Take a “Customer Moment”

By: Ben Stephens, Service Strategies

Good customer service skills are essential to the success of customer facing technical staff.  Many of today’s best technology organizations provide their staff with effective customer service skills through formal programs like our Service Representative, Support Professional and Support Specialist training courses. However, service organizations frequently neglect to reinforce the customer service skills they invested in through formal training, thereby diminishing their investment. While we are all very busy today, there are simple ways to reinforce the customer service skills we value.

Recently, I participated on a call with customer where I was delivering a presentation as a part of a regular operations meeting. As we reviewed the agenda for the meeting I noted the second bullet was “Customer Moment.” I was intrigued by this item and when we got to this point in the agenda the presenter went over a customer situation where she had to inform them that they were not going to receive the patch they were promised. She outlined the situation, the process she went through to deliver the message, the customer’s response and led a short discussion on how to best deliver bad news to a customer. This reinforcement exercise took all of ten minutes.

After the call, I asked about the “Customer Moment” agenda item and she explained that all meetings in the service organization included this item. That the meeting organizer is responsible for the agenda item where they review the importance of customer service skills through an example, an exercise or as a part of a staff member recognition. Apparently this has been a part of their service culture for many years.

What a simple idea to ensure that customer skills and the customer is kept foremost in our minds. How does your organization reinforce the importance of customer service skills? Would the “Customer Moment” agenda item work for your team?