Employee Engagement and Customer Engagement

Employee Engagement and Customer Engagement. This post is from Phil Gerbyshak on 9 ways to deliver common sense customer service. Serving customers is a key component of employee engagement:

Serve Customers or customer engagement is a key component of the Zinger Employee Engagement Model.

Serve customers. We want employees to serve the organization’s customers and there are very strong relationships between employee engagement and customer engagement. Does the employee feel served by the organization and management so much so that they in turn offer the same level of service to the external and internal customers.

First impressions matter (a lot!) – The first thing your customer sees or hears is REALLY important, and it sets the tone for the rest of the transaction. Take some time to make this a good one. Smile, comb your hair, take a deep breathe, and smile some more.

Tune the customer in and the world out – When your customer is talking, listen to what they’re saying. Turn off your iPod, don’t answer your cell phone, don’t play on Twitter, just tune your customer in and tune the rest of the world out.

Please and thank you still count – Remember those manners your parents taught you? Use them…ALL THE TIME!

You don’t know everything (but you better still find the answer) – When you read it, you know it’s true. You can’t possibly know everything…but some customer service people think they do. If you’re in customer service, admit it when you don’t know the answer…and then do what you can to find the answer as fast as you.

Customers aren’t always right (but they are always the customer) – Customers may not always be right, but that doesn’t mean you should stick it up their butt that they’re wrong. Customer service reps do NOT need to be right to make the point. The customer is ALWAYS the customer, and if you force your desire to be right, you may make your point…and lose the customer forever after. Treat the customer with respect and find a way to let them win if you can…or at least save face.

People’s names are like gold (learn them fast) – The sooner you can find someone’s name, the sooner you can begin using it to create rapport with the client. Dale Carnegie was right: The sweetest sound anyone will ever hear is the sound of their own name. Learn the name and use it and your customers will be much happier.

Your name matters too – Take a few moments to introduce yourself too. Tell your customers your name, so when they have a question, they can use your name to ask the question.

Complaints are great– Complaints are an opportunity to fix what’s wrong. If folks don’t complain, you can’t make things better. Let your customers know you welcome their complaints and appreciate the opportunity to make things better.

Service recovery matters (a lot!) –  If you screw up (and you probably will if you work in customer service for more than a day), you need to practice your service recovery. How you recover from a mistake is often MORE important than the actual service delivery. I’ve had many places where I had something done wrong, that when they finally fixed it, they made it GREATER than if they had never messed up in the first place.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kasthor/93217483/

What are your best ways to deliver common sense customer service?

This was a reprint of  Phil Gerbyshak on customer service. To view the original article or visit Phil’s website, click here.