“Going the extra mile is easy with clear directions”
As I sit in London on this sunny afternoon, customer service is at the forefront of my mind and I want to share with you 5 transformational tips that will transform your success and business if you choose to implement them.
This week has culminated my passion for customer service. I spent three days being trained to deliver World Host Principles of Customer Service with 10 training professionals. It was an amazing training programme and I cannot wait to support local businesses with this. It’s funny how on my journey to London my passion has been even further intensified with some good and not so good experiences. On arriving in London my friend and I decided to
1) Make doing business as easy as possible with you
Don’t make your customers work hard to find your phone number, or complete a 5 page customer sign up form to enable them to buy from you. As we all know convenience is a huge factor in winning customers. Ensure you and your staff always strive to make doing business with you as easy as possible.
2) Ensure your staff have a solid product knowledge
Don’t let your staff loose on your customers without the relevant induction and training to enable them to give your customers solid advice. Without a knowledge of the products it also minimises their ability to upsell other products.
3) Don’t assume…teach your staff the basics in customer service.
We specialise in helping businesses to create Olympic Standard Customer Service Experts and want to share some of the basics with you. A simple acronym we learned this week as part of the World Host training was GREET. Instill these simple principles in your staff ethos and their attitude stand out.
Give Fully
Respect Everyone
Empathise with others
Excel at your job
Teamwork works
4) Engage staff in your vision – whether that be personal, team or organisation
Whatever the size of team – whether you work alone or with 1000 people, engaging people in your vision is contagious. When you are passionate about what you do, why you do it and where you are going people can feel that. Another quote that really resonated from the training this week was ‘Your attitude is contagious, is yours worth catching.’ Customers can tangibly see if your staff are engaged in your business’ vision. Be passionate, make it clear and make your staff feel like they are the most important part of the jigsaw.
5) Gather meaningful feedback from your customers
Ask your customers what is missing, what they love and what you could be doing better? Why are they doing business with you? This information is so important. Did you know that for every 1 customer that complains, 26 don’t say a word. Give your customers a non-threatening mechanism to give feedback. Survey Monkey is a free online tool to use if you aren’t already centralising the way you capture feedback.
I want to use this blog post to acknowledge my trainer Linda Greenwood from this week and also the 9 individuals I met on the programme. I learned so much from each an everyone of you and I am sincerely delighted to have met you all.
Now get delighting your customer by taking some tangible actions.
Please share your thoughts in the comment box below.
Have a fab weekend, I am off to explore London WOOHOO!