Today I am sharing a memory, a little professional advice, and an
affirmation that the most difficult interaction can be overcome with a little
humor. Always.
Customer service depends
heavily on the rep’s ability to communicate with what is often an angry,
frustrated, confused, or harried customer. This means that they are not on fine
listening mode. Under those circumstances, effective customer service becomes
the chore of breaking through whatever is preventing those customers from
hearing what you need to communicate to them.
There are best practices to
get there, and any business concern worth its mettle properly trains the people
who communicate with their clients and try to resolve issues for them. Bad customer service can cause a business serious money.
These days, despite efforts
to contain globalism, one of the biggest efforts in customer service is simply the transfer of
information. Diversity means that you will communicate with people in a variety
of demographics—from place of origin to educational level, to name but two. It's hard enough to break through the strata when nuances of culture and language put up additional hurdles in the process, but that's beyond the topic at hand.
For a variety of reasons,
you may need to give out strings and combinations of letters and numbers
(because you need to spell something out or because you are giving people a
confirmation/tracking number).
I always trained staff by
telling them that they needed to enunciate clearly (which I admit did not
always render the desired effect).
I also like to rely on standard/uniform
solutions that everyone could implement easily and understand just as well.
For numbers, I always
suggest breaking down by the digit. Digits have their own specific sound from zero
to nine, but if you start combining numbers, the possibilities for
misunderstanding increase exponentially--especially with the elderly whose hearing may be impaired.
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| source: http://wheresmysammich.com/picture/70085/nato-phonetic-alphabet/ |
When spelling out words, I
generally rely on the NATO phonetic alphabet. It has been
in use for over 50 years, and even if you are not military or in aviation, it is
part of popular culture. Who doesn’t know what Alpha, Bravo, Charlie represents?
Make no mistake, you will
run into someone who doesn’t know or will feign ignorance, and you’ll have to
work around it.
I love words and always
have. I used to read the dictionary for fun, and playfully skim through a
thesaurus because I loved the way it added a funky taxonomy to the process! And word geek that I am, I'd sometimes write lists for fun (something I recommend to keep your mind sharp).
One of the things I tried
to stress to my staff was that if you could connect to a customer on a human
level, it made the whole exchange better and easier. But the aforementioned
anger and frustrations sometimes presented a tough wall to crack; if you could make
them laugh or connect to something they cared about, you were more than halfway
there.
So I use spelling to disarm
their emotional state. The NATO Phonetic
Alphabetic remains a standard but I supplement it. If I have any piece of
personal information, I related each code word to a specific topic of interest
to customer. For instance, at Professional Press Books I used medical terms because my client base was composed of students, professors, doctors and surgeons in ophthalmology and optometry.
Sometimes there is nothing you can do to make them happy.
And sometimes folks reject the codes, for spite or in spite of their popularity, in which case you are free to substitute. You
can try simple words (A as in apple, B as in boy) like a kindergarten lesson
plan.
I just can’t do that, it’s
boring and uninspired, so instead I opt for lists of related words (often food-related,
from herbs and spices to pasta shapes). I have used the Roman pantheon of gods, candy bar brands,
countries of the world, superheroes, cheeses, international currencies, colors beyond the rainbow, dog breeds!
Most people tend to find it
easier to relate to when you use first names--with Juliet, Mike, Oscar, Romeo
and Victor setting the precedent. But then, I have taken the opportunities to
blow up their expectations by using Spanish names and pronouncing them
correctly (A for Alejandra, B for Belkis), or Italian names with a Brooklyn
accent (A is foh Ant-knee, B is foh Bobo)…
My personal favorite was
the crabby old man who made every step of the process a living hell but whom I
made cackle by delivering his payment confirmation code as nine-zero-four-four-A for April-six-eight-D for Daniela-nine-S for
Shaniquah…
The double take dislodged
the pole he had stuck up his behind, and that
was the day Shaniquah saved the day.
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