Advanced Customer Service

Presented by Amgad Salah Senior Customer Services

Agenda
What is Customer Service How is the Customer What is CRM Basic Needs of the Customers on Telephone The Dimensions of Customer Service What is Consultative Customer Service Consultative Customer Service Techniques Handling Angry Customer Handling Abusive Customers Telephone Etiquette. Role Plays

What is customer service? Customer service is the sum total of what an organisation does to meet customer expectations and produce customer satisfaction

Work Force Terminologies

Customer Service generally involves: service teamwork and service partnerships actions by a number of people in a team or in several different organisations.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM is the development and maintenance of mutually beneficial long-term relationships with strategically significant customers (Buttle, 2000)

CRM is an IT enhanced value process, which identifies, develops, integrates and focuses the various competencies of the firm to the voice of the customer in order to deliver long-term superior customer value, at a profit to well identified existing and potential customers. (Plakoyiannaki and Tzokas, 2001)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Trust The willingness to rely on the ability, integrity, and motivation of one company to serve the needs of the other company as agreed upon implicitly and explicitly.
Value The ability of a selling organisation to satisfy the needs of the customer at a comparatively lower cost or higher benefit than that offered by competitors and measured in monetary, temporal, functional and psychological terms

Benefits of CRM:
In addition to trust and value, CRM benefits are:

Shared or distributed database Cost reduction Better customer service get a 360 degree view of your customer Increased customer satisfaction Better customer retention.

Benefits of CRM:
Loyal customers. Improve targeting your marketing campaign activities , allowing you to spend your budget wisely. More new business Improve cross selling and up selling

The Basic Needs of the Customer on the Phone 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
14.

Help. Respect and appreciation. Comfort, compassion and support. To be listened to with empathy. Satisfaction. Trust and reliability. A friendly, smiling face. Understanding. To be made to feel important. A quality product or service at a fair price. Taken seriously. Guaranteed immediate action. Assured the problem will not happen again. Compensated in some way.

Elements of good customer service

Professionalism Personal attention Accurate information Genuine concern Reliable Follow up

Professionalism:

Be informed & gain knowledge. Anticipate questions from customer Use thank you and please. Control background noise. Dont use office-specific jargon or acronyms.

Assure the customer: Self confidence Positive tone Smile in your voice

Personal attention
Personal attention: starts with the first encounter with the customer
It is an ongoing, lifetime exchange we use with our customers to maintain their life time value and ensure their loyalty

Accurate Information:
Do what you said. Dont promise the customer something you cant do Use easy-to understand examples Dont blame others Dont use outdated material

Genuine Concern

Use empathy Dont judge callers feelings Dont let one negative call bleed into another

Reliable Follow-up

responsibility to carry out promised action

Positive attitude

The Engine that drives excellent service forward.

Benefits of positive attitude:

Creates goodwill with caller Reduces the potential for irritating the caller Lessens stress for you Helps you enjoy your job more Creates a more productive work environment

Projecting positive attitude

Keep organized work space Make conscious effort to be positive laugh and think of positive things. Link being positive with consequences Choose role model who is positive Focus on the callers needs instead of your own Feelings are a choice keep your problems away Feel proud of your success Pass on the positive attitude to the customer

Turn negative attitude into positive:

This is our POLICY. Its a computer problem. Your file must be lost. We have never received your complaint. Thats NOT my job.

Creating lifetime Customers

Listen

Apologize Fix Follow up

L.A.F.F

Listen
Most people either speak or prepare to speak or listen to judge and criticize. Levels of listening:

Ignoring ( You do not listen) Preventive: (Humming , you act as if you are listening) Selective: ( Listen to a part and another not) Attentive: (Focus on the words not empathic listening) Empathic: ( The best, Gets what behind the words)

Apologize sincerely
Saying that youre sorry doesnt imply that you or your company did anything wrong. It simply conveys that you truly regret that the customers experience was not satisfactory.
Apologizing not only helps you to build a rapport with customers, but also conveys that you care and want to make things right.

Apologize sincerely (continued)

Seek first to understand then to be understood

We were taught how to talk, walk, write but to listen.???? You are 100% responsible for communication with the others whether you are sending or receiving

Asking Questions

Ask lots of questions and listen intensely to the answers. By asking questions you remain in control of the conversation. Make it two ways communication
Types: Open Ended Questions Closed Ended Questions Confirmation Questions Personal Questions

1- Open Ended Questions

Open Ended Questions work well when you wish to get the customer talking and involved in the conversation

Who

When

Why

Where

What

How

2- Closed ended Questions

Use Closed Questions if you need to gather a lot of information in a short time or you are attempting to confirm information you already have.
They usually end with Yes or No

3- Confirmation questions

These questions help you confirm your understanding of the customers needs. They also give the customer the opportunity to clarify what they need or add more information to their message. Ensure that you state the confirmation in the form of a question so that the customer can respond appropriately.

4- Personal questions

May the customer resist to give personal information So, I have to

Explain the reason to take information Use Can I phrase

Why do customers leave company????

Statistics (continued) Out of 100 dissatisfied customers only 4% are willing to voice their complaints

Statistics (continued) Each satisfied customer tells 5 persons Each dissatisfied customer tells 16+ persons

Fix and Follow up

Fix

Follow up

Reasons customers become complainers

1.
2. 3.

They had to wait too long.

Their expectations were not met. They feel helpless, powerless, frustrated or victimized.

4.
5. 6. 7. 8.

They feel no one listens to them.

They were treated poorly or discourteously. They were told to do something by a staff person and it was wrong. They have personal prejudices against you or your staff. They want to control and manipulate.

9.
10.

They had their integrity questioned by staff.

Staff argued with them.

Handling Complainer customers

1. 2. 3. 4. Stay Calm. Let the customer vent. Deal with emotions first. Focus on the problem.

5. 6.
7. 8.

Avoid emotional triggers words. Gently confront abusive & accept the anger.
Let customer know that you want to help him. Know when you quit.

Are complaints good or bad.

Complaints are one of the best research tools you can use Complaints tell you exactly what youve done wrong Complaints are one of the best resources for new products or services

Complaints

Improvement

Customer Satisfaction

So, thank your customer for highlighting your FLAWS

Golden Method for customer resolution Anger preludes rationality; angry customers cant rationalize!

Golden Method for complaint resolution Ventilation is crucial:

1. 2. when the customers are angry, they want to express their anger through venting. Dont interrupt or tell him to calm down.

Golden Method for complaint resolution

You should acknowledge the customers anger.

Dont ignore the customers anger.

Work Force Terminologies

Login Duration. The total Login time for the agent (ideal stat , Not Ready Shift Duration. The total time for the agent from the first Login to the last Logout

Work Force Terminologies

Adherence To Schedule. A general term that refers to how well agents adhere to their schedules. Can include both a) how much time they were available to take calls during their shifts, including the time spent handling calls and the time spent waiting for calls to arrive (also called Availability), and b) when they were available to take calls (also called Compliance or Adherence).

Work Force Terminologies

Call Forcing. An ACD feature that automatically delivers calls to agents who are available and ready to take calls. They hear a notification that the call has arrived (e.g. a beep tone), but do not have to press a button to answer the call.
Call Ringing. In this case the agent must press a button to answer the call

Reports

Reports

Operation reports: - All reports Which include the project figures and reflect the project performance SO, We can determine the project status versus the Project targets or the benchmark

Reports

Agent reports: (Agent Performance) - All reports Which include the agent figures and reflect the agent performance SO, We can determine the agent status versus the targets or the benchmark