Appreciate The Learning Opportunities In Customer Service

Our customer service team at Phone.com has a peer recognition program called Smiles where each employee can nominate each other for their amazing work. We also place positive customer feedback into what we call The Smile Box. Each week, we draw names from the box and share the winners with the team. Then, each winner gets to select a $10 gift card. Pretty snazzy, right?

I was on a mission to purchase some gift cards to replenish the stash and I know a lot of our team eats at Carl’s Jr. (@CarlsJr) so I popped over there to purchase a handful of cards.

As I walk in, I’m greeted immediately by a woman who appears to be the manager. I don’t typically eat at this establishment but I was definitely surprised by the attention right away. I approach the counter and let the cashier know that I’d like to purchase four gift cards. She smiles and says, “You bet! I don’t quite know how to do that but let me get my manager.”

She calls the manager over, the same woman who greeted me walking in the door. She’s smiling and talking to me about purchasing the cards and showing the cashier exactly how to do it.

The cashier then smiles at me and says, “See, I now know how to do this, thanks to you. I appreciate the learning opportunity!”

I smiled and told her I loved her enthusiasm. What an awesome mindset to have!

She could have totally blown it off, been annoyed that she had to get a manager and not been thrilled to learn something new. Instead, she took it as a golden OPPORTUNITY to help the customer (me) now and those in the future.

What Carl’s Jr. Did Right

Empower to Ask: They empowered their employee to ASK for help. She had no problem reaching out to her manager to have her show the way to process gift cards.

Appreciate the Opportunities: The employee had the mindset to see this as a learning opportunity rather than feeling stupid about not knowing how to do something.

How many times a day do we appreciate these gems of learning? Do we often overlook how beneficial these actually are?

I encourage you, the next time you have to learn something new on the spot, to appreciate the opportunity. It can only help you in the long run, right?

[custom_author=jenny]