PERFECT PHRASES for CUSTOMER SERVICE

Hundreds of Ready-to-Use Phrases for Handling Any Customer Service Situation

By Robert Bacal

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright ©2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-174506-2

Contents

Preface to the Second EditionPart One. Succeeding at Customer ServiceChapter 1. Basics of Customer ServiceChapter 2. Customer Service Tools and TechniquesPart Two. Dealing with Specific Customer Situations1. When You’re Late or Know You’ll Be Late2. When a Customer Is in a Hurry3. When a Customer Jumps Ahead in a Line of Waiting Customers4. When a Customer Asks to Be Served Ahead of Other Waiting Customers5. When a Customer Interrupts a Discussion Between the Employee and
Another Customer6. When a Customer Has a Negative Attitude About Your Company Due to Past
Experiences7. When You Need to Explain a Company Policy or Procedure8. When a Customer Might Be Mistrustful9. When the Customer Has Been Through Voicemail Hell10. When a Customer Is Experiencing a Language Barrier11. When the Customer Has Been “Buck-Passed”12. When a Customer Needs to Follow a Sequence of Actions13. When the Customer Insults Your Competence14. When a Customer Won’t Stop Talking on the Phone15. When the Customer Swears or Yells #116. When the Customer Swears or Yells #217. When a Customer Won’t Stop Talking and Is Getting Abusive on the Phone
#118. When a Customer Won’t Stop Talking and Is Getting Abusive on the Phone
#219. When a Customer Has Been Waiting in a Line20. When You Don’t Have the Answer21. When Nobody Handy Has the Answer22. When You Need to Place a Caller on Hold23. When You Need to Route a Customer Phone Call24. When You Lack the Authority to …25. When a Customer Threatens to Go Over Your Head26. When a Customer Demands to Speak with Your Supervisor27. When a Customer Demands to Speak with Your Supervisor, Who Isn’t
Available28. When a Customer Threatens to Complain to the Press29. When a Customer Demands to Speak to the “Person in Charge”30. When a Customer Makes an Embarrassing Mistake31. When a Customer Withholds Information Due to Privacy Concerns32. When a Customer Threatens Bodily Harm or Property Damage33. When a Customer Is Confused About What He or She Wants or Needs34. When a Customer Makes a Racist Remark35. When a Customer Makes a Sexist Remark36. When a Customer Refuses to Leave37. When a Customer Accuses You of Racism38. When a Customer Plays One Employee Off Another (“So-and-So Said”)39. When a Customer Might Be Stealing40. When a Customer Is Playing to an Audience of Other Customers41. When a Customer Exhibits Passive-Aggressive Behavior42. When a Customer Uses Nonverbal Attempts to Intimidate43. When a Customer Makes Persistent and Frequent Phone Calls44. When Someone Else Is Not Responding (No Callback)45. When You Need to Clarify Commitments46. When a Customer Wants Information You’re Not Allowed to Give47. When a Customer Makes a Suggestion to Improve Service48. When You Can’t Find a Customer’s Reservatioppointment49. When You’re Following Up on a Customer Complaint50. Properly Identifying the Internal Customer51. When an Internal Customer Isn’t Following Procedures to Request
Service52. When the Customer Wants Something That Won’t Fill His Need53. When You Want Feedback from the Customer54. When a Customer Complains About Red Tape and Paperwork55. When You Need to Respond to a Customer Complaint Made in Writing56. When a Reservatioppointment Is Lost and You Can’t Meet the
Commitment57. When Customers Are Waiting in a Waiting Room58. When a Customer Complains About a Known Problem59. When a Customer Asks Inappropriate Questions60. When a Customer Tries an Unacceptable Merchandise ReturnPart Three. Social Media and Customer ServiceThe Connection Between Social Media and Customer Service61. Scanning, Watching, Searching (Proactive)62. Triage: Proactively Prioritizing Complaints/Comments63. Contact!64. Proactive Complaint Handling

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Basics of Customer Service

There must be a billion words written about customer service. Advice abounds,from the banal and obvious (smile when you talk on the phone) to complex anddifficult suggestions about how to “create a corporate culture of excellentcustomer service.”

Amid all the words, simple or fancy, is a basic hidden truth about customerservice: the person who interacts directly with the customer determines whetherthat customer perceives that he or she is receiving poor customer service,excellent service, or something in between. If you serve customers directly, youhave the power to affect their perceptions. That customer contact is where “therubber meets the road.”

If you provide service to customers, your words and behaviors are the tools youuse to create a positive customer perception of you and the company you workfor. Whether you’re a novice working with customers or a seasoned pro, what youdo and say will affect how customers see you. You can’t help it. Customers willform opinions, so you might as well learn how to create positive opinions. Butyou need to know how to do that.

It might be that you get paid minimum wage and you don’t plan to stay in yourcustomer service job. Why care what customers think? The answer issimple—self-interest! Customers who form negative opinions about you canmake your life miserable. When they get angry, they complain, slow down servicefor others (making them mad), threaten, swear, and otherwise do thingsthat add stress to your job. In some cases, their anger can escalate to thepoint where your physical safety is at risk. All because you couldn’t bebothered or didn’t care. It’s to your benefit to provide decent customerservice just for these reasons. More on what’s in it for you in a moment.

That’s what this book is for—to teach you about the dozens and dozens oftechniques you can use when interacting with customers so they’ll walk away withpositive feelings about the experience. You’ll learn about very specific thingsyou can do or say in all kinds of customer interactions. You’ll learn how todeal with difficult customers. You’ll learn how to approach customers and how toget information from them so you can do your job. You’ll learn to deal withcustomer service problems quickly, efficiently, and professionally. Best of all,the techniques in this book will fit your needs, whether you serve burgers,staff the desk in a hotel, help people in health care environments, or even workfor the government.

This book will tell you exactly what to do and say, and it will provide you withnumerous examples so you can use customer service techniques effectively.

Let’s get started!

What’s in It for Me?

Why should you be concerned with providing excellent customer service? You don’town the company. You may not get paid more for providing excellent customerservice. So, what’s in it for you?

There are three powerful reasons for learning to provide great customer service:greater job satisfaction, reduced stress and hassle, and enhanced job success.

First, very few people derive any job satisfaction when they feel that the timethey spend at work is “wasted.” Most of us need to feel useful andproductive—to make a difference, whether it’s helping a fast food customermake healthier food choices or dispensing legal advice. When you provide high-quality customer service, you feel that you’re making that difference and canderive pride in your work. The day goes faster.

When you do a good job with a customer, such as calming down someone who’s angryand complaining, you feel good about having achieved something. Perhaps moreimportant than your own perceptions are the customer’s perceptions, when you doa good job with a customer and he or she tells you what you’ve achieved. Thatfeedback helps you feel good about yourself and your performance. Doing a goodjob and taking pride in how you serve customers are ways to prevent job burnout.

Second, deliver quality customer service and you will save yourself a lot ofstress and hassle. When you learn and use customer service skills, you are farless likely to get into protracted, unpleasant, and upsetting interactions witha customer. You make yourself less of a target for customer wrath. That’sbecause customer service skills help keep customers from becoming angry andreduce the length and intensity of the anger when and if difficult customerservice situations occur.

Third, learning and using quality customer service techniques helps form theperceptions of those who may be able to help your career—supervisors,managers, and potential employers. Using these techniques makes you look good toeveryone, and that’s critical in getting promoted, receiving pay raises, andgetting new job opportunities. Managers and supervisors notice when a customerasks for you specifically because you do such a good job or comments positivelyabout how you’ve helped.

Of course, you may have other reasons to want to provide the best customerservice possible. You may want to contribute to the success of your employer.You may like the feeling of having other employees look up to you as a goodmodel. Or you may even benefit directly if you work on a commission basis. Inmany jobs, people who are good at customer service earn more.

Regardless of your reasons, quality customer service techniques can be learned,and you can learn them with a little effort.

In the rest of this chapter, we’ll provide an overview of customer serviceprinciples and issues and explain how to use this book. In the next chapter,we’ll describe 60 techniques you should be using. The rest of the book isdedicated to showing you how to use those techniques.

Different Kinds of Customers

Before we continue, we should clarify what the word “customer” means.

You’re probably familiar with our starting definition: the customer isthe person who pays for goods or services that you provide. This definitionworks in some contexts, but not all. It breaks down in situations where moneydoesn’t directly change hands. For example, people often interact withgovernment, public schools, and other organizations. They receive goods orservices from them, but do not pay anything directly to them. We need to changeour definition so that people who interact with these organizations fall underour definition of customer, since they, too, deserve high-quality customerservice, even if they aren’t paying directly.

Here’s a better definition: the customer is the person next in line whoreceives your output (service, products). That person may purchase goods orservices directly or receive output you create or deliver without directpayment. The person may be outside your company, but this definition alsoincludes anyone within the company who receives output from you.

There are four basic types of customers. Regardless of type, each customerdeserves to receive top-quality customer service, and each can make your worklife miserable if you don’t provide it.

First, there are external paying customers. These are the people who pay to eatin a restaurant, pay for health care and legal advice, or pay to stay in ahotel.

Second, there are internal customers. These are people who receive output(services, products, information) that you create or provide, but who are in thesame organization as you. Internal customers may be billed via interdepartmentalcharge systems, or there may be no payment system in place. For example, humanresources staff members involved in hiring employees, in effect, work forinternal customers (the managers of the work units needing new employees). Thetechnician who maintains company computers works for internal customers (thepeople who use the computers he or she maintains).

Third, there are external nonpaying customers. These customers receive services,goods, or other outputs but don’t directly pay for them. For example, thetourist who visits a traveler’s information kiosk by the highway may receivetourist information (outputs) and maps (goods), but doesn’t pay directly. Thattourist is a customer. Another example is the parent who attends the parent-teachermeeting at the local public school. He or she receives outputs andservices from the teacher, but doesn’t pay the teacher directly. That parentneeds to be treated like a customer, too.

That brings us to the fourth type of customer, regulated customers. Governmentorganizations interact with people in ways that aren’t oriented toward providingsomething to individuals, but are involved in regulating them for the commongood. It might seem like people regulated by the government through licenses,zoning regulations, permits, and other controls are really not customers. Wewant to include them, however, because even though government regulates them,they still deserve the best possible levels of customer service. Including thisgroup under the term customer reminds us (and, hopefully, government employees)that even when employees are telling people what to do or what they are allowed(or not allowed) to do, they need to apply principles of customer service. Thisapplies to border guards, immigration officials, health inspectors, buildingcode enforcers, and to every position you can imagine in the public sector.

First Things First—Dispelling an Important Customer Service Myth

We need to address the single most popular false idea about customer service.It’s a great slogan, credited to H. Gordon Selfridge, who passed away in 1947.No doubt you’ve heard the phrase,” The customer is always right.” Unfortunately,it’s wrong and misleading.

Clearly the customer is not always right. Customers make unreasonable requestsand have unreasonable expectations. Customers sometimes even play fast and loosewith the truth. Customers may not understand your company and what you can andcan’t do for them.

Practically speaking, you can’t operate under the assumption that the customeris always right. You can’t give every customer what he or she asks for.

Can we come up with a phrase or two that realistically describe how we shouldtreat customers? Yes. Here are two short phrases that fit the bill.

* The customer always deserves to be treated as if he or she is important andhis or her opinions, needs, and wants are worth your attention.

* The customer deserves to receive maximum effort of those serving him or her,even when the customer’s expectations, wants, and needs may be impractical.

Since the customer isn’t “always right” and it’s often not possible to give thecustomer what he or she wants, what are the implications for customer service?

It’s simple. The customer has other important wants and needs besides gettingwhat he or she is asking for. Even in situations where you can’t do what thecustomer asks, you can contribute to development of the customer’s positiveimpression about how he or she is treated. That’s what we’ve captured in the twophrases above. We need to focus not only on what we provide to the customer, buton how we provide it. That’s the key to realistic, excellent customer service.To do that, you need to understand these other wants and needs—and that’swhere we’re going to go next.

Understanding What Customers Want

One thing about the customer service techniques you’re going to learn: you can’tsucceed with them by memorizing them or using them in every situation. The keyto customer service is doing the right thing at the right time.

To be able to choose the right techniques and to use them effectively, you haveto understand what customers want. Knowing this will help you make sense of thetechniques you’ll be looking at. Below is a list of the most important customerwants and needs. When you address these, you create positive customerperceptions about you and your company. That means fewer arguments, fewerhassles, and better customer relationships. Customers want:

* problem solved

* effort

* acknowledgment and understanding

* choices and options

* positive surprises

* consistency, reliability, and predictability

* value (not necessarily best price)

* reasonable simplicity

* speed

* confidentiality

* sense of importance

Customers want their problem solved. They want to get what they want from you,whether it’s a product, service, or other output. This is the customer service”want” that most people are familiar with. However, it’s not always possible togive the customer what he or she wants, which is where the rest of the “wants”come in. Even if you can’t solve the customer’s problem, you can create positiveperceptions by addressing the other, less obvious customer wants.

Customers expect that you (and your company) will make an effort to addresstheir problems, concerns, and needs, even if you can’t give them what they want.Customers respect effort, often pay attention to effort above and beyond thecall of duty, and will turn on you (create hassles) if they sense that youaren’t making an effort. Many of the techniques you’ll learn later in this bookwork because they demonstrate “effort above and beyond the call of duty.”

Customers want and expect to have their wants, needs, expectations, feelings,and words acknowledged and understood. That means listening and proving to thecustomer that you have “got” what he or she is saying. Customers who feelunderstood and acknowledged feel important, and that’s a vital part of goodcustomer relationships.

Customers also want to feel they have choices and options and are not trapped byyou or your company. They want to feel they can decide and that you’re helpingthem, rather than the other way around. When customers feel helpless orpowerless, they’re more likely to become frustrated, angry, and aggressive.

Customers also appreciate “positive surprises.” Positive surprises are thingsyou do that go above and beyond their hopes and expectations (going the extrafive miles). They include offering discounts or providing some other benefitthat’s normally unavailable to them. Positive surprises are most useful whendealing with difficult or angry customers.

Consistency, reliability, and predictability are also important customer wants.Customers expect that you will treat them in a consistent way and that you’llalways do what you say you’ll do. By acting in accordance with these wants, youprovide the customer with a sense of security and confidence in both youpersonally and in the company. This builds loyalty.

Customers also expect value for their investments of time and money. What’sinteresting here is that while money (price) is part of the value equation, it’sonly a part. When customers look at value, they also take into account howthey’re treated, the quality and expertise of the advice they receive from youto help them make decisions, and a number of other factors. You may not be ableto affect the price of services or products you provide, but you can add valueby helping the customer in other ways.

Reasonable simplicity is another important customer want. These days many peopleare overwhelmed by a complex world. If you complicate the customers’ world ormake them jump through a number of hoops, they will become frustrated and angry.One of your customer service roles should be to make things easier for thecustomer, not more complicated, without oversimplifying or treating thecustomers in a condescending way.

(Continues…)
(Continues…)Excerpted from PERFECT PHRASES for CUSTOMER SERVICE by Robert Bacal. Copyright © 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
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