Good Customer Service: the Reality

I worked in the customer retention department at a cable company. In a world where children are shooting children, global warming has us all practically boiling and we may just be in the war to end all wars, I sat for eight hours per day, five days per week and listened to people calling with their problems with their cable and company that I represented. I jumped through hoops and put out fires and begged and pleaded and did what it took to keep this customer as a customer. Before that, I worked as a receptionist, also selling beer and nachos at the local civic arena and also as a waitress at the local greasy spoon. I have had a lot of experience in a lot of different incarnations of your friendly customer service representative and typically, when I recount the stories of the glory, I find myself using a lot of four letter words!

An important thing to remember about customer service is that it is about the customer actually getting service, quality service that is cohesive with the principles of the company.

The number one, most important principle of good customer service is to always create proper expectation for the customer. All the average customer wants is quality goods for an appropriate price. Nothing goes perfectly 100% of the time. The most honorable, not always easy thing to do is to be honest and up front. When something does go wrong, it's easy to feel as if the customer gets to say jump and we providing the service have to ask how high. In reality, the if the customer is that upset, they typically are not rational. They have forgotten they are even speaking with a real human being. We need to be the logical ones.

Genuine empathy is also very important when defining quality customer service. Customers just need to know you are really listening. Scripts are a moderately necessary evil. I understand that scripts make sure that every customer is treated equally and that all the company policies are observed however, business owners NEED to have faith in their customer service providers to act human and let the customers know that the business remembers that they are more than numbers and dollar signs.