Lesson 3: Execute effective customer service
Now that you know how to communicate partnership in any conversation, let’s talk about how to execute effective customer service. Customer service includes how you communicate with your customers and the types of experiences you create for them.
It includes, but isn’t limited to, how you help solve any problems or complaints they may have. Excellent customer service is important to sales, because it helps you build loyalty and trust with your customers.
In order to serve your customers, keep your business successful, and enact excellent customer service, you’ll need to know your decision triangle and act with emotional intelligence.
Know your decision triangle
When providing customer service, you often need to make decisions that impact your customer, your business, and your employees. As the leader of your brand, you need to consider all three sides of your decision triangle: business, customer, and employee.
Get in the habit of asking yourself, how will my decision impact all three sides? What needs to be considered to make a decision that will land in the middle of the triangle, balancing the needs of all three? If the decision favors one side, which guiding principle can I use to best leverage this imbalance?
Let’s say you own a pizza shop and a regular customer comes in a minute after closing and asks if you can still make a pizza. How do you balance the needs of the customer, the needs of your employee who may need to work overtime, and the needs of your business?
As you create principles to help you navigate the decision triangle in your company, document these guiding principles. As your company grows, you can then lead by example and empower employees to make decisions using the processes you create.
Act with emotional intelligence
The impact of your decisions and related customer satisfaction are emotional results (how you make them feel). To have effective customer service, use emotional intelligence—this means being aware of both your emotions and others’ emotions and how they are impacting the interaction.
As you interact with customers, ask yourself, how is the customer feeling right now and how am I feeling right now? If you notice yourself starting to get frustrated, you might want to take a few deep breaths to remain calm in the situation. Or, if you realize you’re tired, give yourself an internal pep talk to keep the energy of the conversation up.
You can use a mood meter to help you identify customers’ current emotions (and your own) and adjust your approach accordingly. This is great for both customer service AND sales!
Your goal should be to leave each interaction with your customer in an energetic, positive mood. This will lead to better customer satisfaction and success in the partnership. This may take multiple interactions–especially if your customer is dissatisfied.
Emotional intelligence isn’t just about awareness
An emotionally intelligent business person not only knows how to be aware of customers’ emotions, but also how to guide them. Think about companies that have amazing NPS (Net Promoter Score) results, like GoDaddy, Disney, or Apple. How do they influence customers’ emotions? They inspire with their Why.
In Course 1, we talked about the importance of having a Why that sets your business apart. Your Why is what people will get excited about. Customers don’t buy what you sell, they buy why you do it. Focus on communicating your Why in interactions with your customer to increase positive experiences and feelings in your customers.
Case study: Arnold Smith, Eastern Iowa NFL Flag Football
Arnold Smith knows all about what it means to have a Why that inspires. From sleeping on the floor when his family first moved to America to start an official NFL flag football league in his community, Arnold’s story is remarkable.
A dad himself, Arnold started the Eastern Iowa NFL Flag Football league because he wanted to teach kids teamwork, sportsmanship, and other critical values that will help shape their character. You can learn more about Arnold’s story here.
Now that you know how to encourage a positive mindset in your customer, let’s take a step back. How do you create a positive, winning mindset for yourself? Find out in the next lesson.