A lot has been said and read on good customer service and the impact it has on profitability and customer loyalty. We come across at least a few occasions everyday in our day to day life where we have to interact with a customer service person. How does one experience differ from the other ? Is it the service that catches your attention or is it the person who serves you that leaves a mark on you , or is it both ?
I have been in the customer service business for 24+ years and have been directly and currently indirectly providing customer service. Coming out fresh from the engineering college, my first job was a memorable one, that not only exposed me to harsh realities of life but also gave me a reality check that I should now forget my good old college days. By direct, I mean that earlier I was a customer facing engineer and in my later role, I was providing remote support to our global customers.
I joined a third party maintenance company who was providing on site support for the mainframe customers. The mainframe computers those days were primarily from IBM, Unisys, DEC and were gigantic in size with removable disk pack drives, vacuum column tape drives, punch card machines and line printers. The customer I was asked to go was one of those with Burroughs mainframe and in the business of power generation and supply. The center were I was placed was the 24×7 data center and I was an on the job trainee with a senior engineer placed on the site. The first few days were just reading the manuals and watching my senior on how to troubleshoot problems.
I remember that it was hardly a week or so and as usual being very enthusiastic, I reached the customer place on or before my usual time (9 am) and read the manuals and I was interrupted by an operator asking me to check a printer who had stopped printing. My heart started to pound as it was my very first call that I was supposed to handle alone. In front of the printer, I was just checking a few basic things and suddenly a hand pulled me away from the printer and asked me to get out of the computer room. Shocked and terrified, I looked at the person doing that and it was the data center manager. He asked his operators not to allow a “fresher” to touch his expensive equipment and asked me to stay away from the data center till the senior engineer comes. Later on, the senior engineer came and took control of the situation and explained to the data center manager that he would mentor and coach me towards servicing the equipment and that he would take utmost care that I wouldn’t touch the equipment until he gives a go.
This episode left me thinking whether I have taken a right decision by taking a career like this. I couldn’t sleep the whole night but finally I decided that I would give my best shot at it and let my work do the talking. From that day, I slogged day and night to learn things and within a year, I could manage the mainframe computer on my own. It was then that the senior engineer left the company and I was given the independent charge of this account. The data center manager was totally at my mercy as we didn’t have any other “expert” who could handle this installation which was running on old and obsolete mainframe. So much so that he fought with my manager to give me promotion or else he would go for another vendor to do support as he relies on me for providing support.
The tables had turned and the person who literally threw me out of his office was fighting for me and was wanting me to continue to serve his data center.
Two things I took as a learning from this experience and my first job.
- There is no substitute for hard work and technical competency is needed to resolve the customer problem. These qualities are assumed to be there while taking up any job so I wont be discussing much in this article. We will focus on the 2nd one in depth.
- There has to be some kind of determination or the X-factor that a person seeking customer service should have. What is this X-factor or what makes him/her a better customer support person than another? Why does a customer prefers to be serviced by the same person again and again even though the same service can be provided by others.
Well, there are three main ingredients which form the X-factor. These qualities also form the basic building blocks for anyone in customer service.
- Empathy
- Responsiveness
- Attitude
We shall discuss them individually.
1. Empathy.
The book defines empathy as “a capability to share your feelings and understand another’s emotion” (the another person in our context is the customer we want to service). In my example above, my first reaction to the customers hostility was to retaliate but when I put myself into his shoes that night, I realized that he was probably right and at that time, I had to empathize with him to realize where he was coming from. This is customer service is an acquired art and will come through experience. Only that one should be patient and should have a desire to help.
2. Responsiveness.
What does the customer want ?
To answer a few of these questions, here is a list of some minimum things that a customer would expect and various surveys that were done also confirm this.
- The customer needs someone to listen to his problem and help him.
- Someone to keep following up with him on the same problem without him having to keep calling support line again and again.
- He would like to be heard by the same person so that he wouldn’t have to repeat his problem again and again.
One word which would cover all the 3 points above is “Responsiveness”. This is the number one quality and a must for all those who are already in customer services or are aspiring to be one.
Some questions to ask whether you have this in you.
- Do you check and respond to all your mails on time? (Time management).
- Does someone have to remind you again to do the needful?
- Do you stick to your commitments ? (to call the customer once you have committed that you will call, no matter if you have a solution ready for him yet or no)
If you have this in you or are committed to build this quality this would go a big way in coming out winner. If you lack this quality, then again it is an acquired art and should try to build this capability and see how it can create wonders for you.
3. Attitude
Other thing that is important and makes one a better customer customer service person is “Attitude”. Having the right or wrong attitude in all the career options may need to have different qualities. In relation to customer service, ask these questions to see if you have this quality.
- Do you try to offer help the customer and direct him to the right place even if it doesn’t lie in your area and follow up with the appropriate person?
- Are you motivated to come to office every morning and keen to talk to new customers, new problems ?
- Do you constantly see anyways that you can make the customers be more satisfied and pursue that with your management ? Example: A process enhancement which would prevent the customer to be kept on hold for a long time.
- Do you keep your cool even when you know the customer is wrong and is persisting ?
- Are you an avid listener?
A note about “technical competency” which is thought by most people as the only thing needed to serve the customers. I feel that and as I mentioned earlier, although it is needed, I consider that this is something everyone should have at a reasonable level. However, the above qualities will ultimately differentiate a good customer service versus an mediocre service. In reality, the customer hardly cares whether you are too senior, too technical and have more in depth knowledge. All he wants someone to help him to solve his problem or get him to the right person who can do so.
I have tried this myself and have tried to influence my colleagues, managers and business partners and am sure they would have been benefited. In my current role as a manager, I have tried to mentor my team with these qualities. Once a person listens to the customer with empathy, is responsive , has the right attitude and is technically competent, he/she can start seeing the results in form of customer appreciations via the feedback programs which give a great feeling of “satisfaction” and motivates him/her to do even more.
Now come to the last thing I want to discuss and something for the people who already have the above qualities and are practicing the same and willing to take it to the next step i.e. the customer wanting to be served by you again and again. Here are some suggestions that will help you go beyond what is needed but will add value in serving the customers.
- For a problem that they are solving for the customer, even if he/she is not on duty, continues to follow up on the issue and ensures that the issue is being progressing well.
- Asks for continuous feedback on how he can improve, looks on for opportunities to give a better experience to the customer.
- Collaborates with other teams in order to get the issue fixed for the customer and also provide feedback to the management on improving service to customers.
- Documenting and creating knowledge for others to use if they encounter similar problem.
I started my career as a mainframe engineer as a resident engineer at the customer data center providing 24×7 support. Those days were of centralized computing and the mainframe was the single point of failure for the organization and hence the engineers supporting them had to be on their toes, should there be any outage. We couldn’t do without having engineers onsite, keeping spares onsite and have an escalation path to ensure system stays up as there would be many people who would have to sit idle if there was any outage. Customer service /satisfaction depended on the up-time, how knowledgeable the engineer who managed the systems was and the escalation efficiency. From customer management perspective, there was a team dedicated to serve this customer who managed day to day activities.