How to improve your customer service skills
Most of our staff members are pretty good at customer service skills. We carry out all our project executions with equal enthusiasm and efficiency irrespective of the customer. But only a handful of customers consider us as a most favoured vendor. These customers will first ask us for a piece of advice if they need anything related to IT services, digital surveillance or point of sale solutions. I decided to investigate the reason for this. After all, we do our jobs with equal competence for all our customers.
The customer arrived, went through the system, and was happy with the overall digital surveillance system we had sold to him. I sent the invoice to this man, and he replied saying. “We have cleared your invoice, and by the way, the wooden piece under the camera matches very well with the rest of the house”. I was startled. After procuring such a sophisticated system and brilliant high-resolution cameras, he mentions the beauty of that painted wooden piece under the camera! Then and there, I understood the game. Providing and installing the system was our job, and he paid for that. However, he considered spraying that white paint over the wooden piece something extra, and it showed our meticulous attitude, which impressed him. I am sure he would not have minded that piece of wood if we didn’t paint it, but that is what made all the difference to us. It was something like crossing that extra mile that made all the difference.
I can recall another example of crossing that extra mile, which happened in the corporate world. We got a reasonably large order where one of the PTZ cameras needed an “Auto tracking feature”. We completed the project, but when we were commissioning the system, we realized that a unique PTZ Keyboard is required to configure the auto-tracking function. This keyboard cost approximately $500, which didn’t include in the proposal. I informed the concerned person about it, and he said that the keyboard is too expensive and can manage without an auto-tracking function. In the meantime, I learned that one of the companies in Christchurch has this keyboard. I asked them if I could borrow their keyboard for a week, and they agreed.
I used their PTZ keyboard to configure an auto-tracking function. On the final handover day, I demonstrated the functioning of the overall system, and they noticed that the auto-tracking was working on the PTZ camera. He casually asked me, “but I was under the impression that I can’t configure without PTZ keyboard?” I said, “Oh! I was able to borrow one from one of my friends.” That created the magic. Now, the whole company is our fan, and we are the first to be called if they have any technological issue. So here also, it was not about technology or intelligence but the attitude towards completing a job. Although they would have not minded if we had not configured the system the way the original installers designed it initially, they were impressed that we crossed that extra mile to do something which was not essential.
Thus the moral of the story is your technical expertise and competence are essential. Still, it is all about the attitude that takes your customer service skills to the next level and differentiates you from your competitors.