Good customer service is profitable. It just makes good money sense, writes John Tschol on Desk.com.
There’s just no way you can escape from the mandate of customer service.
But then, how does it sit in your head? If customer service is so important for businesses, we ought to make a few rules.
Here are some of them:
Always be serving
Recessional economies, tightwad companies, growing businesses, IPO launches: you can ask entrepreneurs why the focus on customer service has gone down and they’d come up with all of those things and more.
The trouble is this: the economy, the budget layout, the fact that you are growing, and the exciting news about your upcoming IPO doesn’t mean a thing for your customers.
All that they want is their problems solved.
Either you do it or you don’t.
Stand up for the truth
Often, businesses think that “It’s alright to lie sometimes”.
Maybe. Not standing up for what’s right can you hurt you in the long run, however.
It’d make you go galloping in circles called “guilt”, “lack of satisfaction”, and “vanishing sales”.
As Micah Solomon puts it, standing up for the right thing helps employees get a better idea as to what your company or brand is about.
It lets customers know how you are different from the pack. It lets the world know where you stand.
Never mislead
You know how some individuals are upright and tight-fisted about doing and saying the right things? The more successful you are, the more righteous you tend to get.
In business, however, it doesn’t work that way. I remember being told by a customer service agent — working at the telecom company where I have a voice plan subscription — that they’d often push customers to buy subscription plans (and later topping these plans up with unnecessary Value Added Services) they have no use for.Never make someone buy anything they don’t need.
You’d come off as a desperate, money-hungry shmuck and not as a caring and valuable brand.
If a customer is wrong, let them know
A customer is not always right. How can she be when she is just as human as you and I? Your customers don’t come with special powers to be right always. Now, most businesses don’t want to risk saying that, do they?
As a business, it’s hard to get customers in as it is. Being blunt doesn’t exactly sound like a nice thing to do for your bottom-line.
But you must. If a customer is wrong, let her know. Do what you can to correct it. But she must know.
Don’t make excuses
Small or big — every business has customers. Small businesses usually cite lack of time or resources as an excuse to serve customers better. Large businesses usually have desert sand in the middle of good intent and practical results.
Large businesses have infrastructure and resources. Small businesses have agility. Plus, everyone has access to tools like ZenDesk, HelpScout, or much smaller but meaner plugins Grexit, Streak, Mailflo, and many others.
Giving is getting
Customer service is often considered as “you know that thing you got to do?” or “yeah, a business function” — it’s not.
If anything, it should be the “only thing you ought to do”; it’s the “one business function that makes money next to marketing”.
Customer service is all about giving.
By the way, for ages now, giving has always been the way for getting (anything you want).
What are some of the tenets of customer service that you think should be included here?
