Customer Care Service Training | Personalize Interactions
Add a personal note to every interaction with a customer.
Too much customer service is impersonal. The standard letter issued by a computer is impersonal. The scripted greeting provided by a call center is impersonal. The mechanical processing of a transaction is impersonal.
The Oxford dictionary definition of “impersonal” is pertinent here: “Not influenced by or involving personal feelings. Featureless and anonymous.”
This could pass for a description of much of what we call customer service today. There is no feeling. It is featureless and customers are anonymous, mere numbers on a form.
The buzz can’t be generated by impersonal, featureless, and anonymous systems. It can only be created by people who are personal with customers.
Being personal with customers means striving to know and relate to each one as a person. It means personalizing as much as possible of what you do for customers.
Delivering a personal approach to service requires giving something of yourself, perhaps a thought communicated, perhaps a piece of your heart or a soupçon of your spirit. Personalizing customer service allows customers to obtain a glimpse of the “real you” as opposed to the artificial system imposed by the company.
The act of personalizing service requires front-line people to take personal ownership of each interaction with a customer and thus accept responsibility for developing and progressing the relationship.
Every day there are hundreds of opportunities to personalize customer service and create a buzz. It takes time and it can be risky—but the benefit is that it might strike a chord in the life of a customer.
It takes very little to personalize an interaction. It could be as simple as adding a personal comment to a compliment slip rather than sending it out blank, or it could be starting an email with some appropriate and unique greeting that is specific to the customer. When you personalize an interaction the customer is more likely to remember you as a person than when the interaction is impersonal and devoid of feeling.
Here are some simple steps for personalizing customer service:
Make yourself known personally to each customer (“Hello, my name is Zara, it’s good to see you”).
Get to know the customer as a person (“I was just interested, Mrs Polson, do you live locally?”).
Do something personal to reinforce the relationship with a customer (“Mrs Polson, I’ve written my name here on the warranty, so if there’s any problem just call and ask for me, Zara”).
Find a way of putting your personal stamp on the relationship, for example with a follow-up call (“Mrs Polson, this is Zara, I’m just contacting you to see if everything is all right following the purchase you made from us last week”).
Overall, show that you believe the person you are dealing with at the moment is the most important person in the world right now.
EXCELLENCE CUSTOMER SERVICE PRACTICE
Practice personalization on a daily basis by adding a little of yourself to each interaction with a customer (internal or external).
EXCELLENCE CUSTOMER SERVICE QUOTE
The choice is simple: Do you want your service to be impersonal (carried out robotically through procedures) or do you want it to be personal (identified with human beings who genuinely care)?
