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It’s hard to imagine how just eight minutes a day (every day) can mean the difference between where your customer service is today and where it needs to be to create a real competitive advantage for your business – to make you an icon to provide exceptional customer service, able to inspire loyalty and passion, and often at a price premium as well.
Closing the eight-minute gap between where your customer service is today and where you want it to be is one of several repetitive behaviors that repeat themselves in a very short period of time I offer I found it to be truly transformative for my consulting clients. I’m what’s called a Customer Service Transformation Consultant – I work with companies to bring them ever closer to the pinnacle of customer service excellence, helping clients in various industries “the Zappos of car dealerships” or “the four seasons of banking”. become. “
1. The Ritz-Carlton-inspired 8-minute customer service update
When you call the “Ritz-Carlton of the industry at the start of each shift, if there is more than one) because of your outstanding customer service. I use the same technique but call it “Customer Service Update”. The reason for keeping it at eight minutes is that if you start getting close to ten minutes or—shudder—fifteen minutes, you’re well on your way to becoming just another meeting. (Note: Depending on your organizational culture, updating daily may not be practical. If so, do it weekly.)
When updating customer service, don’t talk about quarterly numbers, nor about KPIs. They’re not talking about anything along those lines. Instead, you work to teach, learn, and be inspired by one of your organization’s core customer service principles or codes of conduct.
For example, when updating customer service on Monday, you might be debating the “standard yes” principle: that as a company and as individuals, you always strive to find a way to say “yes” to a customer—and that when you Don’t say yes, never say no outright, without offering a reasonable alternative or two. Ideally, reps will even share examples of applying the “standard yes” approach to real customer situations.
On Tuesday you’ll highlight another principle, perhaps your approach to restoring customer service, which is helping a customer and ultimately turning them around. And so forth. Think how much learning and empowering your entire organization will have experienced in just a week, let alone a year!
Related: 5 Life-Changing Customer Service Secrets You Can Learn from Five Star Hotels
2. The 10-5-3 sequence to ensure no customer is ignored
A near-universal desire among customers is for recognition: the feeling of being seen and not being ignored or ignored. A quick and easy-to-implement way to ensure the latter never happens, at least when they’re on site, is the 10-5-3 sequence:
• At 10 feet: Look up from what you’re doing and acknowledge the guest with direct eye contact and a nod.
• At 5 feet: Smile with your lips and eyes.
• At a distance of 90 cm: Greet the guest verbally and say hello with the time of day (“Good morning”).
The only exception is that if you notice your customer, a fellow shopper, or a child (or parent) busy on their cell phone from a meter away, it’s important to just keep walking. Do not disturb this customer!
Related Topics: A great customer experience starts with great employee engagement and management. Here’s why.
3. The 3 Rings Rule
Answer incoming calls before the fourth ring whenever humanly possible. Why? Because already on the fourth ring callers start to feel uncomfortable, I doubt if you can do it always Embrace the tone and start to assume that when you finally do it, you’re too distracted or won’t be of much help. This is why many of the top brands like Nordstrom and all major luxury hotels have taken the 3 rings rule to heart.
It is the standard of the Forbes Travel Guide rating system. A hotel aspiring to four or five star status will have points deducted, which can ultimately result in being denied the desired star rating if it falls short of the third ring too often!) So, now, to the Show customers you belong too. In this top tier of service, it’s best to stick to the three rings boundary whenever possible.
4. Instant Behavior Correction
In order to build and maintain a great, customer service-focused company, it is important to immediately correct employee missteps for two reasons. First, and most obviously, you want to improve your customer service performance immediately, rather than allowing destructive behavior. Second, if you wait a while — say, until a performance review is due — the employee will never remember the incident the way you do, and they’ll be more reluctant than you coming out of your so late learn correction.
For best results, do a lot of “management by walking around” so that you can simultaneously model good customer service behaviors and also observe inevitable missteps: grammatical errors, excessive informality (and excessive formality, for that matter), and so on – seemingly tiny small things that add up to make a big difference. Wait until the customers are out of earshot and say, “Do you have a minute?” If you do this frequently and with grace, those words won’t turn anyone’s stomach.
Undoubtedly, many aspects of customer service transformation take time. You’re not going to redesign your hiring process, rewrite your safeguards, or draft your behavioral best practices in just a few minutes a day. But it’s amazing how these short but repetitive steps above can help you climb the ladder from tolerable customer service to excellent, even legendary, customer service.
