There are certain customer service skills that every employee and business owner must master if they are forward-facing with customers. Without them, you run the risk of finding your business in an embarrassing customer service train-wreck plastered all over google, or you’ll simply lose customers as your service continues to let people down.
Either way, there are a few universal skills that every employee and business owner can master that will dramatically improve the business. Here are a few tips:
- Language matters. It is extremely easy to say the right thing, but to say it the wrong way. Actively work on the language that is used in customer interactions and strive to remain politically correct.
- Standards matter. For example, a doorman at a great hotel is rarely blindsided by a guest trying to enter while the doorman’s back is turned. How can that be? Standards. In this case, the standard is usually that ‘‘doormen work in teams.’’ They simply face each other and subtly tip each other off if someone is coming from behind. They quite literally have each other’s back, leading to a consistently comfortable, welcoming, hospitable experience.
- Get rid of the fine print. To a customer, fine print is where a company hides something that will protect them from a dissatisfied customer. Better to fix it than hide it.
- First impressions matter. Walk up to, and into, your establishment with the eye of a customer. A customer perception is his reality, and a first impression is important because it tends to linger in a customer’s memory. Ditto if that fist interaction is on the phone, via chat, or via mobile.
- Are you easy to use? You won’t know until you try. Try your own website without your auto-log in. Is it easy? Or a pain? Come in the front door and see if the door swings open easily, or whacks you on the shoulder. And so forth.