With the holidays upon us, it’s a good time of year to talk about gratitude. At Fabricare we just sent out thank you cards to our top customers known as our “Fab Faves.”
How does a customer go from threatening to call the Better Business Bureau, making negative posts on Facebook and doing whatever she can to defame us, to apologizing an hour later?
I think the short answer is to have the facts on your side.
Even though “perception is often reality,” when push comes to shove, the facts usually win out.
I’m passionate about service.
I enjoy serving others and finding ways to make their experience more enjoyable. I also appreciate good service and am truly grateful when it’s exceptional.
I started this blog with the goal of helping to create a culture of exceptional service in our organization.
The thinking was simple.
When I sat down to grab a bite before a flight, my table was complete with an iPad and credit card scanner.
Cool.
Being a service geek, thoughts of how good this would be raced through my mind.
You could say that pulling a paying customer out of his seat and dragging him off the plane is the ultimate in bad customer service.
Obviously, United Airlines is addressing this in more ways than one. (An impending lawsuit will do that – which was settled out of court.)
But what caused this to get so out of hand? How could this have been prevented? What’s the absolute worst occurrence that could happen in your organization that can be compared to United’s debacle – and how can you avoid it?
One customer service technique that we learned from Zingerman’s customer service training is the use of a Code Red or Code Green scoring system.
Part of great customer service is dealing with customer complaints – unless you don’t have any (yea right!?).
What business doesn’t have a problem or “misunderstanding” from time to time?
In the dry cleaning industry, you get a lot of practice at problem-solving. Industry statistics show that 90% of the problems are either a result of the customer or the manufacturer.
I thought I’d kick off this new blog with my top eleven customer service concepts.
Why concepts?
Because when you embrace the concepts then your every action shows the customer that you care about them.