Perfect Phrases for Customer Service

by Robert Bacal

Overview

THE RIGHT PHRASE FOR EVERY SITUATION . . . EVERY TIME

You've heard it a million times: "The customer is always right." But let’s face it—sometimes the customer is misinformed, confused, or downright difficult. The ability to handle such customers is what separates the serious professional from the average employee.

Perfect Phrases for Customer Service, second edition, provides the language you need for everyday customer service situations—and includes simple, effective techniques that can help you meet even the most demanding customer needs. Master the most effective words and phrases for:

• Defusing bad situations before they get worse
• Handling complaints patiently and professionally
• Satisfying customers and increasing sales
• Building long-term relationships with important customers

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780071745062
Publisher:	McGraw Hill LLC
Publication date:	11/10/2010
Series:	Perfect Phrases Series
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	7.98(w) x 11.70(h) x 0.48(d)

About the Author

Robert Bacal is the author of Managing Performance and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Consulting, and he runs the management website work911.com.

Read an Excerpt

PERFECT PHRASES for CUSTOMER SERVICE

Hundreds of Ready-to-Use Phrases for Handling Any Customer Service Situation

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By Robert Bacal

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2011The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-174506-2

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Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Basics of Customer Service

There must be a billion words written about customer service. Advice abounds, from the banal and obvious (smile when you talk on the phone) to complex and difficult suggestions about how to "create a corporate culture of excellent customer service."

Amid all the words, simple or fancy, is a basic hidden truth about customer service: the person who interacts directly with the customer determines whether that customer perceives that he or she is receiving poor customer service, excellent service, or something in between. If you serve customers directly, you have the power to affect their perceptions. That customer contact is where "the rubber meets the road."

If you provide service to customers, your words and behaviors are the tools you use to create a positive customer perception of you and the company you work for. Whether you're a novice working with customers or a seasoned pro, what you do and say will affect how customers see you. You can't help it. Customers will form opinions, so you might as well learn how to create positive opinions. But you need to know how to do that.

It might be that you get paid minimum wage and you don't plan to stay in your customer service job. Why care what customers think? The answer is simple—self-interest! Customers who form negative opinions about you can make your life miserable. When they get angry, they complain, slow down service for others (making them mad), threaten, swear, and otherwise do things that add stress to your job. In some cases, their anger can escalate to the point where your physical safety is at risk. All because you couldn't be bothered or didn't care. It's to your benefit to provide decent customer service just for these reasons. More on what's in it for you in a moment.

That's what this book is for—to teach you about the dozens and dozens of techniques you can use when interacting with customers so they'll walk away with positive feelings about the experience. You'll learn about very specific things you can do or say in all kinds of customer interactions. You'll learn how to deal with difficult customers. You'll learn how to approach customers and how to get information from them so you can do your job. You'll learn to deal with customer service problems quickly, efficiently, and professionally. Best of all, the techniques in this book will fit your needs, whether you serve burgers, staff the desk in a hotel, help people in health care environments, or even work for the government.

This book will tell you exactly what to do and say, and it will provide you with numerous examples so you can use customer service techniques effectively.

Let's get started!

What's in It for Me?

Why should you be concerned with providing excellent customer service? You don't own the company. You may not get paid more for providing excellent customer service. So, what's in it for you?

There are three powerful reasons for learning to provide great customer service: greater job satisfaction, reduced stress and hassle, and enhanced job success.

First, very few people derive any job satisfaction when they feel that the time they spend at work is "wasted." Most of us need to feel useful and productive—to make a difference, whether it's helping a fast food customer make healthier food choices or dispensing legal advice. When you provide high- quality customer service, you feel that you're making that difference and can derive pride in your work. The day goes faster.

When you do a good job with a customer, such as calming down someone who's angry and complaining, you feel good about having achieved something. Perhaps more important than your own perceptions are the customer's perceptions, when you do a good job with a customer and he or she tells you what you've achieved. That feedback helps you feel good about yourself and your performance. Doing a good job and taking pride in how you serve customers are ways to prevent job burnout.

Second, deliver quality customer service and you will save yourself a lot of stress and hassle. When you learn and use customer service skills, you are far less likely to get into protracted, unpleasant, and upsetting interactions with a customer. You make yourself less of a target for customer wrath. That's because customer service skills help keep customers from becoming angry and reduce the length and intensity of the anger when and if difficult customer service situations occur.

Third, learning and using quality customer service techniques helps form the perceptions of those who may be able to help your career—supervisors, managers, and potential employers. Using these techniques makes you look good to everyone, and that's critical in getting promoted, receiving pay raises, and getting new job opportunities. Managers and supervisors notice when a customer asks for you specifically because you do such a good job or comments positively about how you've helped.

Of course, you may have other reasons to want to provide the best customer service possible. You may want to contribute to the success of your employer. You may like the feeling of having other employees look up to you as a good model. Or you may even benefit directly if you work on a commission basis. In many jobs, people who are good at customer service earn more.

Regardless of your reasons, quality customer service techniques can be learned, and you can learn them with a little effort.

In the rest of this chapter, we'll provide an overview of customer service principles and issues and explain how to use this book. In the next chapter, we'll describe 60 techniques you should be using. The rest of the book is dedicated to showing you how to use those techniques.

Different Kinds of Customers

Before we continue, we should clarify what the word "customer" means.

You're probably familiar with our starting definition: the customer is the person who pays for goods or services that you provide. This definition works in some contexts, but not all. It breaks down in situations where money doesn't directly change hands. For example, people often interact with government, public schools, and other organizations. They receive goods or services from them, but do not pay anything directly to them. We need to change our definition so that people who interact with these organizations fall under our definition of customer, since they, too, deserve high-quality customer service, even if they aren't paying directly.

Here's a better definition: the customer is the person next in line who receives your output (service, products). That person may purchase goods or services directly or receive output you create or deliver without direct payment. The person may be outside your company, but this definition also includes anyone within the company who receives output from you.

There are four basic types of customers. Regardless of type, each customer deserves to receive top-quality customer service, and each can make your work life miserable if you don't provide it.

First, there are external paying customers. These are the people who pay to eat in a restaurant, pay for health care and legal advice, or pay to stay in a hotel.

Second, there are internal customers. These are people who receive output (services, products, information) that you create or provide, but who are in the same organization as you. Internal customers may be billed via interdepartmental charge systems, or there may be no payment system in place. For example, human resources staff members involved in hiring employees, in effect, work for internal customers (the manage
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Excerpted from PERFECT PHRASES for CUSTOMER SERVICE by Robert Bacal. Copyright © 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition ix

Part 1 Succeeding at Customer Service

Chapter 1 Basics of Customer Service 3

What's in it for Me? 4

Different Kinds of Customers 6

First Things First-Dispelling an Important Customer Service Myth 8

Understanding what Customers Want 10

How to get the most from this Book 13

Chapter 2 Customer Service Tools and Techniques 15

Above and Beyond the Call of Duty 16

Acknowledge Customer's Needs 16

Acknowledge Without Encouraging 17

Active Listening 17

Admit Mistakes 18

Allow Venting 18

Apologize 19

Appropriate Nonverbals 19

Appropriate Smiles 19

Arrange Follow-Up 20

Ask Probing Questions 20

Assurances of Effort 21

Assurances of Results 21

Audience Removal 22

Bonus Buy Off 22

Broken Record 22

Close Interactions Positively 23

Common Courtesy 23

Complete Follow-Up 24

Contact Security/Authorities/Management 24

Disengage 25

Distract 25

Empathy Statements 26

Expedite 26

Expert Recommendations 27

Explain Reasoning or Actions 27

Face-Saving Out 28

Find Agreement Points 28

Finish Off/Follow Up 29

Isolate/Detach Customer 29

Level 29

Manage Height Differentials/Nonverbals 30

Manage Interpersonal Distance 30

Not Taking the Bait 31

Offering Choices/Empowering 32

Plain Language 32

Preemptive Strike 33

Privacy and Confidentiality 33

Pros and Cons 34

Provide Alternatives 34

Provide a Customer Takeaway 35

Provide Explanations 35

Question Instead of State 36

Refer to Supervisor 36

Refer to Third Party 37

Refocus 38

Set Limits 38

Some People Think That (Neutral Mode) 40

Stop Sign-Nonverbal 40

Suggest an Alternative to Waiting 41

Summarize the Conversation 41

Telephone Silence 42

Thank-Yous 43

Timeout 43

Use Customer's Name 43

Use of Timing with Angry Customers 44

Verbal Softeners 44

Voice Tone-Emphatic 45

When Question 45

You're Right! 46

Part 2 Dealing with Specific Customer Situations

1 When you're Late or Know You'll Be Late 49

2 When a Customer Is in a Hurry 52

3 When a Customer Jumps Ahead in a Line of Waiting Customers 54

4 When a Customer Asks to Be Served Ahead of Other Waiting Customers 56

5 When a Customer Interrupts a Discussion between the Employee and Another Customer 58

6 When a Customer has a Negative Attitude About Your Company Due to Past Experiences 60

7 When You Need to Explain a Company Policy or Procedure 63

8 When a Customer Might Be Mistrustful 66

9 When the Customer Has Been Through Voicemail Hell 69

10 When a Customer Is Experiencing a Language Barrier 72

11 When the Customer Has been "Buck-Passed" 75

12 When a Customer Needs to Follow a Sequence of Actions 77

13 When the Customer Insults Your Competence 79

14 When a Customer Won't Stop Talking on the Phone 81

15 When the Customer Swears or Yells #1 83

16 When the Customer Swears or Yells #2 86

17 When a Customer Won't Stop Talking and Is Getting Abusive on the Phone #1 89

18 When a Customer Won't Stop Talking and Is Getting Abusive on the Phone #2 92

19 When a Customer Has Been Waiting in a Line 95

20 When You Don't Have the Answer 97

21 When Nobody Handy Has the Answer 101

22 When You Need to Place a Caller on Hold 104

23 When You Need to Route a Customer Phone Call 107

24 When You Lack the Authority to ... 109

25 When a Customer Threatens to go Over Your Head 111

26 When a Customer Demands to Speak with Your Supervisor 113

27 When a Customer Demands to Speak with Your Supervisor, Who Isn't Available 116

28 When a Customer Threatens to Complain to the Press 118

29 When a Customer Demands to Speak to the "Person in Charge" 121

30 When a Customer Makes an Embarrassing Mistake 125

31 When a Customer Withholds Information Due to Privacy Concerns 128

32 When a Customer Threatens Bodily Harm or Property Damage 131

33 When a Customer Is Confused About What He or She Wants or Needs 135

34 When a Customer Makes a Racist Remark 138

35 When a Customer Makes a Sexist Remark 141

36 When a Customer Refuses to Leave 144

37 When a Customer Accuses You of Racism 147

38 When a Customer Plays One Employee Off Another ("So-and-So Said") 150

39 When a Customer Might Be Stealing 154

40 When a Customer Is Playing to an Audience of Other Customers 156

41 When a Customer Exhibits Passive-Aggressive Behavior 159

42 When a Customer Uses Nonverbal Attempts to Intimidate 162

43 When a Customer Makes Persistent and Frequent Phone Calls 165

44 When Someone Else Is Not Responding (No Callback) 168

45 When You Need to Clarify Commitments 172

46 When a Customer Wants Information You're Not Allowed to Give 175

47 When a Customer Makes a Suggestion to Improve Service 177

48 When You Can't Find a Customer's Reservation/Appointment 180

49 When You're Following Up on a Customer Complaint 183

50 Properly Identifying the Internal Customer 186

51 When an Internal Customer Isn't Following Procedures to Request Service 189

52 When the Customer Wants Something that Won't Fill His Need 192

53 When You Want Feedback from the Customer 195

54 When a Customer Complains About Red Tape and Paperwork 198

55 When You Need to Respond to a Customer Complaint Made in Writing 201

56 When a Reservation/Appointment Is Lost and You Can't Meet the Commitment 204

57 When Customers Are Waiting in a Waiting Room 207

58 When a Customer Complains about a Known Problem 210

59 When a Customer Asks Inappropriate Questions 212

60 When a Customer Tries an Unacceptable Merchandise Return 214

Part 3 Social Media and Customer Service

The Connection Between Social Media and Customer Service 221

61 Scanning, Watching, Searching (Proactive) 227

62 Triage: Proactively Prioritizing Complaints/Comments 229

63 Contact! 232

64 Proactive Complaint Handling 234