The Putting A Name With A Face Kind Of Customer Service

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I have worked on a customer service team for almost 13 years now and I think I can count the number of times I’ve met a customer face to face on one hand… and I may not need my thumb. Back when I worked for TierraNet(The world’s best webhosting and domain registrar), we had a couple instances where customers walked into our office and said “I’m here to renew my domain name.” In our office that was enough to send a bunch of introverted computer types scrambling for cover.

I’ll admit that left to my own vices I would communicate with coworkers and customers 100% of the time by email and instant messenger if I could. I have learned as a manager and customer service professional that it is all too easy for effective communication to fall short over those mediums.

We have a local customer that has had nothing but problems over the past year of using our service. To their credit they have been incredibly gracious and more than willing to spend the money and time to get their phones working properly. Many customers in their position would have left long ago in search of a better solution. After a lot of work and testing by our tier 3 team, we are fairly certain we figured out what was causing their issues and proposed what we hope will be the definitive solution.

To ensure that we executed the plan properly I traveled to the customer’s office and helped our customer, Dan set up the phones. After several tests this is looking promising and I am extremely hopeful. In all, it was great to put a name with a face and I’m sure to them, great to meet a representative for a company that has been the target of some angst over the past year. Fortunately, they were just excited at the potential of fixing the problem.

When working with a customer on the phone or even through a ticket system in a tier 2 capacity it is so easy to ignore, delay and just generally forget that these customers are PEOPLE. I am reminded today as a customer service professional that regardless of whether I see a customer face to face, they are people just like me. Going back to the golden rule, maybe that’s just enough reminder to make sure I treat them the way I want to be treated. In customer service, we are in the business of serving PEOPLE. Never, ever forget that!

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Jeremy Watkin
Jeremy Watkin is the Director of Customer Support and CX at NumberBarn. He has more than 20 years of experience as a contact center professional leading highly engaged customer service teams. Jeremy is frequently recognized as a thought leader for his writing and speaking on a variety of topics including quality management, outsourcing, customer experience, contact center technology, and more. When not working he's spending quality time with his wife Alicia and their three boys, running with his dog, or dreaming of native trout rising for a size 16 elk hair caddis.

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