Proactive Customer Service

Attitude and being proactive is the biggest factor when it comes to truly great customer service.  We have all been to a business where the service was okay, but you could tell the staff did not really care. They answered all your questions and were fast enough, but you were still left feeling like a number. 


For example, you call your cell phone company with a basic request, and it gets fulfilled. However, unknown to you there is a new value package for cell phone services, that would save you money. Most staff would just process the request and get on to the next customer. Staff with a great customer proactive attitude would see that the new value package could save the customer money and tell the customer. Now the customer could see the staff actually care and want to help.


How often do staff look to actually really help customers ?  Well the answer, is not often enough. We are so busy training staff with knowledge, we can forget that the most important thing is to have a customer centered attitude.


Proactive customer service begins with the hiring process and continues with the training. The training should be a chance to not only train for knowledge but also to train for a helping attitude. This is where staff should be trained to look for customer needs based on sales history.  Also staff could be trained to ask appropriate questions to find out customer needs. Customer retention will increase once staff get trained to maintain the habit of taking a proactive helping approach to customer service.


Smile training is really just a way to ensure we are training staff to have a proactive helping attitude towards customers. Proactive customer service is good business and great for customers.