Here’s a summary of my comments from a wide-ranging conversation with a blogger about mistakes employees make that prevent customer engagement and make them unhappy.
While no one believes that customers are really always right, CSRs and Sales Reps should believe that customers are always critically important to their jobs and the success of the company. And they should act like that all the time. Problems occur when employees make these mistakes:
* Not welcoming customers who enter the business warmly and enthusiastically.
* Not looking and sounding like helping them find what they need, answer their questions or solve their problems is the most important thing they have to do that day … and it’s their pleasure to do so.
* Not treating customers the way the customers want to be treated, not the way the CSRs want to be treated themselves.
* Not following department guidelines or procedures, assuming there are some to start with.
* Not responding quickly to customer calls or emails.
* Not listening – talking too much or too soon.
* Not asking enough good questions to get to the core of the problem and intended outcomes
* Over-promising and under-delivering. Making promises the CSR or the company can’t or won’t keep.
* Not following up effectively after a solution is achieved to keep the problem from happening again.
Engaging customers and keeping them happy is simple, but not usually easy. That’s why they call it work.