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Customer Service Making the Difference

Guest post by: Frank O`Toole

Article Overview: We have all experienced it? You ring a company to speak to a representative only the representative is not exactly a great rep for that company. They reply with a grunt, a huff or an "I do not know" and then do not even bother to find out your query.

Customer Service Making the Difference

We have all experienced it? You ring a company to speak to a representative only the representative is not exactly a great rep for that company. They reply with a grunt, a huff or an "I do not know" and then do not even bother to find out your query. Personally as a customer service skills trainer for telecommunication it never fails to surprise me that people act like this. Either the person has not been appropriately trained for their job in customer service or else they just do not care and if it is the latter than a call to the manager should sort that out fairly promptly.

As a telecommunicater you know that it is your responsibility to provide exceptional customer service over the phone. Now, customer service skills trainers do not deny that a telecommunicate can get a raw deal also as the customer may be angry and take it out on you, you may get a bad reception and you can not see their facial expressions to recognise how they are feeling. As you have heard before a picture is worth a thousand words which obviously means you will need to compensate for with a lot more words.

Yet, as customer service skills trainers will tell you it is your job to keep that customer satisfied in order to build a solid track record to expand your relationship with the customers for the future.

Customer service skill providers develop their courses around moments of truth. These moments of truth are based on what you do to either add or subtract to your customer relationship. For example a negative moment may lead the customer having an unconstructive feeling about the company where as if you have a positive relation with the customer by showing that you are human too and not just an answering service but that you are there to help and empower them.

One negative relation can result in 4 positive relations to compensate and this is what customer service trainers' stress. As you are not dealing with interpersonal communication you are dealing with perceptions so you do not want to assume the perception you want to be responsible for that positive perception.

As a customer service skills provider I am often asked why customers leave. Well, in a study in Washington this was asked and it found that 1% die, 3% move and a staggering 68% felt that they were not supported or looked after appropriately.

The key to excellent customer service skills is to avoid generalizing. When you come to red lights in traffic you will find yourself saying, "Sure, all the lights are red" or if you talk to 3 people in a bad mood you find yourself saying, "Everyone is in a bad mood". We all do this but what you will realise through customer service skills courses is that this is externalising and if you keep this in your head you will treat others this way too consequently resulting in negative relations with customers.

Remember you are the representative of the company so treat others as you would like to be treated yourself.

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Article Tags: customer service skills, customer service skills training, training courses



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