Uplifting Service - Blog

Jeff Eilertsen offers service performance insights to address five essential service challenges every organization must successfully address. In this interview with Ron Kaufman, Jeff discusses the third challenge, Building Internal Service Relationships and Employee Engagement. […]

Jeff Eilertsen offers service performance insights to address five essential service challenges every organization must successfully address. In this interview with Ron Kaufman, Jeff discusses the second challenge, Shifting from Service Process to Customer Experience. […]

Many senior leaders assume that service performance improvement only requires a front-line training initiative. This is a fundamental mistake. A strong and successful service culture demands the power of a senior leadership team that is […]

The world of work has changed. Every person must continuously add value, not only to the work itself, but to the experience our customers have with our work. How well we do at creating and […]

Today we use sophisticated technologies to learn a great deal about our customers. We track what they like, what they spend, what they search for, where they go, and how often they return. Yet despite all this new “big data” and the insights it can deliver, customers all over the world still appreciate “Old School Customer Service”.

These four “Old School Customer Service” techniques are time-tested, and they work as well today as they have for generations.

Your organization is going to get some sand in the gears, and when that happens, it’s your job to keep your people focused and enthusiastic. How do you do that? You find opportunities to educate. You recognize individual successes. You role model what needs to happen and then recognize when other people act as role models. You acknowledge service achievements.

Read on for six tips on how you can strengthen your team by keeping them motivated to provide uplifting service.

In this two-part blog series, I’ll provide tips on how you can strengthen your service team.

Here, in Part I, we’ll take a look at the steps you can take to make it easier for your employees to provide great service to your customers or clients.

We love receiving great customer service. That’s no surprise. But did you know that great service can actually elicit a physical reaction? A recent American Express Service Study found that 63 percent of its 1,620 respondents said they felt an increased heart rate when they just thought about great service. And for 53 percent of those studied, great service caused them to have the same cerebral response that results from feeling loved. The trick, of course, is developing a customer service team that has the skills to provide such an overwhelming reaction amongst your customers.

When considering quality of service around the world, many stereotypes can be applied. We may think certain countries or cultures naturally excel at service, while others are very efficient but not very friendly. And we may even see some countries where service appears to be an altogether low priority. Yet while stereotypes persist – and may have basis in personal experience – I have accumulated more and more experience in countries across the globe, and everywhere I teach and travel, I observe 3 things we all have in common:

1. Service expectations are local.

How people understand and evaluate service, especially front line customer service, is based on the world they live in every day. We judge the service we receive by comparing it to our own experience. This everyday experience varies widely for people from Nairobi to Shanghai to Delhi to Seattle. Defining service excellence is relative to what we experience around us.

Especially during the busy holiday season, customers wait on hold for an eternity. Complaints go unanswered. Salespeople and customer service providers seem more like Scrooge than Santa’s helpers. If you think customer service has taken a nosedive, you’re right, says Ron Kaufman—but there’s a lot you can do to change that. Read on for his tips for being a better customer.

Each year The Conference Board publishes survey results of the Top CEO Challenges for global organizations. In 2014 the top four challenges are:

1. Human Capital
2. Customer Relationships
3. Innovation
4. Operational Excellence

The Conference Board says business leaders are seeking to drive growth by “focusing on people, performance, reconnecting with customers, and reshaping the culture of work. They see a renewed commitment to customers, innovation, and the corporate brand.”