When I’m not working, I’m thinking. Yesterday, I was thinking about what we (as a company) can do better, and while anything can be made “better,” I try to find and focus on specific aspects of what we do. (If you’re not familiar with what we do, please check out our about us page, or feel free to contact us and ask!)
After I had some time to gather my thoughts, I sent an email to my team (Customer Service Concierges) who all have several years of experience working in customer service.
An abridged version of the email I sent my team about the art of customer service communication is below…
One of my favorite quotes is by Leonardo da Vinci (you may have heard of him). He said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
Communication is an art, and customer service communication is OUR art. As such, we should always be working to improve our art of customer service communication.
We have all worked in customer service… Think about what it was like working on the “other side” of the phone/email as a CSR for a moment. Then, think about the following questions and how you communicate with companies (on behalf of our users).
As a CSR, were all of your “customer service”-related decisions based on company policy? Or, did you tend to do more “favors” for the people (customers) with whom you enjoyed talking/emailing/chatting?
Did you feel like you made a personal connection with any of your customers? Even if it was just one of those pre-determined or canned questions like “How’s the weather in
[city]?” or “How about those [sports team] last night?!”Did you ever share a laugh or a funny story while working with your customer?
Wasn’t it refreshing and wasn’t it rewarding to speak with someone who was appreciative of what you did/do for them? Didn’t it make you feel awesome when the customer thanked you and praised you for your help?
I love getting IMs and emails from you telling me about how happy you made [username]. I sincerely love reading testimonials from users about how great of a job (insert your name) did on their issue.
It is truly one of the best feelings – knowing we made someone, somewhere happy.
Let’s face it, we work in a thankless department — customer service. The majority of businesses don’t provide good customer service (because most businesses consider customer service a cost-center instead of a value-center) and some companies flat out suck at customer service. We’ve even run into some that don’t even have a customer service department!
Add to that, consumers are conditioned to crappy customer service, so they hate it too.
COMNIO has an enormous goal…
We’re intentionally targeting dissatisfied consumers and trying to achieve what many of our users feel is “impossible” or “hopeless.” Then, we’re taking these impossible tasks to an (unfortunately) under-appreciated team operating according to restrictive guidelines that often prevent them (the CSRs) from making customers happy.
But, if we can spark a change by being happy, thankful, polite, kind, and sincere to everyone we encounter (the public, our users, the companies with which we communicate, etc.), think of the impact we can make on those individual’s lives.
Even if we don’t resolve the issue, or get the answer we (and our users) want from the company, we should strive to make every interaction a positive one.
Carry on…
-Ross
P.S. If I need to increase your hours to allow for reading my long-winded emails, let me know.