If Not Now, Then When In Customer Service?

The super complex life question, “If not now, then when?” was shared on my office whiteboard a couple of weeks ago. I write a daily quote for all to see.

Needless to say, there are many ways to answer this one question (see photo of feedback).

And of course, seeing the responses that my intelligent and creative coworkers shared got my wheels spinnin’ and of course I must relate it back to customer support somehow. Yes, I am that outrageous. Does this surprise you at all though?

Ultimately, here’s the one impactful thought that I took out of this:

There are many ways to read the same thing.

When a visitor arrives on our website DMV.org, they view our partner advertisements. They see display advertisements. They read through our content. What we display on our website makes an impression on them. They begin to form their own perceptions about us based on what they see. Some visitors even take the time to share their feedback about their experience with us. This process is mostly out of our control.

What we CAN control is how we react.

I envision reacting…or responding, I should say, to feedback looking like this:

Yes, it looks like a happy little L.A.M.B.!

This is a fresh and updated spin from a post I wrote titled Bahhdd Feedback! from January 2013.

When we receive bahhhddd feedback (see what I did there), here are the steps we can considering taking:

L is for Listen

What does this customer have to say? Why are they saying it? We give the customer our ears.  What happened during their experience to take them down a bad road? We must first seek to understand their journey and we can do this by listening.

A is for Acknowledge

We stand firm and acknowledge that a negative situation happened and apologize for it. We own up to the mistake. We take responsibility and we acknowledge that to the customer.

M is for Move

What can we do to take action and move this situation around to get better results? What can we repair? What can we take away and learn from? Ultimately–what moves are we going to take to improve.

B is for Boost

After the dust clears from the bad experience and the customer has rode off happily into the sunset, we’re left with one question: How can we make sure this doesn’t happen again? While we can’t change the way the customer perceives us, we can boost communication and make changes that enhance the experience for the customer.

Remember:

There is no better time to pay attention to the gems of feedback we receive from customers than right this very second.

[custom_author=jenny]