STOCK CONTROL

Yesterday I went to my local shopping mall for a cell phone accessory and saw three telco staff not serving anyone. I browsed their shelves for a few minutes before I turned to interrupt the staff playing on their Ipads. Apparently the item wanted was sold out but they had other colours, no I said I wanted black. "Black is the most popular colour we sell"

"We may have some more in a month" I was told, with no apology attached. I thought, OK so you know it's the most popular but you dont have enough, so should'nt you maybe foresee this situation? I drove home, went online and purchased two of what I wanted for half the price in the space of a few minutes. My lesson learned there is that next time I wont bother with the traditional retail, and go straight online to spend my money. If that kind of customer experience persists how many retailers are going to be out of work in the future, and can you blame the spread of the internet - or is some blame to be attached to the shortcomings of the retail staff themselves?

WHY FACTOR

A lady asked me during a recent workshop WHY do we have to be nice. Why do we have to be great at customer service. I asked her where she likes to go shopping, then I asked her how many hours she works in a week.
I then asked her that when she goes shopping with her hard earned money, and she steps into her favourite clothes shop wanting to buy something, that if she was met by apathetic staff who were none to phased about serving her - would she still spend her money there.

The answer was no, she would'nt. So I explained that when customers enter her workplace, they too have their hard earned money in their pockets and will take their money elsewhere quite readily if she does not give excellent service. If and when that happens, she will be out of a job pretty soon and will not be able to go shopping.
The point was understood.

SUPERSTARS WORKSHOP

These 3 hour seminars will transform the culture and mindset in your business into one of customer service excellence.
There are no boring graphs and charts and no scripts to read through.
The picture slide show leads the participants through humorous anecdotes and concentrates their focus into how they can apply simple methods to change their workplace. They look at how to improve themselves and what they can do as individuals to be ready to serve not only customers but anyone in their lives.
Retaining customers
Recovering from mistakes
Looking from a customers viewpoint
First impressions count

At $40 per person, how can you not afford to invest in your teams success?

A SCOTT MCKAIN STORY

SUPERSTAR STORY.....

Danny Meyer is the legendary hospitality guru in New York who relates this fantastic example of a service superstar.

A lady about to begin her lunch while at one of Meyer's restaurants suddenly became agitated upon discovering she had left her cell phone in the cab she had arrived in a short while back.
About to rush out the door - the head waiter stopped her and convinced the anxious diner to enjoy her meal instead as he promised to look after the matter for her. The head waiter called the lost cell phone, spoke to the cab driver who had it, and then promptly dispatched one of the restaurant staff in another cab to drive over to retrieve the phone.

The lady in question was obviously delighted.

Cost to the restaurant, about $30. Benefits to the restaurant, priceless word of mouth praise like this for a long time to come.

Thats Superstar service! Start using it in your business, or become just another average business doing the motions.

SERVICE FAILURE

Planning ahead for those rare occasions when something goes wrong will pay off. Turning a bad situation into a good one takes a little training to empower your front line staff.

Allow your frontline crew to fix the problem immediately and apologise instead of making the upset customer wait further whilst somebody finds a manager. Most angry customers are not looking to rip the company off, they simply want their problem fixed and to be heard.

Once you have allowed for that, it is a good investment to over deliver on expectations. If you can really please that previously upset customer by doing the unexpected (over deliver) then that customer will be a fan for life and tell many others about how you worked wonders for them.
Have a service recovery plan in place and make sure frontline staff are empowered to put things right.