Guide Your Customer Service Training Initiatives With These Six Pillars

2
6010

Share on LinkedIn

6 Pillars Of Customer Service

When you are looking to improve the customer service in your organization, one of the first things you need to do is identify is the specific behaviours that need to be targetted.  What are the performance gaps that need to be closed?

Customer service behaviours fall into six fundamental categories, which we refer to as the Six Pillars of Customer Service.  They provide a good starting point for the development of customer service training programs, coaching plans or incentive strategies:

 Attitude

Attitude includes being solution-driven, being positive, having energy, etc.  Contrary to popular belief, there are some very effective ways to influence these things.

Interest

Interest is being 100% customer-focused, and conveying to customers that they are important.

Action

Over 90% of customers consider “taking ownership” as the primary factor in WOW customer experience.

Verbal Language

Strong communication skills, and attention to positive verbal language strategies create positive experiences, and minimize negative ones.

Body Language

Even when our mouths aren’t speaking, our body is. Poor body language can often undermine otherwise positive messages.

Tone of Voice

This is the single most neglected, yet one of the most powerful skill sets. Tone of voice contributes to our ability to persuade, influence, empathize and engage.

Each of these pillars involve very specific skill sets that you can target, and, of course, not all of the pillars apply equally, or in every work environment.  Take the time to examine what you would like to accomplish, then use the six pillars of customer service to guide your training or coaching initiatives.

Good luck!

“Don’t be fooled into thinking that customer service is simply common sense.  There are a great many skills involved that are difficult to master”  Shaun Belding – The Science of WOW keynote

Republished with author's permission from original post.

2 COMMENTS

  1. I enjoyed the article. All good points. I would only add Listening. The ability to listen completely and objectively is the most important component of communication. If we don’t listen well, we won’t respond well.

  2. Great observation Renee – thank you. We actually include listening in the “Interest” pillar, but it probably should have been identified in this piece. It is indeed a critical component.

ADD YOUR COMMENT

Please use comments to add value to the discussion. Maximum one link to an educational blog post or article. We will NOT PUBLISH brief comments like "good post," comments that mainly promote links, or comments with links to companies, products, or services.

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here