Make Customer Service an Outlier Not an Outpost (Part 2)

Refining the Frontline and Lifeblood of Your Business

A go-to manual with practical and helpful advice. A primer to assist managers, human resource departments, and small business owners.

5. Going The Extra Miles

Since the theory is always easier said than done, this is a toughie. Build your department this way. Hire this type of person. All good stuff.

However, it still doesn’t change events on the ground. Not overnight. Not fast enough at the moment and you’re desperate. If not desperate, well, you might be sooner than later.

Begin making the time to reorganize, restructure, and rebuild this division if you must. Go those extra miles. New faces or not. New job descriptions or not. All this with a refined doctrine.

I get the pressures of the here and now. Orders being placed and filled. Services that are prepaid and must be rendered. The stress and pressures of operating a business and delivering all the promises while you’re understaffed.

Add in a few miscues and you’d rather take five minutes to vent, slug a shot of whiskey, and light a cigarette. Despite the fried nerves, you don’t have these moments to spare.

Make the time. Even if it means elevating people and entrusting those around you with more responsibility.

The fear of change is in the unknown. Don’t allow your ego to get the best of you, your company, and your situation.

Things aren’t working and need to be fixed. Stuff happens all the time in our everyday lives. When it does we stop and fix it. If we need to replace something, we make the switch. The other day my coffee maker konked out. What’s more important than a fresh pot of morning joe? Except for a detour for the emergency room, Wal-Mart ruled the agenda.

I’ve watched people covering their rumps and strategizing the fallout to their egos rather than fixing stuff. It’s a waste of time that creates more damage and trouble in the long run.

We also watch many others reluctant to provide action. A bad or wrong solution and their resolutions are feared to bring more harm than good.

Because of this, good and entrusted people up for the job pause to take initiative. The company culture created this response — failure to act is still an action.

6. Customer Service: Your Pillars and Foundation

Culture, dynamics, and economic shift. Everything changes, except the concept of the customer and their expectations.

Industries evolve. Technologies progress. No matter the business, customer service remains a constant. Despite newer tools and streams of communication, the essence of customer service mirrors its name and definition: servicing the customer.

Our commercial landscape contains upheaval and the most progressive times since the birth and second phase of the Industrial Nation. Disruptors, technology, and cultural shifts are moving at a rapid speed. What’s here today is gone tomorrow. The things that have replaced the old could be taken out and replaced at any moment.

All of us are waiting for the software that will replace us. Exciting, yet anxious times.

The power of customer satisfaction will determine how much your business will grow. Despite this, companies overlook this principle daily.

Make customer service a euphoric experience. When a customer uses your products and services, enjoys satisfaction and betterment, they become repetitive customers. Now, they are clients.

The most successful businesses deliver customer service around the clock. Even when a person forgets they are performing customer relations, they are. Selling the firm’s products and services. Selling themselves. Selling the brand, promoting the brand.

Don’t be fooled into thinking customer service is only handled by the agents and supervisors in the customer service department. Every employee is a customer service agent.

That hot-shot salesperson is an agent and extension. What if he decides to bad mouth the organization over drinks at the local happy hour? These types of things happen and could be just as damaging, demoralizing, and disappointing as a service rep bungling a customer’s situation.

These same people could join chat rooms and social media groups. As anonymous voices, they could spread the poison.

When your employees are off-script, away from campus, and outside of work hours, how do they feel about their role? This is big. When they’re in social situations and someone asks them what they do, how do they respond?

Do they bad mouth the firm? A sheepish grin and shrug of the shoulders say it’s just a job. In most cases, it’s not him. Take a look at these guys.

How often do we discount the people we deem not for long? Most move on, but what about their replacement? How do they assimilate? It might not be you or your company. If it’s a hot seat, I’d look into it.

Company culture, including trust, is huge. The people you employ are an extension of your company. The policies, culture, and all the rest, will affect them. Like people, some will be impacted more or less than others. What is constant, is the vibes they carry with them.

Your company is unique. Forget the industry and competition for a moment.

You might find the next productive member of your sales force. If your service agents grow and want to try sales, support and encourage their choice. The best salespeople aren’t the ones with the gift of gab — that’s a line of bull.

The best salespeople carry the most product knowledge and company fabric. The secret sauce to handle customer objections. The confidence to forge ahead and close the sale with full conviction in their firewall — a support system that you have built.

As consumers, we spot the differences in salespeople. We know when we’re being hustled versus handled. How the salesperson carries themself is a reflection of the relationship they share with their mother company.

It’s a slimy feeling when we’re a number instead of a person — a quest for a quota. Especially when we’ve been interrupted to be sold. On the other hand, how does it feel when we’re valued? Our time and patronage respected?

All things being equal, we search for these cues while anticipating trouble. It’s our internal voices asking questions. If things break down, who do I speak to? Am I your commission or your customer? Neither? Both?

How you treat your own is a reflection of how you treat your customers. How you behave affects how your culture, ideas, and policies are translated.

This all starts at the top, and it’s all good. Since ownership creates culture, the ones in control could change direction.

7. Customer Service As An Outlier, Not An Outpost

Find communicators, writers, and people with these hobbies. Be diligent in your recruiting and hiring process. Refine your outlook and standards. Get to know people — your people.

Not everyone is a future computer technician. Not everyone is analytical. Make it your mission to find your customer service reps. Scout your talent.

Scour the floors, spend time in the various departments. Search for your new-age customer service agents.

Get what you want and need by getting who you want and need. Odds are, they’re already in-house.

The next time you invite your Big Whigs, investors, and top customers to tour the facilities, consider your customer service manager to partake. Most have a human touch by nature.

We all have strengths and weaknesses. Areas of discipline where we excel more than other areas and people. Stock your customer service department with your best communicators.

Scout your internal talent. Find these people. You have them. Look for the traits in these people that you need to construct your new and improved service division.

Nothing encourages an employee more than success. Their success. Not the company’s market share, stock values, or quarterly profits. Even if these things are tied into their contracts and packages. People want intrinsic things. The music they can feel and carry with them.

As that person excels in their role, you’ve found yourself another star. They’ll also be loyal — they know you saved them. They’re grateful and productive. It’s a win-win.

Rethinking customer service includes revamping your criteria for customer service reps. In the hiring process, look for the skills you want in your customer service agents.

Take the time right now to construct your customer service agent. Think about the type of person you want speaking, supporting, and selling to your customers. If you don’t consider customer service agents salespeople, think again.

Many have the same skills and similar approaches. Instead of asking for the order and closing the sale, they grease the skids to do so. They take pride in keeping customers in the game so the sales force could do their job.

Don’t think of your customer service division as a place to stop the bleeding. To quiet unhappy customers. To stop the cancers from metastasizing and spreading.

Forgo mediocre by creating a pro-active department with a pro-active culture. Encourage and support initiative, autonomy, and process. Free that bird from its cage and watch it fly.

8. Brand Ambassadors

The battlefield mentality is negative. Arming customer service reps for the battle is adversarial out of the gate. It creates the us versus them culture. In my experience, negative only leads to worse: a toxic environment. Then, it’s all lost.

You’re now stuck (or will be, sooner than later) with a customer service department full of unhappy and dissatisfied employees. There will be back-biting, gossip, and a lack of accountability. All of this will affect your business and drag it down.

This negative outlook begins with the bottom line. Too many firms look at customer service as an area that costs money rather than earns. How wrong they are.

By now, I hope you realize the benefits of a robust customer service team. The bags and toolkits from customer service carry a piece of everything. All departments, your mission statement, and business plans. Everything and everyone — including your products, services, and customers. The frontline unit with behind-the-scenes know-how and skills.

9. Investing In The Wrong Customer

You know that guy and his profile: Charlie Scams. You’re on the lookout for good ole, Chuck. That smiley, smooth-talking customer who’s out to getcha. But you have a plan. A counter-strike.

The Charlie Scams aren’t the culprits who will sink your business. Yet, it’s the profile that most businesses fear and waste time, resources, and coaching to spot.

Here’s why: Now and then, their antics pay off and they get a free lunch. Guess what? They won’t come back.

They’re disloyal, that’s their DNA. The scammers will bounce from company to company, in search of the cheapest price. That’s their quest. Their victory isn’t found in value nor the return on their investment.

It’s found in the chase for the cheap. A race to the bottom. Their low and no class people. The type who wants everything for nothing. They’re rude, stupid, and shameless. Their money might be green, but their patronage isn’t worth a fraction of their trouble.

In the event they don’t get it for free or at a discount, they still gain the satisfaction of the lowest price.

These people’s loyalty is the bottom line. Their bottom line. It’s a game to these creeps. Let’s find the lowest price, belly ache, and negotiate.

The only time these people return is when they’ve run out of targets. What’s the most damage they could do? Write a negative Yelp review? Okay, but you’ll get over it since your customer service department will answer it.

The bigger concern is the logical explanation of why a loyal customer decided to change brands. This is the more damaging stuff.

Now, compare this disloyal customer to the regular customer who has grown into a client. They rarely negotiate, unless of course, they feel they’ve been loyal, spreading the news on your behalf, while watching newbies get all the perks to join the fold. Think about it. Do you blame them?

However, too many bad experiences with your product or service, they might complain, they might not. When they leave, they’ll be taking this repetitive business somewhere else. They might even spread the word about the way they were treated and ignored.

Now, you tell me who is a more important customer? When you see it this way, it’s better to put your resources and invest them in this sector.

Don’t prioritize the elusive customer. That population and goldmine over the rainbow.

Make it a priority to turn your existing customers into clients. The people who won’t even think of your competition. They won’t need them.