Introduction
To Serve and to Please—The Service Difference
Service. Service. Service! Open a newspaper, turn on a radio or a TV—you’ll see and hear endless ads that boldly shout that you should spend your money at this place or that one because of the customer service. No matter how big or small your business, how simple or sophisticated your product or service, customer service has become the enduring ingredient in the elusive formula for success.
Each of us gives and receives service constantly. As consumers, we demand great service, and as service-providers we’re obligated to give great service—because if we don’t, people just won’t do business with us. Today’s business reality is that simple and that harsh. But don’t despair!
The Service Difference
This book is about not only how to give your customers the kind of service that they expect, but the kind they’ll remember and like so much that they return to spend even more money with you time and time again.
This book is about creating what we call The Service Difference. That’s service so special that it genuinely pleases your customers and sets your organization apart from the pack. Most importantly, when you deliver The Service Difference, you create lasting, profitable customer loyalty that encourages customers to do business with you rather than a competitor. It’s loyalty that even a slightly better mousetrap, or a slightly lower price, can’t yank away.
The Thinking Behind This Book
We could write a very short book on customer service. It could say something like this: Good customer service is being nice to customers, and not being rude to them. Good customer service comes from treating people in the way they’d like to be treated.
Yes, that would be a short book. And one you really wouldn’t need to buy. Because it wouldn’t begin to describe what it really takes to give your customers truly great service today.
The Whole and the Parts
Competing in today’s ruthlessly competitive business environment means that your company’s customer service effort is part of a much more complex system. Great service isn’t merely saying, “How may I help you?” “Thanks for your business,” and “Have a nice day.”
Sure, that would be a good start. And certainly many businesses we know would benefit immensely by just starting there. But that’s not the stuff of customer service that will help you compete against world class competitors.
Competing in customer service requires you to understand what good service is and why it’s so vitally important. Competing on the basis of service means making great customer service an essential—no, an indispensable—part of your daily operation.
Competing in service means:
- Possessing a deep understanding of your market
- Organizing and running your business in a special way
- Hiring people in a certain way
- Training them to behave in certain ways
- Operating to standards
- Using technology to its fullest
- And much more
In short, a book on creating and consistently delivering great customer service is a book about rethinking and redesigning your business, and managing it as though you were starting from scratch.
Practical Bias
Wherever we can, we list the action steps as simply as insert tab A into slot B. There’s a whole lot of that throughout the book.
In the first few chapters we orient you to today’s brave new world of service. The one that’s driven by catering to customers, treating them as though they are valued, special, and the very reason your business exists. We try to explain in straightforward terms why great customer service is a business necessity, and why it’s a much bigger job than just being nice to customers, picking up the phone by the second ring, or waiting for the customer to hang up the phone before you do.
What You’ll Find in This Book
An old Spanish proverb holds that, “It is one thing to speak of bulls, it is another to be in the bullring.” This book will enable you to bravely enter the ring, boldly face the snorting bulls of commerce, and happily prevail. Because we suspect you’d rather find out what works rather than be preached at, the book is short on shoulds and long on how tos.
We’ve divided the book into several major parts, each focusing on a particular aspect of delivering The Service Difference.
Part 1: What Exactly Is Customer Service?
Customer service, like art, is many different things to many people. But unlike art, The Service Difference can be precisely defined and consistently delivered. This section describes in detail what The Service Difference is, why it’s so vitally important, and how you can make it an integral part of your organization’s very heart and soul. We show you how to get past the lip-service of merely saying “service, service, service” to making The Service Difference an essential part not only of what your organization stands for, but of the way every employee in it behaves day in and day out. You’ll learn how to operate your business in a way that consistently encourages customers to want to spend their money with you.
Part 2: Service Is Communication
The roots of great customer service, The Service Difference, are in one-to-one communication between your individual employees and your individual customers. Customer service is based on human-to-human interaction. In this section, we take a close look at the dynamics of effective communication. You’ll find very specific information about how you can avoid communication break-downs. And how you can maximize understanding between you and your customer when you interact face to face, over the phone, in letters, through your instruction manuals, and even when your customer is very angry with your company and you’re having an absolutely rotten day.
Part 3: So, How Am I Doing?
Your customers’ needs, wants, and preferences change. All the time. The key to making The Service Difference really work for your organization is to continuously stay responsive and relevant to your customers. Customer satisfaction surveys are part of the answer, but there’s much more to it. We cover it all in this section about gathering and using information from your customers. You’ll learn how to keep your organization in-touch and on top.
Part 4: Build It and They Will Come: Creating a Customer Service Organization
Delivering The Service Difference requires you to do much more than simply issue memos, policies, and directives about giving good service. To truly deliver The Service Difference, your whole organization has to breathe, eat, and sleep service. This section shows you, in great detail, how to make that happen. It covers hiring, training, motivating, rewarding, and supporting your service staff. You’ll even learn how to give great service to internal customers across the hall, as well as to customers far flung around the globe—separated from you by language, time, and a few oceans and continents.
Part 5: The Gizmos & Gadgets of Great Service
To be sure, great service is high-touch (human to human contact), yet we live in a highly technical age. The Service Difference is supported by sophisticated technology that enables you to serve customers in wonderful ways that you simply couldn’t do without the electronics. Even if you can’t program your VCR (and who can?!), you’ll get a solid grounding on how you can put to work the whiz-bang, gee-whiz high-tech stuff that’s revolutionizing customer service.
Appendix A: Resources
We’ve worked hard to make this book a complete guide to how you can create The Service Difference in your organization. And we know that putting these ideas into reality in your company is a big job. You might want to get some more help. In this section, you’ll find listings for other consultants, trainers, technology vendors, call center outsourcing firms, and so on. We’re in there, too, and would love to discuss with you how we might be of further assistance.
Extras
To make the learning experience as easy and as fun as possible, we’ve highlighted lots of tips and facts along the way. Look for the following elements in the book to guide you along.
Tales from the Real World
It’s one thing for us to give you important principles, guidelines, checklists, charts, and lists of Dos and Don’ts. But there’s nothing like a good example to drive home a point.
Voltaire, a French philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment, once asked, “Are there any so wise as to learn from the experience of others?” In Tales from the Real World, you’ll find stories that illustrate The Service Difference in action.
Since we’re pretty sure that you’ve experienced plenty of bad service as a customer yourself, we’re going to highlight, as much as possible, people doing things right.
Quote, Unquote
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation, English author Isaac D’Israeli observed. We’ve included some especially apt quotes for your enlightenment and entertainment.
Watch It!
Warnings, cautions, and “heads up” notes appear in the little box titled Watch It! You still might want to do something that we warn you against, but at least we can say, “We told you so!”
At Your Service
As you read the book, these little boxes will key in on important ideas and offer additional helpful tips.
Word to the Wise
We’ve tried to avoid buzz words and arcane jargon, but there may be some terms you’re not familiar with. So Word to the Wise defines some less common terms we use in the text. You can find a Glossary for all those terms in the back of the book.
At Your Service
To help you help others (and in the process, help your employer and yourself ), the authors of this book brought together more than four decades of experience of serving demanding customers in a wide variety of industries. Our collective experience includes far more than management consulting and speaking at conferences around the globe.
Sure, we’ve served big-name companies in industries as varied as heavy equipment rentals, disability and life insurance, healthcare, elevator manufacturing, hospitality, newspaper publishing, banking, pharmaceuticals, defense contractors, grocery stores, mining, telecommunications, chemical producers, government agencies, and on and on, all over North and South America, Europe, and beyond.
But just as importantly, we’ve been employees in firms from New York to California—in big companies, little companies, and not-for-profits. We learned about the world of service by painting houses and commercial buildings, working as a farmhand and a hospital security guard, cooking in a fast food restaurant, stocking shelves, tending bar, rescuing people, writing radio commercials, selling computer systems and information services, reporting news, marketing cable television services, advertising professional reference libraries, managing a satellite information system, conducting market research, teaching college, taking Scouts camping, helping the school board pass a needed tax hike, teaching literacy to immigrants and quality to prisoners (really!), reading for the blind, and donating blood.
In short, we’ve spent lots of time in the real world dealing with and working to please demanding customers. We’ve made it our life’s work to help organizations of all sizes and types to be the best they can be. To truly provide the service difference.
Now you are our customer. We consider it a privilege and a joy to serve you. We hope you find this book an invaluable resource for giving your customers both their money’s worth and a truly delightful experience. We know if you implement the ideas, strategies, and tactics in this book, you will gain The Service Difference and profitably stand out.
In fact, we can’t wait to hear of your success. We invite you to submit your “tales from the real world,” as well as any other comments or suggestions you may have. Please send them to either one of us; our contact information appears in the Resources appendix at the back of the book.
Acknowledgments
We’re thankful to our clients who helped us see that The Service Difference really does make a meaningful difference in reaching and sustaining a high level of success.
We’re grateful to Dick Staron of Alpha Books, who championed this project, and his team who brought it to life, Howard Jones, John Carroll, and especially Nancy Warner.
We offer a very special thank you to Sandy Lang of Kaset International for her careful reading of the manuscript and her many thoughtful suggestions that improved the work.
And we deeply appreciate the many people who shared their insights and information with us so that we could bring them to you in this book. You’ll find many of their names in the Quote, Unquote sections, in the credit lines beneath material we’ve reproduced for you, and in the Resources section. We must extend special thanks to Bill Bonstetter of TTI Performance Systems, and Judy Suiter and Randy Jay Widrick for their incredibly valuable work in the area of behavioral profiles.
To the others who quietly gave us a helping hand not wanting anything in return, thank you for your help; your selfless example teaches us much about great customer service.
There’s a lot of really important, really cool information between these covers. Let’s get to work!
Special Thanks from the Publisher to the Technical Reviewer
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Great Customer Service was reviewed by an expert who not only checked the technical accuracy of what you’ll learn in this book, but also provided invaluable insight and suggestions.
Our special thanks are extended to Alexandra Lang, corporate communications manager for Kaset International. She is responsible for internal and external newsletters, public relations, and article writing for publications. Kaset International is a recognized leader in service quality training and consulting. Since 1973, Kaset has worked with leading public and private sector organizations to help them maintain a competitive advantage through customer loyalty. Kaset, a Times Mirror company, is based in Tampa, Florida.
Lang, who has been with Kaset for 17 years, has managed Kaset’s quarterly customer publication, in-touch, since 1984. She has interviewed and written about customer-focused executives throughout North America, the Bahamas, and the United Kingdom.
Lang earned her BA from The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, with a major in chemistry. She also attended the University of Southwest Florida in Pensacola and Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach, VA. Her first love has always been writing, however.