When you give your customers a service that is way out of the ordinary, two things happen: your customers come back again and again, and your job becomes something you enjoy.
When you give great service to your customers, you want them to say "Wow!" as soon as you leave. You can do that if you use the 7 tips below as part of your regular service.
- Give your customers a lot of chances to win: People love to be stroked. Just like pets, we like it when people fuss over us, smile at us, and touch us gently. Strokes can be any kind of greeting, using someone's name, or saying something like "Have a nice day." But the best thing you can do for someone is to give them your full attention.
- Surprise them with something they didn't expect: British Airways found that a staff member's popularity with passengers goes up when they do something unexpected, like start a conversation or invite someone to see the flight deck. If you want these to still be a surprise, they have to be rare and not the norm.
- Pay attention to the small stuff: Paying attention to the little things that don't affect the main service much is a way of saying, "If we take care of the little things, just think what we'll do with the big ones." The bathrooms should be so clean that you could eat your food in them, and the customer notices should not talk down to people.
- Try to guess what your customers will want: In a survey of airport check-in workers, customers said that the best ones were the ones who knew what they needed before they asked. These were people who would often look down the line and figure out what each customer needed, whether it was a grandmother who needed help with her bags or a business executive who wanted a quick service.
- Always Say "Yes": Great customer care workers never say "no" to someone who asks for help. Even if they can't do it themselves, they'll know someone who can and put you in touch with them. They always talk in a good way. Even if the answer is "No, we're closed," the response is "Yes, we can do that for you first thing tomorrow."
- Treat them the same by acting differently toward them: We don't like it when other people get better service than us, like in a restaurant. It makes us feel like we're not important or good enough. We also don't want to be treated the same as everyone else if that means getting a standard, soulless answer like you might get in a fast-food restaurant. The trick is to treat everyone differently but the same way.
- Match Tact With Tact: Tact means handling other people's feelings with skill. When things are awkward or embarrassing, tact keeps everyone from blushing. It's something that will be noticed by your customers, but you should try not to be noticed.
Practice these seven answers until you know them as well as you know how to breathe, and customers will be lining up to talk to you.
