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Katie and Carol discuss Tip 49: Keep your customers happy by saving them effort. A little trick in testing your customer service. It is in the form of a question: Is the customer having to put forth an effort to get service? If the customer is overextending to interact with you, then you are not adequately serving her. Are you asking her to call back and ask for someone else, or are you taking her number and seeing that you are the one that follows up? Are you forcing her to figure out the system to find her answers, or are you moving toward her to discover her needs? That’s the difference.
They also address Tip 50: Know your customers and where you stand with them. It’s easy to get lost in the process, forgetting to maintain a level of superior customer service. Occasionally step back and check the relationship. The most important question to include on a survey of customer satisfaction is “Would you recommend us to a friend?”
Both tips are from Katie and Carol’s book Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Hello and welcome to the Skirt Strategies podcast, the podcast for tips and techniques you can use to increase your confidence and project a powerful image to get the job with a client, the raise or the promotion you deserve.
Katie: I want to start this podcast with a little scenario.
Visualize yourself with one of your key customers. Customer, client, user, subscriber, patient, whatever you want to call them.
How do you best interact with that customer in a way where you know you’re getting them what they need?
And if you’re thinking in your mind that the answer is, “I asked them questions” or “I asked them what they need”, I think you’re on the right track.
Not rocket science, but too often when we are providing a service to a customer, we’re looking too quickly at fixing what they need before we diagnose to the great degree.
Carol: Interesting.
Katie: So when I have people come to me and they say, “Katie. Here’s what we need. We need some supervisory skills training.” And I say, “Why?” There’s a question right there. That’s how astute I am.
I say, “Why?” And they say, “Well, because we’re seeing that our supervisors are not quite as effective with their employees as they need to be.”
And in fact, we sometimes see a few too many complaints in the HR Department because they feel like their boss may be bullying them a little bit or was not good at addressing what they need, or they’re not on a development track where they feel like they’re moving up the ladder.
All these things that you could turn around and say, “Well, then it has to do with the supervisory skill.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: So then my tendency is to quickly jump in and save the day – “I can help you.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: And I put my cape on and I show up and I get exactly what they need done.
But you know what? How often are we jumping to the conclusion of exactly what they need is what they have identified? And if I were adept at fixing everything they need, (not just in short term, but also in long term) I would be an expert at asking and drilling down and spending some time with them and doing more of a diagnosis around what is exactly what you’re seeing that’s going on, before you tell me what you need.
Carol: Right. Nice.
Katie: Too often, our employees or sometimes customers (the internal costumers) come to us with, “Here’s what we need to do. Fix this. I need this.” And instead of just going into really finding out whether that’s what they need, we just transact.
Carol: Right. They needed paperclips to do their job before they run out of paperclips when in fact they need a new copy machine.
Katie: Yes. In fact, what they want to do is just throw money at something versus really fix it more systemically.
Carol: Right.
Katie: As Customer Service Providers, we have to be super adept at listening. And to do that, we ask some questions, but we also build a relationship so that when they do get a feel for what we do, what we offer, how the relationship is back and forth, and I don’t have all the answers, tell me more about what you want, here’s what I cannot do, here’s what I can do.
Now we’ve got really a dialogue that is ongoing and instead of a vendor relationship, it’s more of a partnering relationship.
Carol: Sure.
Katie: That is what you want to see in your mind as the destination for a customer/supplier relationship.
Carol: Nice. I like it.
Katie: And I’ve heard somebody call it, instead of being a transactional relationship like a vendor would be, it’s a more transformational one.
Carol: Yes.
Katie: “I’m here to help transform you.”
Carol: “Oh, I see. Go ahead if you’re doing your job.”
Katie: Or you see the halo over my head or something. That’s kind of religious, but…
Carol: So this is really starting at Tip Number 49. And that is – Keep your customers happy by saving them effort.
Katie: These two tips in this podcasts.
Carol: So that was 49 and 50 is – Know your customers and where you stand with them.
Katie: Okay. And those two tips, 49 and 50 came from our book – Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership.
Carol: Right. And we’re assuming that you were in the Customer Service. And if you’re not, I can’t imagine what you do necessarily and I know you’re not specifically in the Customer Service Department necessarily. But you have customers, you have employees, you have internal customers, you have external customers and you have a family.
Katie: Yeah. You have to provide something to them.
Carol: Right. So if this doesn’t work, if you’re not in the Customer Service Department, just think about how this works for the other people that you serve.
So keep your customers happy by saving them effort. What comes back to me, Katie, on this is – So often, we think we’re doing the right thing by our customers. But we’re making them work to get our service or our product. And you know what? Somebody else isn’t making them work to get that.
Katie: That’s where competition can undermine you.
Carol: Right. It should be undermining you if you’re not doing it right.
Katie: Yeah. That’s right.
Carol: So you’ve got to stay on top of this. You really have to work on always seeing your product or service from your customer’s point of view. And you know, you and I – we have a website and we look at that on a daily basis, to the point that…
Katie: We’re sick of it?
Carol: We can’t see the force to a degree sometimes. And we think, “Oh, this is so easy. They just come here and do this and do this.”
Well, if it’s not completely obvious to the person coming to our website, I think they say, “We have something like less than eight seconds to get somebody to do something that is going to keep them on our website so we better be pretty damn good.”
And we do. You and I change it up quite often, thinking, “Well, is this what’s going to get them to stay on the website or to sign up for our mailing list or to take the assessment or buy a book or whatever it is on our website?”
We want to get them interested right away and we want to make it as easy as possible to keep them there and keep their interest.
Katie: So where are you going with that?
Carol: Well, how do you look at your business?
Katie: Freshly.
Carol: Freshly and keep your customers happy by saving them effort. What do you do to save them effort?
Katie: So that’s the test. I actually learned that kind of a test. I call it a test because if it’s a check, if you are… (and this is a basic check, but I think we forget it all the time.)
Are you asking your customer to have to do something extra that you could do? Sometimes they have to do it. They have to read this paperwork and sign it.
Carol: Right. They have to sign up for our mailing list in order to get on our mailing list, yeah.
Katie: Exactly. But beyond that, what are you doing to help serve them? That’s where when somebody really feels like they’ve almost been catered to.
Carol: Right, right. What can you do that’s that one step better than your competition?
Katie: Yeah, yeah. So here’s one of my peeves (when I see this being violated.) If I call up an office (somebody that provides a service to me) and I ask a question or I need something from them and they say, “Well, I don’t really have that answer for you. You’ll need to hang up and call back to this other department and ask for Susie.”
Carol: “I can try to patch you through.” But it doesn’t always work.
Katie: “So write down her number.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: I realized this isn’t always feasible. But instead of saying, “That’s a great question, Katie. That would be a question for this other department. Let me find out for you and I’ll call you back.”
Carol: Right. “Or I’ll have them call you back.”
Katie: Perfect! There was a hotel we used to stay in all the time in the 90’s in the Fort Worth region when I did ton of consulting work physically in that area.
It was called – The Worthington and it was one of the only four star hotels around that region. So it’s in the middle of Fort Worth which is in the middle of Texas.
One of their classic characteristics of being a great hotel – was that you could ask anybody from anywhere on the staff anything and they would get any answer for you.
For example – If I saw a plumber walking by in the hallway and I said I need more towels. You know, most people will look at that and say, “That’s the facilities guy. He’s not going to know.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: My husband would nudge me. “Don’t ask him. That’s not the right guy.” “No. He is the hotel as much as anyone else.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: Or you could ask room service to have somebody come in and fix the radiator.
Carol: Right.
Katie: Not in the car. I realized I’m…
Carol: Back in the 40’s when we had radiators in our room.
Katie: We had radiators at my house growing up. But we lived in an old… It was neat, I thought. Anyway, that’s a sidebar.
Carol: I do think that between restaurants and hotels, we have Customer Service fine-tuned and especially at some of the four diamond or big star hotels.
Katie: That’s what they’re called.
Carol: Yeah, their diamonds. Thank you.
Katie: You are in the industry.
Carol: I am in the industry. But there’s things that you can do. The Ritz Carlton – As soon as you get out of your car, they know who you are. And they know by your luggage tag, they know by your… I mean, they have like five different ways. And this is the bell people.
Katie: Then they have an earpiece where somebody is watching you on video and doing a face recognition and saying, “That’s Carol Wight.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: No, they don’t.
Carol: No, they really do.
Katie: They do?
Carol: This is Ritz Carlton, remember?
Katie: It’s The Ritz.
Carol: The five diamond. But yeah, I have a friend who does Customer Service training and he talks all the time about going to The Ritz and how they were like, “Mr. Garcia. The people right over here at the check in are ready to check in.” And literally they said, “Mr. Garcia. Right this way.” And he’s like, “How did they know my name?”
Katie: I guess you’re wanted in four states.
Carol: Exactly.
Katie: This is an excellent reminder of how standards have changed through the years and whether you’re a young person or an old person or an experienced person or not, it doesn’t matter.
The customer expectation has become so much more sophisticated and savvy. What worked back then, wouldn’t necessarily work now. I mean, them going an extra step back then really puts themselves above and beyond many other hotels.
Carol: Right, right.
Katie: But now a lot of places are doing it. What is it that you’re offering that needs to be on the same high standard as what your costumer is expecting and what some of your other competitors might? I mean, I haven’t really thought about that with what I do in consulting and training.
Carol: Oh, interesting. Yeah.
Katie: I kind of think of it as being, “Here’s the way you do it.” Now, I have evolved and I feel like I’ve gotten more comfortable with my clients.
And I can diagnose something faster and I could say, “Here’s what we could do,” or “Tell me more about what you want.” And so, I’ve gotten better just in making what the fit for them work.
Carol: But is there a piece that you could do that’s above and beyond?
Katie: I don’t know.
Carol: So now, let’s say that you’ve consulted with somebody and maybe it was last year. And they love you and all of that and they’re done, right?
Katie: Do I follow up? Right.
Carol: But six months later, do you pick up the phone and say, “Hey, this is Katie. I’m just calling to make sure everything is going well. If it is…”
Katie: I tried, but I am not nearly as good as that as I would like to be. I would love to have a staff that would help me do that.
Carol: Right.
Katie: And in fact, I had a client that did a training that was in collaboration with a facility. And the facility messed up on a couple of things. And I think it probably affected my reputation just a bit. I did not throw the facility under the bus. I think they were straightforward about what happened. But the customer noticed it. And so, it reflected on my consulting as well.
Carol: Sure.
Katie: And it was a little bit tricky not calling it too much to attention like, “Oh my gosh! That was horrible.” You don’t want to do that.
Carol: Sure.
Katie: I think she may have overreacted just a bit about the flaw and the facility. But I gave her follow up with what I know I could do to help cover all of us. And that was – give her some follow on consulting and some support.
And she had some questions about, “So what do I do with my staff now that we’ve done this teambuilding with you and X, Y, Z?” And I said, “Here are some great steps. Take a look at this and this and this. What do you think you’d like to do?” And then I never heard from her.
I offered topnotch follow up, face to face. I called her, I emailed her, I maybe even texted her, different types of media so that in case my email didn’t go through. And I never heard back from her.
Carol: Interesting.
Katie: I know.
Carol: Well, sometimes those things and sometimes people either – they don’t have the money or they don’t have the need at the moment. And when the need comes up, they’ll find you again. But moving on to Number 50 is Knowing your customers and where you stand with them.
Katie: Yeah. I never ended up knowing where I stood with her, which was frustrating to me.
Carol: Do you do any kind of a follow up survey of their training and what they’ve got from you and how they liked it?
Katie: Well, it depends.
Carol: Because sometimes people are a little bit more willing to do an online survey, feeling like they’re one of many who may have done that, rather than talking to you directly. And you and I do this.
Katie: That would’ve been a good idea.
Carol: So about once a year, Katie and I send out a survey to our listeners, followers, everybody.
Katie: Subscribers.
Carol: We want to know how people feel about our service. And so, we ask and then we use that information for the rest of the year.
Who knows if we’re doing it right? We feel like we are and we may ask enough questions and people answer it.
I’m always amazed at how many people we get sending it back. They are the best. It’s absolutely wonderful.
So if you’re not signed up with us, you need to go on our website and in the upper right hand corner there’s a…
Katie: Sign up, get the free tips.
Carol: Then I think that now it’s an assessment or tips or something. So sign up and get that.
Katie: Assessmyskills.com is always a great place to go, if you haven’t been there yet. Assessmyskills.com will get you into our mailing list, but it also gives you a leadership assessment and a report.
Carol: Right. You know, that’s one thing that kind of goes in these two tips is – “Are you giving great information and great service for nothing?”
Katie: Great service and information for nothing.
Carol: Because I think that’s what we do.
Katie: Oh yeah!
Carol: Women get this podcast and it doesn’t cost them anything.
Katie: Right.
Carol: And we do a lot of other things that get our content out there that tell people, “These are the wonderful things we do. Now, use us for consulting or whatever.”
But we try not to be too salesy, but we’re also giving people lots of wonderful information that they can use all the time. And hopefully, there’s the law of return and the law of circulation.
Katie: Karma, baby!
Carol: And hopefully karma will come back and pay us big dividends, right?
Katie: Hopefully. But you and I just love giving. It feels good to give.
Carol: We do. We enjoy this. But at some point, love to be paying for it. And we are.
Katie: We know that our podcast followers – we know that we’ve got a chunk of them. Man! We have a lot of people that follow the podcast.
So if you are one of those, but you’ve never been to our website or you’ve never thought of us for follow on one on one or some ideas or send us an email with a question of a dilemma you have, that would be great.
Carol: We’re also accepting sponsorships for anybody who’s interested. We’ll mention your name many times over on this podcast if you want to sponsor it.
Katie: We’ll put you on the website.
Carol: That’s right.
Katie: So let’s repeat these again. Tip Number 49 – Keep your customers happy by saving them effort. And Number 50 – Know your customers and where you stand with them.
More or less, awareness of what you do well and what you provide, even just you asking me the question about what do I do with my follow up for customers.
There’s lots of things I could be doing. There’s lots of little gimmicks that I could be making sure they have or something that makes their life a little bit easier.
That starts with asking them questions and knowing what’s important to them. I’d like to think I know them, but I also would love to know them more.
When you want to have a conversation with a customer or a potential customer, I have a wonderful approach that has almost always worked.
Carol: Let me tell us what that is.
Katie: Let me tell you. If you think of the objective as getting face to face with an existing customer or a prospect, just getting face to face to do a discovery, find out more about them and let them find out about you.
The opening to that request might sound like, “I hear that you’re doing this and this work. That sounds fascinating and I’m curious about what your objectives are for getting something out of that.”
Let’s say that they’re in the construction industry and they’re trying to be better known in the community as a family service or something like that.
Then I might turn around and say, “I work with a lot of companies like that and I’d be interested in sharing what I do and seeing if it’s a fit with what you might need in order to achieve that objective.”
Carol: Nice.
Katie: I’ve done nothing more than say, “Let’s find the prospect of how you want to get some place and how I might have something that helps you get there.”
Carol: Right. I’m not saying I do, but I’m saying we could go down a little path and maybe just have a lunch and see if there’s anything that would work.
Katie: Yes. You can call it a discovery, you can also give them a bit of an opt-out so that it doesn’t feel as threatening by saying, “Let’s see if there’s a mutual fit. And if not, then we know. But if so, then we can see where that might go.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: And now, they feel like that’s very non-invasive.
Carol: Yeah. It’s not a sales call, it’s just a discovery of… “Boy, it sounds like you guys are doing something that I’ve done before. And if I can help you, let me know.”
Katie: Yeah. I have had great success with that.
Carol: Good.
Katie: It’s just about building those relationships, keeping customers happy and knowing where you stand with them.
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We’re so glad you joined us for this episode of The Skirt Strategies podcast. We’d love to hear from you with questions or comments. Email us at info@skirtstrategies.com or interact with us on Facebook.
Now more than ever, the world needs powerful, confident female leaders. And that’s what we are.
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