Customers like to feel special. Feeling special is a wonderful feeling you can give your customers by over-delivering in every area. Exceed their expectations! Imagine sending an e-mail with a question to a retailer and expecting a response the next day, only to receive one with half an hour. Would you feel special?

Another way to make customers feel special is to stay in touch with them. With your mailing list on computer, this is easy. You can send online holiday and even birthday greetings without the expense of supplies and postage. You can include helpful advice on various topics or offer something for free that they would appreciate. If you do, make sure the quality of the product is at least equal to the quality of your products, including the presentation or packaging. You always want to appear to be putting their needs ahead of yours.

Follow-up service after the sale should be just as good as or better than the service provided before the sale. Have you received excellent service before a sale then been put on hold for an hour when there was a problem with your purchase? Or got a customer service representative that obviously wanted to get you off the line as soon as possible? How did this make you feel about doing further business with the company? What if they had responded to your problem with the same excellent service they had given you in selling you the product? Would it make you want to be a loyal customer?

Honesty is a major component of a successful business. Few things are more infuriating than to invest in a product only to find out that you didn’t get what was promised. You should always project honesty about the quality, use, and benefits of your products. If enough customers get angry about false promises, they can put a company out of business. Honesty can be viewed as a major component in good customer service that builds trust and consequent repeat business.

Customer service personnel should be well trained. Having well-trained sales and marketing employees is only half the job. Sales people get customers, but customer service representatives keep customers. Consumers dislike a company that has well-trained sales people and poorly trained or untrained customer service representatives. Bad publicity travels fast and reverses marketing efforts. You should spend as much time training your customer service representatives as you do your sales team.

The quality of your customer service should be at least as good as that of your competition or you won’t keep customers long term. Reputable companies develop the trust of consumers and have the least trouble selling their products and services. The marketplace admires how they operate and treat their customers. One of the tenets of a reputable company is its commitment to providing excellent customer service. When a company has great customer service even the most difficult customer will leave feeling better.

Customer service should be of a consistent quality. You can walk into any McDonalds in the world and know what you will get. The food is prepared everywhere the same way. What if you walked into a McDonalds and got well-prepared french fries one day and badly prepared french fries the next day? The lack of consistency would discourage you from coming back. Consumers seek the same consistency from the companies they do business with that franchisees are known for providing.

What about customers who lie? Even when you think a customer is lying, it’s wise to give him the benefit of the doubt. Only a very few customers will actually take advantage of you. Procter and Gamble once received a complaint about a bad diaper, and the company sent her several cartons of diapers in response. The company sure got good word-of-mouth advertising by that action instead of bad publicity. Any amends made to customers can be considered a cost of doing business.

If you create, project, and maintain a positive image of your company, the competition will have to work hard to steal your regular and prospective customers. Developing brands work on projecting images. Sony and Lexus, for example, both project the image of quality products and superior customer care. If two products or services are of equal quality and one sells better than another, especially at a higher price, image is the reason.

These tips will help improve any company that applies them. By improving customer service, they will improve the retention rate.

Many call centers conduct monitoring, training, and reporting to some degree. They feel comfortable with their service as long as there are no major customer complaints. However, an absence of complaints does not mean a center provides superior service. Quality requires an ongoing initiative to make quality assurance a way of life at your call center. Then it will stand out from the crowd and attract more and better clients.

To accomplish this, first integrate quality into every aspect of hiring and training call center representatives. It can be tricky to select individuals with a knack for providing good customer service, but you can begin by designing screening tools based on the attributes of your current employees who excel at their job. Determine the skill sets they use and how they approach their work. You can also use this information as a basis for conducting interviews and screening applicants for their potential.

New representatives or agents should receive training in quality customer service from the first day. Intensive orientation and training allow the new hires to learn and practice good customer service skills from the start. Agents will not only understand what is expected of them, but also have the skills to accomplish it.

Some call centers require two weeks of intensive training for new hires, with role playing and practice with simulated calls before they are allowed to work on the floor. After an intensive orientation and practicing calls, new agents feel more confident in their ability to serve callers. They are also informed of the company’s resources and how to assist customers with questions. Some companies also require attendance at a refresher course every six months. Call centers that provide excellent training tend to win awards for the quality of their customer service.

Ideally, supervisors and managers can be recruited from among the call center associates. If not, those selected should undergo the same training as a new call center hire. Managers must be able to understand the call center agent’s position from within, and they should also learn the quality assurance representative’s position. Managers should be able to provide interim training and counseling for the call center associates and assess quality assurance issues.

At many call centers, production reports are reviewed daily or even weekly. Although these reports are useful, they don’t address problems as they are happening. Some call centers use real-time reporting programs that identify problems quickly and avoid customer dissatisfaction. Statistics can be viewed continuously and those falling outside the norm can be quickly addressed. Taking too little time on calls can be as bad a sign as taking too much time. Good customer service doesn’t mean rushing customers and getting them off the phone as quickly as possible. Real-time reporting helps managers quickly identify good performers and assess their methods. By determining what makes them good, managers can strive to train other agents to duplicate their efforts.

Call monitoring will continue to be an important tool in any quality assurance program. You can add a program to your system that allows shadow monitoring, enabling you to see what the agent is typing while he or she is talking, thereby identifying problems with software and database usage.

Ensuring the highest quality service at your call center shouldn’t be left entirely up to the quality assurance team. If you integrate quality assurance into all your processes, you’ll be able to watch client satisfaction skyrocket.

Training employees in the art of providing good customer service can be an inexpensive improvement that results in increased sales and business. Offering regular refresher courses can be easily accomplished and add to your company’s profitability. Your employees should have good people skills and enjoy working with people. One employee with a bad attitude can have an impact, especially on a small business.

Sometimes customers can be difficult. They may be complaining, demanding, picky, unreasonable, know-it-all, and faultfinding. There’s no way to avoid these customers. Overwhelmed by emotion, angry people cannot reason because anything you might say to help them gets filtered through their anger. Trying to solve their problems or negotiate with them doesn’t do any good. However, you can listen to them and let them vent their emotions. After they have their say, the first thing you should do is apologize. Recent research shows that fewer than half of angry customers receive an apology and that the fastest way to diffuse a situation is with two little words: “I’m sorry.” Most people simply want their feelings to be acknowledged. They don’t want to be ignored or made to feel that their situation is unimportant.

The customer is not always right, and some people try to feel better by making someone else feel bad. Being a captive audience, a store clerk or customer service representative is easy prey for displaced aggression. Employees should understand that being courteous to customers does not mean accepting abuse from them. But saying something like “I’m sorry. Thank you for letting me know that you’re unhappy with…” will usually calm even the angriest of customers.

“D” is for Dedicated. The moment a customer needs help, the dedicated customer service representative swings into action. The customer should be made to feel that he is priority number one, not that he’s on the bottom of a list and will have to wait his turn.

“E” is for Empowered. The empowered customer service representative is given what he needs to be able to provide outstanding customer service. Empowerment begins with training, the provision of tools, and the recognition of individual potential. Empowerment is nurtured by showing trust and support, listening to representatives and helping them resolve problems, and removing any obstacles or conditions that make their work harder.

“L” is for Linked. The members of a customer care team must work together and share information. Great customer service cannot be achieved by individuals working in isolation. Linking should also extend beyond the team to include all other employees of the company in mutual support. A company with employees who work together for the mutual benefit of the company and its customers will quickly rise to the top.

“I” is for Informed. In the past the customer service department was often neglected by management. Representatives, seen as workers at the bottom of the totem pole, went untrained and uninformed. Today more and more companies have realized the importance of these front-line staff and are treating them like royalty. After all, they are representing the company not only to established customers, but to new and potential customers as well. How customers are treated is how business goes. Customers deal first with customer service representatives. These representatives should receive thorough training on the company’s products, systems, policies, and procedures. They should know how to solve problems, what to do when a customer has a crisis, where to find needed information, when to ask for outside assistance, who to contact in specific situations, and how to build customer satisfaction and trust. They should be informed in all aspects of the company and its products and services.

“V” is for Valued. Before customer service representatives can value their work and your customers, you must show them that you value them. If they feel like valuable employees doing work that is valued, they will produce far greater results than if they feel insignificant in an insignificant job. You can emphasize that you value them by providing training, asking for their opinions and feedback, responding to their needs and questions, acknowledging their contribution, praising them, and offering financial incentives to the degree possible and other rewards. Rewards might include gift certificates or small gifts on appropriate occasions.

“E” is for Experienced. An experienced customer service representative learns to be knowledgeable but not overly technical with customers. He or she shows confidence but not arrogance, friendliness but not familiarity, helpfulness but not insistence, and attentiveness but not intrusiveness. The representative may be smartly dressed but never overpowering. It takes experience to automatically strike the right balance and quickly shift to a new balance for the next customer.

“R” is for Representative. The customer service representative should always act in the best interests of the company. From personal appearance to speech and action, the representative should project a strong, positive image of the company and a sincere interest in helping the customer. At the conclusion of a contact with the representative, the customer should feel happy about doing business with a company whose employees are warm and friendly as well as efficient and knowledgeable.

“Y” is for “Your” Responsibility. The customer service representative accepts responsibility for his role as a front-line representative for the company. He knows that to a customer, he IS the company.

Not just customer service representatives, but all employees of a company are responsible for delivering good customer service, and delivery means being a dedicated, empowered, linked, informed, valued, and experienced representative who accepts responsibility.