It almost goes without saying that good customer service is essential to sustaining any business. No matter how wonderful a job you do of attracting new customers, you won’t be profitable for long unless you have a solid customer retention strategy in place – and in action. It’s the actions that count – not what you say you’ll do, or what the policy says. People will remember what you or your employees have done – or not done.

One of the key components of an effective retention strategy is exceptional customer service. Not just good service, but memorable service. Today, consumers’ expectations are higher than ever and companies that fail to deliver, risk losing market share.

10 Tips for Delivering Good Customer Service.

1) Treat me like a somebody. It’s been years since that Midas muffler commercial aired, but the “I’m a somebody” phrase can still be heard from time to time. Why? Because regular customers expect (and deserve) to be remembered. As one woman summed it up, “You don’t need to remember my name, or what I order, but do acknowledge that I’ve been there before.”

One of the best examples I’ve ever seen of this is at my local coffee shop. One day I noticed that the young man behind the counter greeted some people by name and, even if he didn’t know their name, he knew what they usually ordered. As I waited for my tea (he’d already placed my ‘two milk on the side’ on the counter without me having said a word), I asked him why he said, “See you later” to some customers, “See you tomorrow” to others, yet always said, “Have a good week” to me. The smiling, friendly reply? “Because you only come in on Mondays and Fridays”. As I thanked him, I thought to myself, “Wow. He won’t be here long”. Unfortunately, I was right.

2) Be polite! Too frequently company representatives ask customers for file information without saying “Please” or even being polite. It is not acceptable for a service rep to simply bark out, “Account number?” And it is never acceptable for a service rep to insult a client.

Six weeks ago there was a problem with my home internet account – which is with a phone carrier I have used my entire life (and, as you know, this kind of loyalty to a phone company is almost unheard of these days). In all that time, I have never been late with a bill payment to them. There is a long and ugly story here, but the short version is that a) the problem was on their end and b) before they realized where things had gone wrong, their rep was extremely rude. When I asked him to please change the way in which he was addressing me, he snarled, “Well whadya expect? If you’d pay your bills on time you wouldn’t have this problem.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. In fact, if I’d just read this account (instead of being on the receiving end), I wouldn’t have believed the story. What’s worse is that although the company later apologized, their senior management seemed to feel that this was not an isolated incident.
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Good customer service is the best way to keep customers coming back to your business. super stores that have hundreds of employee’s, these companies do not give their workers enough incentive to be customer friendly, and they don’t seem to insist their employees use the customer training tips that are provided during their training. Businesses always supply new employees with their own customer service training tips in the beginning but they seem to forget them after being employed for awhile. Maybe stores and businesses should make their employees go through a refresher course and re-learn the customer service training tips that were given to them in the beginning. Training your employees in the art of customer service can be the least expensive improvement you can do. Make sure your employees have good people skills and that they enjoy working with people. One nasty person with a bad attitude can ruin a small business faster than a hold-up. Here are some customer service training tips that may help your employees.

Some customers are just plain difficult. They are always complaining, they are picky, know-it-alls, faultfinders, constant complainers, unreasonable, demanding. There’s no way you can avoid them so you have to learn to deal with them. Angry people cannot rationalize because they are so wrapped up in the emotion of anger that anything you say gets filtered through their emotion. Rationalizing, problem solving, listening, and negotiating are all left-brain activities and your angry customer is stuck in the right side of the brain, and therefore cannot be expected to rationalize with you. Here are a few more customer service training tips.
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How do you define good customer service? Does that simply mean the satisfactory marketing and sale of a product or service to a customer or does it mean something else? Is providing good customer service, good enough?

In these days of below average customer service, you may think providing good service will set you apart from the pack. Well, I am here to tell you that nothing less than exemplary service will help you succeed. By incorporating the “wow” factor into every successful sale, you will achieve greater profits and better customer satisfaction.

To achieve the “wow” factor, you must be honest, knowledgeable, friendly, professional and deliver on your promises. Do not over promise, but do not under promise either.

In addition, you must be able to provide a high level of service to everyone who comes in contact with your business. If you do, you’ll also get more referrals from your satisfied clients.

“Wow” everyone who comes into contact with you and your business. You want people to be blown away by the extraordinary level of service you deliver to your clients. Demonstrate your exceptional level of customer service by showing your generosity through gift giving. Your goal should be to deliver such a high level of service that your clients can’t wait to tell their family members, friends and co-workers about your company.
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Statistics consistently reinforce that the biggest challenge in today’s contact center environment is agent training. Turnover continues to be high; new hire costs are on the rise—I’ve seen anywhere from $6500 to $10,000 quoted per agent! At the same time, losing customers because of bad call experiences negatively impacts your bottom line. What can you do? How do you justify the training expenditure?
Research has been making a case for how spending in human performance areas such as training, translates into bottom line growth. Accenture’s study on the impact of training on ROI has some interesting results. (Smith, David. Y. and Waddington, Ted. Running Training Like a Business: Determining the Return on Investment of Your Learning Programs, Outlook Point of View, March 2003.)
First, in the area of recruitment, training opportunities were among the top three criteria people considered when deciding where they want to work (the others are the opportunity for advancement and a good benefits package).
In the area of productivity, as a result of training, employees were:
17% more productive
20% higher performance levels relative to their peer group
Stayed with the company 14% longer
In the area of retention, employees who had access to the training were:
More than 2 times more likely to expect to be with the company in 2 years
More than 6 times more likely to think the company is a ‘great place to work’
More likely to think they are fairly compensated
Dollar figures associated with their statistics for a fiscal year report the annual per person net benefit or $25,324. They multiplied this number by their 50,000 employees yielding a companywide benefit of training of $1.26 million. By dividing the benefit by the cost of one year of training ($358 million), researchers concluded that the ROI (at Accenture) is 353%.
Negative Customer Service Experiences?
How many of you know (and track) what percentage of your calls are bad experiences? Hopefully, you do know the number, and they’re in the low single digits.
In a recent study, in answer to (1) did the agent satisfy your needs in the call, and (2) based on any negative experience, would you stop using this company and go to the competition? the results were:

Ages Would Stop Using the Company in the Future
18 – 25 100%
26 – 35 97
36 – 45 53
46-55 50
56-65 33
Over 65 63
Source: 2003 Purdue University/BenchmarkPortal.com
As you can see, there is a strong correlation between participant’s age and his/her tendency to stop using the company after a bad experience. Notice that younger participants were less tolerant, more likely to go to the competition, and those over 65 are more demanding that those in middle age.
Therefore, it’s very important to take great care of your younger callers so as to maintain their loyalty. Callers above 36 have more of an ‘emotional bank account’ with the company they’re dealing with-probably had some good experiences and are more willing to ‘forgive’ a bad one.
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