How do you define good customer service? Does that simply mean the satisfactory marketing and sale of a product or service to a customer or does it mean something else? Is providing good customer service, good enough?

In these days of below average customer service, you may think providing good service will set you apart from the pack. Well, I am here to tell you that nothing less than exemplary service will help you succeed. By incorporating the “wow” factor into every successful sale, you will achieve greater profits and better customer satisfaction.

To achieve the “wow” factor, you must be honest, knowledgeable, friendly, professional and deliver on your promises. Do not over promise, but do not under promise either.

In addition, you must be able to provide a high level of service to everyone who comes in contact with your business. If you do, you’ll also get more referrals from your satisfied clients.

“Wow” everyone who comes into contact with you and your business. You want people to be blown away by the extraordinary level of service you deliver to your clients. Demonstrate your exceptional level of customer service by showing your generosity through gift giving. Your goal should be to deliver such a high level of service that your clients can’t wait to tell their family members, friends and co-workers about your company.

Everyone who comes into contact with your business is a potential client or referrer. Reward those who refer people to you by offering them a gift. Send gifts to all business associates in order to gain favor. This is a great way to build relationships with the people you rely on to do business. Look for a reason to send these people a thank you card along with a gift.

So, what types of gifts should you send? I’ll leave that up to your imagination, but here are some ideas to help you get started:

Movie passes

Starbucks cards

Flowers, houseplants

A ticket for a free car wash

Gift candles

Favorite recipes

Gourmet chocolates or gourmet popcorn

Successful sales people always make sure their faithful referrers are regularly and consistently rewarded. Set aside the best rewards for your top referrers. This may include:

Dinner for two at a fancy restaurant

Tickets to the opera or to a rock concert

A gift card

High end fruit or gift basket

Potted plant or flower arrangement

A personally inscribed pen

Yes, when it comes to gift giving the sky is the limit. The more personal the gift, the more likely it will be remembered and it will serve as a thoughtful reminder to your best referrers the next time someone is in need of your exemplary services.

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Good customer service is the best way to keep customers coming back to your business. super stores that have hundreds of employee’s, these companies do not give their workers enough incentive to be customer friendly, and they don’t seem to insist their employees use the customer training tips that are provided during their training. Businesses always supply new employees with their own customer service training tips in the beginning but they seem to forget them after being employed for awhile. Maybe stores and businesses should make their employees go through a refresher course and re-learn the customer service training tips that were given to them in the beginning. Training your employees in the art of customer service can be the least expensive improvement you can do. Make sure your employees have good people skills and that they enjoy working with people. One nasty person with a bad attitude can ruin a small business faster than a hold-up. Here are some customer service training tips that may help your employees.

Some customers are just plain difficult. They are always complaining, they are picky, know-it-alls, faultfinders, constant complainers, unreasonable, demanding. There’s no way you can avoid them so you have to learn to deal with them. Angry people cannot rationalize because they are so wrapped up in the emotion of anger that anything you say gets filtered through their emotion. 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. Here are a few more customer service training tips.

Believe it or not the best way to diffuse a situation with an angry customer may be cleared up with two little words. “I’m sorry.” Recent research shows that more than 50% of customers who have voices a complaint never get an apology. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that most people just want to be acknowledged, and when they get ignored and treated like they don’t matter and their opinion means nothing. One of the better customer service training tips I found is saying “I’m sorry,” can make all the difference in the world.

I don’t believe in the saying the “customer is always right.” No their not always right, and there are those that make themselves feel superior by belittling others. Being courteous to customers does not mean you have to accept abuse from them. Nobody deserves to be treated badly, but unfortunately there are those who go out of their way to do so. Saying things like, “Thank you for letting me know that you’re unhappy with…” will usually calm even the meanest customers and the nicer you continue to be with them, the calmer they get, this is a very good customer service training tip. Try it a few times it really works. There’s also another saying that goes: “You don’t have to show up to every fight you’re invited to.”

Think quick. In 10 seconds, can you list the 5 key benefits you offer your customers?

I bet you said “Yes”. But are you sure you listed benefits? If you’ll bear with me for another 10 seconds, I’d like to test out a theory on you.

Recap your answers &ndash maybe even write them down. Now list the 5 main things your business does. In other words, what are your 5 core services? What are the 5 core features of your product?

If your first list looks anything like your second, chances are you’re mistaking features for benefits. As a result, it’s likely that your marketing materials aren’t engaging your customer. Customers don’t want to know what you can do. They want to know what you can do FOR THEM.

Don’t talk features &ndash talk benefits.

Don’t be alarmed. You’re not alone. Most business owners and marketing managers are so close to their product or service that they have a lot of trouble distinguishing benefits from the features of their offering. Ask a web host “what are the benefits of your service?”, and you’ll likely hear something along the lines of, “we offer load-balanced server clusters.” But that’s not a benefit… that’s what they do. The benefit is superior uptime and performance.

In fact, so many people think features instead of benefits that it can work in your favour &ndash to dramatic effect. If you can accurately identify your benefits, and convey those benefits to your market, you’ll be light-years ahead of most of your competition. You’ll be converting leads into sales while they’re still bogged down trying to promote features.

So if you’ve ever sat down to write a sales letter and wondered how you’re going to grab your reader’s attention, or you’ve ever gone ‘round in circles writing draft after draft of web copy without ever hitting the mark, now you know where you were going wrong.

The only question remaining is, how do you do it right? Advertising copywriters and website copywriters do it all the time &ndash and most of the time, they do it with benefits. Benefits are the copywriter’s holy grail. But if you’re not a seasoned copywriter, how do you identify the benefits you offer your customers?

There are any number of ways to identify the benefits you offer. This article discusses just three:

1) Customer Research

2) Speak to Your Sales Team

3) Make it Easy for Your Customer to Get Buy-In

The method you choose depends on your time constraints, budget, and level of customer interaction.

1) Customer Research

The most obvious way to identify benefits is to ask your existing customers. They’re spending a lot of money on your offering, so you can be sure they know what benefit they’re getting from it. (In many cases, it can be handy to ask them what benefits they’d like to be getting from you too!) Unfortunately, like everyone else, your customers are busy people. In most cases, you won’t get useful feedback by simply sending an email enquiry. You have to make it easy for them to respond, and you have to make it worth their while. Think about questionnaires and surveys for quantitative data, and interviews and focus groups for qualitative data. These are the simplest techniques, but you still have to make sure you interpret the results appropriately. And always remember that they’re self-report methods. People will sometimes tell you what they think you want to hear. (That’s also why you have to word your questions very carefully &ndash try not to ask leading questions.) Of course, there are plenty of other research techniques around. Do a bit of homework and find the methods which best suit your business requirements. But don’t get carried away by the possibilities. All the research data in the world is pointless if you’re not talking the language of your customer.

2) Speak to Your Sales Team

Sadly, not every business can afford to invest in market research. If your budget doesn’t stretch far enough, try talking to your sales people. They’re out in the field every day, talking to customers. And because their livelihood depends on their success in engaging customers, chances are they’ll be able to tell you what your customers want to know. (A word of warning, though… Be careful not to make lofty promises. Unlike your sales team, written collateral doesn’t generate a rapport with your customers. Customers won’t make as many allowances, so you can only stretch the truth so far in writing before your credibility suffers. What’s more, if you do push the boundaries, you’re more likely to be held to your word!)

3) Make it Easy for Your Customer to Get Buy-In

If you don’t have the budget for in-depth customer research, and you don’t have a sales team, a good tip is to imagine how your customer gets buy-in from their boss. Quite often, the decision maker is someone higher up the food chain than your direct audience. Your audience will probably be the key stakeholder &ndash they’ll be the user of your product, or the recipient of your service. But when they find an offering they like, there’s a good chance they’ll have to sell it to someone further up the line. If you can make this sale easier, you’ll have a foot in the door. Don’t just appeal to the sensibilities of the direct audience. You also need to ask yourself what they need to know to convince the decision maker. If the decision maker is a CFO, think Return on Investment (ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). If the decision maker is a CIO or MIS, think performance, technological sustainability, availability, manageability, and ease of integration. If the decision maker is a CEO, think liability, risk management, and ROI. And only use jargon to prove you know your stuff. Remember… jargon will probably have the ultimate decision maker scratching their head, not reaching for their cheque book.

There are many many more ways to identify benefits. This is just a very superficial snapshot of some techniques you might like to try. At the very least they’ll get you thinking benefits.

In the end, the message is simple. Forget all the fancy talk about complicated revolutionary marketing principles. Forget new-age hard-sell advertising quick-fixes. Forget looking to so-called “experts” for solutions. Just think benefits. And if you can accurately do that, the rest is just mechanics. Once you know what you want to write about, you just need to put pen to paper. And that’s a whole ‘nother story!

Happy writing!

Two weeks ago I scribed a note of praise for Office Depot on PlanetFeedback.Com. Two hours later I got a personal response from Office Depot’s executive office. Last Friday I logged a complex complaint via email to my wireless phone company. Less than 3 hours later a researched response landed in my email box. It wasn’t the response I hoped for, but it was a timely response. Both companies exceeded my expectations of timeliness and personalization of response. How would your customers rate their experience on your “Contact Us” page? Here are 4 tips to help you create an e-commerce experience that keeps customers in love with you after a service mishap.

1. Prominently display phone number. Many customers visit your “Contact Us” page for the sole purpose of locating a phone number. Don’t force your customers to fill out a form or contact you via email if they want to personally talk with you. Your phone number, preferably toll-free, should be prominently displayed on your home page and on your “Contact Us” page.

2. Create a list of Frequently Asked Questions. Identify the top 5 &ndash 10 questions or complaints logged on your website and post them with answers. This will be a time saving convenience for customers and reduces your email/call volume. Amazon.com has one of the best FAQ sections I’ve seen on the web. When visitors click Help on .amazon.com, they are soon viewing a page of more than 50 frequently asked questions and answers. Visitors almost never have to contact Amazon.com directly for assistance.

3. Develop response standards. In 1998 I conducted an informal survey by shopping customer service departments on the Internet. In my survey, in which I logged complaints or posed questions, 60% of the companies didn’t even bother to respond. Of those that did respond, the average response time was 4.5 days. Today, e-commerce customers will not give you days to respond. They expect a response within hours. Determine your response targets and then line up systems and processes to deliver your goal. Keep in mind that your initial e-response should never be delivered more than 24 hours after the customer contacts you.

4. Dedicate staff to email response. Well-intentioned companies are failing customers miserably because their representatives are juggling too many tasks. Customer Care staff cannot effectively respond to high volumes of phone calls, postal mail and email complaints and maintain quality service standards. If your Customer Care Department is receiving at least 400 email inquiries/complaints monthly, you need at least one person dedicated to reviewing, researching and responding to email complaints and this needs to be their primary job.

How can that be? If you allow refunds, you are losing sales. The short-term answer is perhaps. The objective of every business is to increase profits for the long - term.

If you have a no refund policy, many customers will either not make a purchase or buy less merchandise. These customers are reluctant to spend their money, in case the product isn’t right. Yes, they could exchange it for other merchandise. However, if you don’t have what they want currently, you have their money and they have nothing.

Why are owners afraid of giving money-back? There are three main reasons and the fears are the result of short-term thinking.

1.Owners can’t stand seeing cash going out of the register. This results in fewer sales for the day.

2.The owner worries about bogus refunds. If you have proper controls, this will seldom happen. The people taking advantage of bogus refunds concentrate on large stores.

3.Owners are concerned with too much merchandise being returned. You could have a few customers taking advantage of this. If they are bringing back resalable product, it should not be a concern.

Most large companies have a return policy that is favorable to the customers. This encourages customers to spend more money. The customer knows unwanted merchandise can be returned. The increase in sales and profits will outweigh the risk of bogus returns with proper controls.

Just have a specific refund policy in place. For example, it could be a cash refund with the original receipt and within 30 days of the purchase. The longer the return period, the less likely you will get a return. Customers will put the merchandise aside and or lose the receipt.

Your refund policy can be a huge advantage against your small competitors. Too many owners don’t take advantage of separating themselves from the other businesses. It would be a good idea to have several professional signs at least 8.5 x 11 around the store with your refund policy. Using bright color paper will make this stand out even more.

Here is an example of what to put on the sign:

Refunds Gladly Made With Receipt

The sign behind the register area could have the full details.

You must explain and make sure all of your employees understand and follow the customer friendly refund policy. There could be some resistance to change especially with employees on commission. However, let them know long-term the refund policy will result in increase sales and commissions. If they still don’t want to follow the policy, you are better-off if they worked somewhere else.

Take the first step in improving your sales and profits by improving customer service with a friendly refund policy. Take off that short-term hat and carry out polices and strategies that will increase your sales and profits long-term.

You can have the best products, the plushest offices, the best location, but unless you are a ‘customer focused’ business, all of this counts for nothing, you will never really hit the heights you deserve.

So what can you do to build a business which focuses outwardly on the customer, and not inwardly on the business?

Build Passion and Commitment

The first building block is passion and commitment. This is the very foundation stone of a customer focused business. Without passion and commitment the structure you will build above will be weak and prone to collapse at the first sign of stress.

The passion and commitment has to come from you and your staff. All of you have to totally believe in the concept of the customer being the centre of everything you do. From the moment you step into work everyone has to do whatever it takes to satisfy the customer.

As the key person in the business what can you do to build passion and commitment? Lead from the front and set an example. Keep the concept at the top of the agenda and demonstrate it in everything you do. Keep talking about it. Celebrate all the great examples of putting the customer totally in focus.

Build Processes Around Your Customer Not The Business

All great businesses have clearly laid down processes on how to get things done. Whether you have a formal Process Manual or a Quick Reference Guide, which sets out your processes, a clear procedure provides confidence and clarity for both your staff and the customer.

But don’t just build your processes around making things easier for you, build them to make things easier for the customer. Look at every step in the process and ask yourself, “Can we do something to make it even easier for the customer to do business with us?”Are there steps which can be refined or even eliminated all together? Be inquisitive, bold and challenging!

Build a Relationship

Building a relationship with your customer is at the very heart of a customer focused model. Build a strong, firm relationship and you will have a customer for life. The basis of relationship building is A.B.C. &ndash Always Be Communicating. Here are some ideas on building an enduring and profitable relationship through ABC:

• Make a point to periodically call your customers. Set up a diary system to provide you with a regular reminder or prompt. Call them even if you have nothing sell! A strange concept perhaps but you never know what will come out of the conversation

• Issue quarterly newsletters telling them about your latest products, what you have planned for the future, a customer profile, news about new employees. Find anything which would be of interest and at the same time binding both of you closer together

• Make it a point during any conversation to find out something about the business you didn’t know before. File away any interesting fact and think how you can use it in the future. Imagine how powerful it would be when you ask how the idea they mentioned in your last conversation was going!

• Do memorable things. Send birthday or anniversary cards to your key contact, a simple thank you note for doing business with us, send articles or newspaper cuttings, which you think will be of interest to them

Build a Culture of ‘Wanting To Know’

If you are to build a reputation for being customer focused you should be making an effort to find out on a regular basis what they want from you. This can be achieved by either an informal phone call or a more formal survey via mail or e-mail. Find out what they like about your business, what they don’t like and what changes they would like to see.

Having gathered together all the information, suggestions and ideas, set out an action plan to follow up. Once you have acted upon the workable suggestions, get in touch with the customers again and tell them what you have done in response to their comments. This will demonstrate that you have taken their ideas seriously and really care about what they think. Powerful stuff!

Being customer focused can be very rewarding and help in building a great business. Which of these steps are you going to put into practice today? Remember this &ndash let the customer be your focus and you will become their focus.

Just imagine. You have walked out of a shop or put down the phone after purchasing something and your immediate reaction is “Wow!” How do you feel? Excited; satisfied; fulfilled … eager to return and buy again?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get your customers to feel the same way about dealing with you?

Lots of small business owners (and not so small!) seem to think that the customer is merely an interference. But how can you get your customers all pumped up and ready to do business with you again?

I’ll share some tips on exactly how you can get a ‘Wow!” response and show how it can positively impact your bottom line.

Get promising

These days too many businesses seem reluctant to commit to anything. As a result, you walk away with a nagging doubt that nothing is going to happen and so the whole experience is not pleasant. What a refreshing change to get a business that provides a firm promise on dates and times or opening hours.

Can you provide a clear promise to your customers? Have a think about each aspect of your business and highlight all your ‘promisables’ in your sales and marketing material. One great tip &ndash under promise and over deliver. Promise delivery in 7 days, knowing you can do it in 3 days. When the goods arrived 4 days before expected, that’s a ‘Wow’ factor if ever there was one!

Important point &ndash if you can’t deliver it, don’t promise it!

Be a Tigger

Remember Tigger from Winnie the Pooh? He’s all over the place; bouncing up and down with endless energy and enthusiasm. He just leaves his friends breathless! What a great person to be with and do business with.

Are you enthusiastic when you speak and deal with your customers? Are your staff brimming with enthusiasm? If you can’t project an image which says “I’m happy to be here”, how can you expect your customers to feel different? So, have a Tigger day every day!

First impressions

If you have a shop or office where customers visit you, what do your premises say about your business? Is it modern, fresh-looking, clean and tidy? Or is it worn, tired and generally looking run down? Like it or not, customers will judge you on what they see. They may say ‘Wow’ but for all the wrong reasons!

A pot of paint and a splash of colour can make all the difference and it doesn’t have to cost the earth (these DIY programmes have a lot to answer for!).

Be a problem solver

Despite all businesses believing they have great customer service, the fact is that the majority don’t. The main reason is that when people complain, most feel that they have not been listened to and their problem has not been solved.

Be a solver of problems - quickly and efficiently. Here’s a motto for you &ndash ‘Resolve to Solve’.

Be their friend

I don’t know about you, but I am a sucker for business owners who take their time to know me and recognise me when I next call or visit! The bond and the desire to do more business with those types of entrepreneurs, is strong for me.

Do you take time to build a relationship with all your key clients? Do you go out of your way to greet them when they next do business? As the saying goes, aim to turn strangers into friends and friends in to customers.

Value for money

In this day and age of new technology, and the hefty prices that go with it, the concept of giving great value is sometimes forgotten. Creating a ‘Wow’ moment can be as simple as giving a little bit extra, something unexpected. It doesn’t have to be of huge value, it’s genuinely the thought that counts.

Don’t restrict this idea just to price. Price on its own may not work, it has to be tied in with something else &ndash 2 for 1, a small gift etc.

The quality of your product must also reflect value for money. Don’t try and pass off an inferior product with a superior price &ndash you’ll again create the wrong type of ‘Wow’ moment! Medium price and great quality &ndash a definite and positive ‘Wow’.

Call them

The real killer ‘Wow’ is calling your customer a few days after he has bought. Asking him if the product is fine, whether it does what he wanted it to do, is one sure way of stopping him in his tracks! If everything is great, then you have a customer for life. If there is a problem, wonderful; you have the opportunity to put it right and … have a customer for life. This is a very simple and powerful way of creating ‘Wow’.

So that’s it. If you follow theses simple ideas, all your customers will be saying ‘Wow’ and they will be coming back time and time again. Who knows, they may even tell their friends? Now there’s a thought.

Last week I made an early morning trip to a seminar/book promo breakfast to promote my web site. After putting out flyers all over the place I took a moment to step in to the facility and caught a few moments of a morning with Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE.

As I stepped through the door, a question and answer session was in progress. A woman stepped up to the microphone and asked “Is the customer always right?”

Jack smiled and said, “You might not think so, and they may believe so, but if you don’t make it so, you’re dead!”

Jack, that is a pretty strong consequence. Dead. But let’s face it. Who will come to do business with you again after you argue with them about their dissatisfaction? I think most people will just go somewhere else.

Isn’t is just common sense that we let our customer complain and then make it right? Well for the business owner, we usually just grin and say ” what would it take to make you happy today?” but what about our employees?

If we have not taken the time to train our employees how to deal with an unhappy customer, how will they react when one attacks them with ” the food was cold and tasted like crap!” or “I only had it for three days and the wheel fell off!”

It is important that as part of training any employee who has contact with the customer they have training on dealing with complaints as well as how to work the register or take the order. As a business owner you probably have already thought of that. Is there a piece of this puzzle missing?

The missing piece might be empowerment. The employee can be trained how to be calm and not take complaints personally. But what if they are not empowered to take action and correct the problem immediately themselves? What if you have instructed them to get you if there is a problem and you are on your way to the bank to make a deposit?

In most cases an angry consumer will not wait for you to return.

This would mean that if your employee is not empowered to make a correction or offer a compromise to make the customer happy, you would lose their business forever. How much does it cost to get a new customer? How much does it cost to make them happy when they are dissatisfied? The difference on paper is staggering.

Therefore, as part of the training of a new employee, it should be taught what is possible to do to make a customer happy when they are complaining. A quick response to a problem is appreciated almost more than the actual solution in most cases.

You see in life, we are all customers at some time or other, and I don’t know about you, but when I am an upset customer, I am always right!

A day in the life of a business person can be filled with joy and satisfaction or it can be frustrating and stressful. When things go wrong, some people lose control. Holding emotions in check and reacting professionally under fire are not always easy. It is particularly difficult to be nice to people who are not being nice to you.

So what do you do to keep your cool when the customer is chewing you out? Most of the time, it is not even your fault. It could be that the problem was with a product or a service delivered by someone else in your organization. You’re getting the blame because the unhappy person found you first, and it’s not pleasant. When faced with angry people, there are four key steps that will help diffuse the situation.

Step one is to apologize. “But,” you say, “it’s not my fault.” It doesn’t matter who’s to blame; apologize anyway. As a representative of your company you have a responsibility to see that things go well. Your willingness to be accountable will have a positive effect. After all, it takes two to have an argument. If one of you refuses to be disagreeable you can’t have a disagreement. You are not accepting blame-you are simply saying, “I’m sorry about the problem.” You are wasting your breath unless you apologize with complete sincerity so be sure that your tone of voice matches your words.

Step two is to sympathize with the irate customer. Let the person know that you can identify with his feelings. Say that you understand the frustration of receiving a faulty product or poor service. The angry person begins to feel better as soon as his reaction is validated.

Step three is to accept responsibility for the situation. Be accountable to the customer. Let him know that you intend to do whatever it takes to make things right. You can’t help what has already happened, but you will come up with a solution to the problem or you will find someone who can.

The last step is to take action. Decide what you can do and tell the customer. You will replace the defective or incorrect product as quickly as possible. If the issue was poor service deliver better service. Whenever you can offer a bonus of some sort or waive fees, the tiger before you is transformed into a pussycat.

Use the acronym “ASAP” to remember these four steps for calming upset customers. Each letter stands for part of the process.

A is “apologize.”

S represents “sympathize.”

A stands for “accept responsibility.”

P means “prepare to take action.”

Nothing will be solved by becoming argumentative and reactionary. Instead, diffuse the client’s anger by being apologetic and sympathetic and focus on positive steps that will resolve the situation. Before you know it, your adversaries will become your allies.

Oh yes, remember to smile. It will make everyone feel better and behave better.

(c) 2005, Lydia Ramsey. All rights in all media reserved. Please reprint article with by-line intact and all links made live.

1. Greet the customer enthusiastically. Put a smile on your face and energy in your voice. Intentionally sound fun, interesting, friendly, and conversational. When you do these simple things, you will find that you are quickly establishing rapport with callers and that customers enjoy speaking with you.

2. Listen without interrupting. It can be tempting to interrupt a rambler or storyteller, but try not to do so within the first few seconds. Listen patiently and let the customer tell you what is on her mind. Of course, you can’t let a long-winded caller get out of hand.

3. Respond with appropriate emotions. Be natural with your customers. When they are happy and the situation calls for more energy, express this energy. If the situation calls for empathy, don’t sit there like a stone, express empathy. When I was in car rental and a customer would complain about a breakdown in one of our rental cars, I’d quickly make an expression of empathy like: “I realize how frustrating this whole thing must be for you.”

4. Make the customer feel smart/good. Yesterday I conducted a mystery shopper call for a client and one of the customer service representatives did an outstanding job of making the caller feel good. The “mystery shopper” was told to ask several redundant and “dumb” questions and she did that very well. At one point the customer service representative said, “You obviously care about your health or you wouldn’t have called today.” That went over very well—instead of making the caller feel like an idiot, she made her feel like a star!

5. Never come across annoyed, “interrupted”, or irritated. Your job is to help and serve. And in your job you are going to hear a lot of the same thing over and over. Some customers will annoy you and some of the comments you hear will be just outrageous. But don’t let it show. Give every caller your best and sound patient, interested, friendly and helpful every time.

Master these five points at the beginning of the call and your impression will be friendly, helpful, and memorable. Read on to discover ways to end the call on positive note.

Make the most of the last few seconds of the call–

1. Ask if there is anything else you can do. Don’t rush to end the call. Make sure you’ve answered all of the customer’s questions by simply asking, “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

2. Express sincere appreciation for the call. One of my clients does a phenomenal job of this. Anytime and every time a customer calls Accuvue Vision, they will get a warm and sincere thank you for the call. Every representative will make the caller feel great about calling with sincere phrases like: “I’m really glad you called us today.” “Your feedback is definitely appreciated and I’m so glad you chose to share it with us today.” “Thanks so much for taking time out of your day to call and tell us this.”

Always end the call on a positive, upbeat note.

3. Let your caller hang up first. It’s simply polite to let your caller hang up first. In most cases, callers will hang up with 2-4 seconds of the last spoken word.

Never forget that your callers remember the first and the last thing in a series of events disproportionate to anything else. Make the most of these critical touch points by adopting these steps.