I rant about customer service a lot.
We all do. We choose our restaurants, hotels, clothing stores and shops based
largely on good or bad service. If poor, we quit using that company, tell our
friends or even post negatively online for all to see. How costly is that?
Many paying customers QUIT their
contractors. Not due to pricing, or technical skill, but due to one thing: Poor Customer Service. The treatment –
actual or imagined – was poor, thus the experience was wrecked. And there goes
the customer, referrals and reputation right along with it.
So guess what a large number of contractors
do? Shocking answer here, plus some Top Contractor CSR Scripts.
They
prefer to pay almost no attention to customer service training. They want
to squeak by for “as little as possible,” not realizing that this so-called
“savings” is among the costliest money drains known to man. You can do all the
research you want: even if everything else is right, bad customer services
skills can kill a business.
Remember, ALL who speak to customers
become THE spokesperson and representative of your company. However, too often,
a company just puts “somebody” on the phone, communicating through email, and making
social posts. Or, worst of all, they allow technicians to stand face-to-face in
customers’ homes, communicating unprofessionally or setting you up for
disaster.
It’s not their fault. They were NOT trained
in the lucrative art of customer service. So they just “wing it,” communicating
indifferently, sending signals of “amateur” or “sketchy” or sometimes just
plain rude.
The
Fallacy of “Nice People”
It is TOTALLY false to say, “No, we
don’t need training because we hire nice people.”
Wrong. Nice people OFTEN over-promise
and can misstate facts. Do nice people know how to upsell? How to handle a
complaint? Generate a referral? In fact, here are just a few areas where Top
Trained Customer Service Reps excel:
- Effective phone answering, hand-offs and outbound
- Appointment Confirmations
- Upsells
- Callbacks
- Angry Customers
- Referral Generation
- Positive Review Generation
- Agreement Renewals
- Tardy appointment scripts, emails
Imagine if EVERY ONE of those were
improved? What would that mean to your bottom line? And what would this cost
you to implement vs. what it’s costing you to NOT HAVE?
Now imagine if you focused on each
area, just 2 per week; in just over a month, you’d have greatly increased your
company image, professionalism and sales.
The
Power of Scripts and Professionally-Crafted Written Communication
Some shy away from “Scripts,”
assuming this is for robots and recordings. Hardly. The best speeches ever made
are scripted. Yet an effective delivery means they’re comfortable with the
POINTS of the script, without memorizing them verbatim.
Same with written communication. We
supply clients with dozens of email and follow-up ‘mail’ templates (all
prewritten) which can be easily personalized. The point is:
Better to have a strategic outline
for all written and verbal communications than none at all.
The above should help you a ton. Of
course, we have dozens of scripts, emails, follow-ups, referral requests,
renewal letters, thank you cards and more Customer Service pieces. (Ask your
coach or email to
request more info.)
As we head into summer, I just
wanted you to have these scripts to help you get and keep more customers, while
conveying a better and more professional image.
Hope you put these to good use. Enjoy!
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