More on customer service

Customer service comes from the heart afwj from Lyndon Seno
and an article:

 
Who your customer really is
Perhaps you think that the people who have direct contact with actual paying customers or clients are the only ones who need to consider service. You, as someone who deals purely with people inside the company, are not a giver of service and do not have customers yourself. What about the person from credit control who needs you to get a copy of a customer’s invoice for her? Or the person who does your books who needs you to keep your receipts in some kind of order?

People you deal with inside the organisation are your customers too - internal, rather than external customers, but still deserving of the same consideration and care.

The external customers are the people who buy your goods and services and who make pay day possible.

The internal customers are the people with whom you work inside your company, the people who pull together as a team to deliver the product or service required by the external customer.
What your customer expects
Although service is difficult to define, we can still say what it is that the customer wants from a transaction. Think about it for yourself - put yourself in the shoes of a customer of yours, or think of a time when you, as a customer contacted an organisation. You might like to make a list and see how it compares with the one below.

The customer wants:

someone who will listen;
someone who will solve their problem; and,
someone who will do what they say they will.

Or, to put it another way, the customer wants to speak to someone who is:



Courteous
Friendly


Understanding
Informal


Sincere
Responsive


Tolerant
Smiling


Open-minded
Truthful


Motivated



Empathetic



Reliable




There are other things you may have put - accepting, non-judgemental, trustworthy, professional - and these are equally valid points. Lists like this grow longer the more time you spend thinking about them. What you can’t do is to put these points into an order of importance - that depends on your customer. Remember, too, that customers are neither aware of, nor interested in, how many other customers there are or how busy you may be. As far as they are concerned, you have one customer and one problem with which to deal!
Benefits of good service
If, as service givers, we deal with our customers effectively and efficiently, the company will benefit in a number of areas:

the cost of solving problems that occur will be minimised;
money owed to the company may be collected quickly;
a relationship is developed between the company and the customer;
the possibility of supplying additional products and services is opened up; and,
it introduces the customer to an area of the company other than sales.

Michael LeBeouf, an internationally published author, lecturer and professor of management at the University of New Orleans, tells of s
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