When I'm talking with new agents, I often ask what they bring to the table over someone calling an 800 number. I feel its important for an agent to know the answer to this and to use their answer in their presentation. The usual answers are things like experience, I’m local, I know my clients and great customer service. Then I’ll ask what does great customer service mean? For the most part, in all honesty, its a bullet point without much definition. A while back, I set out to write a support ‘contract’ with my clients, which I’ll come back to in the future, but it defines what I mean.
Now, off to the rambling part of this post. It doesn’t take much looking around at some day to day transactions to find some examples of great customer service and examples of poor customer service. Most of us could, and should, look at those and see if we can learn lessons from those experiences to incorporate into our day to day operations, whether its something good to do or something not so good and we need to avoid them.
The other day, I was coming back from the gym and had to stop at Safeway (grocery store) to get a few things. Its was probably 11:00 at night or so. The Safeway near my house is an older, smaller Safeway, but it is open 24 hours and I pretty much know where everything is on the shelves, usually a quick in and out.
I grab everything I need, go to the checkout, and notice they are doing some construction where a couple of the cash registers used to be. I wait for the cashier to stop stocking the shelves and come up and check me out. I asked him about the construction, he stated they were putting in some self-serve checkouts. I thought to myself, great, its about time!
Now, he should have stopped there, but, he didn’t. He goes on to complain about how this is going to result in a cut of more hours, how bad the self serve checkouts are and just generally is unhappy with the idea. I had to tell him that I like the idea, my experience nowadays is they work well, though that wasn’t always true. I was also thinking to myself, I wouldn’t have to listen to you ramble and complain if I checked myself out, I could just listen to myself complain
Afterwards, I was wondering, how many of us, as salespeople, express our views at something, that have nothing to do with the sale, to our clients? I know I’ve done it, complained about a carrier, complained about the paperwork, whatever. I’m better at it, but I’ve often wondered what I’ve said that I didn’t realize I said.
I’m not saying don’t chit-chat, that is a good thing. Just try to keep it positive, and let the client/prospect lead the direction of the chit-chat!
Dan
Now, off to the rambling part of this post. It doesn’t take much looking around at some day to day transactions to find some examples of great customer service and examples of poor customer service. Most of us could, and should, look at those and see if we can learn lessons from those experiences to incorporate into our day to day operations, whether its something good to do or something not so good and we need to avoid them.
The other day, I was coming back from the gym and had to stop at Safeway (grocery store) to get a few things. Its was probably 11:00 at night or so. The Safeway near my house is an older, smaller Safeway, but it is open 24 hours and I pretty much know where everything is on the shelves, usually a quick in and out.
I grab everything I need, go to the checkout, and notice they are doing some construction where a couple of the cash registers used to be. I wait for the cashier to stop stocking the shelves and come up and check me out. I asked him about the construction, he stated they were putting in some self-serve checkouts. I thought to myself, great, its about time!
Now, he should have stopped there, but, he didn’t. He goes on to complain about how this is going to result in a cut of more hours, how bad the self serve checkouts are and just generally is unhappy with the idea. I had to tell him that I like the idea, my experience nowadays is they work well, though that wasn’t always true. I was also thinking to myself, I wouldn’t have to listen to you ramble and complain if I checked myself out, I could just listen to myself complain
Afterwards, I was wondering, how many of us, as salespeople, express our views at something, that have nothing to do with the sale, to our clients? I know I’ve done it, complained about a carrier, complained about the paperwork, whatever. I’m better at it, but I’ve often wondered what I’ve said that I didn’t realize I said.
I’m not saying don’t chit-chat, that is a good thing. Just try to keep it positive, and let the client/prospect lead the direction of the chit-chat!
Dan
