Emotionally Intelligent Customer Service

Okay, so today didn’t start off very well. 

Your alarm didn’t go off so you missed breakfast at home.  Your boss gave you a dirty look when you reached the office because some clown in an SUV broke down in the fast lane on Jalan Tun Razak and made you twenty minutes late.  A colleague bumped your arm as you carried your coffee from the pantry and your white blouse is stained for the day.  And now, at 11:30, just as your morning settles down, in walks the customer from Hell.  (sigh)

Among the many customers you serve, the difficult types are very few.  Yet these are the ones that trigger your emotions and lead you into potential confrontations.  This is why developing emotional intelligence is critical for customer service people. 

And just who are customer service people?  Anyone who comes into contact with customers.  So this probably means you.

Developing your emotional intelligence happens on two levels – recognizing and managing your own emotions and recognizing and managing the emotions of others.

Managing your own emotions is simply a matter of breaking patterned behavior.  We all have emotional buttons that are easily pushed, and when they are, they trigger the same emotional response.  Think about your emotional response when that customer walks into your office.  It’s familiar.  You’ve felt it before.

Managing this response is simply a matter of breaking the pattern.  Once you know your triggers and identify the accompanying response, your next step is to find a disruptor.  This could be an image in your mind, a key word, the punch line to a joke or intimate thoughts of a friend.  The idea, however, is that your patterned emotional response is interrupted, and this prepares you to move in a different emotional direction.

As soon as you find yourself face to face with a difficult customer, think rationally for just a moment.  First, recognize that something that this customer is doing or saying is irritating you.  This is your trigger.  Second, recognize and acknowledge the emotion that accompanies this trigger.  It could be anger, irritation, frustration or helplessness.  Whatever it is, embrace it and feel it.  But, before you respond to it, call up your disruptor.  Think of your joke.  Concentrate on your key word.  Imagine your lover’s smiling face, or whatever about your lover. 

Then, once the emotional behavioral pattern is interrupted, face your difficult customer and begin managing his or her emotions.

How is this done?  Next week I’ll tell you a story, and you’ll see.

Don’t be angry!

A Positive Twist on Customer Service

Here’s a true story.

I flew into the island resort of Penang, Malaysia, "Pearl of the Orient", right about the time that they were redoing the airport.  Construction was obviously going on everywhere and sheets of plywood lined the corridors.  As I exited the aircraft, I immediately noticed a large sign which said, “Construction in Progress.  Regret the Inconvenience Caused.”  Suddenly I felt… inconvenienced.  My bags felt heavier.  I wondered, if I’d been a tourist rather than on business, is this the way I would have wanted my holiday to begin?

Put yourself in the place of an arriving tourist.  When you get off the plane, what’s the first thing you want to read?  That’s right.  Welcome to Penang!  And what about all of this construction?  We are Upgrading to Serve You Better!  Now, that makes you feel a lot better doesn’t it?  It makes you feel… welcomed, rather than inconvenienced.

If you take a moment to think about it, you can always state a negative message in a positive way, and this is a technique your customer service representatives need to learn.  When they know how to emphasize positive ideas, not only will they make unsatisfied customers happy again, but they’ll also prevent them from getting angry.

Imagine a very common situation.  A customer passes your service rep a credit card to make a purchase, but the transaction is rejected.  Publicly, your rep hands the card back to the customer and says (loud enough for everyone to hear), “Your card isn’t going through.”  What kind of reaction can you expect?  Well, the customer is likely to get defensive.  Obviously there has been some Terrible Mistake.  The customer might even blame your machine, or worse, your service rep for the problem.  Why?  Because the negative message your service rep passed along caused your customer embarrassment and offense.

Is there a better way to say this?  You could probably think of dozens.  One of the first is by simply passing the card back to the customer and quietly asking, “Do you have a different card you’d like to use?”  The message will be clear without the embarrassing baggage attached.

Look around your premises.  Have you got any negative signs that your customers might see?  Replace them with positive messages.  Your customers are much more interested in what you will do for them than what you won’t do.

Negativity is infectious.  If your reps pass it along to your customers, even unintentionally, they’ll begin feeling negative as well.  Positive messages get positive responses and prevent unsatisfied customers from becoming angry customers.

This Is Why It's Called 'Customer Service'

Let’s face it.  Sometimes one of your products may malfunction.  Now and then one of your deliveries might be delayed.  Or maybe the repair job that your technicians just completed for a customer didn’t fix what it was supposed to.  As hard as you try in your business to prevent nuisances like these from occurring, they will happen.  And this is why you have a customer service department.

When the unexpected happens, your customers are bound to become unsatisfied and turn to your customer service representatives.  Most of the time they’ll be reasonable, your service reps will be successful and the customer will walk away happy.  This is what customer service is supposed to do: make unsatisfied customers happy again.  When this happens, word gets around.  People say good things about your service and your company’s reputation flourishes. 

Some customer service departments, however, still don’t get it.  They make unsatisfied customers angry.  When this happens, word also gets around.  Can you count the number of times you’ve heard friends or business associates say, “I’ll never do business there again”?

One of the most common pitfalls that otherwise well-meaning customer service reps step into is using wrong procedures or saying the wrong things and making customers angry.  Here are just a few ways to ensure that your customer service reps don’t make the same mistakes.

First, always be positive.  Stating negative messages in a positive way creates an upbeat atmosphere that makes your customers feel better.  Eliminate as many No’s as possible from speech and from signs. 

Second, deliver on promises.  Whatever your reps tell your customers they will do must be done.  To your customers, the word of your reps is as good as the word of your entire company.  Ensure, therefore, that you have the backup support necessary to deliver on what your reps promise.

Third, answer enquiries.  Customers are happiest when they know they are immediately attended to by a helpful human being.  Unanswered e-mail and voice messages are the first flash point for their impatience.

Fourth, empower your reps.  Unnecessary delays can occur if your customer service reps have to defer to their managers or to you all of the time.  Ensure that they know the parameters in which they can operate and allow them to make decisions for your customers’ benefit.

Finally, hire a good trainer.  Training is an investment.  The better trained your reps are, the better they’ll perform.  And the better they perform, the more the good word continues to go around.

Meeting Customer Expectations -- or Not

The customer is always right.

If you are a customer yourself (and this includes every one of you), you probably agree with this statement most of the time.  You’re exchanging your hard-earned cash for products and services from which you expect certain levels of satisfaction.  If you become unsatisfied, it’s up to the vendor to set things right.

If you are in customer service, however, you probably know that this isn’t true all of the time.  In fact, sometimes the customer is just downright wrong.  Yet, since your business depends on your customers, it’s still your job to set things right.  This isn’t always easy, especially when your customer becomes difficult.

Difficult customers represent just a small portion of the customers you deal with on a day-to-day basis, yet these few can profoundly affect the way you feel about your job and the way you deal with your next customer.  However, if you know how to manage your customers’ emotions successfully, you can prevent an unsatisfied customer from turning into an angry customer.  This begins with understanding what it is that your customers really want.

Generally speaking, customers have two sets of expectations – one positive, the other negative.  Positive expectations center around the idea that you care about them and that you can help them.  They believe that you have what they need and that what they purchase will be reliable.  Since they know their business is valuable to you, they expect to be treated fairly and professionally in exchange.  Customers become unsatisfied when their positive expectations are unmet.

Negative expectations center around the idea that you are going to take advantage of them.  They believe that they are unimportant to you personally and that you are only interested in making a profit from your overpriced goods.  If they run into problems, they expect you to be reluctant to help and to receive a hassle before you listen to them.  Since they believe you are unskilled, you probably don’t have the authority to deal with them in the first place.  Customers become unsatisfied when their negative expectations are met.

In any case, if customers become unsatisfied, you can deal with it.  It happens.  This is why we have customer service departments in the first place.  Turning customers back around before they get angry, however, is your job and this begins with knowing how to meet (or not to meet) the expectations that they have.