This week’s Blog is a departure from property
styling, staging, design, décor and preparing to sell in general.
It involves something that as services
dealing with the public we need to deal with. Something that is hard to find
and seems to be disappearing and at times non- existent:
Good customer service.
I read the following several years ago, (2009)
in the NY Times blog of Jay Goltz.
It is timely, insightful and helps us turn
negative situations into positive customer experiences.
Just thought I’d share!
How to S.A.V.E. Customer Service
By Jay Goltz
Sympathize. “I can understand why you are upset,” or, “yes, I can see the
problem,” or, “I am so sorry that we have put you through this” will go a long
way to calming most people.
Act.
“I am going to talk to the person who does our scheduling,” or, “I am going to
go back to production to take care of this myself,” or 100 other things you can
say that will solve the problem.
Vindicate. It’s important to let the customer know that this isn’t business as
usual. In my custom-framing business, if we frame something improperly we say,
“We have a quality control inspector in addition to your sales consultant who
checked over your order. They usually catch things like this. Obviously they
dropped the ball. I’m really embarrassed. This kind of performance did not get
us where we are. Again, I’m really sorry.”
Eat
something. Customers did not give you money to get bad service. Many times it
is appropriate to give them something. A restaurant might offer a free dessert,
another company could offer free delivery or a discount. It costs a lot to find
a new customer; it is certainly worth something
to keep an existing one.
Great post. Its great to see so much effort put into customer service. And it is also very important that businesses take the time to ensure that their customers are satisfied as well. I know integrating queue management software has helped my business stay on top of customer's needs.
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