Comments on: Engage People on a Human Level

By: Service Untitled » Engaging with customers. - customer service and customer service experience blog

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:25:49 +0000

[...] Engaging customers doesn’t necessarily have to be about killing dead air time (like the previous post I wrote on the subject discusses), but it does have to involve paying attention to and caring about [...]

By: Service Untitled » Engaging Customers In Action: Recognizing Them - customer service and customer service experience blog

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:07:20 +0000

[...] I’ve talked about the importance of engaging customers on a human level before. It’s critical to an excellent customer service experience and it’s critical to making the difference between an above average and an exceptional customer service experience. The companies (and more so, the employees) that can engage customers at a more human level are the ones that are going to see their customer satisfaction scores coming in as 10’s as opposed to 8’s or 9’s. I was at a nice restaurant this evening with some family members and the waiter engaged us on a human level. We’ve been going to this restaurant for quite a while and we’ve seen this waited plenty of times. We hadn’t been there recently, but he remembered us (he said “welcome back, good to see you again”) and when another person at our table asked him a question about how he’s been doing, he told us about a several month RV trip he took around the country. [...]

By: Service Untitled » Customer Service of Taxes - Part 2 of 2 - customer service and customer service experience blog

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:10:33 +0000

[...] What the TurboTax representative did was just another example of engaging customers on a human level. You don’t necessarily have to ask about the weather – you just need personality that is different from (and hopefully better than) what’s on the script. My customer service experience with TurboTax made me feel that I made the right choice for my tax preparation software. It also made me sure about who I was going to use next year and in years to come. That’s the underlying goal of customer service and TurboTax (Intuit, actually) obviously understands that. [...]

By: Service Untitled

Service Untitled — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:28:32 +0000

Todd,

You don’t want to do it during the nitty gritty time where you are actually doing something. However, it could be a good way to kill time when you’re waiting for something to download, when you need a computer to restart, etc. It depends on the situation. However, there will always be customers who don’t think it is genuine, and for good reason, a lot of the times it isn’t.

By: Todd

Todd — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:01:53 +0000

I personally can’t stand it when agents try to engage me in small talk. It makes me feel like they aren’t as interested in solving my problem as they are in just chit-chatting, plus I know they really could care less what the weather is like here or about my crying prince/princess (which I would find insulting if someone actually did say).

Small talk like this has always come across awkward to me, just like the really long “goodbye” statements (“Just remember that you can always call us at 800-555-1212 if you have any further problems. We appreciate your business and thanks for calling Company X today! Good-bye.”)

I don’t think anyone can truly pull this off regardless of personality, as in my humble opinion, it will always seem fake and distracting from the real issue at hand.

By: Service Untitled

Service Untitled — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:31:19 +0000

JNK: That is a funny approach with telling people the look great. Sending out birthday cards are a great touch for personalizing the experience.

David: You’re right — you can’t force it. If you force it and it isn’t the right use, it won’t help at all (may be do the opposite in fact). I agree fully.

Thanks for the great comments.

By: David Silversmith

David Silversmith — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:05:06 +0000

Personally I love and have used this idea myself.

At one point several years ago I really encouraged my reps to use this practice. What I discovered is that ideas like this are very much personality dependant.

When I use this approach it comes across as very natural. When I tried to get others to copy my approach – it worked for some. However, for others it came across as very stilted and obviously fake.

I still love this idea – but I include it as a suggestion – part of a bag of tricks and encourage reps to find the approaches and tricks that they are comfortable with.

By: JNK

JNK — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:37:18 +0000

This is great. The prince/princess question is priceless. I always tell people when I am doing remote support that they are looking great today. My dad used to do that when he was talking on the phone with people. I own a computer repair & consulting company in Bel Air, MD I am always tring to give the best support I can give, and many of my clients have also become friends. I just recently started sending out birthday cards as one more personal way to stay in touch with my clients. It’s sad though, that sometimes my card is the only one they get. Always remember that everyone is the same inside – we all want to be treated as an individual.