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How to Get Better Service This Holiday Season
By: Patrick Maguire
Book Chapter: Human-to-Human Service
Posted: 12/20/2011
Today’s post comes courtesy of customer service expert, Jeff Toister, founder and owner of Toister Performance Solutions. Thanks to Jeff for including me:
Every year I compile a list of tips for getting better customer service during the holiday season. This year, I decided to ask for tips from some of the customer service authors and bloggers I admire most. Their wonderful suggestions form a list that is sure to result in outstanding customer service.
Treat employees with respect (Patrick Maguire)
Patrick Maguire’s terrific blog, I’m Your Server Not Your Servant, highlights customer service experiences from the employees’ point of view. He reminds us that getting better service starts with treating employees with respect.
We need to remember that human workers are not the same as self-checkout stations, and that workers should be treated with the same mutual respect that we would expect if we were doing their jobs. If you treat workers with common courtesy and make a sincere effort to have some fun and make a genuine connection with them, your chances of receiving excellent service will improve dramatically.
Be engaging (Steve Curtin)
Visit Steve Curtin’s customer service blog and you’ll see a picture of him holding a pineapple. Why a pineapple? The pineapple is a universal symbol of hospitality. (Seriously, who could get upset when there is a pineapple involved?) Naturally, he recommends being a more hospitable customer.
When a customer glances at an employee’s name tag and uses her name at the beginning of the interaction along with a smile and eye contact, it has a disarming effect that quickly breaks the ice. The customer may also ask, “How is your day?” or compliment the employee by saying, “You look like the one in charge…” Just as employees tend to reflect the dispositions of their supervisors (for better or worse), they can also reflect the dispositions of the customers they serve.
Be reasonable (Shep Hyken)
Shep Hyken, best-selling author of the Amazement Revolution, also writes a very insightful customer service blog. One of his suggestions is that a reasonable customer will almost always get better service.
Let’s start with a confrontational situation to illustrate the point. There is an old story that goes something like this:
A passenger approached the airline representative about his lost luggage. Obviously upset, he more than complained. He yelled and made derogatory remarks about the airline. The airline employee’s response was simple. “Sir, I can see you’re upset. Right now there are only two people who care about your lost luggage and you are starting to make one of them upset.”
The moral of the story is that as a customer, you can’t get what you want by being unreasonable. If there is a problem, a level headed approach with reasonable suggestions will always win over confrontational arguments.
Place your irritability on hold before complaining (Guy Winch)
Sometimes, we have customer service complaints that need to be resolved. Who better to give advice on complaint resolution than Guy Winch, a psychotherapist who literally wrote the book on how to complain the right way (check out The Squeaky Wheel)? Here are complaint tips from an article he wrote for Psychology Today on how to resolve Christmas shopping complaints.
Complaint in person: “We should arm ourselves with receipts, patience, civility, and authentic smiles.”
Complaint via toll-free hotline: “We should place our irritability on hold (even if we are placed there too), remain calm and present the facts simply.”
Complaint via Twitter: “If you do tweet a complaint about a company, be fair, especially if you have oodles of followers. Remember, frustration fades but tweets are forever.
Don’t take yourself too seriously (Write the Company)
Write the Company’s blog features witty customer service correspondence with real companies. Read between the lines and you’ll realize that his tip is a great reminder to not take ourselves too seriously.
Getting better customer service during the holidays requires a secret weapon. This should not be confused with producing a concealed weapon, which has also proven to be very effective in getting the full attention of service personnel. One secret weapon to consider is sympathy. Not for the service representative, for yourself. You’ll be amazed by how much faster and more compassionately you’ll be treated by simply taping a slightly soiled white gauze pad over an eye or applying fake blood under your nose with even more on a tissue. Holidays are a crazy time to be a customer, so go crazy!
Enjoy the holidays and good luck getting outstanding customer service this holiday season!
5 Responses to “How to Get Better Service This Holiday Season”
Leave a Reply
Permalink | Posted in Human-to-Human Service | 5 Comments »
My favorite “secret weapon” is a sense of humor.
Well Pat, here goes. I guess I’m a little honked off.
If you want better service, then be a better customer. Realize that you are not the only one on line nor the only table in the section. Everyone has a lot more to do right now, so do not expect that you will get everything you want immediately. Be flexible and patient. If you are seated in a full service dining room, do not act like you’re at the McDonald’s drive thru. You will not get faster service, you will just get pissed off service. And really? Do you really need 3 glasses of water with no ice, half filled with hot water and two slices of lemon? Do you really have to round your tip down so that your credit card bill comes to an even number? REALLY? REALLY? An extra 39 cents would kill you? I’m sorry that you have to subsidize my wage($2.65)but how much do you think that ahi would cost if you didn’t? How much do you think it costs ME for you to sit at my table for 2 hours??? Don’t even start with no shows.
NO! The reason people don’t get outstanding customer service is because they are not willing to take the time to be a decent customer. They are whiny, impatient, self centered and over- complicate their transactions. I had a Vegan guy today who wanted to order a portobello sandwich with no mushrooms and no boursin. That left lettuce and onions. WTF? I kindly pointed him to the veggie patty substitute, which if he had READ THE EFFING MENU, he would have found! Oh and BTW? MAYO IS NOT DAIRY!
This once, with apologies, I’m gonna voice my opposition to the Server Not Servant vibe.
It’s the holiday season and those who’re serving others have chosen to be there during the busiest few weeks for retail and ancillary businesses of the year.
Now, I’m the last to raise the “the customer is always right” flag. However I resent the timbre of Patrick’s entire post — as if we need somehow to make extra preparations to ensure our satisfaction this season.
Why “arm” oneself, as a contributor says. Why not just act for real and state what you need and get it over with should you have a complaint.
Perhaps the best advice under a title of this sort would be “hey, just state your case and make your needs known and you’ll get what you want.”
And for that small minority of those who’re a little unsure of themselves, “don’t go into a situation blasting with both barrels when a simple question will do — a million more bees are attracted to a teaspoon of honey than a gallon of vinegar.”
Let’s just respect each other.
Happy holidays, everyone.
Thanks for re-posting this list, Patrick.
The holidays can sometimes lead to stress for customers, employees, and even bloggers! Even normally terrific employees will occasionally direct their frustrations towards respectful and reasonable customers. It shouldn’t be that way, but we’re all human so it sometimes is. These tips have all proven to be helpful to me an many others in those situations.
Thanks again for sharing!
@Paulie
Don’t get me wrong I’m not being disrespectful or anything, but I’d beg to differ with your opinion. To me the majority of the articles brought up in the post are in the same spirit as what you said. It’s about drawing people’s attention to the fact that there is a right and wrong way to complain. As you so rightly put it in plain terms, you will get far better results if you complain in a clear, calm and respectfully manner instead of running in all guns blazing.
I do think that by accepting bad behavior we has set a precedent where some people feel that it is perfectly acceptable to verbally abuse the person they are complaining to and the only way to get results is to give verbal abuse. This has also given rise to chancers who go to restaurants and find minute details to kick up murder over so the manager will give them a free meal just to get them out of his/her hair.