What is Quality Customer Service?

1. What is Quality Customer Service? Principles of Hospitality & Tourism

2. Customer Service • Customer service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. • According to Jamier L. Scott. (2002),[1] “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation."

3. Customer Service • Customer service is an integral part of the hospitality industry and should not be seen as an extension of it. • A company’s most vital asset is its customers. • Without them, we would not and could not exist in business. • When you satisfy our customers, they not only help us grow by continuing to do business with you, but recommend you to friends and associates.

4. Commandment #1 • Know who is boss. • You are in business to service customer needs, and you can only do that if you know what it is your customers want. • When you truly listen to your customers, they let you know what they want and how you can provide good service. • Never forget that the customer pays your salary and makes your job possible.

5. Commandment #2 • Be a good listener. • Take the time to identify customer needs by asking questions and concentrating on what the customer is really saying. • Listen to their words, tone of voice, body language, and most importantly, how they feel. Beware of making assumptions - thinking you intuitively know what the customer wants. • Do you know what three things are most important to your customer?

6. Commandment #3 • Identify and anticipate needs. • Customers don't buy products or services. • They buy good feelings and solutions to problems. • Most customer needs are emotional rather than logical. • The more you know your customers, the better you become at anticipating their needs. • Communicate regularly so that you are aware of problems or upcoming needs.

7. Commandment #4 • Make customers feel important and appreciated. • Treat them as individuals. • Always use their name and find ways to compliment them, but be sincere. • People value sincerity. (It creates good feeling and trust.) • Think about ways to generate good feelings about doing business with you. • Customers are very sensitive and know whether or not you really care about them. • Your body language needs to convey sincerity. Your words and actions should be congruent.

8. Commandment #5 • Help customers understand your systems. • Your organization may have the world's best systems for getting things done, but if customers don't understand them, they can get confused, impatient and angry. • Take time to explain how your systems work and how they simplify transactions.

9. Commandment #6 • Appreciate the power of "Yes". • Always look for ways to help your customers. • When they have a request (as long as it is reasonable) tell them that you can do it. • Figure out how afterwards. • Look for ways to make doing business with you easy. • Always do what you say you are going to do.

10. Commandment #7 • Give customers the benefit of the doubt. • Proving to him why he’s wrong and you’re right isn’t worth losing a customer over. • You will never win an argument with a customer, and you should never, ever put a customer in that position.

11. Commandment #8 • If a customer makes a request for something special, do everything you can to say yes. • The fact that a customer cared enough to ask is all you need to know in trying to accommodate her. • It may be an exception from your customer service policy, but (if it isn’t illegal) try to do it. • Remember you are just making one exception for one customer, not making new policy. Mr. Marshall Field was right-on in his famous statement: "Give the lady what she wants."

12. Commandment #9 • Are your customer service associates properly trained in how to handle a customer complaint or an irate person? • Give them guidelines for what to say and do in every conceivable case. • People on the frontline of a situation play the most critical role in your customer’s experience. • Make sure they know what to do and say to make that customer’s experience a positive, pleasant one.

13. Commandment #10 • Want to know what your customers think of your company? Ask them! • Compose a "How're We Doing?" card and leave it at the exit or register stand, or include it in their next statement. • Keep it short and simple. Ask things like: what it is they like; what they don’t like; what they would change; what you could do better; about their latest experience there, etc. • To ensure the customer sends it in, have it pre-stamped. And if the customer has given their name and address, be sure to acknowledge receipt of the card.

14. Customer Service • Its importance varies by product, industry and customer; • Defective or broken merchandise can be exchanged, often only with a receipt and within a specified time frame. • Retail stores will often have a desk or counter devoted to dealing with returns, exchanges and complaints, or will perform related functions at the point of sale.

15. Customer Service • In their book Rules to Break and Laws to Follow, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. write that "customers have memories. They will remember you, whether you remember them or not.“ • Further, "customer trust can be destroyed at once by a major service problem, or it can be undermined one day at a time, with a thousand small demonstrations of incompetence."[3]

16. Customer Service • Customer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means called self-service. • Examples of self service are Internet sites. However, In the Internet era, a challenge has been to maintain and/or enhance the personal experience while making use of the efficiencies of online commerce. • Writing in Fast Company, entrepreneur and customer systems innovator Micah Solomon has made the point that "Online customers are literally invisible to you (and you to them), so it's easy to shortchange them emotionally. But this lack of visual and tactile presence makes it even more crucial to create a sense of personal, human-to-human connection in the online arena."[2]

17. Customer Service • In their book Rules to Break and Laws to Follow, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. write that "customers have memories. They will remember you, whether you remember them or not.“ • Further, "customer trust can be destroyed at once by a major service problem, or it can be undermined one day at a time, with a thousand small demonstrations of incompetence."[3]

18. Customer Service • Customer service plays an important role in an organization's ability to generate income and revenue.[4] • From that perspective, customer service should be included as part of an overall approach to systematic improvement. • Some have argued[5] that the quality and level of customer service has decreased in recent years, • Attributed to a lack of support or understanding at the executive and middle management levels of a corporation and/or a customer service policy. • Technology