Service Untitled

While the frequency of the situation depends on the type of company, a customer service representative will almost certainly talk to someone they have trouble understanding at one point in their customer service career. When it does occur, what’s the best thing to do? Here are some tips and suggestions I’ve found to be effective:

• Speak slowly. People tend to respond to the way you speak and mimic it to some degree. With that in mind, speak slowly and clearly when you are working with a customer who is difficult to understand.
• Ask close ended questions. Instead of asking questions that prompt long or complicated responses, stick to asking simple questions that can be answered with a yes or a no. This will make communication easier for everyone.
• Ask customers to spell things. You obviously have to use discretion when choosing to do this, but asking customers to spell information can be helpful. If they say they live at 123 Random Street (but what they say doesn’t sound anything like that), asking the customer to spell that out will likely make it easier to get the correct information in a timely manner.
• Ask customers to adjust their tone. If the issue is purely a thick accent, there isn’t much that can be done in this area. However, if a customer is just speaking too softly (or too loudly) or seems to have a bad connection, make them aware of this. It usually isn’t hard for a customer to raise or lower their voice or to call back to get a new connection. Be careful and be sure to use your best service etiquette when asking customers to adjust their tone. Something like, “I’m sorry, but I am having trouble understanding you. Would you mind speaking up a little bit?” tends to work well.
• Identify who is good at working with difficult to understand customers. Some employees are just better at working with customers who are difficult to understand than others are. If your company is lucky enough to have such employees, identify who they are and kindly redirect the customers that are very difficult to understand to these employees. 

When a customer is truly difficult to understand, there is only so much that can be done. The methods above have always worked fairly well for me. What has worked well for you in the past?

Working with angry customers is a part of customer service that can’t be avoided. I write about working with angry customers fairly regularly and have a category devoted to it, but it is still a challenge to work with angry customers. A reader named Nancy emailed me today expressing the frustration she feels when she works with extremely angry customers who just won’t let her talk. Her frustration is certainly called for and it is a common one at that.

Out of all the challenges in customer service, working with customers who scream, yell, and curse is probably the biggest challenge. Most companies don’t tolerate the worst of these customers (they hang up), but what about the customer who is just really angry and isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong? How do you work with that customer?

Back in December 2007, I featured a two part guest post from Jennifer Harris, an employee at Ruby Receptionists. Her (great) advice is as follows:

• Lower your voice. This will force the customer to lower his or her voice to hear you.
• Provide a plan of action. Let the customer know what you can do and make it clear if you are doing anything special or going out of your way for that customer.

These are two great tips. I also find it useful to apologize to customers about the inconvenience and tell them that you are going to work with them to get their issues resolved. Ask them what they would like to happen to get the issue resolved (this works really well when customers are going on and on; simply ask, “Okay, what would you like us to do to get this issue resolved for you?” and go from there).

It’s unfortunate, but sometimes you just have to talk while an angry customer is talking. If you lower your voice, you will usually be able to gain some control over the conversation. Once you have the customer listening, use your best active listening skills and positive language to come to a solution.

In almost all companies, angry customers are a fact of customer service life. It is important to not take the customer’s anger personally (it isn’t directed towards you specifically) and to do whatever you can to get the issue resolved. Even though some customers can’t be pleased, it is possible to work with a majority of customers who can start off angry and end up satisfied.

I was filling out a government form last week and noticed on the upper right hand corner there was a line that said “Estimated Burden: 85 Minutes.” Needless to say, this isn’t the best verbiage for posting how long a form will take to process at some government office somewhere in Virginia or Maryland.

Think about the alternatives the government could have placed that would make the line a little bit less confrontational:

• EB: 85
• B85
• 85
• Estimated Processing Time: 85 minutes
• Estimated Processing: 85 minutes
• Estimated Completion Time: 85 Minutes

That is just six examples from what is certainly an unlimited number of possibilities. Burden is not a positive word and there are so many ways to hide the true meaning on the form. Anyone trained to fill out the forms could probably figure out what EB means, but for the 99% of people who aren’t familiar with the acronym, EB:85 will mean nothing.  The government can even put just 85 or B85, both of which would give the processor the information he or she needs without having a negative tone towards the customer (the person filling out the form).

Even though these types of things are super simple to fix, you can’t seem to get away from them. Some organizations simply don’t understand that a simple change in wording can make a difference and convey a totally different (and much more positive) tone. The ones that do, though, are the ones that will likely have happier customers. (Assume, of course, that similar verbiage mistakes are made across organizations that don’t think about it and not just in one place.)

Regular (and careful) readers of my blog will inevitably come across a typo or an awkward sentence in one of my posts. Some readers will even contact me and let me know about the more obvious ones that slip through. 

While I’m usually pretty good at avoiding errors in my posts, the quantity of posts I write, my inherent lack of an editor, and the relatively informal style of writing that I write my blog posts with makes errors inevitable. Even with an occasional error, though, I still have better grammar than a lolcat and never use resort to using chatspeak.

But some, even in professional situations, don’t have better grammar than a lolcat and do use chatspeak.

A surprising number of companies and customer service supervisors don’t place any sort of emphasis or seem to care much about employees using proper spelling and grammar when communicating with customers. The companies may care officially, but judging from what their representatives type and send out, the rules don’t seem to be enforced. It is quite likely that you have been in a customer service live chat or seen an email from a customer service representative that was filled with spelling and grammar mistakes, many of which were painfully obvious and incredibly easy to avoid.

While no one expects a customer service representative to write like Shakespeare or Steinbeck (if they can, they should consider changing jobs), they should be expected to fully spell out words, to use punctuation appropriately, to be able to use the right “your”, to know the difference between than and then and to and too, and so on. Most of the things that people mess up on are simple things that everyone was taught in middle school (and probably before that). The correct usages are readily available online and very easy to test representatives on. Improper spelling and grammar is a terrible way to lose customer confidence because it is so easy to avoid.

After you finish reading this post, check out some of the emails that come from your company and/or take a few minutes to monitor some of the conversations going on through your live chat. What type of spelling and grammar is being used? Does it present the image that you want to present?

And just in case you didn’t realize, the errors in the title of the post were intentional.

It isn’t unheard of for customer service representatives (myself included) to take a look at an issue and notice something is broken or not know the answer. If the product or service that a representative supports is complicated, not knowing something or something being broken is essentially inevitable. It’s okay not to know, but it isn’t okay not to be honest.

If you have learned that the customer has discovered a bug, that’s fine – just tell them that and let them know that you’re working on getting it resolved for them. Chances are, there are bugs in your product or ways to break it and that customers will find these eventually, so if a customer does discover one, apologize for the inconvenience, let someone know that can fix it, and communicate with the customer about how long it will take and what you can do to help them (maybe there is a workaround or something that can be done on your end). Most customers will appreciate you being up front with them and will thank you for communicating so well.

If you come across a weird problem that you can’t find the answer to and your colleague can’t find the answer to or something like that, then just be honest. Say something like “I looked into this and asked a colleague of mine as well, but we can’t find out what is wrong with your account just yet. I am going to ask one of our engineers and then give you a call back as soon as I hear from them. Thank you so much for your patience.” Again, you’re being up front with the customer and the customer will appreciate this.

There are of course customers that won’t appreciate your honesty and would prefer to be lied to. Nothing works for everyone, but for most companies and most customers, being upfront is the way to be. Very few customers expect absolute perfection and letting them know that you aren’t perfect is just fine (as long as you are going to do something about it).

If you haven’t noticed already, a lot of companies send out holiday greetings in December. I’ve gotten several emails and several cards from various companies and organizations over the past few days and I imagine it’ll continue right through the main part of the holiday season. 

Holiday cards are a nice gesture. I’m not sure how much business they’ll get your company, but the number of customers who will be annoyed by a nice holiday card is very small. They’ll help your brand and help to show customers that you are thinking about them. Some customers will really like the cards, while others will just look at it briefly and then throw it out.

Some companies put promotional certificates or other such promotions in the holiday greetings they send out. These can be effective, but I also think “polluting” the card with promotional material can detract from the “we care so we are sending you a card” message. The choice is obviously yours and as long as you include your promotion subtly and within the context of a holiday greeting, you should be fine.

Holiday greetings should also be attractive and well designed. If you don’t have professional designers in-house, hire someone to come up with your cards or buy cards that are particularly stylish and fit in with your overall brand. Use a nice font, high quality card stock, well written text, and so on. If your brand is ultra-formal, don’t pick a playful design – be consistent.

And remember to be politically correct with your cards. Happy holidays, season’s greetings, etc. are all nice things to put without having to associate yourself with a particular holiday and risk offending or alienating someone.

I called my bank today and after introducing myself, the customer service representative asked for my social security number. Then she asked for my date of birth and zipcode. This is obviously standard operating procedure within a bank, but by just asking for any of those personal details, the representative didn’t follow an important principle of customer service.

When customer service representatives ask for sensitive customer information, they need to preface it with the intended use of the personal information. For example, “May I have your social security number so I can look up your account?” is a much better way to ask the same question.

During any given customer service call, a representative will usually have to ask for at least some type of personal data. Name, address, social security number, phone number, etc. My general rule is to explain why you are asking for anything besides a first and last name. “May I have your address so I can look up your account?” “For security purposes, would you mind verifying your phone number for me?” are all good questions to ask in a delicate manner.

A lot of customers are very weary of getting out personal information to people they don’t know. Obviously, saying what the information will be used for will not eliminate fears in an extremely concerned caller, but it will certainly help a customer feel more comfortable and confident. There is very little to lose by prefacing a request for personal information and a lot to gain. It is truly a little thing that can end up making a big difference in the overall customer service experience.

There are a lot of (usually very smart) people who work in customer service and think that the customer service interaction is actually a debate between the customer and the representative. This couldn’t be further from the case.

The most important thing to remember is this: there is nothing to be gained from proving a customer wrong. Unlike a debate competition or a political battle, the “gotcha” moments in customer service do nothing to “help your case.” All they do is make a customer feel bad and encourage them to get on the defensive. This obviously doesn’t accomplish anything and usually, makes the customer service experience worse because customers get worked up when there was really no need to get them worked up in the first place.

Instead of debating, encourage representatives to focus on the positives. Focusing on the positives is a great way to shift the tone of a conversation. Instead of debating the customer, have representatives tell them what they are going to do for the customer and how they are going to help the customer resolve his or her issue. In the end, that is all the customer cares about. Who was right or who was wrong isn’t really relevant in the broader scheme of things.

Not debating a customer does not mean that you always have to agree with them. If they’re wrong, representatives can certainly say “from my experience, that isn’t the best way to do that” or say something like “our system is not designed to be used that way, which is why you ran into that problem.” Phrases like that sound a lot better than, “you obviously didn’t know what you were doing and that is why you are having this problem”

With a vast majority of customer representatives, it isn’t what they’re saying, but how they’re saying it. Phrasing the same statement a different way or changing a debate to a friendly conversation will make a world of difference 90% of the time.