Customer service has morphed over the years; from its modest beginnings of just saying thank you, through to the ‘service with a smile’ era, and today’s approach is now commonly coined as service excellence.
The customer has been brought up on the fact that they are always right, even when they are wrong, which let’s face it, is wrong a lot of the time and so, quite rightly, organisational focus has centred around meeting these expectations with the hope of actually surpassing them.
In the early 1990s many large organisations felt the best way to deliver customer service was the American way; ‘now make sure you have a nice day sir’, and all that jazz!
Initially this was seen as a great way to enhance the customer relationship however it didn’t take long for the English-centristy to take over and for that phrase to become a real bug-bear.
However, the concept of building communication between employee and customer was a step in the right direction.
Righttrack Consultancy, a learning and development specialist with over 20 years experience has designed and implemented a vast range of customer service programmes across many sectors, addressing different topic areas within customer service.
Righttrack’s Managing Director Kasmin Cooney says,
“There is much more to customer service than meets the eye and often, while many people have the basic understanding; manners, enthusiasm, etc … many actually lack the skills and confidence to effectively deal with tricky situations that can occur.
Customer service development is an area that is always in demand as the importance of getting it right is integral to organisational success.
You could have the best product, with the most inspiring marketing yet if the customer experience is a bad one, that’s it.
Plus, to add to a bad situation, if a customer’s experience is negative then the story is likely to be told to at least 10 other people; a volcano waiting to erupt.
Although the basics of customer service can be applied to all organisations, we have found that by tailoring the learning around our clients’ specific needs results in a stronger understanding of the concepts and a greater, far-reaching impact.
Employees are taught skills that are directly transferrable into their role, as examples of what they have experienced are incorporated into the learning; this builds on their confidence as well as their repertoire of skills.”
The delivery of a customer service can be in the traditional format of training however, experiential events are proving popular as it allows an element of fun to be incorporated into the learning, as well as allowing the delegates to experience the skills first hand.
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