Introduction
This is not a book about selling shoes or clothes or cosmetics or jewelry.
This is a book about creating a corporate culture that encourages, motivates, and compensates your employees to consistently deliver a superior customer service experience for your customers.
Customer service is like the weather. Everybody talks about it but nobody (well, almost nobody) does anything about it.
And yet each one of us is an expert on customer service. At one point or another during the course of our day, we are all customers. We know good service when we see it, and we know bad service when we see it. You don’t have to read a book to have it explained to you.
Picture a metaphorical customer service counter. On one side of the customer service counter is you, the customer. You know exactly what your expectations are: a good product or service at a fair price. If there’s a problem, you want it taken care of as quickly, seamlessly, and painlessly as possible. Simple stuff. We all know this.
So, then, why is good customer service so rare?
Because a funny thing happens to people when they are on the other side of the customer service counter or the front desk or the reception area or on the the other end of the telephone or Internet—when they are in the position of having to give service as opposed to receiving service. Most often, their only concerns are the rules, the process, the manual, the bureaucracy, the way it’s always been done. It is as if they hit the “delete” button on ...
