The ART of Excellent Customer Service

I had a 5 minute presentation to give last week but the program was postponed. I was more than pissed. I was so angry that I made sure my preparation did not go to waste. I call it productive anger. I dressed up and did the presentation at home. I will post the video next week. Since it is informative, it would be unfair to keep the information all to myself, so I am sharing…

Customer service is not exclusive to customer service officers alone. It cuts across all departments especially for service providing businesses like banks, hospitals, schools, consulting firms and many more. Any time you interact with a customer or a prospective customer, you are providing customer service; and at that point, you are a customer service ambassador of your organization. We know that customers are the best people to advertise your business. Prospective customers trust the words of existing customers more than your words. Even if you pay the best Nollywood actors to advertise your business but give poor customer service, people will only watch your advertisement and YIMU. So how do you ensure that you are giving your customer excellent customer service?
By practising the ART of excellent customer service.

The acronym ART stands for
A-Attention: You must pay attention to your customers and your customers’ needs. Paying attention to your customers means that when they come to you for enquiries or make complaints, you should listen to them. Show them you care and you are willing to help. While paying attention to your customers’ needs means ensuring through feedback and proper research that whatever product or service you are providing satisfies your customers’ needs.

R-Respect: Regardless of your customers’ age, gender or status, each customer must be treated with respect. Do not look down on a customer because he is not richly dressed. You don’t know who he knows or who he could refer to you. We say the customer is king. How do we treat a king? With respect.

T-Timeliness: In business, time is money and nobody wants his time to be wasted especially now when everyone wants things done sharp sharp. You should not be the one to waste your customers’ time. If it’s a 5 minute transaction, stick to 5 minutes. If you do that, your customers will see you as efficient and would love to keep doing business with you.

So now that you know the ART of excellence customer service, Attention, Respect and Timeliness, nothing should stop you from making your customers feel like the kings we say they are.

Be uniquely different, be you.

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