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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Almost every company discusses, at length, the need for customer service and the significance of supplying true excellence to its customers. However, very few actually follow through with what it takes to attain this excellence. This is particularly true in the bottled water business since not all providers share the opinion that customer service is of the utmost importance in any business.

The bottled water industry services a wide customer base with numerous companies and individual clients. The industry is characterized by a small number of very large firms and a substantial number of relatively small consumers with specific geographic niches.

The Nature of the Business:

The bottled water business consists of the manufacturing and delivery of spring or purified water in small packages or large containers such as 5 gallon bottles. The product is delivered directly to the customer’s site in either company owned delivery vehicles or through common carriers. Each individual bottled water company provides an implicit promise to its customers that it will manufacture the highest quality product and deliver that product at the agreed upon time.

Many, Many Customers:

The customer base in the bottled water industry is very diverse and ranges from individual consumers with single bottle requirements to large multi-cooler business accounts with significant water needs. Each client has its own specific requirements, which are met by the company providing the services and product.

The Customer Service Promise and the History of the Business:

In the past, various bottled water companies have focused on process rather than customer service. Many firms acted on the belief that the delivery of a superior product completed their obligation to the customer. However, the customer service promise includes much more than a simple delivery of a quality product and requires additional services such as on time delivery, proper pricing, responding to additional delivery requests and other specific needs. One of the most important customer responsibilities is the ability to communicate their concerns not only to the customer service departments, but also to the heads of each company.
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