The Long, Stressful Christmas Shopping Lineup

At some point during the Christmas and holiday season, we all are going to experience a long line. No one really likes a long lineup, but there are some ways companies can make it a more tolerable situation. 

The most important thing for staff to do, is to smile at the customer and not look frustrated with the long line. A simple smile can do wonders, as often customers are greeted by non-smiling staff, who almost look annoyed at the long line. Now smiles are great but there is much more that can be done to deal with peak business times. It will very important to have all staff help out with the rush, and put aside non-essential duties, until its less busy. Customers will hate seeing some staff just stocking shelves or doing some other non-essential task, while they wait in a long lineup. Also, the worst thing that could happen is if there are staff just standing around chatting, this would cause huge customer frustration.

Another important step will be to keep the conversations between staff and customers short, in the interest of reducing the lineup. Now that does not mean being rude, but it does mean not asking a lot of open ended questions to get the customer talking. Its perfectly fine, to generate small talk during non-busy times, as this does build a good relationship between the company and the customer. In addition, everybody in the lineup will appreciate the staff keeping conversations short with other customers in the interest of trying to keep the line moving at good pace.

Now during peak business times, it will be very important to ensure all staff take breaks, to ensure they do not burn out, and start to show their stress. These breaks will refresh the staff and ensure they are more prepared to deal with this stressful and busy time of year. Staff breaks are even more important during busy times, as stress can build up, and can really affect staff by causing them to have a short temper and look frustrated. We all know everybody deals with stress differently, but breaks can help staff to avoid projecting that stress to customers. One more point is to have supervisors ensure the staff actually take their breaks, as sometimes when its busy people can forget their break time.

The holiday season is a very busy time, but these tips can help your company any time of the year, when there is a big influx of customers all at once. Keeping customers smiling can be tough during busy times, but managing staff stress, can help to reduce customer frustration, which is good for everybody.

Create Word Of Mouth Champions To Grow Your Business

Does your company create word of mouth champions? A word of mouth champion is someone who champions your business and is very loyal because of your amazing customer service delivery, and quality product or service. These customers will promote and defend your company, because of the emotional bond they have with the company. They will be champions of the company, which is clearly good for business.


In addition to the company marketing efforts, you will gain many referrals from these loyal customers. These champions will also make it harder for the competition to compete because amazing customer service is rare, so now the competition will have to compete using other tools, such as price. This is a crucial point, as price is very easy to compete on, but superior customer service is not so easy for other  companies to duplicate. They would have to create new training programs, which takes time and money. Most companies will choose to compete on price, because its easier and cheaper. 


Now the key is how  to have your company create these word of mouth champions. The company will need to deliver exceptional customer service that really surprises the customer. This will not be easy, but can be achieved through a strong training program for all staff. Also, the company will need to recruit the right staff with great attitudes. The old saying, hire for attitude, train for  skill  is very true when it comes to creating a superior customer service culture within a company. In addition to the training and hiring, the staff will need to be given the proper authority and power to solve most issues. Having this needed authority will save the customer time, because then the staff do not have to consult the manager for every issue.


One way to create content  for the training is to study several successful companies, who consistently deliver great service, and find some basic ideas that can be implemented into your business.  Then you could put a few of these company success stories together, so staff could read and understand some success principles. The main thing is to have staff learn and remember the essence of what superior customer service is all about. Also, these stories will often be easier to remember than page after page of training materials and often will be more useful.


However, basic ideas still need to be put into the training program. One such principle, is to always have staff be solution oriented towards customers. Customers do not want to hear, that this is against policy, they would rather hear, "I will work on this issue for you and get it resolved" . Customers want solutions to problems, not staff just repeating company rules, that state this problem can not be solved.The training program could also focus on scenario based customer service examples, to allow staff to be creative in their solutions to deliver great customer service.  This will help staff develop creative solution ideas and create the habit of superior service.  


This training and hiring process will, over time produce many word of mouth champions, which will cause the business to become more profitable and will produce many smiling customers.

Secret of Customer Service

The secret to great customer service is really no great mystery at all, its just so rare, that  you would think that  there must be some great hidden mystery. It would seem like there are some  hidden steps, because  you will go to some companies and receive amazing service, but then go to many more businesses and receive very poor service. This would lead you to believe that there must be some concealed steps  to great customer service or else this would be delivered by all companies.


Perhaps the secret to great customer service is so obvious, that it is often overlooked by employers and employees. The great secret is: Treat a customer like how you would like to be treated. This simple yet hard to implement concept will transform your customer service into a happy and loyal customer creation machine. Most people will want to be treated with respect and receive attentive, helpful customer service. Just imagine how happy and loyal customers would be if staff could be trained to deliver this kind of quality service.


Now of course this is a simple concept, but its very difficult for most companies to implement into their training programs. Most staff just want to get through the day, and just get home. The employees are thinking more about themselves, than about actually trying to help out customers. You can see this attitude everywhere, just look for it when you go shopping. See what happens  when you go into a store just before closing time, you can often  see the look of horror in the faces of the staff, as they are thinking they might have to stay later. 


So how can companies reveal the secret of customer service to their staff? The most important aspect will be to hire staff with the right attitude and then train them in the ways of superior customer service. There will need to be a constant emphasis on remembering to treat others as you would like to be treated. This is where role playing can play a crucial role, to have staff play out various scenarios to show them the correct way to handle various situations. Have employees remember when they received great service, and let them describe the situation, so everybody can learn. Also staff can list the ways they expect to be treated as customers, and then  encourage them to deliver that kind of customer service.


Once the training is finished, then its time  for staff to practice what they have learned. This is where quality monitoring will be important to ensure, they are following the training and delivering amazing service. Monitoring and encouraging the staff will pay off in a big way, as the staff will develop the habit of delivering superior customer service. Once the staff implement this secret, you will have many loyal and happy customers