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The Customer Service Frame of Mind

Seminars@Hadley


Presented byMichael Rydel

Moderated by Dawn Turco

AnnouncerYou are listening to Seminars@Hadley. This seminar is The Customer Service Frame of Mind. Presented by, Michael Rydel. Moderated by, Dawn Turco.

Dawn TurcoGreetings again, this is Dawn Turco coming to you from Hadley Central. Let me get us underway today. I'm excited about today's presentation. I didn't have to go far for our presenter today.

Michael Rydel works with us here at Hadley as our Dean of Curricular Affairs and is actually just occupying the office next door to me today. We're coming to you from the Chicagoland area. We're getting a light dusting of snow, so it's a good day to be in for a seminar. We appreciate all of those who are joining us across this

©2016 Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired of 33


country, and we already know we have several international participants.

Again, welcome all. Today's seminar topic is The Customer Service Frame of Mind. Having said that, I will release the mic to our presenter, Michael Rydel, and I'll be back with you when it's time for some questions and answers. Michael, you've got the mic.

Michael RydelHello, everyone. Welcome to the seminar at Hadley, The Customer Service Frame of Mind. Basically, this hour is going to be divided into four different sections. The first section is, how to get yourself in to that customer frame of mind, or that customer service frame of mind. The assumption here is that you work with the public or somehow, you are a customer service rep or somehow working with people who need your help. The first part of this seminar is how to get yourself into that frame of mind. That's going to be about 10 or 15 minutes and then we'll take questions after that.

The second part of the seminar is basically what I call customer service rep 101 training. If you were a new employee for a help desk or some type of customer service rep job, what type of basic training would you receive in that particular position?



The third part of the seminar is going to be talking specifically about telephone and email training, and how you should be working with people over the phone. If part of your job is to answer people with email, what type of emails are good for you for helping these customers? The final part of the class is advice for management. Basically, if you're a manager of a company or an agency, what type of customer service tips can you use to improve that customer service for your organization? So each of those are going to be about 10 or 15 minute sections and then Dawn will hop in and take your questions after each one of those.

You know, as I got this topic, I thought to myself, where did it all start for me? My first job as I was growing up was in my father's grocery store, here in Chicago back in the 1960s. As a little kid, I stocked the shelves and was kept away from the candy counter mainly. Eventually, I made my way to the deli section, the delicatessen, and started my career as a teenager serving customers over the counters.

Over the years, at all of my jobs, I've used that background. I've worked with thousands of customers, both external and internal customers with that frame of mind. I think my whole attitude towards customer service changed way back in 1993. On a business trip, I



discovered what's called the world famous Pike Place Fish Company in Seattle, Washington.

In Seattle, near where Starbucks coffee was founded, one of the biggest tourist attractions there is this place called Pike Place Fish. What makes it a tourist attraction is that it's a show; it's not just a fish store, but it's a show. What happens there is that the employees will throw three-foot salmon and other fish over the counter to each other as people are buying it. When a customer orders a fish, an employee at the market picks up this ice-covered fish, throws it over the countertop, where another employee catches it and preps it for sale.

What makes this place so special, though, is that the store is full of high energy. It's loud and it's funny and people are just having a ball. That's what draws the tourists and that's what also draws the local customers. What it did for me to watch this, really during the lunchtime, is it convinced me to bring their Pike Place Fish training program to where I was working at the time, Kemper Insurance. Just because in their training program, it tends to instill a sense of joy in the customer service team and the help desk. What we've found is that it really worked.

The Pike Place Fish Market is a place that has 14 people working there and they're working 12-hour days. All the employees in that store, which is right on the waterfront,



act as if they're on a stage. They yell out orders, they repeat funny phrases, they make up cheers. When people order three halibut steaks, they yell, "Three halibut steaks," and then they throw the halibut steaks over the counter. People order a mackerel, they go, "Holy mackerel," and everybody yells, "Holy mackerel," and they're throwing these fish left and right. "Five crab cakes flying away, five crab cakes flying away." Eventually, what happens is that these customers, and when you go there, eventually you see hundreds of people just there watching the show.

Well, the result of all of this is that this little fish store has become a multimillion-dollar business and a tourist attraction. The store has showed up on the television show Frasier. It's been featured on The Learning Channel. It's been on a show called The Real World Seattle. For all of the football games that are in Seattle, they always take the cameras to the Pike Place Fish Company and show that in the background during the Seattle Seahawks football games. How do they do it? What do they do? How do they train their employees to make this place such a fun place? Essentially, what they do is that they have a Fish Philosophy, is what they call it. It's a philosophy of customer service and it has four parts.

What they say is that for all of their employees, number one, they want people to play. It's not as if you're at work;



they want the employees to feel as if they're having fun, as if they're just playing instead of working. The second part of their philosophy is that they want to make sure that their employees make the day of their customers. In other words, when people leave this store, they want to be able to say, "Man, this was the best part of my day, I had so much fun at this store. You really made my day." The third part is called, "Be There," in other words, they want to make sure that the customer service person, or in this case, the fish salesperson, pays 100 percent attention to their customer and is there for the customer at all times. In order to do all of this, the fourth thing that they teach in their program is that every morning, you have to wake up and choose to have a positive attitude. So, how do you do this?

At Pike's Place, which is like this stage, they're yelling out these orders, they're repeating funny phrases, they're making up cheers. They make their workplace a fun place to be. But you say to yourself, "Well, I can't do that where I work. I mean, it's a school or it's an agency or it's a different kind of organization. If you acted like this, you wouldn't be professional. Anyway, where I work, there are no fish to throw around." But what they teach is that you don't have to yell and scream or even joke around to make sure that you're having fun at work.



Wherever you are and wherever you work, you have to find a way to make that place an enjoyable place to work for that day. This could range from joking around with people or just being friendly, or just being upbeat as you go through your day. What they're saying is that if you have that attitude, that's going to be that customer service frame of mind that you're going to have. If you feel as though if you're having fun at work, your customers will feel as if they're part of the game, or they're part of the play and they're going to get into it as well.

Once you start having fun at work, people want to work with you. Customers may start asking for you in particular, and what could be better than a customer saying to you, "This was really great, this was the most fun I've had all day. You've really made my day?" The secret to all of that is involving the customer. You want to let them into your great day and you want to be able to go home at night, or you want your customers to go be able to go home and tell their spouses, "You'll never believe what happened to day. I had fun at a fish store; I had fun talking to somebody at an agency. I had fun getting a call from Mike from Hadley.”

So, playing around, trying to make people's day, and then the third part of their training program is called, "Being There." This is a little tougher one because with this one in particular, what they train their staff to do is that you



have to be present with people all the time. That means, you have to, whenever you're with that customer, you have to pay 100 percent attention to that customer. Very often, that's eye contact, or very often, it's just making sure that you listen to everything that they're saying and really are interested in what they're saying.

Well, you know, a lot of times, and I'll tell you, over 30 years of working, I've fallen into that trap where when somebody asks me a question, you say, "Oh my God, don't you know the answer to this?" Of course, the answer is no, that's why they're asking the question. A customer doesn't know that you've heard that question a thousand times before. So, a really tough part about this "Being There" is that feeling that all questions are new questions. Even though you've heard this question a thousand times before, you have to get yourself psyched up to say, "This person doesn't know that I've heard this a thousand times before. And I have to answer this question as enthusiastically as possible."

A couple of things that really hurt this whole process, number one is probably daydreaming. There's one of these things where, as people are talking to you, it's really easy sometimes to just zone out or to start thinking of other things. You really have to force yourself to get back into that frame of mind where you're paying 100 percent attention that customer's question. What they say in their



training program is that you have to be invested in the moment. You've chosen to be at work, you've chosen to be there, and you should be happy to have this opportunity to help this customer and make their day and try to have some fun with them.

You say, "Well, it all sounds great in theory but how can you do this five days a week?" And at Pike's they're working 14-hour days. What they say in their training program is that the customer service reps really need to get out of bed every morning and make a conscious choice to be in a good mood. You have to convince yourself, "I'm going to this job and I've got to get myself into a positive frame of mind to do this job."

Think about it, it's very easy to make yourself upset. You can sit there sometimes and you dwell on an issue and you analyze what somebody says, and you get madder and madder all the time until eventually you put yourself into a bad mood. Well, if you have that ability to put yourself into a bad mood, can you force yourself to put yourself into a good mood? You want to know something? That's actually a harder thing to do. You say to yourself, "How can I force myself to be happier?"

What they say in their training program is that you have to focus on activities that bring you happiness. You have to find a substitute for ones that don't. Just little things,



maybe it's just adding fruit to your cereal, or during work, take a walk at lunchtime or do some exercise, or maybe call a coworker and try and cheer them up. But the key is, for all of this type of customer service frame of mind is that you have to consciously choose to have that positive attitude and get yourself into that customer service frame of mind by creating an environment where you're having fun, where you're making the customer's day, you're being there for that customer and you're choosing to have that positive attitude. So, that's the first part of this training and I'm going to ask Dawn to open up for questions or comments from the crowd here.

Dawn TurcoThanks, Mike, that was great; being upbeat, being there for people and attitude, I think those are great pieces of advice from the fish folks, and not even just for those working in customer service, but for those who just work around colleagues. I've been watching the text messaging, we don't have questions yet there, but let me open the mic and see if anybody has questions before Mike moves on. Well, they're thinking, Mike. It's a quiet group out there. Having just given you that opportunity, let's move on and we'll see if by the next break, we don't see some questions popping up. Mike, it's back to you.

Michael Rydel



Thanks, Dawn. That first part of getting into that positive frame of mind is a prerequisite for this next section of the course. This next section of the course, I call, "Customer Service 101." What type of training would you get if you were going to be a help desk person, or if you were going to be a retail type of a salesperson, or someone who has a lot of customer contact day in and day out?

The first part of this is what we call, "The DISC Customer Identification System." What that means is that in general, as you are working with customers, most people are going to fall into four different categories, or four different types of customers, based on what the psychologist William Marston called, "The DISC system," D-I-S-C, each of those being a different type of customer; the D standing for Dominant, the I for Influential, the S for Steady and the C for Conscientious. As all of us are customers of stores or agencies or schools, we tend to fall into one of these types of behaviors.

So, let me go through each of these and then give you some tips on when that person is your customer, what they're looking for, what they want you to do, and what they absolutely don't want you to do. The first would be the dominant customer. These are direct and decisive customers. According to statistics, about 18 percent of all of your customers basically fall into this category. These are highly competitive people who dress really well, they



look for the top of the line products. What they’re really interested in as a customer is that they want to win. They want to win in all of their business transactions. They want to dominate the situation.

So, the best way to approach this particular type of customer is to be very clear as you're speaking to that person, get right to the point, be organized, emphasize facts, and stick to business. This type of customer doesn't want to socialize, this type of customer is there to purchase a product. This type of customer doesn't want to necessarily have fun, may get into it a little bit if you're in that positive frame of mind, but generally is there, "Just let me get some fish. Just let me buy this product and get the best price that I get." What you don't want to do with these particular customers is ramble or waste time, or look disorganized, do a lot of small talk or gossip.

When we train our customer service reps, part of the training is, as you get to know people and as you get to meet these customers, eventually, as you get more experienced, you can tell what style they have. These dominant people who walk in really just want to get the business done and you have to be very straightforward with them and get the business done with them.

On the opposite side of the spectrum are what Marston calls, "The influential customers." These are optimistic



and outgoing customers. According to statistics, about 28 percent of customers fall into this category. These are very sociable people, talkative people. They smile a lot, they have a good sense of humor. When you're dealing with this type of a customer, you want to allow them to socialize. You want to ask for their opinions. You want to provide ideas. They're probably going to want stuff in writing. If it's a complicated transaction, they're probably the type of person who wants all the details put in writing later on while they're enjoying the moment right now. By the way, this particular type of a customer, according to market research, are looking for discounts, and are always looking to see, "How can I get a better deal?" as they try to be friendly with you.

With this particular customer, you don't want to be quiet. You do want to concentrate on facts and figures, but you don't want to let this person leave the store without making a decision because this is the type of customer who might stay with you for a few minutes and talk about this product, and then say, "You know, I'll think about it and come back later." Of course, the last thing that you want to do with this customer is get trapped spending too much time with this person. This type of customer, this influential type of customer, could conceivably just come to the store for that particular, for just the socialization and not necessarily wanting to buy anything.



The third type of customer, the steady customer, which makes up the large majority of customers, about 40 percent, are what we call steady, sympathetic, and cooperative. These are loyal customers who like to shop at familiar and reliable places. They don't want to be rushed and they want to hear relaxed and thoughtful voices. You always want, with this particular customer, to start out with a personal comment. If they're a steady customer, the best bet with this person is, do you recognize this person? Can you call them by their name? They want to set up a relationship with you, so you start with a personal comment, you show sincere interest, you listen patiently to what they're saying, you give them time to think, and these customers very often are looking for guarantees.

With these customers, you don't want to rush them, you don't want to over-emphasize the cold, hard facts. You don't want to interrupt them, you don't want to overpromise and you don't wan to demand for them to make a decision. These are your steady customers, these are the people who come to your organization all the time and are the heart and soul of your business.

The last type of customer are what they call, "The conscientious customer." These are concerned customers, correct customers. Again, in terms of stats, make up about 14 percent of the customer base. These



are people who are great at playing poker. They rarely reveal what they're thinking. They love to do "do it yourself" type products, but they tend to overanalyze. A lot of them have what we call a dry wit. They want products with very little risks, they want documentation, and they want guarantees.

For these particular customers, you want to be prepared, be organized, straightforward and direct. You want to give them measurements and timelines, but you've got to give them space. You have to give them time to make up their minds. They're not quite as tough as the dominant customer, but they're in that same frame of mind. For them, you don't want to look disorganized, you don't want to be too casual. Again, you don't want to try to force them to make a quick decision, but you don't want to be vague either.

As you're dealing with customers, the first thing for customer service training, is that generally, you have to recognize what type of customer you're working with. Are they dominant, influential, steady, or conscientious? A lot of people would say, "You know what, if this is a brand new customer, or if this is the first time this person has called our organization, I have no idea what to do with this particular person. I have no idea if it's a D or I or S or C. So, give me some best practices, give me some things that work with all four types of customers.



It's pretty straightforward; number one by far is that you have to listen intently to the customer. That fish idea of being there, it's very important to make sure that you listen to the customer, hear what they say, and very often, ask them, "Can I repeat what you just said so I make sure I understand you?" Secondly, you always want to avoid negative words. When you go through a customer service training, very often, words like "can't" and "not," or even the word "but" is totally de-emphasized by organizations. Instead of saying to a customer, "I can't do it," you say, "Well, let's see what we can do." Instead of saying, "I won't do it," say, "Well, this is what I can do for you." Finally, if the customer is wrong and the customer is complaining about something that wasn't your organization's fault, a lot of times, our reaction is to get defensive and say, "But it couldn't have happened that way." The best way around that one is just to work through it with them and say, "Could you tell me more about what happened?" and you hope that as you walk through this conversation with the person, maybe they'll realize that it really wasn't your organization's fault.

Another really important thing is the word "because." Customers want to hear the word "because," because it gives them a legitimate reason for a delay, or a legitimate reason about why a mistake happened, or a legitimate explanation about the terms and conditions for the



transactions. Explanations enable the customers and the employees to work together to fix the problems and maintain a strong relationship.

The last best practice is called, "Follow Up." There's a phrase in customer service that says, "Do what you say you were going to do." So, if you tell the customer that you're going to call back, make sure you call back. If you tell the customer that you're going to look something up for them, make sure you do it and get back to them. Even if you don't have any new information, the best thing to do is to call them back anyway and say, "At this time, we don't have any new information but I wanted to call you and let you know that unfortunately, we still are working on this problem."

If the customer gets angry, there's a three-step process involved with an angry customer. Number one, acknowledge that person's pain. Tell that person, "I want to make sure you know that I'm here to help." You might have to apologize, "I'm sorry for the confusion. I'm sorry for the mistake. I apologize for the misunderstanding." Acknowledge that person's anger. Number two, paraphrase. Say, “Let me make sure I understand the problem. Please tell me exactly what happened. May I repeat the problem so I can understand what's going on here so I can fix it?" Then number three is help the customer now. Say, "I'm going to check the computer



right now to fix the problem," or, "I'm going to call somebody to fix this problem. Let me get on this right away." With any luck, you're going to find the solution.

One of the things that researchers have found is that, very often, when you fix a mistake for people, people will like your company or organization more than if you had done it right in the first place.

I'll end this section with just a little story about my sister. I asked her in preparation for this speech, I said, "What store or organization are you most loyal to?" She said it was her hairdresser. I said, "Oh, really? Why is that?" She said, "Well, the first time I went there, they made a mistake and colored my hair the wrong color. They were so apologetic, they fixed it for free, charged me nothing, and bought me lunch, and I've been a steady customer there for 10 years." I thought to myself, "But they colored your hair wrong, why would you go back?" And she said, "Because when they made the mistake, they fixed it so fast that I realized that they cared. Once I knew that they cared, I figured, "This is the place that I want to do business." On that happy note, I'm going to send it to Dawn here and see if we have some questions from the crowd.

Dawn Turco



Thanks, Mike. Yes, actually, we do. We had a couple questions come in on the text. The first one was asking about a website for Pike Fish, and I've put it up there. It is PikePlaceFish.com, that's PikePlaceFish, all one word, dot com. Then Priscilla has asked, Mike, what do you do with the situation when you have a customer who is basically taking up too much of your time and you have other customers to attend to. How do you handle that one who wants to take a long time with you?

Michael RydelThis is one of the toughest of all situations because you don't want to offend that person and yet, you know that there a whole bunch of people waiting. Very often, what I'll do with this is say, "I'd love to continue this conversation. Why don't we schedule some time down the road to talk about this in more detail?" Obviously, if you're selling fish, it's a totally different story than if you're on the telephone at the Hadley School for the Blind. But, you know, one of the things that I would do is to make sure that they know that we're going to schedule a time down the road to have a more detailed conversation about what they want to talk about.

Dawn TurcoWell, I'm keeping an eye on the clock for you, Mike, and I think maybe we'll go on. I know you have some other things you want to share with us before we conclude



today. So, let's move on and then we'll give a little time for questions down the road a bit.

Michael RydelOkay, thanks, Dawn. This next section is called, "Telephone Customer Service." I think so many of us in our jobs now spend a majority of our time on the telephone and on the computer doing email. Where I worked in the past, we used a program by a company called The Telephone Doctor. Essentially, their whole point of view for telephone customer service comes down to a couple of points. What they're saying with telephone is that there's only three or four different aspects of a telephone conversation that you have control over; your voice, your tone of voice, the words that you use, and the perception of the customer on the other side of that telephone call.

What The Telephone Doctor teaches is that the number one mistake that most businesses make is that we're perceived as being rude or curt in the way we're talking to people. What they’re trying to do is teach people how to use a tone of voice that is not too fast, not monotonous, enunciates, and is not too loud and not too soft, but just right. The way they always start their training is, they talk about a comparison. They talk about the fact that most of us have grown up in an age where we've been around television forever. In television, people hear voices, they



recognize a tone of voice, they understand the words. On television, you can see visible emotions, you see facial expressions and see body language.

The reason they use this analogy is that what they say is, when you're on the telephone with a customer, that face-to-face interaction just isn't there. The analogy that they use is that telephone customer service is far more analogous to the way radio used to be.

In the old days, 1920s, 30s, 40s, people used to listen to the radio for more than news, sports, and weather and music. They used to listen to comedy shows and dramas performed by famous actors. When we did that telephone training, what we tried to instill in our customer service reps is that it's as if you're talking on the radio. You have to make sure that people can hear your voice, recognize your tone of voice, that they can understand your words, and that you have to make sure that you can convey emotions in a positive way. Actually, you really want to engage that customer's imagination.

The way they train this is that they say, "Number one, make sure your voice is understood. Don't talk too fast, don't talk too slow, don't be monotone, use some inflection when you speak, don't mumble. You have to enunciate your words, and it has to be right in the middle, not too loud and not too soft." In terms of tone, you really want to



make sure that the tone of voice that you have is not angry or aggressive, or could be perceived as attacking that customer. The way that I would picture this is that if somebody were to call, let's say, a company called "American Buzzsaw" and say, "May I speak to Mr. Smith?" And a person says, "Well, what's your name?"

"Well, Miss Lopez.""What's your company?""AmEx Corporation.""Well, what's this in regards to?" That type of angry,

aggressive, attacking voice will get that customer defensive or possibly will talk back to you and be offensive. When they do that customer service phone training, typically, each organization has its own standards. Generally, a better way to approach this would be, "Good morning, American Buzzsaw. This is Mike, can I help you?"

"May I speak to Mr. Smith?""Sure, may I tell him who's calling?""It's Miss Lopez from AmEx.""Thank you. If you're able to hold, I'll ring Mr. Smith's

office right now." That's that type of what they call "business friendly tone of voice." You want to make sure that your voice is understood, that you have that friendly tone, and the words that you choose are easily understood.



You have to be careful with the words that you say to a customer. Words have several meanings and very often, many organizations will actually script the type of interactions that their help desk or customer service reps will have with their customers. They're so afraid that it's so easy to misunderstand words. Very often, when you just try to wing it, or when you just try to make up stuff off the top of your head, you're going to get yourself in trouble. As often as you can, if you have documentation with you, that you can choose your words carefully and make sure that your meaning is clear. If the person doesn't understand you, even get to the point where you say, "Are you sure you understood my instructions? Could I ask you to repeat those instructions to make sure that we're on the same page?" Because the customer perception for telephone customer service tends to be, customers can be very emotional. It's very easy for customers to get their feelings hurt. If they get their feelings hurt, that memory will linger on and you'll very often lose their business.

A couple of tips, real fast ones here, for voicemail. Voicemail is one of the best tools that we have in business now. One of the things that you can do with voicemail is that you can actually help a person by leaving the solution to the problem in the voicemail message. Very often, people will use voicemail and say, "I'll call you back." But if you actually put your answer to the question in there, people will be much more appreciative.



What I tend to do is say, "Hello, my name is Mike Rydel from the Hadley School for the Blind. My phone number is 847-555-1212. The answer to your questions is..." then I give them the answer. "If you'd like more information..." I'll repeat my phone number at the end of that voicemail, 847-555-1212, so that phone number is on twice. If people are scanning through their voicemail messages, sometimes they don't have their pen or computer ready for that phone number right away. If you say it twice, it'll give you a better chance for them to get your number correctly.

When it comes to email, just very simply, less is more with email. If you're going to send an email to a customer with an answer to a problem, I'm going to say, number one, that email should have real friendly tone of voice, using please and thank you's as much as possible. Instead of saying, for instance, "The accounting department requires you to send three copies of your last three tax returns to the processing department by February 1st." Right, "Please send three copies of your last three tax returns to Mike from Loan Processing by February 1st." The "please" and "thank you" will definitely help. In those emails, 50 words or less is what is normally taught nowadays.

What that means is, that's about four sentence per email and in that email, the first sentence should have the most



important information. Those sentences should be short sentences, about 10 or 15 words each. People like to use bullet points for clarity. Finally, for email, it's good to use the active voice. Instead of saying, "The radio was listened to by John," say, "John listened to the radio." Instead of saying, "The form needs to be filled out by the customer," say, "Please complete the form." Essentially, to wrap this up, this section, when it comes to voicemail or email, less is more, keep it friendly, keep it short, and make sure you're clear. Dawn, I think we'll have just a couple minutes here.

Dawn TurcoOh, thank you, Mike. I can't agree with you more on the voicemail. At Hadley, we, of course, get a lot of voicemail from customers and professionals and students. Having your name and your phone number both at the beginning and end of the message, and I have found even spelling out that last name for us, because sometimes it just doesn't come through so clearly. You really want to know who you're asking for when you do return the call, so that was great advice. We did have a question from Priscilla, and she was wondering, how do you keep someone from becoming frustrated with you when you speak with an accent?

Michael Rydel



Well, everybody tells me that I have a Chicago accent. What I do with them, more often than not, is just slow down my voice and make sure that I enunciate and make sure that the person understands what I just said. I'll even go to the point to say, "Are we on the same page? Are you following me okay with this explanation?" I guess, more than anything else, would be just to slow down a little bit and just make that personal connection with the person, so that they feel comfortable to have you repeat stuff.

Dawn TurcoWe have a question about emails; what is the best way to instruct peers to shorten their emails? Oh, I feel your pain. Some of our peers don't know when to get to the point and tend to give you every detail. Many of us get emails that are way too long, what's your suggestion, Mike?

Michael RydelWell, this is going to seem really self-serving. I advise them to take our business writing class from the Hadley School for the Blind. In all honesty, the best thing to do is to have a personal conversation with the person and say, "Hey, I took this class and I learned a couple of things. Would you be interested if I shared this with you?" It'd be so easy to offend somebody by telling them that their emails are long-winded. You almost have to go around the back end and say, "This is something that I've been



doing, this is something that I have learned. Maybe I could share this with you." Otherwise, our classes in business writing and business communication really work to help people improve their writing and speaking skills. Dawn?

Dawn TurcoLet me just check, I think we had a hand raised in the participants. Maybe Sandra had a question, let's just check for that. Alright, let's go on, Mike. We're coming up on the hour and I know you have a little bit more you want to cover.

Michael RydelThanks, Dawn. The last part of this seminar is advice for management, and what can we do as managers to create an environment where we can improve our customer service for our clients? The first thing that I want to bring up here is, you can't just have a program for customer service. What you really need to do for customer service is try to instill a customer service frame of mind in the culture of your organization.

Let me tell you what I mean by that; I used to go to a bank and the bank was a pretty impersonal place. You stood in line, you did your business, you walked in, you walked out, and that was pretty much the bank. One day, I go in there and there's a big banner in the bank with the words "We



Care." All the tellers were wearing "I Care" buttons. It was evident to me that, except for these buttons, that nothing had changed at all in the bank. I asked the teller, "What is this whole program?" and she looked at me and said, "Oh, it's just a bunch of bull."

Now, I have been a customer of this bank and I had pretty much zero expectations for customer service. Now, I was angry because as I figured out, the only thing worse than employees who don't care are employees who don't care wearing buttons that say, "I care." I guess my first advice for management in all of this is, don't just try to install an "I care" program or a customer appreciation program. The best approach for this is to look through your staff and put in a culture that gets the input and buy-in of the staff before you try to make the change.

With that, in order to build loyalty, you can't have a program and you need a culture change. The first thing that a management should realize is that the best way to have a connection between their employees and customers is that you have to connect with them in a rational way and in an emotional way. It's rational because you have to have the right product at the fair price. It's emotional because your employees need to treat customers as people and they need to treat their customers with respect.



Why do we treat them with respect? Because they deserve our respect. One of the things for management to realize is that if the managers treat their employees with respect, this will trickle down to the customers. If you create an environment where everyone has a positive thought process and everyone is treated in a positive way, it's going to be absolutely natural for that to move from the employee right to the customer. Workers who enjoy their time at work will treat the customer well.

One of the best places that I've seen around here is Barnes and Noble bookstore. They believe that their supervisors should consistently recognize their employees publicly and privately. The employee satisfaction numbers at these bookstores are great, because the employees believe that they are the bookstore, not the corporation that owns them, but that they’re the major part of this store. They take ownership in their jobs. So, another tip for managers is that, basically, we used to be taught that it takes four positive comments to offset the anxiety caused by one instance of constructive criticism. So, another good factor with this is, if you create an environment in your organization that's positive, it'll spill right to the customers. A third thing to mention here is what they say, "The front line does not lie." Management has to create standard operating procedures and computer systems that help the employees serve the customer.



A couple weeks ago, I called my phone company about a broken telephone. The customer service rep was very nice and gave me all of the information about a location near me where I could get a new phone. I asked this person, "Well, if I can do that, can I upgrade my call package at the same time?" and she said to me, "Well, I can't tell you." I said, "Oh, you don't know?" She goes, "Oh, no, I know, but I can't tell you. To find out, you have to call a different 800 number. You have to call 888-444-2425." I said, "That's the most stupid thing I ever heard," she said, "Well, there's a lot of stupid things around here, do you want to hear more of them?" I go, "Not really."

One of the things that management's got to realize is that the procedures that you put in and the computer systems that you implement have got to talk to one another. If a customer wants to be able to do two or three things, it's really not best practice to have them call two or three numbers to know that. You have to know your customer. You have to create a system, as a manager, that allows this customer service rep to talk to the customer as a person. I'll give you an example of this, if you call Pizza Hut, for instance, from your home phone, they have a database of every pizza that you've ever ordered at Pizza Hut. If you log into Google, they identify your IP address and send you adds that you personally might find interesting.



That's why I love teaching so much, because it's the relationship with the students that make the courses great. As a customer service rep, management needs to give them the information at the fingertips that allows them to know the customer as personally as possible. Where I want to wrap up with all this is the fact that managers should realize that all business is new business. Every time a customer buys something, they're not just a repeat customer, they’re a new customer because they've made a choice to buy something today. If you don't treat them like a new customer, you're going to lose them. They'll just go to a different organization.

To wrap this up, the four parts here is that this fish outlook, have that positive attitude, know your customer, know what to say to that customer, be very clear on the phone, be very clear with your email. If you're in management, try to create a culture in your organization that allows your workers to treat people in this positive way. With that being said, I'm going to switch back to Dawn and take some final questions and comments.

Dawn TurcoWe were having a little difficulty handing the mic over. We do have a hand raised, so let me see if we can get that question in. I'm going to release the mic.

Unidentified Male



Michael, thank you for your information. I would like to say to you that I will try to transport to take this information and use them in my physical therapy. I think that it's possible to use this information in my small office. I think that they are really important things, important questions to practice in my office. So, thank you for your information and I am really satisfied to participate in this seminar. Thank you.

Dawn TurcoThat's great, Louis. And Tabitha is passing along her thanks for the seminar to you, Mike, and says you made some very valid points. Let's just see if there is any final question before I close this out today.

Well, having heard that silence, let me on behalf of the Hadley School for the Blind, thank you all for participating in today's seminar. A very special thanks to Michael Rydel for his presentation on The Customer Service Frame of Mind. This was a great hour.

For those of you who'd like to listen again or perhaps recommend it to a colleague or friend, the recording for this seminar will be placed on the Hadley Website in the Past Seminars area, probably within about two days. It will be available to you there 24/7, so no matter where you've joined us worldwide, feel free to just go and grab it. It's there for your download or for podcast. Again, thank



you, Michael Rydel. I'll hand the mic back to you for your final farewell.

Michael RydelA great experience with our course. I want to thank everyone for listening to my hour on The Customer Service Frame of Mind. Thanks, everybody. Bye bye.

Dawn TurcoThank you, Louis, and goodbye, everyone. Thank you again, bye bye.


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