Want to own or work for an inspired company? Do you want to feel like your time on the job is worth more than the exchange of dollars for time and effort? Do you want to work with people who know how to change course when their toughest customers aren’t so happy? Here are seven strategies to improve your workplace and make even your toughest patrons proud to do business with you.
1. Be Entrepreneurial – even when you don’t own the company. It will change the way you think about work. Think of yourself as the president of your own career. When my mom was a teenager, she remembered the wise advice of a family friend who told her, “Do your job well, even when nobody is watching.” She worked at a theater candy counter. One slow day, she was happily cleaning her work area when a customer came up and asked her, “No one’s around. Why aren’t you just taking it easy?” My mom replied, “I’d rather be doing something useful than doing nothing.” That customer offered my mom a job at his company on the spot. He realized that she approached her job with an entrepreneurial spirit, which always translates to growth and opportunity.
2. Create a happy workplace environment – regardless of your position. If you are a company leader, ask yourself, “If I had no ties to this company, what would make me want to get up in the morning and come to work here?” That question is the catalyst for making critical changes to your customer service culture, because every employee is your internal customer. What happens on the inside of the company eventually shows up on the outside. Happy committed employees translate to happy committed customers. Like attracts like. If you are not in a position of leadership, and you run into a challenging issue with a coworker, challenge yourself to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Take responsibility for restoring a happy workplace environment, so that you can grow your problem solving skills and reap the rewards of those efforts.
3. Put yourself in a position of passion. When you ask a room full of people what they love to do, it’s no surprise that you get a whole array of different answers. Some people love working with facts and statistics, others hate it. Some like working with their hands, others detest it. Some have a passion for serving customers, others develop excellent customer service skills because they have a passion for developing skills. Get in touch with your passion and put it to work at work. If you are a company leader, give employees opportunities to explore different work areas within the company and put people in positions based on their strengths and passions.
4. Face your fears instead of avoiding them. It’s tempting to avoid the phone calls from your toughest customers. “I’ll call him later,” you might think, avoiding the discomfort of his demeanor. I once worked on a project with a person who believed “avoid it and maybe it will go away”’ I called a meeting and this person explained, “You know that book The Power of Now? Well, I’d like to write a book called The Power of Later, because I find if I leave things alone long enough, the problems resolve themselves.” Yikes! Okay, it is true that there are situations that benefit from a little time and space. However, when you use time and space to avoid rather than unify, you run into problems. Fear is an indicator that it’s time to grow. Seek out the advice of someone who is stellar at handling the issues that challenge you. Role play with a trusted advisor to grow your comfort with uncomfortable situations. The more proactive you become in resolving customer conflict, the greater your results.
5. Appreciate the virtues of (Gladys) your challenging customer. Gladys represents that customer who holds the potential of being a vocal advocate of your company. Gladys tends to start out prickly, but when you manage your own emotions and creative problem solving abilities, magic happens. Gladys is a gift. She offers you insight into problems that other customers are not willing to share. She jabs at the wounded areas of your company that, left untreated, can fester into “dis-ease” that eventually (or immediately) impact the profitability and well-being of your business and career. When you see your Gladys through eyes of compassion, you come to realize that she or he is reacting the way they learned to react to problems. Think of her as attacking the problem, not you. When you don’t take it personally, you become her supporter or personal guide to resolution. When you become that person who helps to set things right, you gain a devoted fan and reap the rewards of ongoing referrals.
6. Be a champion of excellence. It only takes one person to champion the change of an entire company culture. When you declare yourself a champion of customer service excellence, you start thinking and acting like a champion. Champions aren’t interested in mere satisfaction; they thrive on excellence. People are drawn to champions. I once heard a motivational speaker talk about success by saying “You have to do it by yourself, but you can’t do it alone.” At first I thought it was just a trite phrase, but it’s actually quite profound. You – by yourself – get to decide how you will approach your life. Will you choose to be a champion, a slacker or something in-between? That decision is made by you alone, but you can’t have company-wide success alone. Enrolling others into the champion mentality means treating your staff, coworkers, board and customers as the champions they can be. Your inspiration can change the direction of even the most difficult workplace environments.#p#分页标题#e#
7. Measure your success. You get what you measure. If you want to improve customer service, put measurement tools into place to gauge your progress. It can be as simple as asking a customer at the end of their visit, “How could we make your experience with us even better next time?” This non-threatening question makes it easy for customers to feel comfortable sharing what they normally wouldn’t bother to tell you. You can also use surveys, but don’t be obnoxious about it. Make it worth the customer’s time to answer the survey by offering a form of thank you for their time, either a small gift or coupon. If you want to take your customer service success to the highest level, seek out feedback by asking for it from your coworkers, clients, and vendors using tools such as the 360 degree feedback or other measurements. Don’t receive feedback as a threat or as criticism. See it as information to consider and possibly as instruction to follow. Your service skills will skyrocket.
Written by Marilyn Suttle at www.whosyourgladys.com/blog
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