the standards, hold your team members to them.
• Ensure your team member are getting the training they need. Believe it or not, most people aren’t born working in customer service industries and, as such, the skills needed to deal with people do not come naturally. Ongoing training will support your cause.
• Develop an incentive program through which those who go above and beyond the call of duty can be  rewarded for their efforts. Sure, you should be paying well, but you should show your team members a bit of respect by acknowledging their hard work from time to time as well.
• Take criticism seriously. People who are unhappy with your business aren’t likely to tell you about their experiences – they’ll tell everyone else they know instead. If someone has something to say – listen. Others probably have the same sentiment.

The happier your team members, the more their attitudes will rub off on their customer interactions – guaranteed.

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Manager Training

Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”

It takes time to develop a good team. As a manager you’ll find that once you have a team of great employees you’ll need to learn how to balance their skills. For example, some are better at building personal client relationships while others are better at doing the technical aspects of their jobs.

Once you develop a strong team you’re going to have to take a step back to look at the way your team members interact with your customers. From there, you’ll need to develop a strong customer service plan. A good customer service plan involves day to day interactions, retention, and future development but before you can dive into the details you need to work on something a bit more generalised – your main customer service promises.

My research has led me to four main promises every good customer service team should be able to keep. They are as follows:

• A good customer service team has the ability to attract good customers – the kind they want- and win them over;
• A good customer service team has the skills necessary to convince those customers to remain loyal and stay with them;
• A good customer service team has a strong brand that emphasizes the value of good customer relationships; and
• A good customer service team always has a positive attitude when it comes to client relationships.

How does your team rate when it comes to fulfilling these promises? Are you able to keep these promises or are there things you can or should change in order to build better relationships?

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

A lot of people view marketing as the method of selling a product. Marketing, to them, means creating a print ad, television commercial, or radio segment and hoping it brings traffic so that they can make a few sales.

Marketing, in reality, is really much more than your ability to advertise your products, though. Marketing is your ability to brand yourself and make yourself known amongst members of your target audience, including your current client base. Marketing includes the way your organisation treats the public as a whole. It’s a culmination of your values, your philosophies, your team members, and their mindsets.

So when you next start to train a group of new employees, how will you explain your company’s marketing campaigns? The truth is that most of your employees don’t have all of the real skills necessary to develop a strong marketing campaign from A to Z but if you utilize the skills they do have and supplement them with outside resources you’ll do a bang-up job putting your company in the public spotlight.

These are a few things you should consider as you market your organisation:

• Develop a customer service agreement outlining your organision’s mission or goal with respects to customer service. How will you let your customers know what your standards are and how will you get your customer service team to live up to those standards?
• Set a procedure for complaints. Your customers should be allowed to complain if your customer service team doesn’t meet their goals or expectations. You should set a complete system, including who will take the initial complaint and how it will be handled up until it is resolved.
• Don’t ignore those complaints, either. The better you handle them, the less likely it is you’ll lose a customer later on down the line. Even handing a complaint well is a mark of good customer service.
• Constantly communicate with your customers. Let them know what’s going on within your organisation and how you are working to solve problems with your systems to make their experiences with you even better.

Keeping your customers happy IS a marketing method and its one you should take very, very seriously. After all, your current clients play a huge role in your marketing as well – and if they are spreading information about bad experiences you won’t receive as good a response from your traditional marketing campaigns either.

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

I thought we’d take a few minutes today to go over a few more tips designed to make your customer service relationships even stronger. Remember, great customer service should start from the first moment you make contact with a client or prospect.

5. Learn to be Flexible

Or, in reality, learning how to stray from company policy. Let’s say, for example, that the widget you sold Mrs. X broke 2 days after her warranty expired. She’s been a long time customer but your company policy is to never replace widgets after the warranty expires. Would you rather replace Mrs. X’s widget one time or lose her business for the rest of your existence?

4. Be Responsible

If your company made a mistake, own up to it and make a correction. Customers are able to better identify with organisations that can accept responsibility for their shortcomings rather than make excuses for them.

3. Don’t Place Blame

Responsibility and blame really go hand in hand. If you sell computer products – printers, for example- and a customer is having problems installing the drivers what will you do? Will you blame the computer operating system or will you do the research necessary to help your client make the printer work?

2. Avoid Paranoia

There’s an old story about a guy returning a tire to Nordstroms, a popular high-end department chain in the US. The elderly gentleman insisted he had purchased the tire at Nordstroms but there was one problem – Nordstroms doesn’t sell tires. At all. Anywhere. They’re customer service policy, however, is that the customer is always right and they did accept the return of the tire. Weird instances like this shouldn’t send you into a panic. Just because you take back one tire doesn’t mean everyone in the county is going to try to do the same. They’ll likely laugh it off (and you migth consider rephrasing your customer service policies).

1. Make Your Customers Happy

The easiest way to make your customers happy is to “underpromise and over deliver.” If you’re constantly giving customers the best service possible even though they expected less they’ll always be happy.

Try to incorporate a few of these ideas into your customer service training plans. The more skills your customer service representatives develop the happier your clients will be.

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”

You’ve all been excited about a new product or service launch at least once over the course of your career. If you haven’t, I’d have to question whether or not sales and management are the right career paths for you.

I find that one of the most important things we have to consider when training our customer service representatives is teaching them the difference between hype and excitement. Knowing the difference will make it easy for your customer service reps to present new products to clients without making false statements.

Hype…

• …is deceptive.
• …attempts to predict outcomes.
• …makes unrealistic promises.
• …doesn’t last long.
• …is impossible.
• …is sales-driven.
• …is not trustworthy.

Excitement…

• …is honest.
• …doesn’t eliminate flaws.
• …is wild and unpredictable.
• …has no set time frames.
• …is realistic.
• …is value-driven.
• …is believable and trustworthy.

Are you starting to see the differences? We can hype up a new product or service but much of what we say will have been fashioned to sound good whether it is true or not. If your customer service team is really excited about a product they’ll be able to talk about it and sell it without making false statements or misleading your current and new customers.

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Courses

Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”