1. Anger precludes rationality.

Angry customers simply cannot rationalize. This is because they are so wrapped up in the emotion of anger that everything you say is filtered through their emotions. Anger is an emotion and emotions are experienced in the right side of the brain. Rationalizing, problem solving, listening, and negotiating are all left-brain activities and your angry customer is stuck in the right side of the brain, and therefore cannot be expected to rationalize with you.

2. Anger must be acknowledged.

It’s not productive for you to ignore anger or tiptoe around it. There is something known as the communication chain. When people communicate, they expect the person or persons they are communicating with to respond or react…this response or reaction is a link in the communication chain. A failure to respond to communication leaves the communication chain unlinked…broken. For example, If I walk into my office and say… “Hello Sherry, how are you?” ….and she says absolutely nothing, she’s broken the communication chain. And that leaves me feeling awkward, perhaps embarrassed.

If a customer expresses anger and we fail to respond to it, the communication chain is broken and the customer feels like they are not getting through, that you are not listening. So, the customer may speak louder to make his or her point. They might become even angrier and more difficult, as they are resorting to whatever it takes to feel heard and understood. You can keep your angry customers from getting angrier by acknowledging their anger and responding to it. You can respond to anger with a statement like, “Clearly you’re upset and I want you to know that getting to the bottom of this is just as important to me as it is to you.” This statement directly and professionally addresses anger &ndash without- making the customer even angrier. Now that the anger has been acknowledged, you have completed the communication chain.

3. First, diffuse anger. Research has shown that an approach to problem solving that emphasizes anger diffusion first results in a lesser payout by the company. If you first work to diffuse anger and then move into problem solving, you will find that communication is much easier/because your customer is able to really listen to you. Problem resolution is now possible because your customer is calm and in the position to rationalize. Beginning the problem solving process before addressing and diffusing anger makes your job much harder because your customer is emotional and not able to fully rationalize. If you do attempt to solve the problem or negotiate, you will almost always have to offer more to satisfy the customer than you would if you had successfully first diffused anger.

Now that you know that anger precludes rationality and that anger has to be responded to, make sure you don’t ignore the customer’s expression of anger and that you always work to diffuse anger and create calm before beginning the problem resolution process. When you do this, you’ll quickly find yourself responding to anger with much more ease and confidence.

4. The issue is not the issue.

In conflict situations, the issue at hand is not usually the “real” issue. The way the issue is handled becomes the real issue. What really matters to customers is not the $2 overcharge or the fact their order for cranberry red paint is actually holly berry red. What does matter is how the company responds and resolves the issue. That becomes the real issue.

5. Ventilation is crucial.

An Angry customer can be compared to an erupting volcano. When a volcano is erupting, there is nothing you can do about it. You can’t speed up the eruption, you can’t put a lid on it, and you cannot direct or redirect it…it must erupt. When a customer is angry, they must experience and express their anger…through venting. We should not interrupt them or tell them to “calm down.” This would be as futile as trying to tame a volcano. A volcano erupts and eventually subsides. Your angry customer will vent and eventually calm down.

6. An apology works.

An apology makes the angry customer feel heard and understood. It diffuses and anger and allows you to begin to re-establish trust. Not only that, but pilot studies have found that the mere act of apologizing has reduced lawsuits, settlement, and defense costs. You need to apologize to customers regardless of fault. Certainly, the apology needs to be carefully worded. Here’s an example of a sincere, yet careful apology:

“Please accept my sincere and unreserved apology for any inconvenience this may have caused you.”

7. You cannot win an argument with a customer.

Certainly, you can prove your point and even have the last word. You may be right, but as far as changing your customer’s mind is concerned, you will probably be just as futile as if YOU were wrong. Your goal in complaint situations is to retain the customer, not to be right. If you win the argument, you may very well have lost the customer. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

When you’re dealing with angry customers, make sure you acknowledge their anger, allow the customer to vent, and carefully handle the issue with diplomacy and tact. When you do, you’ll find that diffusing anger is much easier and you’ll significantly reduce your stress level.

When you’re dealing with angry customers, make sure you acknowledge their anger, allow the customer to vent, and carefully handle the issue with diplomacy and tact. When you do, you’ll find that diffusing anger is much easier and you’ll significantly reduce your stress level.

The last thing we want to hear during our work day is complaints from customers. However, it does come with the territory. Here are a few tips on how to turn your customer’s complaint into a positive.

1. Listen

When a customer comes to you with a complaint about one of your products or services, listen to them. Listen to what they are telling you, and take notes if at all possible.

The number one thing a customer wants when they have a problem is for someone to listen to them.

Allow them to vent, let them get it all out. Once they have explained their problem in full, begin to ask any questions you may have to get a full handle on the situation.

While you are listening, body language is very important. Make sure you maintain eye contact. This sends your customer a message that you are taking them seriously.

2. Be Empathetic

When the customer is done explaining their problem, show sincerity by telling them that you understand how they feel. Apologize on behalf of the company that they feel the way they do, and tell them that you are committed to resolving their issue within the guidelines of your company.

By becoming defensive in this situation, you are taking a bad situation and making it worse.

By having an understanding of where your customer is coming from on the situation, and speaking in a calm tone of voice, you can clearly defuse the situation.

You don’t by any means want your customer to become angry and cause a scene.

3. Offer a Solution.

We have all heard the expression “the customer is always right.”

I don’t necessarily agree with this, but it is important to work toward finding a solution, even if the customer is in the wrong. For instance, you might try meeting them half way.

You will know wether or not your customer is a repeat offender, and you can handle the situation accordingly.

For customers who have a legitimate complaint, it is best to rectify the situation right then and there. Wether it is giving them their money back, or replacing their product.

Always leave your customer with your business card and tell them if they should ever have a problem again, they should not hesitate to contact you immediately. This will help them regain their confidence in you and your company.

The main goal when a customer has a complaint is to not allow the problem to snowball. Your objective should be to defuse the situation and retain your customer.

By handling tough situations such as these in a professional manner, you will find your once complaining customers satisfied that you resolved their issue, and a new found respect for you.

This article may be reproduced by anyone at any time, as long as the authors name and reference links are kept in tact and active.

While companies focus thousands of dollars on external customer service in hopes of wooing and retaining customers, little attention is being paid to the effect poor internal customer service has on customer satisfaction. It all starts within your organization! Sooner or later the ripple effect reaches your customers. To really walk your service talk, make sure your commitment to internal customer service matches your company’s external focus on customer care.

When we think of customer service we think of staff serving customers over a counter or over the phone. But customer service occurs within your organization as well. How well is your staff serving its internal customers: other departments, its management, vendors and consultants? Believe it or not, it all counts. Internal customer service refers to service directed to others within your organization. It refers to your level of responsiveness, quality, communication, teamwork and morale.

I define Internal Customer Service as effectively serving other departments within your organization. How well are you providing other departments with service, products or information to help them do their jobs? How well are you listening to and understanding their concerns? How well are you solving problems for each other to help your organization succeed?

Teaming with Success

How well do you work with other departments? Does your Marketing department communicate well with the Legal department? Does Fulfillment relate well with Shipping and Receiving? Do Catering and Facilities work well together? When it’s time to communicate with others from different departments do you take a deep breath, or smile and relish a chance to renew contact with colleagues from elsewhere in the company?

As a manager I once joined a publishing company and found myself in the midst of a war between departments. Production resented Editorial for the way they missed deadlines and delivered shoddy copy. Conversely, Editorial had little respect for the resulting manuscripts they received back from Production, full of errors and oversights. Poor teamwork, poor communication and myopic thinking had led to a hardening of positions over time. They each cared about the finished product but were putting pressure on each other without realizing it. It took time, but eventually both groups came to appreciate each other and how to best work together to achieve win-wins for the greater good of their customers.

Do you relish or dread committee work with other departments? Does it seem their aims are contrary to your department’s? When other departments contact you for help do you regard it as a nuisance, a distraction and a drain of your valuable time? Can you see the greater good that comes from helping them solve their problems or fulfill their needs?

You can take pride in opportunities to help other departments look good. Obviously, you don’t want their success to come at your expense. Usually helping others doesn’t mean you lose a zero-sum game, where only one of you can win and helping others hurts you. In most instances helping other departments leads to a win-win situation. And what goes around usually comes around. Helping other departments succeed can help yours too when the roles are reversed.

Up with People

Good internal customer service starts with good morale within your group. Are your people happy? Do they feel good about themselves and their contributions to the goals of the department and to the company at large? They should, and effort should be made to help them do so. Happy employees are productive, and customers take note. Happy employees are also better team players. Will you fly the airline whose employees are striking with management, or the airline whose employees are management? Employees invested in employee stock purchasing plans with matching contributions see themselves as much more a part of the company. Thus, as the company goes, so do they go.

When I fly out of Oakland Airport I use an outlying parking lot and shuttle van. This shuttle is shared by employees from Southwest Airlines, coming to work or returning to their cars after their shifts. I’ve found them as happy and upbeat when they’re starting their shifts as when they’re finishing their shifts. That’s great morale, and tells me they like their jobs. It’s contagious! Sometimes I’m envious on that shuttle when I know I’ll be checking in at a competitor’s ticket counter.

Who’s On Top?

Many organizational charts employ an inverted pyramid with customers at top. Some companies instead put their employees at the top. In many senses, the employees are management’s customers. Corporate values that emphasize treating employees well translate to good customer care too. Does your organization value its people? Invariably, companies that care about their people can better ask their people to care about their customers.

Catering to Customer Service Needs

Here are five tips for your organization to help strengthen its internal customer service orientation.

1. Employees should never complain within earshot of customers. It gives them the impression your company isn’t well run, shaking their confidence in you.

2. Employees should never complain to customers about other department’s employees. Who wants to patronize a company whose people don’t get along with each other.

3. Employees at every level should strive to build bridges between departments. This can be done through cross training, joint picnics, parties or offsites, or creative gatherings, as well as day-to-day niceties.

4. Utilize post mortems after joint projects so everyone can learn from the experience. Fences can be mended and new understandings gleaned when everyone reviews what went right…or wrong. By doing do after the project the immediate pressure is off, yet stronger bonds can be forged while the experience is fresh in peoples’ minds. Not doing so can result in lingering animosities that will exacerbate future collaborations.

5. Consider letting your employees become “Customer for a Day”; to experience firsthand what your customers experience when doing business with you.

Congratulations on turning customer service inside out! By improving internal customer service you have just enhanced the customer service your external customers receive. You’re walking your talk regarding customer service. Touch

About once a week I grab my laptop and head to a caf

Collaboration among healthcare professionals, particularly in circumstances that require the sharing of confidential patient information, requires an intranet or extranet that offers enhanced security features.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has three major requirements:

• Protect the privacy of individual health information

• Provide the necessary security to protect the privacy of individual health information

• Provide standardization of electronic data interchange in health care transactions

Addressing this need, intranets and extranets are now available that meet these security requirements. As you consider the implementation of an intranet or extranet, look for the following security features:

• Secure web server with 128bit SSL encryption

• Server monitoring

• Secure IDs and passwords

• Defined authority levels

• Viewing permission controls

• Session time out after 30 minutes

• The ability to disable user-specific cookies,

• The ability of users to change their own password,

• The ability to create strong passwords.

• Complete, un-editable activity log for security audits

Choosing a web-based solution

To speed the implementation of an intranet or extranet with these features, an increasingly popular approach is to use an Application Service Provider (ASP).

In addition to providing an immediate solution that has the appropriate security features in-place, the advantages of a web-based ASP include a lower cost of entry, a proven track-record of performance and no need to install intranet software or extranet software.

What kind of image do you present when marketing your products? Are you professional and well organized or does your store/site/whatever scream, “sloppy!,” to those who matter the most: your customers? Let’s see how one leading retailer is winning the sales war, but losing an important battle: store organization.

WalMart is dominant in so many categories with the various products that they sell. In 50 years the company has gone from a local player to a world powerhouse and is on track to expand throughout the land of the largest consumer market in the world, China.

As much as WalMart is conquering new horizons and dominating the American landscape, one problem is arising: their stores are a mess. Visit your local WalMart store at any given time and you will find throngs of shoppers but few workers. Most workers are busy at the front end of the store ringing up sales, while others are scattered throughout the store putting up stock.

Why is this a problem? Quite frankly, WalMart is a victim of its own success. Stock turns over so fast, that the store must replenish during peak store hours in order to keep everything on hand. A good problem to have, right? Not if you are a customer who wants something and you cannot navigate aisles to find what you need as boxes of stock partially block you out.

WalMart’s chief competitor, Target, seems to have gotten it right. Their stores are neat; the signs to help you find various sections are big, bold, and color coordinated; and stock replenishment does not take over the aisles. On the other hand, KMart was once an industry powerhouse and many of their stores are old and disheveled. More importantly, KMart is now an “also ran” as other retailers — including WalMart — have presented a better place to shop for customers.

As much as price is a driving factor in winning the sales war, store organization and cleanliness can eventually undermine sales as customers are turned off by a messy environment and choose to go to your competitor.

While many customers will accept a lower level of customer service [less floor help available, for example], clutter will drive them away faster than low prices will pull them in. You can tout, “Always low prices, always” in your motto, but your customers will flee if they find your store to be disorganized. Competitors wait in the wings to grab what you will lose: can you afford the loss of sales?

By Flemming Andersen

When you are preparing for a move, you will find that there are a lot of details that have to be taken care of. You will have a lot of preparations to handle for the big day and it will take a lot of time for one or two people to handle. Most people find it a lot easier to hire movers to take care of all these things for them. Movers can make it a lot less stressful for everyone involved.

Movers can usually be found in most areas. In some companies, they will provide different services. There are some movers that do more and others that only provide minimal services. You will need to decide what you are looking for in the moving company that you hire. Think about all the things that you are going to need done and what you are going to be willing to pay for.

Some moving companies only provide the transportation part of the move. This means that you will have to do all the packing and the wrapping. For some of the companies, you will even have to load the boxes and packages up on the truck. This may not be what a lot of people want in their moving company. They may expect the movers that they hire to do all the work for them in order to make their life easier.

If this is the case, you should look for movers that provide all the services of moving. This will include the wrapping of items, boxing them up, loading and unloading the truck and driving to the new location. A lot of people want this full service in their moving companies. For this service, however, you are going to have to pay more for the cost. In the long run, it is usually worth the expense.

Most movers will even go the extra mile to pack one room at a time and then they will label them and put them in the rooms that they belong in the new house. This great time saving step will help a lot of people with the unpacking in the new home. When you know what is in each box and where it goes, you will save a lot of time and work in the end.

Some movers even have storage units available for the customer to store their unwanted items. This great feature will be a big help in most moves. This step will let you store the items that you do not want or cannot use in the new home. You will not have the bother of trying to find room for them. The items will be safely packed away in a storage container until you want them. This will also cost extra, but it again is worth the cost when it comes to making things a lot easier for your move.

For more info visit: .find-movers.org/

What is 24-7 support?

Do you get frustrated calling a hot line for many times and still no answer whatsoever? Do you hate bringing your machine to the store and waiting for days for the service? Do you want quick response and assistance from product manufacturers? The answer is the modern 247 support service.

Many companies, especially the more established once provide 24-7-365 support service to their clients. What does this mean?

24-7-365 Support Service

This means that manufacturers or support service provides 24 hours, 7 days a week and 365 days in a year support service. It literally means there is support anytime, anywhere, any season.

How it works?

This is because product manufacturers outsource their service support with competent 24-7 support provider.

The 24-7 support provider hires skilled, competent, and well-trained staff to attend to the needs of customers, clients and they have enough knowledge of variety of products.

This ensures that if you are the customer of a product they serve, you will be taken cared of properly.

What are the services available from a 24-7 support service?

• Voice support &ndash you have a warm body attending to you for your inquiries. Many consumers prefer this type of support service. However, if you are an irate consumer and you deal with voice support, you may not control your anger and some people regret this later on.

• Non-voice support &ndash This is an email support where consumers can send their requests for support and receive response direct to their inbox. This enables the support and the consumer to get fast response and interaction.

• Live chat support &ndash this is one of the most preferred support services. You chat with the support operator and get the response quick. If there is no operator available, then an automated response is provided to you.

24-7 support is a benefit of the ecommerce advent. It is therefore easy to communicate to manufacturers and your problems get attention immediately.

Finally, 24-7 support is difficult if a manufacturer is doing it on his own. It is therefore necessary that you outsource your 24-7 support service if you want to ensure that you are really serving your clients 24-7.

Avoid promising a 24-7 support if you are not outsourcing your support service. The reason is that if you are doing the support within your entity and your operators are not trained well, you may not be able to assist your customers as promised.

Now, if you outsource your 24-7 support, then you are surely backed by experienced and well-trained 24-7 customer support. You can brag about it and your customers will be able to enjoy it as well.

Hi there, my name’s Michael McMurray…

I am not sure how you arrived at my website… Maybe a friend told you about it or perhaps you happened to just stumble across it by pure luck. Now that you’re here I should let you know, you are on the most important website you will ever come across on the entire internet.

If you have been looking to create an additional stream of income you can now stop searching the internet for a way to make money. You have just come across the easiest and fastest way to start earning money online.

You can stop day dreaming about buying a new house, paying off your debts, buying that new car, or quitting your job and it can now become reality. If you’re ready for a change in your life you have come across the perfect website to help you achieve this.

I want you to imagine this… imagine waking up when you want to in the morning, not when your alarm clock goes off. You no longer need to hit that snooze button for an extra 5 minutes of rest before you have to go into work.

Imagine getting up eating a nice big breakfast then turning on your computer to see that you have made $150 while you were sleeping. Not a bad way to start off the day… then imagine spending time with your children and taking them to the park to play and coming home for a late lunch at 2:00. O yeah I forgot to mention this is a Tuesday but today is not your day off work, no every day is like this for you.

After lunch you turn on your laptop at your kitchen table and respond to a few emails and check on several things. Your computer shows that you have made yourself another $200 while you were enjoying the nice weather outside. Not bad, so far you have made $350 and you only spent around 30 minutes on the computer while you were out enjoying the rest of your day.

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In these days of competitive markets, the business that excels at customer service is the one that will not only maintain their position, but grow. You could answer the question “What is Customer service” by saying that it is about “exceeding” the expectations of the client, not just “satisfying” them. This is not just about the product or service that you are selling; it’s about looking after the people buying them from you too.

Having a great product must be the first step. Everybody likes quality, even more if it is competitively priced with other similar products. If you make the product yourself, see what you can do to enhance how it performs, what it’s made from, how it compares with others. If you can make the product the best there is within the price range, customers will not only buy from you, but they will recommend others to buy from you too.

So, you have a great product and your client base is growing - how is your pre and after sales service doing? Not many people think about how they sell the product, but it is still literally serving the customer. How many of us have put the phone down on someone who has been given the unenviable task of cold calling clients to try and sell goods?

Cold calling and pressure sales are two areas that have managed to give selling a bad name, particularly if they are persistent, repetitive and quite obviously so desperate to make a sale that they become aggressive. This is most definitely not what is customer service. Most of us would prefer to do our own market research when looking to buy something and the Internet has made it all so much easier. If you want to build your client base, having a website is now essential rather than an optional extra. Customers can look at the product, find out more about it and then contact you if they are interested. If they register with your site, you are able to build a list of potential customers too, to contact them again at a later date.

It might seem, from what is written above, that there is no place for person to person selling any more. Quite the opposite is the case, from the research I have done, it would appear that most customers would welcome speaking to someone who is knowledgeable about the product (that’s the important bit!) and is able to resolve any problems quickly. Call centres in India might be cheaper to run than local ones, but do the operators understand what the product is, do they even want to?

With the best will in the world, things can go wrong. For example, there could be a faulty batch manufactured, or if you are offering a service someone fails to turn up to an appointment. Complaints start coming in and you can either stick your head in the sand and ignore it or you can admit the mistake and try and rectify the situation to everyone’s satisfaction. Good customer service will always take the second route. Why? Because by dealing with a problem quickly and efficiently, that customer goes away happy and will tell his friends what a good organisation you are. Ignoring problems or just not resolving them quickly and satisfactorily really annoys customers and they won’t recommend you to others. According to one survey, 68% of customers will leave a supplier if they encounter an attitude of indifference.

A personal example now. My car broke down not too far from a local garage. I rang them up and, without hesitation, they stated that they would go and collect my car and repair it. They called me later in the day to tell me how much it would cost and did I want them to repair it (Gold star no. 1). They said they would waive the cost of collecting the car as it was not too far from the garage (Gold star no. 2). They repaired the car and made sure that everything else was okay too - at no extra expense (Gold star no. 3). A week after the repair, they phoned me to ask whether everything was still okay and was there anything else they could do for me (Gold star no. 4, 5, 6 and 7!). I was extremely satisfied with the service and have bought cars from them since and recommended the garage to friends too. To me this is the answer to “what is customer service?”. There is no better advertisement for a supplier of either goods or services than great customer service.