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Chapter 69 CUSTOMER SERVICE SHOULD NEVER BE SUBPAR Jerry Pagano is an educator who spent many years moonlighting as a head waiter in a great Italian restaurant. Jerry is big on interpersonal communication and customer service. He believes you can’t provide quality customer service without caring enough to listen to your customer . Jerry is also a golfer who plays on public courses. Recently he had an experience on a public course that provides a graphic example of how not to treat customers. Jerry says, “The condition of the course and the attitude of those who work there communicated an awful lot about how they view customers .” Jerry said the tee boxes and greens were beaten up and not maintained. The water stations had no water, which is kind of rough when it is ninety degrees outside. They had few if any rangers to make sure especially slow players kept moving. A four-and-a-half-hour round wound up taking five and a half hours. When Jerry asked one of the rangers he happened to see if he could try to move things along, the ranger responded, “Who do you think you are?” Jerry said, “I’m a customer . I’m just asking you to do your job.” Jerry also noticed that the halfway house (or snack bar) didn’t open until 10:00 a.m. However, golfers often begin playing at 6 a.m. So much for customer service. Jerry also said the people behind the counter didn’t smile and just took his money without even looking at him.“They really seemed unhappy to be working there.” Jerry’s bad experience points out a persistent problem when it comes to how certain organizations fail to see that they are in the business of customer service. It can be a public golf course, the DMV, or a department store chain. You can talk about quality customer service until you are blue in the face (or have the catchiest slogan about how much you care), but if the people in your organization don’t appreciate customers and don’t want to please them, it’s a sham. If employees see those they interact with as nothing but an inconvenience, their attitude as well as their verbal and nonverbal communication will show it. The Customer Is Always Right 149 While this pervasive problem can happen anywhere, it seems particularly bad in the public sector. When was the last time you had to go to a DMV or unemployment office? Did you ever ask yourself why you feel like anything but a valued customer? It’s because for the most part, those in charge of these organizations don’t see you as a customer. They figure you have no other choice but to be there.What are you going to do if you don’t like the way you are being treated at the DMV? Go to a different DMV office around the corner? There is only one. Much of poor customer service comes from organizational leaders communicating negative messages. If those at the top provide no customer service training or do not monitor their employees’ communication style with an eye toward improving it, why should frontline people really care? Employees who go the extra yard with customers need to be rewarded and recognized. Examples of first-rate customer service need to be applauded and modeled.When bosses fail to do this, employees are demotivated. If organizational leaders don’t do customer surveys or seek feedback on how to improve these interactions, the message sent is that those things aren’t important. No matter what business you are in,ask yourself the following question on a regular basis: “What message am I communicating both in my words and actions when it comes to our customers?” Ignoring this question is risky indeed. Chapter 70 “GUERRILLA MARKETING” MAKES SENSE Virtually every professional is involved in promoting, selling, or advertising something. Put together, these activities come under the umbrella of marketing. A colleague of mine recently described marketing this way: “Marketing is the strategy you apply in order to sell your idea, concept, service, or product to a group of targeted customers.” Even if you don’t advertise, you still must have a marketing plan. 150 MAKE THE CONNECTION ...

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