Customer Service lessons from Brailsford and Team GB cycling
March 5, 2012Honesty and transparency with clients and prospects builds better retention and loyalty
March 17, 2012
Customer service can be improved not just by learning how to handle complaints better but also by learning how to handle different types of people better.
Late last year Laura Klein wrote a post on the Smashing Magazine website called Idiots, Drama Queens and Scammers: Improving Customer Service with UX. The post focused on identifying and learning how to deal with your worst type of customers and how that will help you improve your overall level of service.
That, I believe, is true.
Yes, get your people together and work out the best way to solve these issues.
However, a lot of the time we look for similarity of complaints and how that reflects on us and what we have done wrong, how we can improve and how we can work together to help solve the variability of the service we deliver.
But, we must also realise that issues and complaints can also be affected by different types of people as different people will respond to different events in different ways.
Therefore, I believe that there is a lot to be learned by putting the complaint in context ie. taking the customer themselves and their environment into account.
Using personality profiling tools like DISC (discussed in Better team and customer communication – it’s about understanding them not you) or EQ (discussed in Jim Rohn: Work harder on yourself than you do on your job) can help us understand how people communicate and we should communicate with them.
Understand that there are (like the referred to article) ‘Idiots’, ‘Drama Queens’ and ‘Scammers’ out there but it is how we respond to them as people that can make a huge difference to our handling of their complaint.
Different issues or complaints will be communicated differently by different types of people.
Therefore, successful customer service complaint handling can not just be about handling complaints it has also to be about handling different types of people.
What do you think?
10 Comments
HEllo Adrian
There is a phrase that I came across at Peppers & Rogers and which I will never forget: “Treat different customers differently”. The point was to identify and address customer needs. If you get this then you get that the “same customer is not the same customer”.
That’s right, how a customer shows depends on the context. Specifically, does have an urgent issues or something that occurs as minor to him. Did she phone many times to report a problem / issue and did she get ignored many times, is tha why she is being difficult? You get the idea.
One of the key things I learned from Landmark was “Coming from nothing”. Letting go of all of my preconceptions, my baggage, so that I came fresh to each encounter with each customer. With nothing present, I can totally be with the customer and the situation at hand.
Finally, all labels are misleading. Take a look at the labels that Laura Klein used and you should be able to see:
a) internal centric – companies view of the customer;
b) disparaging – putting down customers.
There is some food for thought here. If you use those kinds of labels in your business then you have already created a platform for a certain kind of culture adn I can tell you that is not customer-centric. That does not mean that I am saying that you have to bend over and take whatever customers give you!
Maz
Hi Maz,
Thank you for your comment. As ever it challenges me think more about what I have written. I am not advocating that we use ‘labels’ but that we can use tools to help us understand and better deal with different types of people. For me this is a lot like the idea that the map is not the territory. However, a map can help us better navigate the territory.
What do you think?
Adrian
I agree with you. Actions reflect attitude. though the process of knowing the attitude is a long process but the company also needs it. Great article anyways.
Hi Harold,
Thanks for your comment. You are right that building up the skills and insight to knowing, recognizing and understanding the attitude and personality of those around you is a long process but is worth the effort with benefits for both internal communication and team working as well as customer relations.
All the best,
Adrian
Hi Adrian,
I think you are right.
All customers are different, they all want different things. That is I think the biggest difference between manufacturing and service industries.
Think of the technological complexity of an iPad, how difficult is that to make? Yet apple ship millions, because they are all the same
Next think of your bank, they only have to do one thing, make a decission about whether or not they should lend money. Not nearly so technically difficult as making an iPad. except that all the banks customers are different.
(that and the fact that most banks are inept, but that is another debate)
So yes, it is all about the people.
James
Hi James,
Thank you for the affirmation. Coming from you as one that operates at the ‘coal-face’ that is great feedback.
Thank you,
Adrian