What Do You Mean by Good Customer Service?
As business owners, we want our employees to provide “good service” to our customers. In these days of internet shopping and mass merchandisers, we want our businesses to stand out from the crowd. We want customers to remember our great service and come back repeatedly for more! So when we tell our employees that our mission is to “provide the best customer service possible” what exactly do we mean?
It’s important that we are very specific with our employees about how we want customers to be treated. Some of our employees may be “naturals”. They just instinctively know how to provide “good service”. But others may need specific guidance in this area. When I got my first job, I knew enough to be polite to customers, but truly didn’t know how I could actually be “of service”.
For example, you may want your employees to greet each customer who comes into your store: “Hello, my name is Lorie. Welcome to Apex Gift Foods.” You might want employees to go further: “Is there something in particular that you’re looking for today?” (My father always told me that the majority of customers come into our store for a reason. They haven’t decided to stop by just for fun.) You may want your employees to check back every 5 or 10 minutes with a customer who says they are “browsing”.
However you define “good customer service”, make sure that you explicitly tell your employees what you want them to do. Give them plenty of opportunity to practice these behaviors, then offer them feedback or praise for what they’ve done. The quality of our customer service programs will be a direct reflection of the quality of training and guidance we give to our employees.
1 comment November 19th, 2007
