CUSTOMER IS YOU 2 – “EXTERNAL BEHAVIOR REFLECTS HIS INTERNAL BEHAVIOR TOO… “

Employee behavior towards your Customer –

Most Successful Individual in Life were best exponents of “Customer is you”

The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but LEGENDARY.”

Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money…

It is the customer who pays the wages.”

Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motors

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

Mother Teresa

Be everywhere, do everything, and never fail to astonish the customer.”

Macy’s Motto

If you carefully read all the above quotes from the greats who are living and lived you would realize that for them Customer is first and they are feeling that Customer is in themselves. Take for example what Mother Teresa has quoted “Kind Words can be short and easy to speak “… it speaks volume of the great saint who smiled and brought the world around her.

Judging by External behavior

How difficult is for us to smile and listen to the customer and understand his problem. I have often heard in Corporate circles that Employees first hence would do anything to stand by the employee who has spoken against the customer but since they have a great employee friendly policy for them employee is way above everything. I understand Customers are unreasonable but have we really understood what the customer is going through, imagine your employee behaving badly with the customer then how he must be behaving with your internal team.

External behavior of your employees is a great reflection on his internal behavior. If an employee is not able to manage a customer well and has persistent issues with your customer then if you observe properly he also has issues with your internal people.

Customer pays your Wages

I have really liked what Henry ford has said..” Customer’s are the one who pays your wages….” If you don’t have a customer who is going to pay you and your employee. So most organizations internally have to train their employees on how to behave with the Customer. As I discussed in my earlier write up that Customers are bound to be unreasonable but what are we doing to understand his unreasonable behavior and what actions are we talking. Remember if a customer walks out you are not going to get your next month’s salary.

Most of the legends who lived have given a lot of lessons on Customer Service it is just a matter of time we understand what they meant.

CUSTOMER IS YOU

Customer Service and Customer Experience Management are terms used by most organization while serving the end consumer or the Enterprise Customers. I would like to present a series of Customer understanding views which would help you understand the nature of endless Customer ending thought process which we fail as daily customer facing individual.

In the Series beginning the first and the foremost is to understand”Who is a customer”

“Customer is you”

Let us understand first understand who are our Customers ?

“Customer is you” is a very a difficult thing to understand considering we always feel we are serving others and taking care of others needs. Life comes full circle  when you are serving a Customer you are invariably serving yourself since the customer who has come to purchase or to solve his issues has paid you for the services and its become all the more important for you to serve him and respect him the right way. Today he is your customer but tomorrow you would be someone else’s customer. Imagine for a moment how you would feel if the same things happen to you. So never think about anything be a Customer always even when you are serving a customer …“The Customer is you always “

Step 1 – Think yourself as Customer each time you serve your customer

“Would like you to respect yourself “

Again one of the most overly used quote “Give Respect and Take Respect” . Since you have taken the first step of thinking yourself as a customer when serving a customer than for a minute think “Would you like to respect yourself “. I am sure you would get the answer in affirmative. When you would like to get respect then start first by giving respect to your Customer you would see how much difference it makes.

“Self Respect” a word in itself creates a sense of positiveness when you converse with anyone. A lot of statements, quotes and jargons have been used like “Customer is King”, “Customer Comes First “, “Customer is God” but these jargons are useless you understand that who is this Customer.

Step 2 – Respect your Customer like you are respecting yourself

“Customer always has needs “

When you walk into a store to purchase something “you have need” hence you expect the store executive to listen to you attentively and if he doesn’t give you enough attention you are frustrated, irritated and you want to give a mouthful to him. The problem is he didn’t take care of your needs !! So what is wrong when a customer gets angry with you , think for a moment and go through the customer needs and see whether you have been able to fulfil his requirements.

Step 3 – When you have your needs – So does your Customer

“Customer is unreasonable “

Have you ever been unreasonable when you have gone to a restaurant and screamed at the waiter saying the food which is served to you is not extra hot. You are unreasonable as food has to be hot not extra hot since you like it to be extra hot he cannot change his style of serving unless you mentioned while ordering it to be“Extra hot”. So when your customer is asking something extra why do you always find it unreasonable may be his expectations and thought process has changed after giving you the order so if he has asked something extra just realign his new requirement and make those changes unless it is affecting your bottom line but then you could always say that he would be charged a little extra as this was not part of the original order. The customer is never unreasonable only his expectations changes !

Step 4 – When you are unreasonable so can a Customer be

Series 1 – Customer is You