Ask the Panel • Service Starters • Spotlight Awards • Web Extras - Customer Communicator • Web Extras - Skill Sharpener
Support your reps’ efforts to obtain customer feedback — John Goodman, vice chairman of Customer Care Measurement & Consulting (CCM&C), and author of Customer Experience 3.0, shares two recent documents to help managers obtain, understand, and use customer feedback. They include:
Back to basics with voicemail — It’s always timely to brush up on basic communication skills. Here are tips on using voicemail effectively.
April 12, 2018 — Customers, coworkers, and personal demands — those are the top three sources of stress for today’s busy customer service professionals. Managing each type of stress requires different strategies, and it’s well worth the effort to fine-tune your stress management skills, says Genella MacIntyre, author of 5 Steps to Reducing Stress. In an…To read more — login/sign up
Heather CruitStepping outside of the box helps Heather Cruit help customers. When a difficult issue came up regarding the cost and insurance coverage for a customer’s medication, Cruit decided that a three-way call was needed. Bringing together the patient (her customer) and the doctor helped ensure that the customer was completely satisfied.
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March 15, 2018 — Is your service staff maintaining a positive attitude despite the negativity that inevitably arises in the workplace? If not, then keep in mind that March is “Optimism Month,” and the perfect time to work on improving those attitudes. Reps, like everyone else, will benefit from guidance and suggestions for keeping a…To read more — login/sign up
There’s much that managers can do to alleviate stress in the workplace — Service expert Genella MacIntyre recommends that managers help their teams by monitoring stress levels, providing back up, offering praise, and setting up a quiet room. These resources provide additional insights:
• Tips and techniques for setting up a quiet room
• Five steps to help managers reduce stress, a leadership article from Genella MacIntyre.
The “Little Tramp” reminds us to smile — Humor can be useful during interactions with customers because it helps to diffuse anger and initiate problem solving. But, be sure to avoid the Four Nots of humor.
March 2, 2018 — Online channels are playing a larger and larger role in customer service. Not only are customers buying more online, they are taking their service issues online as well, via email, text, web chat, and other online channels, including social media. And customer service reps need to be ready to handle those…To read more — login/sign up
Answers from frontline reps — In my experience, taking ownership involves several different elements. The first element is to empathize with the member’s situation. Showing empathy can be a great ice breaker, which allows the conversation to flow from a business conversation to more of a personal one. In my opinion, once you have built a…Continue reading
Keep a positive attitude! — A positive attitude helps to reduce stress and to build customer relationships. Here are some ways to keep that positive energy going.
Train your reps to handle customers online and via social media — Online service skills are a growing necessity for reps in today’s digital communication age. Managers need to make sure their reps are prepared. Here are some resources:
A brief excerpt covering online and social media service from Renée Evenson’s Customer Service Training 101, Third Edition.
February 16, 2018 — Customer Service Reps are often advised to treat each customer as their only customer. Shannon Butler, a customer service representative at Brenntag Southwest takes that advice literally because she has just one very large customer. But whether reps are working with one customer or one hundred, Butler’s advice in this month’s…To read more — login/sign up
