Marketing Through Service ? Great Customer Service Starts With Being a Great Customer
Marketing Through Service – Great Customer Service Starts with Being a Great Customer
If you want great customer service, then you have to start by being a good customer. It all starts with your attitude, good or bad, happy or sad. People with positive, happy attitudes change everything. Have you ever noticed that when you meet a stranger and they smile at you, how good it makes you feel? The same is true about customer service. When we are being served or waiting to be served, try and put yourself in the customer service representative’s position. Wouldn’t you like it if your customer first smiled at you and then said hello? It makes a huge difference in the way people are treated. Treat everyone the way that you would like to be treated and you will find that you will receive much better service.
Good customer service is really a license to print money. Zig Ziglar said it best. “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want”. Great customer service comes from the heart. You have no doubt seen this a few times, where the customer service representative went overboard to satisfy and exceed your expectations. Because of the actions of this person you felt really good about the company you just did business with. In fact you would more than likely tell some of your friends about your experience, and they in turn would tell others. These actions from that customer service person resulted in word of mouth advertising, word of mouth referrals, and these referrals are like gold, businesses treasure them.
Exceptional customer service starts with good solid leadership. “You get the best efforts from others not by lighting a fire under them, but by building a fire within”. Bob Nelson. “The greatest management principal in the world is the things that get rewarded and appreciated get done”. Michael LeBouef. Being a customer service representative is a wonderful and rewarding profession. Everyone is a customer service representative; the only difference is how we are compensated. The professional, is the one that works for a company gets paid financially, as well as being personally rewarded and appreciated at times by their customers. The other kind of service representative, perhaps like you and me, get rewarded in a different way. If for example you are “Just a housewife” with children at home, you get your rewards in many wonderful ways. Your satisfaction comes from teaching your children social skills, how to do things for themselves, keeping your home nice, shopping, washing clothes, preparing meals, and the list goes on. You cannot find a more important customer service representative than this person. If you are a single mother or father, your job is incredibly difficult, but still can be very rewarding. Of course it helps if you have a spouse that can assist with some of the chores. People helping people are really doing them a service. Often most people who volunteer their services for free, get their rewards from their inner feelings, it just feels good helping others. It’s the right thing to do and it feels really good.
At the end of the day, if you have not enjoyed the time you have spent, if you are not happy, what’s the point? It’s your life. You are responsible for the results. If you want to be a happier person, start with the right attitude, smile and treat people properly. We are all customers and we are all service representatives. You can make a difference, but it has to start with you. “Its not where you start…it’s where you finish that counts”. Zig Ziglar
© Copyright Peter E. Smith
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Peter E. Smith is President of Prospect Ventures Limited, a Management, Marketing and Sales Consulting Company. Mr. Smith has held senior management positions for two Fortune 500 companies out of the United States, and has owned and operated several businesses including those in the professional, retail, factoring and wholesale industries.
Mr. Smith was educated in Great Britain, Canada and the United States. His books and articles are based upon Mr. Smith’s own observations, experiences, facts and research with many different businesses over the past three and a half decades.
His passion as a consultant is simply to assist companies in achieving record business growth by marketing through service; and dramatically increasing profits while having fun. I can make a significant difference in your business.
