The Nine Rules of Customer Service
1. Every employee is a salesperson… everyone in any organization sells something to someone.
2. Not everybody believes #1… Do you feel negatively about salespeople? Do words like pushy, sleazy, manipulative and liar come to mind?
3. Not everyone behaves according to #1… If you don’t believe you are a salesperson, you’ll feel no need to behave like a salesperson. You’ll do your job and the heck with the customer or you’ll do just enough to keep the customer off your back?
4. Every employee has a customer… even if you never have contact with those
whom you traditionally think of as customers, you still have customers…they are the people with whom you work on a day-to-day basis…those you serve in some work-related way. And…they deserve good customer service also.
5. Adding value to customer service is not a spectator sport… everyone in your organization should be actively and enthusiastically involved in giving positive customer service. No one can afford to sit back and adopt the attitude of that’s not part of my job” or “I’ll let someone else do it…I have better things to do with my time.”
6. Security and future in an organization are directly related to how much value an employee adds, not costs… ask yourself if you helping or hurting your organization with your daily actions.
7. We is greater than me… everyone in your organization should be moving toward a common goal of directly serving external customers (those you sell to) or indirectly serving internal (those you work with each day) customers.
8. Value is personal, perceptual, and performance-driven… it is personal meaning that your customer defines what the value of your service is, not you; it is perceptual meaning that your customers define the value of your service based on what they perceive and much of what they perceive is based on your attitude and performance while you are serving them; it is performance-driven meaning that they define the value of your service on the impact that it has on their life, their job or their organization.
9. Everyone must belong to something… this is true of your customers and your co-workers. So…do you make them feel like they are a part of your organization or your work group? Believe me…if you don’t make them feel like they belong, some other organization out there would love to take them in and make them feel welcome and important. It makes sense then to figuratively “hug” all of your customers (external and internal) doesn’t it? In other words, make all of your customers feel like they are “family.”
Practicing the rules of customer service can help to retain those customers who already come to you for services. Paying attention to your customers can have big payoffs in guaranteed business from them for life and positive word of mouth advertising for your organization that costs nothing but can generate even more devoted customers over time. It seems like a worthwhile investment to focus on your customers.
In your day to day work, what standards are you setting? What makes your customers talk about you?
A survey on "Why Customers Quit"( LeBoeuf, p. xv) found the following:
- 3 percent move away
- 5 percent develop other organizational relationships
- 9 percent leave for competitive reasons
- 14 percent are dissatisfied with the quality of the service they received
- 68 percent quit because of an attitude of indifference toward the customer by the those working within the organization.
