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Preparing Yourself to Deliver Quality Service

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Define different types of customers.

• Describe personal factors that can help project a positive, professional image.

• Communicate positively with yourself in order to enhance self-esteem.

Quality in service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.

Peter Drucker
Management Consultant

RECOGNIZING YOUR CUSTOMERS

In order to properly prepare for and serve your customers you first have to know who they are. Since customers are anyone to whom you provide or get information, services, or products, you have a variety of customers. In some cases your customers might also be your suppliers (people who provide you with information, products, or services). For example, you might provide information to the accounting department about client accounts that they then use to bill customers. In turn, the accounting department also processes your time sheet and issues a paycheck.

Your customers will be either direct (people with whom you personally interact via face-to-face, in writing, or technology) or indirect (people who are customers of your organization, but with whom you may not personally provide service). While direct customers are usually fairly easy to spot, indirect ones are not. Even so, indirect customers are just as important as direct customers because they provide revenue to your organization, which ultimately pays for your salary and benefits.

From a category standpoint, customers typically fall into groups as either internal or external.

Internal Customers

Internal customers are found within your organization. These are your peers, coworkers, supervisor, and in some cases employees. Each of these people have needs just as your external customers do.

It is often said that we hurt the ones we love the most. From a business relationship standpoint, this equates to taking those you work with (internal customers) for granted and failing to provide an appropriate level of service and courtesy, especially when you are under stress or busy.

The challenge is not to lose sight of the fact that there is a reciprocal relationship between you and your internal customers. From time to time, they may need things from you and vice versa. If you treat them with any less respect or fail to provide quality service to them your image and that of your department could be damaged, just the same as if they were from outside your organization. You may also lose their trust and respect along with their support.

External Customers

External customers are people from outside the organization who contact you for information, products, and/or services. These people have identified a need that they believe they have prior to such contact and have a made a conscious choice to come to or contact you in order to satisfy that need. In a competitive global marketplace, where the only thing separating many organizations is the quality of service that they deliver, if you fail to adequately address your customer’s requests or needs, they simply go elsewhere.

PROJECTING A POSITIVE SERVICE IMAGE

You are the front line in delivering service for the organization that pays your salary. What you do impacts your customer’s impression of you and your organization. As such, you are always sending a message about yourself by the way you speak and act. As you will learn in Chapter 3, it is impossible for you to “not communicate” or send a message. Your nonverbal cues (e.g., silence, pauses, and tone of voice, appearance, and other characteristics) combined with the words you use send continual, powerful messages.

One of the best ways to guard against possibly sending the wrong message is to be conscious of your speech and personal presence (e.g., the way you conduct yourself or deal with others). This is important because there are only two types of people with whom you will come in contact throughout any day as long as you work for an organization—customers and potential customers. What this means is that anyone with whom you interact is important to you and your organization and should be treated as a customer. This means being polite, smiling, offering whatever assistance you can, and taking ownership of questions or problems the person might have. If you do not have answers for their questions, either take ownership of the situation and get the answer that the customer seeks or offer alternative solutions. By taking such an approach you will do well as a service provider wherever you work.

Positive Image Strategies

There are many things that you can do to project a positive image. Probably one of the most important and often the most obvious, is to project a caring, customer-focused attitude. Your attitude is the leading indicator of your success.

The following are a few of the factors that can project a positive attitude. Compare these to the ideas you generated in the Think About It activity on page 14.

• Professionalism.  Professionalism is communicated in many ways. The way you talk, act or react, and the things you say are just some indicators of professionalism when you are on the telephone with a customer. Be careful about sending unprofessional messages to your customers through inappropriate comments. For example, if you are prohibited by a policy or supervisor from taking certain actions do not place blame on others by saying such things as “They won’t let us,” or “We have a policy which doesn’t make any sense to me, but I have to follow it.” Such comments send a message that you feel powerless or that you do not support your organization or coworkers. Instead, use more positive terminology, such as, “While I’m unable to do this, what I can do is. . . .”

Another example of poor professionalism is to speak negatively of competitors and their products. Even if the customer brings up a negative experience or comment related to a competitor, avoid making similar comments. Simply say something like, “While I’m not sure about their product, service, or whatever, I can tell you that ours will do. . . .”

• Communication style.  You will learn more about the specific tactics to use for positive communication in Chapter 3. Learning to send and receive messages in an open-minded fashion can go a long way to projecting a positive attitude. This involves actively listening to others, avoiding being judgmental, and phrasing questions and feedback in a positive versus a negative format.

In a call center environment, your tone of voice will also play an important role in how others perceive you, since tone is often interpreted as attitude. Often, your tone can be affected by whether or not you are smiling. Remembering to smile and maintain a positive attitude when speaking to each customer can go a long way in influencing the outcome of a call. Some call center employees actually mount a small mirror or a drawing of a smiley face character on the wall in front of them to remind them to smile as they speak.

• Respect for others.  Your coworkers, peers, supervisors, vendors, and customers all have preferences related to what they want and how they want it, just as you do. Their preferences may at times differ from yours. This does not mean they are wrong, it simply means that they are different. Your success in dealing with others will depend on your ability to acknowledge and value these differences, then work to forge successful interactions and relationships.

• Knowledge and skills.  By taking the time to learn as much as you can about your job requirements, skills, products, and services, you project an image of competency and concern for providing better customer service.

• Time allocation.  The amount of time that you spend with customers and others when listening to their comments or working to resolve issues can say a lot about whether or not you care. For example, assume that a coworker comes to you with a job-related problem or to ask advice and you say you are too busy right now; however, a few minutes later they overhear you laughing and talking loudly to a friend. The coworker might rightly assume that you care less about him or her and a work issue than you do your friend. Remember that your coworkers are internal customers.

• Display of enthusiasm.  Whatever you are doing, strive to show that you enjoy it. Employers pay service employees to do the physical and mental tasks required in a job and to also project an “I care” attitude. Do this by being willing to take on additional responsibility and take ownership when a customer has an issue to resolve. For example, rather than saying, “That’s not my job,” say something like, “While that is not something I normally handle, I’ll be happy to assist you in whatever way I can.”

• Personal appearance.  The manner in which you groom yourself, dress, and your posture say a lot about your values, attitude, and willingness to adhere to organizational standards. These subtle nonverbal messages can often mean success or failure. Even if you do not typically deal with customers face-to-face, remember that your supervisor, coworkers, internal customers, and vendors, or others visiting the workplace will form an opinion about you and your organization based on what they see.

Also, keep in mind that when in casual dress, you may have to work harder to project and maintain a professional manner at all times. Casual dress is not an excuse for casual behavior in the workplace (on or off the telephone).

While some clothing and accessories may be acceptable when associating with friends, the same may not be true when dealing with customers or others in the workplace. If your employer does not have a written dress policy, seek guidance from your supervisor or team leader. Research has shown that the way a person looks or dresses often impacts the impression he or she has of himself or herself, and with whom and how they interact in various situations.

Self-Empowerment

In recent years there have been many books and articles published to help supervisors empower their staff. Alternatively, some sources take the approach that for a supervisor to give the impression that he or she has “empowered” an employee may send a negative message that the person is perceived to have been powerless in his or her own right to begin with.

The reality is that you have the ability to create personal power within yourself. Much of this capacity comes from the personal attitude that you read about earlier. It also comes from your ability to access resources and strategies that can provide tools that you need to be successful.

Basically, self-empowerment comes from having a “can do” attitude about yourself, your abilities, and your opportunities. Naysayers or those who continually think of reasons why something will not succeed often fail in the workplace. Taking an approach of, “That will never work here,” “We tried that before and it did not work,” or “That cannot be done,” will certainly lead you and ultimately your organization to failure when dealing with customers.

To help prevent or overcome a negative viewpoint, try the following strategies.

Work to Build Trust

As you will read in Chapter 6, trust is the basis for all relationships. Without it, you have no relationship. To get trust, you must also give trust and show others that you have faith in their abilities and intentions. Once you do this, you will likely find that they open up and share more freely their ideas, issues, questions, concerns, and resources with you. Only when you get to this level of mutual sharing can you effectively provide quality customer service. Many customers will display trust simply by the fact that they come to you and your organization for assistance. However, if you or the system fails them, the trust will be destroyed and may never be regained (at least not to its previous level).

Create Information-Sharing Networks

Work with coworkers, supervisors, vendors, and customers to establish a conduit through which information is freely and regularly passed. For example, if you find an article or bit of information from which someone else can benefit, forward it along with a little note telling him/her that you thought the information might be of value. Even if they cannot use it, you have sent a message of concern for their needs. They will likely remember this gesture and return in kind in the future.

Set Personal Goals

Even though your organization likely has goals and your supervisor or team leader may work with you to set performance goals, set some personal goals for improvement. Such goals might include:

• taking an evening class at a local educational facility.

• attending a workshop to enhance your knowledge or skills.

• reading a book or listening to an audiotape on a work related topic.

• joining a professional group to learn more about your profession and get actively involved to expand your knowledge and skills in the area of leadership.

Whatever you do, be active in your personal growth and knowledge expansion. To do otherwise dooms you to the path of the dinosaur (you may go away or become extinct) and your professional growth may be thwarted beyond repair.

Work to Build Positive Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is the way you view yourself and your capabilities. A lot of your self-perception comes from the values and beliefs learned as a child from a variety of sources. As a result, much of the way in which you interact with customers and others directly reflects whether you care for yourself or not.

A key to enhancing your self-image is to focus on positive elements in life and avoid negative ones. This includes not associating with people who tend to be negative or who focus on the negative aspects of many situations.

There are many self-help books in bookstores and libraries to assist you in recognizing your level of self-esteem and to provide strategies for improvement. The following exercise can offer a quick insight into your level of self-esteem and provide a listing of areas to start working on possible improvement.

COMMUNICATING POSITIVELY WITH YOURSELF (AND OTHERS)

In 1986, Dr. Shad Helmstetter wrote a book in which he stated that as much of 77 percent of what you tell yourself may be working against you in life (Helmstetter 1986). Helmstetter’s perspective, and that of many others, is that we learn negative language as children which we repeat to ourselves throughout our lives. This simple reality can be seen played out in interactions between adults and children just about anywhere you go. Think about how many times you were told “No” or have seen parents use that word with a child. Certainly, when this communication is occurring, there is often potential danger for the child. On the other hand, many times it is simply a signal that the parent does not want to have to deal with a situation or does not want to take the time to discuss or think about an issue. How many times does a parent make an assumption about a child’s abilities and say something like, “You can’t do that?” or “You’re no good at that.” What impact can this have later on someone’s self-esteem? Now, take these examples of saying “no,” “we can’t do that or are not good at something,” to the customer service environment. How many times have you had a service provider use that language with you? Or, how many times have you used it with a customer? In many cases the service provider is simply displaying behavior he or she learned as a child. Also, this often occurs because a service provider does not want to take ownership for a problem, is not willing to put forth a bit of extra effort, or is simply being negative and displaying control or power. In any of these instances, the result will likely be customer dissatisfaction.

One way to help yourself become more successful in dealing with customers and others in the workplace is to strive to eliminate negative messages from your vocabulary. Instead of saying, “I can’t” or “This won’t work,” say to yourself, “There must be a way of doing this,” and then proceed to work independently or with someone else to find the solution. Keep in mind that customers do not want to hear what you cannot do. Instead, they want to hear what you can do to satisfy their needs. As you proceed through the rest of this course, you will find specific techniques and strategies for working positively with your customers.

To effectively serve customers, you must first determine who they are. By identifying both internal and external customers, then setting about to treat them as being important, you can better provide quality service. Part of this identification is to realize that everyone with whom you have contact is either a customer or potential customer. Doing so can assist you in remembering to treat all people with courtesy and professionalism.

Projecting a positive image through communication style, appearance, and many other means will help you establish stronger customer-provider relationships. As you build trust through your actions and words, you begin to forge positive relationships with customers.

One key factor in developing strong customer relationships is to display a positive percent attitude in which you demonstrate that you do care about customers and their needs. Additionally, eliminating negative language from your vocabulary can go a long way to ensuring successful customer service.