Customer Deserves Good Service
‘Rule No. 1: The customer is always right.”
“Rule No. 2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read rule No. 1.”
Q. Most of the positions in my company are entry level jobs. Only a few of my employees have had experience dealing with demanding customers. How do I convince them that the “customer is always right?”
A. Customer sensitivity is a must in every business, of course. But, give some thought to experimenting with an approach in which you admit that the guy on the other end of the transaction isn’t always right.
A great deal of employee resistance to the TCIAR mantra stems from the fact that many times an intelligent worker can see, firsthand, that the customer is actually wrong … and occasionally even a first-class jerk!
Efforts to convince these employees to the contrary are generally futile. In fact, in extreme cases, workers have been known to go out of their way to prove the moronic nature of their clients. Also, by insisting that your employees see “the emperor’s new clothes” and ignoring the true difficulty of some contemporary customer relationships, you’ll contribute a lot of unnecessary stress to your employees’ daily routines.
Well-placed empathy can work wonders. By acknowledging the foibles and faults of your customers, you will gain the attention and respect of your workers. However, in these situations, you have to emphasize that, while the customer may be wrong, and while we all may know it, we still have to treat the customer as if he or she were chugging on all cylinders.
The need to foster illusions has been part of the retail process since the time of ancient bazaars. We all strive to make our products and services look great and affordable, even when they fall a tad short of the mark. So, too, must we work to make the personal sales and service functions as attractive, seamless, comfortable and supportive as possible … even if the buyer on the other end is downright demented.
Your employees have to understand that the key to success in your business - and in their careers - is the ability to make every customer - even those offering tough-talk or tantrums - feel right, even when they are not. Your employees don’t have to believe it, as long as they make the customer feel it.
Workers should be allowed to make reasonable, personal judgments about a customer, as long as the customer is still treated with the kind of quality care that is the standard of your company. Indeed, constructing an accurate profile of a customer will enable a professional sales or service employee to custom-tailor the attention he or she provides.
Its OK to keep an open mind, as long as the mouth stays shut.
Q. Today, it seems that everybody places a premium on creativity. My employees, my kids, even my accountant, tell me I should be more “creative.” Just what do they mean?
A. The term “creativity” is used in many ways, often inappropriately. Creativity is a subjective process whereby an innovator looks inward for thoughts, ideas and conceptual interconnections that are unique.
A creative person will twist and turn chunks of information and knowledge, establishing seemingly illogical links between them. By freely experimenting, with no heed for the traditional confines of patterns and order, you’ll be able to come up with totally new constructs - ways of behaving and implementing - that can be applied to the challenges facing your enterprise.
In their book, “Corporate Creativity,” professors Alan Robinson and Sam Stern assert that creativity, more than anything else, is the primary propellant of corporate growth. The “energy” you’ll need to break free and create can come only from a steady diet of new information and knowledge. These inputs must be plentiful, diverse and divergent.
According to Nobel Prize winner Herbert A. Simon, creators must have abundant “relevant knowledge.” Despite the fact that the average person has 50,000 thoughts per day, studies have shown that it takes about 10 years of effort to acquire the 50,000 “chunks” of knowledge necessary to be reasonably creative.