What's your mindset about customers?
What's your worst customer service experience? I bet you have a story about receiving lousy service, I know I have a few. On the flipside - do you have a story about giving lousy customer service? Ouch, this is more difficult to contemplate because we naturally see the world from our own point of view - more about this later.
Whatever work you do, you have customers - whether they pay you directly or not. If you work in an organisation you will have internal as well as external customers.
The word customer contains the word custom which means habit. So a customer is someone who buys or interacts with you more than once, and this suggests some kind of relationship. Just like other relationships, customer service can be good or bad depending on the mindset you bring to it.
When I was about 12 years old I started working in my father's hardware store. I was an enthusiastic young man and began to learn about the products, becoming knowledgeable and therefore important (in my mind). One day I got into an argument with a customer about the proper definition of a product, my father stepped in, agreed with the customer and sold the product. I was furious because I knew I was right and confronted my father about this. His response was, "Son, I know you were right, but do you want to be right or do you want to be rich?"
This encounter impacted me, but it was not until I studied NLP and Neuro-Semantics that I really understood how being focused on your own self and needs can have the opposite effect. The famous sales trainer Zig Ziglar said it this way:
"If you help enough other people get what they want, you can have anything you want."
With this frame of mind we can prosper by meeting and exceeding the customer's expectations.
If you would like to develop a customer service mindset in your organisation, then our Exceptional Customer Service training is just what you are looking for.
Self Leadership International is pleased to announce a new product - Customer Service Excellence.
This training has been co-developed with our new trainer and coach Anisha Kaul.
New Trainer
We would like to take this opportunity to welcome Anisha Kaul to the team.
Anisha holds a Masters Degree in Organisational Psychology and is a trained Executive Coach and a Management Consultant.
In addition to executive coaching, Anisha specialises in customer service training and team-building.