What Is Customer Service | MAKE POSITIVE CHOICES
Every day there are an infinite number of customer service options. Always choose the positive.
Tony Chua was sitting in his favorite Starbucks at Millennia Walk, Singapore. He had retreated there to relax, drink a caffe latte, and read the Straits Times after a hard day at the bank’s headquarters nearby.
Suddenly a young waitress (or partner as they call them in Starbucks) called Eileen passed by to clean a table that had just been vacated. She knew Tony from previous visits. She turned to him and remarked, “I do like the tie you are wearing today.”
Suddenly Tony felt happy. The waitress had brightened his day. As he reflected on her comment, it occurred to him that in the last ten years of sitting in cafés, hotel lounges, bars, and restaurants not once—ever— had any waiter or waitress complimented him on what he was wearing.
Eileen had made a positive choice, through a simple comment, to make him feel good. It came from her heart and she was genuine. Every day we are presented with an infinite number of opportunities to make such positive choices.
Eileen’s team mates also make many positive choices that make customers feel good. As a result, customers like to go there. There are other cafés that Tony will avoid because the staff make him feel bad: they choose not to look happy, or they choose not to clean a table, or they choose not to make eye contact with him, or they choose to ignore him. He avoids these cafés. In fact, like all customers he avoids any establishment where people are likely to make him feel bad.
Whether a customer either feels good or feels bad invariably results from these little behavioral choices that front-line staff make. No matter how hard a company tries it cannot prescribe, through training procedure or customer service policy, the behaviors that employees must adopt in relation to customers. That choice is the prerogative of each employee and is driven by their own attitudes.
Here are some other examples of behavioral choices:
These little positive behaviors, if you choose them, will invariably lead to a buzz.
Here are some guidelines for helping you make positive choices:
✙ On your journey to work every morning, tell yourself you are going to choose to do some little things today that will have a positive impact on customers.
✙ Throughout the day, look out for and create little opportunities for making positive choices.
✙ When in conversation with a customer, try to think of some little thing to say that is positive.
✙ When you have a spare moment, try to think of some little thing you can do that is positive.
✙ Do the same when your boss approaches.
✙ Get into the habit of reacting positively to everything you encounter at work.
EXCELLENCE CUSTOMER SERVICE PRACTICE
When you arrive back home this evening (and every evening), sit down for five minutes over a cup of tea or coffee and reflect on the positive choices that you have made at work that day. If it helps, list them—even review them with your teammates tomorrow morning.
EXCELLENCE CUSTOMER SERVICE PRACTICE QUOTE
When you choose to feel good about a customer, good things will happen.
