Training and empowerment that builds the stories clients will remember and share

Wow customer service is an essential part of becoming a legendary customer-centric business. It’s because customers think in terms of stories, and you want them to remember and tell stories about what your business is all about. In my job as a customer service consultant and customer service trainer, this is one of the key disciplines that I try to instill in my corporate clients.

You don’t always have the chance to impress customers, but when you do, you want your employees to be fully empowered to make the magic work and fully inspired to use all of their creativity and all the resources at their disposal to make it happen. reach.

Now i get good customer service advice performing in all kinds of major industries, observing and improving customer service in all kinds of settings. If you will let me go for a moment, let me take you on a trip to witness a customer service plus one moment that has occurred well outside the confines of my daily life.

It’s on an ultra-luxury cruise line, really as close to a five-star resort as you’ll find floating on the high seas, called. Seabourn cruise line. Imagine being there one morning and lined up with everyone including a husband and wife walking down the ramp for their daily shore excursion. Now that they are going down the ramp, the woman puts lotion on her hand. And something just spectacularly horrible is happening. His alliance comes off. It hits the ramp and takes what we called Washington DC, where I grew up, a “cowboys bounce” – an unfortunate bounce in the wrong direction – off the ramp and into the deep blue sea.

She is beside herself. Her caring husband tries to comfort her as best he can. The empathetic crew tells them, “Go and enjoy your time off. Back here on the boat, we’ll take care of the insurance papers while you’re ashore, so you only have to initial them when you return. ”

But it turns out it’s a heritage Alliance. So literally speaking, it’s irreplaceable.

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The couple leave for their day ashore; they don’t have a good time, but they spend the day and go back to their room that evening, where they see the little red light flashing on the phone. It’s a voicemail message from the concierge that says, “Could we disturb you to come to the common area when you’re ready?” The captain wants to talk to you for a minute.

So they think, “Oh, okay, he’s just going to say how sorry he is that this happened, and here are the insurance papers and so on.” ”

But in fact, they get there, the captain introduces himself and then hands him a box.

What do you think was in the box?

Another box.

No; maybe if I was the captain, but I like to think that even I would realize it was not the right time for lightness.

On the contrary, inside the box, as you might have guessed, was her ring.

The moment the captain immediately called or walkie-talkie of divers he knew to be nearby. He convinced them to drop everything they had planned for that morning, come down and look for the ring. Luckily, it was a clear day with calm seas. And surprisingly, they were able to find the passenger’s ring.

Now if that isn’t awesome customer service, I don’t know what it is. And you might have thought that you don’t have an opportunity to do something so dramatic in service to your clients within the context of your own organization and functions. Corn there are so many opportunities in every organization to help your customers in ways that you might not have intended to do when you woke up in the morning, be it something as simple (but disrupting the schedule) as dropping everything to return a lost wallet or cell phone.

These kinds of gestures, big and small, build stories. And these stories are powerful. And managers, when one of your employees is taken away from their regular business to provide more customer service like this that couldn’t be planned in advance, be sure to celebrate it for it. Because that’s an important part of what world-class customer service is.

If you want a free set of powerful customer service training principles including How to Provide Customer Service Wow, [email protected] and I’ll send them to you for free, or visit my website, micahsolomon.com Also contact me if you are interested in personalized customer service training, customer service advice and online customer service learning.