Why Customer Service is Important: 5 Reasons You Should Master Great Customer Service.
I have recently come to notice a massive disconnect between corporate executives pushing for better customer service while frontline workers often feel discouraged about customer service. There are countless articles online that talk about the importance of customer service for a business in terms of increasing revenue, growing profits, and retaining customers; and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, there are very few (if any) articles that talk about the benefits that great customer service brings to the frontline workers and why someone that is going into an entry level customer service position should be passionate about providing great service.
Several years ago I worked at a retail store for a popular cell phone service provider. While I was employed with the company I worked at a total of 4 different stores across 2 districts. This gave me a very broad experience about the different approaches that each store took to customer service as well as the different ways that store managers managed their teams.
There was one store in particular that I worked at for about a month and I hated every moment I spent there. There was no sense of team. Each employee was out for themselves and if there was an opportunity to steal a sale from another employee the manager encouraged it. At one point, one of the other employees got in my face and screamed at me to stop me from helping customers that were entering the store because he wanted the sale. This behaviour was tolerated by the manager (if not encouraged) because this particular employee was getting the most sales.
For what it’s worth, a couple months later it was discovered that this employee had been stealing cell phones the whole time. But that’s a different story.
Customer service was almost non-existent at this store. I was told by the manager on multiple occasions to deceive or mislead the customer in order to make the sale. Customers would frequently come to the store upset because the employees promised promotions or discounts that didn’t exist. When this happened, the customers were just given the number for the customer support line and told they would have to resolve the issue there.
After a month of this, I was ready to quit. But, instead, I was transferred to a different store.
This new store was very different. The employees worked with each other instead of against each other to help each other maximize their commissions. The manager didn’t tolerate any deceitful practices and not surprisingly the number of unhappy customers was dramatically lower and the ones that we did have we would work with our internal support team to actually help them and resolve their problems.
The result of this was that I ended up making more money and enjoyed showing up to work again.
From this experience I was able to learn first hand the results of both good and bad customer service in terms of how it affected me as an employee. From this experience, I have come up with 5 reasons why customer service is important for employees as well as customers.
1: You have to deal with fewer upset customers.
This is a bit obvious. The whole point of customer service is to make customers happy and if your customers are happy it would stand to reason that there are fewer upset customers. But this is missing the bigger picture of why difficult customers exist.
Imagine a situation where someone is trying to return something 31 days after they bought an item when there is only a 30 day return policy. The clerk tells the customer that they can’t return the item because it is 1 day past the return policy. The customer starts arguing with the clerk, getting increasingly heated until the clerk gives up and says “let me get my manager.” The manager tells the customer the same thing but at this point he is getting very agitated and is creating a scene. In order to stop the scene from happening and to end the confrontation the manager finally gives in and accepts the return with a full refund.
In this situation, the poor customer service only taught the customer that if they want to get something done in the future they need to get upset and demand to speak to the manager. And every time they are successful doing this in the future it only reinforces this poor behavior.
Difficult customers are only difficult because they have been trained to act that way by repeat failures in customer service.
By providing great customer service to your customers you reduce the need for customers to be unhappy and you teach your customers that they don’t have to resort to childish tactics to get what they want. Furthermore, when you make a mistake or something goes wrong your customers are more willing to give you the opportunity to fix the problem before creating a scene.
2: You will enjoy coming into work
This one is also a bit obvious. After all, if you have fewer difficult customers it would stand to reason that the work you do will be more enjoyable. But there is another component that needs to be addressed and that is your coworkers.
To see how great customer service results in better coworkers it’s important to understand the opposite. We have already established that when bad service is given it results in upset customers. Most people prefer to avoid conflict since conflict is emotionally exhausting so the more upset customers that come to your store the less your coworkers will want to actually help these customers. Soon, they will start finding creative ways to avoid these situations by ducking into the back office right as a customer walks in or by pretending to take a phone call.
This will then cause the employees that are doing good work to get tired of constantly de-escalating these unhappy customers and they will be able to find new jobs where their effort is appreciated. This leaves the employees that aren’t performing well which will result in more bad customer service and more unhappy customers.
But, if there is a culture of teamwork and great customer service then coworkers will be eager to help customers and work as a team and the good employees will be happy to stay at a thriving store where they can make a difference.
3: The work you do is easier.
Helping unhappy customers is very challenging and time consuming. They are understandably untrustworthy of you and this results in the need of a lot of repeat work. Even if you haven’t done anything wrong, the reputation of your company or even your industry can make working with a customer challenging.
Take for example a used car sales person. The whole industry has a reputation of being dishonest and as a result many people go to a car dealership very suspicious about the sales person due to no fault of their own. This has resulted in the rise of services like Carvana which capitalize on this mistrust of car dealerships.
But, when you have good customer service that builds trust with your customers the result is almost like magic. Your customers are happy to do business with you and will go through the process quickly because they trust that even if something doesn’t turn out the way that they expected you will do what it takes to make it right.
But avoiding mistakes is still key. At the first cell phone store I worked at, we had a lot of people coming into the store unhappy because the employees there misled their customers. Every time I had to help an unhappy customer it was a missed opportunity for me to make more sales. And nearly all of these interactions could have been avoided by doing things right the first time.
By simply doing good honest work and making sure your customers are happy you are saving a significant amount of time each and every day.
4: There are more opportunities for growth
Remember what I said earlier about the cream rising to the top? When you provide great customer service it gets noticed by your customers, by your boss, and even by your boss’s boss. They will see your name mentioned in Google reviews and see your KPIs improving. When there is opportunity, you will be at the top of mind for a promotion.
But, if you don’t get noticed by your boss or your boss’s boss you still have an opportunity to grow in your career. There are countless employers looking for great employees with strong customer service skills.
To get these jobs, create a portfolio of your work. Any time you have a notable customer service interaction write a short story describing the situation, what you did, and what you learned from it.
Here’s an example:
“11/16/21 - An upset customer came into the store because he was told that his new phone would arrive 2 days ago and he hadn’t received it. I told him how sorry I was that this happened, empathized with his situation, and told him that if he gave me 5 minutes I would get to the bottom of this.
After calling the internal support line and reviewing the notes on the account I found out that the phone was delivered to the store he ordered it from and it was waiting there. I then offered to drive over to the store and pick up the phone for him while he continued shopping in the mall.
Later, when he came back to pick up the phone, I helped him set it up and make sure it was working well for him and sold him a case, a screen protector, and a cleaning kit.
From this, I learned the “apologize, empathize, resolve” method of de-escalating conflict.”
In addition to this, take screenshots of any reviews that you receive on platforms such as Google or Facebook and fill a page with these screenshots and add this to your portfolio.
When preparing for an interview, review the stories in your portfolio so you will be prepared to answer situational questions and bring copies of your portfolio to give to the hiring manager. Doing this will make you a shoe in for nearly any customer service job.
5: You can be proud of where you work
For better or for worse it is customary in the U.S. to ask people you just met what they do and where they work. The answers to these questions will inevitably affect what people think of you.
When I was working at the first store that provided poor customer service I hated answering this question. I didn’t want people to know where I worked because I was not proud working there. This caused me to become more closed off and avoid meeting new people.
However, when I was at a different store and later at other companies where I was proud to work I was happy to answer these questions. This made meeting new people and growing my social and professional networks more enjoyable.
Conclusion
Almost nobody disagrees with the importance of customer service but so often the “why” for the frontline employees is framed around the business and not the employees. Knowing and appreciating the many benefits that great customer service brings not only to the customers but to the employees practicing great customer service will help employees get excited about customer service.
