What Is Good Customer Service?
Posted by admin at 05:07 | Filed In Customer Service Tools
There are a number of common questions that people are asked when attending an interview for an office based role. One of these questions asks, what is excellent or good customer service? I have worked in an office based environment for most of my adult life and am sometimes left feeling quite shocked when watching and hearing my fellow colleagues dealing with our clients. In this article I will explain what I believe is good customer service.
A few years ago I was working for a life assurance company and one of my fellow workers was a very lazy man called Ryan. I had to sit next to Ryan for around six months and he had a very poor attitude to work and gave very poor customer service. As an example, a client phoned one afternoon and stated that she had lost the documents to her policy. She asked Ryan if he could send her a duplicate policy schedule and Ryan stated that this would be no trouble at all. Ryan then put the phone down and duly threw the piece of paper, which had the ladies details and request on, into the bin. I asked him why he had done this as it seemed likely that due to his actions that he was unlikely to complete the request. Ryan answered by saying that the lady had not asked for his name so therefore he was not going to do it!
The above is an example of very bad customer service.Lets now turn away from the negative to look at what is good customer service.
If a client asks for an update on how his/her application is progressing, I will ask if he/she minds if I place them on hold whilst I locate their file. If after a couple of minutes I am unable to locate the file or am unable to obtain an update, I will then inform the client of this and will then ask if they would mind if I took a note of their telephone number in order for me to call them later. If they agree to this I will then try to find out the present position of their application. If after a few hours I am still unable to obtain the required information, I will phone the client to tell them that I am still looking, that I have not forgotten about them, apologise for the time it is taking and to make them aware that I am still working on it.
Even if they have not asked for my name I will let them know who I am and will tell them that they can contact me as often as they like. This is what I believe to be very good customer service.
Stephen Hill runs The How To Stop Stammering Centre, he has a number of websites including:
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