Customer Service Experience

This plays out in a banking hall

Client: Where can I get x forms

Guard: I don’t know. Do you see me carrying any forms?

Client: Shock written all over his face

Me: Shock and disgust at such a response from the guard

A customer can be referred to as a buyer, a prospective buyer, or a client. Customers can be classified as internal or external. Internal customers are the work colleagues and other departments that depend on input or service from you. External customers on the other hand are those that aren’t within the particular business entity and hence depend on the overall organization’s products or services.

Good customer service can be seen in various ways such as how we receive a phone call, how you address someone such as your workmate, supervisor, cleaner, and client, or how you communicate a setback that will affect the services or goods you provide. Good customer service is all about proper communication between the customer and service provider.

Take for example a company that doesn’t inform their customers when they are experiencing a problem with their product or service. Possibly the first instinct that a customer will have is that they (the customer) can take care of the problem and will try to correct it by themselves. Once at the end of their wit, they will contact the product manufacturer or service provider and inquire what may be at fault only to discover that it’s been in the knowledge of the provider/manufacturer.

This happens so often to mobile phone users where in case the service provider is experiencing a problem with one of their products, the users only get to know about it when they need to use it. Never mind the fact that in the case that a service doesn’t work, we the users try all the tricks we know to make it work before we turn to customer care who just apologize and inform that all that is an internal failure on their end. Leaving the customers in the dark without communicating and later apologizing will surely not help in building trust relationships that make the customer comfortable in dealing with any given business.

When you take care of customer service you will in return secure future income as you end up building your brand as a customer focused business. You won’t be found having hidden costs or charging more than you state you will charge. A company that is quick to promote a product should be as quick to also promote or advertise the change of the terms to that product. A failure to do so results in words such as unscrupulous, con-company, swindlers. The customers use your product because they trust you to give what they require. The company that betrays their customers’ trust by going behind their backs to increase charges such as tariffs without informing them, may make money in the short run but soon enough customers get to find out and abandon the company. I think they will stick with you if you are honest with them and this can be achieved by building a connection with them and the only way this is achievable is through good customer service.

Empathy I believe results to the designing of good customer service experience. Take an example of our banks. The Floor Manager should know when is the peak time or period for example end months or beginning of school terms or semesters. He should then ensure that all the teller boxes are manned. This will ensure that service is provided efficiently and effectively. I have been on a banking line for such a long time and I think if I wasn’t dozing off then I was fainting. Having gone through such an experience; if I was in the Floor Managers shoes, I would ensure that all the peak times are forecasted on and all the man power needed at the ready. Incase anyone from a bank is reading this, there is nothing more demoralizing than queuing for so long while teller booths are unmanned, it just seems as if the bank hasn’t noticed that there the floor is busy.

Within your team, department, or organization the way one deals with others determines morale and drive the others concerned have. If you are a supervisor who undermines other departments because you feel they don’t play a big role like the department you are in, or you don’t care about other departments who incidentally need information or data or input from your department and treat them poorly you are in the long run hindering the performance of others. They will not want to work with you unless they don’t have a choice and that will translate to you being bad for team morale and poor results and in the long run damage to the image of the overall organization as each teams input is key to the overall output. It is a team game, you treat your subordinates well they become loyal to you and it translates to good results. You as their supervisor you give them customer service. You as the department head of marketing or finance are the customer of say research or engineering departments and they are your customers too hence if their connection is hampered it will bring disharmony and in the spirit of synergy, you get fired.

Back to the beginning of this article, the guard was very rude and what is that they say about word of mouth; bad remarks about your service or product travel faster and wider than good remarks. No need of spending a ton on advertising yet you aren’t backing it up with the service or product. Customers don’t talk about how much you spend but how much their customer service experience was with you. Remember, as a company or a person ensure you guard against injuring your reputation because once word is out you will spend more time and other resources trying to repair the damaged which could have been saved by treating a client warmly, or another department nicely, or your team members encouragingly.

WAZZAM!!