Some people have unreasonable expectations or desires. That will always be the case and there is little we can do to change that. Somepeople will always have an inflated vision or opinion of what they are worth or what they are entitled to in a particular situation. Just because they feel that way does not mean we have to follow through and give in to their demands or requests. In other words, we do not have to agree with their feelings.

But we do need to understand why they feel that way. Just like the economy changes and the world around us changes, so do the feelings of our customers towards us and our businesses. what was perfectly acceptable 20 years ago is not today.

Imagine what you would have thought if 20 years ago one of your customers demanded that he be able to check on the status of an order without calling you or coming into the store. You would have thought he was crazy.

But today, we have online resources that make this not only possible, but commonplace. Imagine if someone requested that he have one place to go where he could get the prices and availability for unlimited products from unlimited vendors, all without leaving their home. Again, you would have dismissed them outright but today, search engines are a way of life that we now take for granted.

Customer Service Training teaches us to be responsive and to listen to our customers. It teaches us to give them more of what they want and listen to their needs and expectations. When we do this, we learn what our customers want and need and it gives us guidelines for creating the type of products and services we know there is a demand for.

Sure, some customers will always be unreasonable. But the demands and requests of today help form the product development and what the world of tomorrow will look like. So instead of dismissing those unreasonable customers, listen to them and just maybe you can catch a glimpse into an opportunity for tomorrow.

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First of all, we imporve our performance, or learn new skills by investing time and effort into the process. We might have someone tell us what we need to do, or what we need to say, but it is still up to us to practice these new things and integrate them into our lives.

So, what do you say to the people who claim they have no time to learn anything new? What do you say to the person who ants to learn but says they have no time? Well, for even the busiest person, self paced training is the way to go. With self paced training, you can learn wherever and whenever you want. Maybe it’s while riding the train or bus to work. Perhaps spending a few minutes reading on your lunch hour. Heck, you can even traing for a couple of minutes reading while you, uhhhh, do what most of us do every morning……

OK, that’s too much information right there but the point is, with self paced training, you can take little chucks of time and do something useful with them. You don;t have to take hours out of your life attending classes or seminars. You can structure self paced training into any schedule, no matter how packed or busy that schedule might be.

CSTI, The Customer Service Training Institute (http://www.infowhse.com) is the best place to find self paced Customer Service training materials on just baout any aspect of Customer Service. Their training modules are priced so that anyone can afford them while still providing top shelf quality training that gives you the skills you need to perofmr at your best.

For weveryone who doesn’t know where to start when it comes to treating customers properly, keep in mind that your customers are just like you and I. We all want to feel appreciated, needed, and respected. If you can keep that in the front of your mind and tailor your thoughts, actions, and words to fit those factors, you will have a great head start on learning new skills!

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We have all been through that and it is rarely a pleasent experience and is almost always a humbling one. The important thing is to learn from these experiences and try to keep one step ahead.

Whenever we find ourselves looking back at something that should have been obvious, we almost always discover that we failed to look at things from the right point of view. In other words, our judgments and thought process were distorted because we had some preconceived notion or bias.

In other words, we failed to keep an open mind.

That is why it is important to enlist the help of othersas often as you can. Two people will look at the same situation or problem and come up with different ideas, opinions, and thoughts. That is because how we look at things is structured based on our life experiences in our past.

This alone is reason enough to get others involved in looking at every process or aspect of your business. Ask your customers, suppliers, employees, and anyone else you can think of what they think about you and your business and how it could be changed for the better.

You don’t have to take all the comments and suggestions and implement the! After all, this is your business. But you should try and understand each and every response to see whether there is any validity to it and why that response was forthcoming. Based on this kind of input you will get more ideas on not only what needs changing, but also on how to best go about making those changes.

Don’t try and do everything yourself or think of everything yourself. If you do, both you, and your business, will suffer.

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There were a few things that were wrong and when I brought these to the attention of the staff, their reply was always “What would you like me to do, sir?” Perhaps they were being friendly or perhaps they just wanted to be able to do what I thought I wanted. But their reply kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

There is a difference between making the customer part of the resolution and making the customer responsible for the resolution. I believe we best serve the customers by offering them choices and making them part of the process that way.

for example, if the room was noisy, the staff could have said; “We could move you to another part of the hotel where it is quieter if you would like or is there something else you think might be a better idea?” At least they would have offerred some kind of alternative and not made me feel responsible to resolve the issue.

You see, customer service is all about finding the best resolution to a situation while making all parties relaxed and comfortable throughout the process. In other words, we want the experience to be as positive as possible without any negative aspects. If we can do that, we have a much better chance of keeping that customer happy and coming back.

That just makes sense, doesn’t it? A happy customer is a satisfied customer. So let’s make an effort to make our customer experience better by interacting better and more positively with every one of our customers.

After all, that’s what it’s all about, right???

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The single most important skill for anyone to have today is the ability to communicate effectively. Without the ability to communicate, your ability to succeed is made countless times harder. In sme cases, it might be impossible!

Good communication skills are the backbone and focal point of customer service training. Being able to communicate and listen effectively is what makes the foundation for the very best customer experience! But these skills teach you so much more. In fact, mastering these skills will have a profound effect not only on your business or career life, but in your personal life as well!

Imagine how much easier, and less stressful, your life would be if you had fewer misunderstandings, disagreements, fights, or bad situations? Imagine how much happier you would be if your life were less stressful and more productive? Even more important, how much would it mean to you and your family to have a happier environment at home?

Look, this is not an over-hyped sales pitch! These are honest to goodness benefits of having good interpersonal skills. Those people who know how to communicate properly and effectively are able to accomplish more in less time and also know how to get more of what they want and also make those around them happeir as well!

Customer Service Training is all about giving everyone more of what they want and making tough situations go away. These skills are all about making life easier and creating more time to do the things you need or want to do. Can you think of what you might do with some extra time each week?

The great thing is that it is not difficult to get these skills and it is not expensive either! Stayed tuned and we will show you how you can get these skills quickly and for about 11 cents a day!

The Customer Service Mall is a brand new site that showcases customer service training products, services, and resources from all over the world and brings them all together in one easy to navigate site. It is still in it’s infancy, and will be growing dramtically in the upcoming months, but it is a great resource for anyone interested in customer service training.

What we loved about the site is that it just content oriented. It’s not flashy, or over the top on appearance which some sites do to make you feel that their site is something special when it’s not. The site concentrates on bringing you the best and most relevant content possible.

When you have a free moment, go over to the site and check it out. Bookmark it as well because this is a great resource and it will only get better over time!

The Customer Service Mall

The Customer Service Training Institute

But no matter how large or small your business is, you still need to make certain that you provide value and satisfaction to your customers. Why? Because all these new opportunties created by the Internet have also increased the number of options available to every customer. So, yes, the opportunties are there, but you will have more people fighting for the same customers.

For example, 20 years ago, if you wanted to purchase a piece of lawn equipment, you would have had to go to your local dealer or home center and choose from their stock. Today, you search in a search engine and you can pick from hundreds of stores with a far greater inventory and purchase something that is exactly what you want!

So what does that mean to those of us in business? What it means is that we have to make every effort to provide the types of products and service that our customer want, need, and enjoy. We need to make purchasing from us enjoyable, profitable, and rewarding. In other words, we need to create a 100% positive customer experience.

Another reason for creating this type of experience is that one thing we have lost in today’s society is customer loyalty. People are no longer buying from a business just because they bought from them in the past. Today they are looking for the best value and best experience. If they don’t get it, they will look elsewhere.

Don’t give your customers any reason tolook elsewhere. Because if you do, you might lose a customer to the many other businesses out there trying to steal them from you!

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The Customer Service Training Blog

There was a fish market in the marketplace and it had a huge crowd of people around it. Most people watching but a lot of people buying as well. Why the huge crowd? Because the employees were creating a “show” around performing their daily tasks. They would yell orders across the room to each other and repeat them several times, throw fish to each other as they were ordered, and do other things that made it fun to watch.

In other owrds, they took the retail process and made it an experience. They gave people a reason to WANT to be there not HAVE to be there!

Customer Service and customer service training is all about making the retail or service process more enjoyable and less of an ordeal. The theory behind that is that people like to do pleasent things and avoid the unpleasent things in life. If you can make coming into your store, or visiting your website, and enjoyable thing, then people will come back time and time again and buy from you.

Think about the fish market and what they do from the customer service point of view. They created a positive experience that made people actually stop and watch even if they were not there to buy fish! They will likely recommend it to others and that creates more potential customers. There is no limit to the number of people who might become customers just because of the experience!

Oh, and by the way, their prices were very much on the high end and they were outselling their competitors several times over while I was there.

Makes you stop and think, doesnt it????

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http://www.infowhse.com

Usually when a business realizes that it has caused a problem, or problems, for a customer, they will take extraordinary measure to insure that the rest of the process goes smoothly. makes sense doesnt it? If you hurt a customer before, you would want to make as sure as you can that it does not happen again. this way you could start rebuilding the relationship, not risk blowing it to smithereens!

Yeah, you would think that. But evidently those folks at Security Dodge don’t use a rational thought process!

You see, I made another appointment the next morning for 5 O’clock that afternoon with the same guy who failed to return any of my calls in the time promised. And when I came into the dealership at 5 o’clock, he was nowhere to be found! He made me sit and wait for 20 minutes because he went somewhere else! Even when he knew I was coming!

Enough about Security Dodge and let’s move on to sound Customer Service philosophy.

Mistakes do happen no matter how many processes you put in place and no matter how many safeguards are used. Something will always finds it’s way to the “dark side” every so often. It is how we handle these situations that make all the difference in the world.

When mistakes do happen, and customers are inconvenienced or otherwise effected, it is critical that you do not compound the problem but allowing other things to go wrong afterwards. As we said, that is just common sense.

So the next time something goes wrong, take the opportuntiyt to step up and show your customers that mistakes bother you and that you care about them. Turn the situationinto an opportuntiy and not a situation where something else is allowed to make matters worse.

The Customer Service Training Institute
http://www.infowhse.com

But sometimes discussing real life bad events can provide a much more powerful message. That is what we have here in this post. It outline a recent experience I had with Security Dodge located in Amityville, New York.

I first contacted them about a vehicle that I was to pick up from their dealership. However, I would leave message after message after message and no one would call me back! Several times when I tried to speak to an actual rep. I was hung up on! Not a good sign!!!

Finally someone from Security dodge called me back after I left him 2 messages. magically, he never received the first one and he told me he would call back in 15 minutes. Two hours later he called. Another bad sign. he said they could not locate my vehicle.

This past Tuesday I arrived at the office to a message from Security dodge that my vehicle was ready for pick up. It had magically either appeared or had been found. I called the person who said he would check on the paperwork and call me back in 1 minute. 45 minutes later, no call! (Sensing apattern here????)

I called him abck and was told that the paperwork had been completed. I told him I would be down in one hour. I arrived at the dealer and this person wasn’t there. I was told to wait after they contacted him. I waited for 20 minutes until this person came back and then told me it was not inspected and that I wuld have to come back again tomorrow. I was assured the car would be inspected the next morning and would be able to be picked up.

The next day I called Security Dodge at 2 o’clock because no one had called me as yet. Security Dodge told me the car would not be ready until after 5 PM!!!!

Granted problems can happen with the best of intentions but this entire experience was one that was full of empty or false promises, total disrespect for the customer, and a complete disregard for the needs of the customer. Here is abreakdown of what Security Dodge did that violated so many basic Customer Service rules:

1) Not returning phone calls or at least acknowledging them is a cardinal sin when it comes to customer service. As time goes by without a return call customer feelings start to get worse and it becomes more and more difficult to satisfy a customer.

2) Never set unreasonable or false expectations. Security dodge employees when they did return a call make promises to call back shortly and then never did. Out of 5 or 6 commitments, not a single one was even close to being fulfilled! We did not ask for the commitments, they were given freely and then not followed up on.

3) Failing to make the situation better when things do go wrong. Security Dodge, after making us come down uneccesarily the night before, should have made getting the car inspected and prepped a priority. Instead, they did the opposite and made a customer feel that they not only did not feel this was an important situation, the tone of Security Dodge made it clear they could care less whether a customer was satisfied or not.

Needless to say we will never enter this dealership again and our view of Chrysler will likely never be the same either. Dealers are the “face” of a company and when a dealer treats their customers as poorly as we were treated by Security Dodge, the company takes the hit.

So if you are in need of a car or van, stay clear of those good folks over at Security Dodge. Better yet, why not check out a Ford or Chevy vehicle??

After all, this is a large purchase and the last thing you need is to give your money to a dealer and then be treated so poorly. Both now and in the future.

More on this in a future post.

The Customer Service Training Institute
http://www.infowhse.com