Taking Care of Your Customers
We asked you a question last time, “Is your customer service department generating revenue?” We asked it because we have created a new course, Taking Care of Your Customers, and rolling it out to our clients has really opened our eyes.
We didn’t tell you that it was a trick question, although it was. The question might even have caught you off-guard, because isn’t the job of customer service to take care of the customer after the sales department has generated the revenue?
When you think that the only job of customer service is to answer the phone and deal with questions and problems, it forces you into a silo that ultimately won’t get you the results you need.
Customer service is not just about solving problems, even though that’s a big part of it. It’s also about creating opportunities that benefit the clients, and ultimately, the company. That’s what most people “leave on the table.”
Here’s how this played out today.
We were at the office supply store, getting workbook binders for our next two classes. We needed more binders than the store had on the shelf; Maia went in search of help and was lucky enough to find Barb.
Barb walked all the way back across the store with her. She checked to see if there were any binders on the top shelf where we couldn’t reach. Then she checked the back, found no binders and called the order desk on her headset to get the ones we needed ordered immediately.
To take it completely over the top, Barb found a box for the binders we had, when we had already been told that there were no boxes.
As she walked us up to the register to check out, she asked if we needed an item that was on sale. Although we weren’t planning on buying anything else, her exceptional care of us made us receptive to checking it out. As a result, we made the purchase.
It was a textbook case of Taking Care of Your Customers.
