Customer Service Mindset
What’s your worst customer service experience?
I bet you have a story about receiving lousy customer service, I know I have a few. On the flipside – do you have a story about giving lousy customer service? Ouch, this is more difficult to contemplate because we naturally see the world from our own point of view.
Whatever work you do, you have customers – whether they pay you directly or not. If you work in an organisation you will have internal as well as external customers.
The word customer contains the word custom which means habit. So a customer is someone who buys or interacts with you more than once, and this suggests some kind of relationship. Just like other relationships, customer service can be good or bad depending on the mindset you bring to it.
When I was about 12 years old I started working in my father’s hardware store. I was an enthusiastic young man and began to learn about the products, becoming knowledgeable and therefore important (in my mind). One day I got into an argument with a customer about the ‘proper’ definition of a product, my father stepped in, agreed with the customer and sold the product. I was furious because I knew I was right and confronted my father about this. His response was, “Son, I know you were right, but do you want to be right or do you want to be rich?”
The famous sales trainer Zig Ziglar said it this way:
“If you help enough other people get what they want, you can have anything you want.”
With this frame of mind we can prosper by meeting and exceeding the customer’s expectations.
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:53 am
Worst customer service I experience is consistently from Singapore Airlines. That’s right, the top ranked airline in the world. There are almost too many stories to share. One remarkable one was when I was flying the new A380 Business Class on an overnight to Delhi. While boarding, they stopped and asked if I would mind changing my seat so that a couple could sit together. I said, sure. Sat alone, my first time on the A380, within 15 minutes a stewardess came by to take my “post take off drink order,” and addressed me as “Mr. Johnson.” (Um, I tend to think I still look somewhat like a woman and it should have been clear to her that I was not a Mister, for starters.) I looked at her. She asked me what I was doing on the plane. I told her that my seat had been changed by SA staff while I was boarding. It went on all night – with various members of the crew interrupting my meal (which was not the Indian vegetarian meal I have in my PPS profile), movie (which was broken – on a brand new plane), work and sleep (they literally shook me until I woke up just for this) to ask me who I was and what I was doing there. Apart from the annoyance, I felt completely unsafe with this crew.
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:01 pm
I wanted to comment on your hardware example. It does make a good point that customers often value how well they are treated more than the product. However, the example presents an interesting dilemma. To what extent is it okay to lie to your customer?
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:21 am
In the hardware example, my father didn’t lie to the customer but confirmed his perception.
Customer service and sales are about delivering perceived value. If the customer had come to the store and wanted to buy knowledge about the agreed ‘correct’ term for the item my father would have been at fault and I would have been right – but the customer didn’t, they came to purchase an item with a name they perceived as correct.
Trust this answers your question.
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:50 am
My use of the word “lie” was a poor choice. I apologize. I was actually moving on past the hardware example to a more theoretical question.
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:09 am
Then to answer the theoretical question from my perception:
The best position to be in for customer service or sales is to be a ‘trusted advisor’ as this allows you to understand the client’s need and provide them with a solution to fit.
Trust is earned and to tell a lie, despite the moral implications, does not benefit the sales person’s cause.
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:28 am
I agree with the value of being the trusted value.
I find it interesting when I sometimes see well intentioned salesmen focus their efforts on building that relationship at the expense of being true to the product they are selling.
Thanks for providing the information.