During our customer service training courses we encourage our delegates to put into action 6 essential rules of customer care.

These crucial rules are –

Be ‘customer driven’, not ‘process-led’ or ‘task focused’

• Be flexible where you can be
• Acknowledge the customer’s perspective
• Work hard to understand your customer’s need and situation
• See the bigger picture and not just the task in hand

Give a personalised service

• Treat people as individuals
• Be friendly not familiar
• Build rapport
• Address customer by name (appropriately formal / informal, e.g. ‘Mr / Mrs’ or ‘John / Margaret’

Be efficient now officious

• Give explanations in customer-friendly terms, not jargon or official-ese’
• Demonstrate your speed of response (e.g. returning calls on time)
• Maintain people’s self-esteem
• Don’t sound like a bureaucratic robot

Be proactive

• Offer suggestions
• Take ownership of situations
• Follow up as promised
• Look for ways to impress customers – exceeding their expectations where possible

Respect your internal customers as well as your external customers

• Think who else may need to be in the loop
• Don’t blame other departments

Compete for your customers not against them

• Aim for ‘win-win’ rather than getting on-up on the caller
• Always consider ways to improve the service to the customer

If you follow these six simple rules then you are on your way to ensuring that you provide excellent customer service at all times.