Service. A Long Lost Art?
posted on: September 4, 2006
It’s often said, “Customer service is an art within itself.” I firmly believe that to provide top-quality service, you need pleasant respectful people who are also customer friendly.
Solid Cactus needed new telephone headsets, and I found a site selling the “recommended” model. One important question I asked was, “does this headset plug into the headset jack on the phone directly, or does it need an amplifier?” Customer service assured me no amp is needed. But to be safe, I only ordered one.
The headset arrived and–no surprise–required an amp. I asked for a return authorization and got resistance. Rather than fight, I decided to take the $69 hit and go back to Google.
I quickly found a company that promised to buy each headset back plus my cost of shipping if they didn’t work. I bought a dozen, they worked and the saga ends. But it reminded me just how important customer service is. Fighting over returning an item is not my definition of service.
The last thing a customer wants to hear is, “It’s our policy…” It’s offensive and puts customers on the defensive. Your customer service reps should have some flexibility with policies to ensure that customers are leaving happy and will return. Let’s look at my situation once more.
When I tried to return the faulty headset I was told “The documentation we have says it will work with your phone model, so our return policy says you can’t return it.” The result was an unhappy customer. Let’s turn this around…. “The documentation we have says it should work with your phone model, but if it’s not working for you, let me see if there is another model you can try while I get a return processed on the one you have.” That’s all it would have taken to make me happy!
We all have a customer service horror story. You don’t want someone telling tales about YOUR business, so take a few minutes and see what you can do to ensure that each time that phone rings or an email gets answered, the customer on the other end is 100% satisfied. It’s good for the customer and that’s good for your business.
