Is customer service out of style?

The year is 1969. The Vietnam War is being waged in Southeast Asia. The summer of love is celebrated at a place called Woodstock. Hurricane Camille ravages the Mississippi coast. Charles Manson goes on a bloody rampage in California, and Neil Armstrong holds the world rapt on July 20, taking his historic walk.

Here at home, a gallon of gasoline costs 35 cents a gallon. When my Dad pulls up to the pump in the family station wagon, the attendant, or perhaps even two, comes rushing up to the vehicle, and while one takes the order from Dad to “fill ‘er up,” the other washes the windows, checks the oil and does anything else Dad requests.

Fast-forward to 2007. To say times have changed in every way imaginable is perhaps a gross understatement. Gasoline is hovering around $2.20 a gallon, which is actually down from recent months. I pay at the pump with my debit card, of course, and haven’t interacted with the gas station attendant in years. How many other aspects of customer service in the retail landscape have been radically redefined?

You’ve probably heard it said that a satisfied customer will tell three people about a great experience with your company and a disgruntled patron will not hesitate to complain to 10 people in great detail. Is treating a customer well to gain his or her loyalty suddenly out of fashion, much like my brother’s orange, ribbed polyester bell-bottoms? Ask five friends this week if they can supply the details of a frustrating customer service situation they have recently experienced. The stories are endless and span all service industries and types of retail establishments.

So what do we do about the sad state of customer service?

The place to start is to train and re-train the folks in your company who are responsible for providing customer service. It sounds simple enough, but you might be surprised at the lack of training most people who interact with the public actually receive.

Teach your staff to interact with the customers, not chat with co-workers about what exciting things happened over the weekend. Remind employees to greet customers upon entering, even if they are currently involved in serving someone else. Encourage your crew to develop a natural and sincere phrase to greet customers with before the transaction begins.

If you are a new business or have made some recent changes in décor, merchandising or inventory availability, this is a golden opportunity to query your customers about how they like what you’re doing. I was pleasantly shocked when the self-checkout attendant at a local grocery thanked me for coming in after I completed my transaction. It was refreshing and yet so simple to do; I was, after all, in the self-checkout lane where no real customer service is expected.

If you have salespeople who roam a sales floor, there is even more opportunity for building rapport with the customer. Remind the sales force that they are not cashiers but salespeople, ambassadors even, for the business. Salespeople should be trained to ask open-ended questions to gain insight into who the customers are and why they chose to come into your store. This will start a dialogue with the customer.

The next key element to excellent customer service is empowering the salesperson to take action. Let those dealing with customers have the authority to resolve issues that frequently arise, such as returns, exchanges, service issues and complaints. These situations, while common, can generate a great deal of frustration for both the employee and the customer. Nothing is more aggravating than having to wait for someone else to sign off on the transaction. Empower your employees to be problem solvers. One of the best ways to build customer loyalty is to deal with issues quickly and efficiently. And with clear knowledge of how to handle these situations, employees develop a more positive outlook on dealing with the public.

Finally, have a written statement of your policies for quick reference, and clearly communicate customer service policies to all staff members who may be in a customer-service role. I recall bringing an item back to a local store after the holidays. The tags were still on the item, but I was told without a receipt there was absolutely nothing the merchant could do for me. I could not return, exchange or receive store credit for the item, even at the lowest price it had sold for recently. The incredible part of the story is that nobody employed at this store could tell me why this was the policy or how we were going to resolve this situation. I found this shocking. Make sure that whatever your policies are, the folks communicating with your customers are not paralyzed by a lack of knowledge or a lack of empowerment to act.

Once your policies and training are in place, it might make sense to hire a mystery shopper. Mystery shoppers pose as customers and rate the experiences they had in your store on a myriad of pre-established criteria. This is a great technique for getting feedback and assessing where your employees are, versus where you would like them to be, in terms of service. You can learn how those you have trusted to deliver customer service for your business are actually interacting with patrons. Well-trained mystery shoppers can effectively test every angle of the customer experience, extrapolate those findings into a complete analysis of your service quality and give specific recommendations on improvements.

There are so many product and service choices in the marketplace today that consumers can spend their dollars with a variety of merchants. Customer service is one of the ways to set you apart from the pack. The best aspect of great customer service is that it rarely costs anything to deliver. With standards and expectations of service at an apparent all-time low, a throwback to the days of the full-service filling station would give every last customer a truly memorable experience. Your company can receive a valuable public-relations boost in the form of sincere endorsements from happy clients and earn you a loyalty from customers, keeping your bottom line healthy for years to come. v

Lili Vianello is president of Visionworks Marketing & Communications, a Columbia-based, full-service advertising, marketing and public relations firm. Contributions to this article were made by Visionworks staff members. Visit them online at www.visionworks.com.