Customer Service Means Actually Helping Customers
Standing in a dressing room with a pair of pants around my ankles knowing that I was going to have to get fully dressed again to walk around the store to search for a pair that actually fit me and then go through the dressing room procedure all over again I moaned, “What ever happened to customer service?”
That bringing no response, I tried the classic, “Hello? Hello?” but that didn’t get any response either.
I thought of hollering “fire” but refrained out of consideration for my fellow shoppers – and the fact that my pants (or at least the store’s pants) were down around my ankles.
Now, before you dismiss me as crazy for expecting someone to assist me in a dressing room, you need to understand I was in a retail ladies’ apparel store, the kind of store that employs salespeople, who (I know you know where I’m going with this) are employed to provide customer service.
Instead, while I’m wandering around their store half-dressed searching for the right size of the pants I’m carrying draped over one arm, three of them (yes, three!) are lolling around behind the cash register.
I was incensed. And, I imagine, if you were the owner of that small business, you would be, too. Presumably, you hired these people to help make you money, not lose you money and you already know the rest of my story; I went back to the dressing room, put on my own clothes and left – because I didn’t get the customer service I expected to get.
Customer service isn’t about tills and processing sales; it’s about serving people and making sales.
If you have staff, you really need to be sure that they are trained to provide the kind of customer service you want them to provide and that they are doing it consistently. Use my Customer Service Makeover as a tool to find out what kind of customer service your small business is providing right now and how to improve it.
Tips for Better Customer Service: How to Help a Customer is an excellent starting point for staff training; it provides a blueprint for salespeople to follow when interacting face-to-face with a potential customer.
Now this wasn’t the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had – just the most recent annoying one. Unfortunately, bad customer service experiences abound. Share Your Bad Customer Experience Story. There’s always something to be learned.
More Customer Service Articles.
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