توضیحات ای جی

BEC : Service -AJ

Hi, this is AJ. Welcome to my commentary talking more about this idea of customer service. So, of course, we can expand the idea of customer service beyond just dealing with your company’s direct customers, meaning the people who are actually buying your services or buying your products. You might be in a position in your company where you’re not dealing directly with those customers, but you’re serving someone.

I think that’s the main idea is that maybe you’re serving or doing work for another division or other people in your company. You’re providing something that helps someone else in your company. Businesses call these people ‘internal customers’, meaning they’re the people you’re serving. They’re the people you’re doing work for in some way or another. You could serve them well too. It could be that your department or you, particularly, do work that helps the salespeople, for example. Maybe you’re producing materials that help the salespeople or maybe you’re supporting them in some way. In many ways the salespeople are your customers, so you can have this same mentality of service with them just as if they were the direct customers.

Another thing you can do, if you really want to be bold, is you can go out and meet your company’s customers no matter what your position is. Even if you’re not in sales, even if you don’t deal directly with the customers normally, you could just go out and meet them. Set up some meetings, go to their locations and talk to them just because you want to understand more who it is your company serves. You could just tell them you know I’m not a salesperson and I don’t do direct customer service. I’m in the mailroom, but I just want to know more about you and know more about the people who are buying our products.

So you could go and arrange a lunch with somebody and chat with them about why they chose your company, what they like about the products and what they use them for, what they think is good and what’s not so good and what are the challenges they have.

Just ask lots of questions and listen, listen, listen. It will give you a different perspective, a different viewpoint on your own job and really help you to understand the bigger picture again of what it is the whole company does and how your own job fits into that.

I’ve noticed in large companies that lots of the employees totally forget about the customers, you know the people who are actually spending the money and the people who are, in fact, really paying for your salary, because all the money comes from the customers, eventually it all comes from them. So a lot of big companies especially, there are a lot of people working in those companies that never deal face to face with a customer. They never meet them. They never talk to them. They don’t know anything about them. I think that’s a weakness. I think that’s a very weak point because you really kind of lose sight of - forget - what you’re doing, why and who it’s all for.

It’s easy to get lost in your own company’s policies and procedures, the organization chart, your manger and your manager’s manager and all these different divisions and get kind of lost in the little world of your own company and totally forgetting about those people out in the real world who are giving money to the company, who are causing it all to happen, the ones you’re all supposed to be serving. So I just think it’s a great exercise to get out there and really directly meet them if you can. If you have that opportunity, do it. Do it as much as you can because it may change the way you do your job when you really find out what the customers want and what they need.

Another idea with customer service, another thing to think about, is the idea of focusing on your very, very best customers. So let’s imagine you do deal with customers in some way, either in sales or you’re actually in the customer service department or something.

Well, of course you want to try to be generally polite and nice to everybody, but it’s also true that there are a small number of customers who do a large amount of business and this is true in almost every single business that it’s not even. All customers are not equal.

Certain customers really spend a lot of money with your company and others not much at all. It’s also true that some customers are really difficult to please and they’re a pain in the butt, meaning they’re really annoying and difficult and they cause lots and lots of problems and other customers are very pleasant and wonderful to deal with. So you have to kind of rank your customers, right? You have a limited amount of energy and time, so instead of just giving equal energy and time to all of them --that doesn’t make sense --you really need to give extra energy, extra time, extra focus to the best ones.

The very best customers are the ones that spend a lot of money with you and who are fun, pleasant, positive and easy to deal with. In other words, you love working with them. You enjoy serving them. They’re wonderful people. They’re a great company --if it’s a company you’re serving --and you really like doing business with them. Those are the best. That’s the top. You want to keep those guys, so you really want to work extra hard to give your best in terms of being polite and nice yes, definitely, but also doing extra things for those people.

Those are the ones you should go to lunch with as often as you can. Those are the ones you should listen to as much as you can. Talk to them. Listen to them. Learn everything possible about them because when you serve those guys really well, those really top ones, the idea is that, number one, you keep them. That’s obviously the first goal. The second goal is that, hopefully, they tell their friends or colleagues about you and, hopefully, you can then attract their friends and their colleagues as customers. The idea is that, hopefully again, generally, their friends and their colleagues will also be great or at least they have a better chance, a higher chance of being great.

By the same token there’s nothing wrong with firing customers. I do it all the time. If someone is just really unpleasant to deal with, they’re really not friendly, they’re not nice, they don’t seem to like you, they don’t seem to like your company and I have experienced this sometimes, they will take away so much energy and it’s not worth it.

The really crazy thing is usually it’s the cheapest customers who are the hardest to deal with. In other words, the ones that really don’t even want to pay you or they’ll want to pay you the very least amount possible, they’re the ones who want the most and they’re the most demanding, they’re the most difficult.

Fire them. Get rid of them. You don’t have to accept money from everybody. No one says you have to. So it can be a really good strategy to either fire or to at least push away the bad customers, the ones that really don’t serve your business very well. Send them to your competitors. Let them deal with them and at the same time attract more and more and more of the fabulous ones, the great ones, the ones that are happy to spend money with you, they love what you do and they’re very, very positive and fun and enjoyable to deal with. That’s the ideal thing. So you want more and more and more of those great customers and fewer and fewer and fewer of the difficult ones.

This is not something that customer service people talk about a lot, but I think it is a great strategy because long term then what happens is that you get a large percentage of fantastic customers and when you have a lot of fantastic customers, they love you, they love spending money with you, it energizes you. It makes you feel great. It energizes your company because it creates more and more and more word of mouth.

Don’t waste too much time trying to please people who are unpleasant. I mean certainly the first time you want to do your best job with everyone, but when you realize that someone is just being cheap or difficult or they’re just not honest people just push them away. Get rid of them and focus on the honest great ones. There are plenty of them out there and give those guys incredible service. You know go over the top. Go above and beyond with the great ones.

So a lot of this is just really basic humanity, I think. I mean there are business books written about customer service and certain computer systems and other systems and policies that can help with customer service, but in the end it’s all about just being friendly and positive and doing your best to help other human beings, doing your best to understand them, doing your best to solve their problems. It means being professional in the sense that no matter how you feel, no matter what’s happening in your life, that when you’re dealing with another person you are positive, helpful, honest and good with them.

So if you’re having a bad day, well it’s not the customer’s fault so don’t take it out on them. Don’t be mean and nasty to them. Go into the bathroom and yell and scream if you need to or yell at the person who made you angry, but be good to your customers and if a customer is angry and difficult you have to try your best to be calm, to be a good person. I mean this is really just basic humanity. This is useful in relationships of any kind, even family relationships or friendships. It’s the same thing, so just treat people like people.

It seems like a revolutionary idea for some reason. For some reason in business that’s like a radical idea - to treat people with humanity and emotion just as you would a friend, someone in your family or someone that you really like. That’s all it really is. It’s not even a business concept. So anyway, get out there and do that. It’s surprising how such a simple thing can actually make a really big difference.

The End.