I was speaking to a company the other day because I was having problem with logging onto their website. I was asked by the customer service representative which browser I use. I told them that I am Mac user so that would be Safari. They then proceed to tell me that their website does not work very well with Safari and that they highly recommended that I switch to another browser. For one thing I am completely stunned that they are telling me to switch browsers. Who develops a web site that is not compatible to all browsers? Why would you be inconveniencing any customer and recommend to them to switch from the browser they use everyday. This representative only wanted to take the easy way out and get me off the line so they could take another call. Their bonus program is obviously flawed and is going for volume instead of quality of service. Please customer service departments, think about the customer and not your call volume. Maybe your call volume is so high because you are not taking the time to talk with your customers in-depth and listen to them which would probably solve future problems they might have with your service.

Make it a great day and weekend! Matt

If you are looking to provide outstanding customer service to your guests you first need to look at how you are on boarding your employees. If you are not teaching them how you want your guests to be treated then you can throw out the whole idea about outstanding customer service.

Today, I was at the grocery store and during my 20 minutes of shopping I saw two different employees ignore two different customer service issues. The first one happened because they only had two cash registers open and myself and three other customers approached them to be checked out. The one employee walked right by all the cash registers and into the office. The one cashier called out to the manager to ring the bell to bring on more cashiers and surprise, who walks out of the office but the one employee who just walked by everyone and saw us waiting. He jumps on a cash registers and takes the next customer. Wow! Is this rocket science 101? You work in a grocery store where you need to stock the shelves and check out customers. If you are not doing one you should be doing the other. Take off your blinders and be proactive!

The second episode happened at the same store with a different employee. I was headed out to the my car with my grocery bags and I see another employee bringing out trash for the dumpster. As I finished loading my car with my bags, I noticed the employee returning from his mission of throwing away the trash and he passes by not one but two empty shopping carts in the parking garage. This is always a problem with grocery stores, since most people are lazy and will not return their carts and that is an entire other blog posts. The grocery store does not have cart returns in the parking garage only one up near the entrance of the store. All the employees know that at any given time of the day there will always be empty shopping carts left in the parking garage, which are a hazard to people driving, getting out of their car or just plan walking through the garage. Keep your customer safe and grab the shopping carts and bring them back to their proper place, what is 30 seconds of your work day? Again take off the blinders, open your eyes to how you can enrich your customers experience at your store.

So, with both of these experiences at the same store within five minutes of each other proves to me that management did not properly on board these employees and I bet they do not have a very good on boarding practice at all for their employees with how to improve their customer experience. After you read this look at your on boarding and see where you have holes or nothing at all with how your employees need to be looking for ways to improve the customer experience.

Make it a great day!!!

In talking with several owners over the past couple of weeks, I have come to realize that the policy and procedures we put in place to protect our businesses are actually killing our customer service. I completely agree that we need to have policy and procedures in place to help the running of our day to day business but do not let those same procedures kill the opportunity to make a client happy. The P&P, which I will now refer to for Policy and Procedure, needs to act as a guideline for how we handle each new situation because no two are going to be the same. The one I like the best in P&P is No Refunds. Yes, I have the same P&P in my business and I will stick by it 99.9% of the time but if I get that 0.01% who I just cannot make happy then to me and my business it is easy to give them their money back and I get to take the high road. Now if they try and give me a negative review on any of the sites, I get to reply that they have been giving their money back and have been giving a coupon to come return to our business. Who can really say that we did not go above and beyond for this individual and we fell on our P&P sword for them. I know that I will sleep sound at night knowing that I did the right thing and will bring us future business.

So in looking at your P&Ps you need to make sure that you give your team the right authority to go outside of the lines and keep the customer/guest happy. In most cases the guest/customer is looking to have their problem solved and continue as a customer of yours. In those cases where you feel you might be getting scammed then you stick with your P&P. The training that we are giving our teams does not let them think outside of the lines. I would love to sit live at a call center and listen in on these calls and prove to the company where they are making the mistakes. If I was also allowed to listen to the recorded calls from  companies I am sure I would be astounded with the customer service representative sicking to the P&P and only causing a customer to get furious with them and then losing them all together as a customer.

To wrap things up, yes, we need P&Ps in our business but train your teams to look outside of the lines to solve problems for your guest/customers and keep them as Raving Fans.

Make it a great day!!!