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Courtesy of Joe Loong, license: CC BY-SA 2.0
Providing good customer service is something everyone in the world is capable of…
But it doesn’t come naturally to all of us, so how can we tap into the empathetic hero that lies within? Knowing common practices and specific training is great, but being a grade A customer service agent begins with understanding human interaction.
Recognizing The Power Of Attitude
Humans are emotional beings, there’s no denying it. We put a whole lot of stock into how well we can interact with other people, and how well people interact with us. Being able to connect with others can make them glow – you may even be thinking of someone right now that just radiates kindness and acceptance!
Those people are easy to identify because we thrive on the emotional stimulation they provide.
By the same token, there is a survivalist, selfish attitude that can destroy any chance of a deep and meaningful connection. The second that we allow someone else to fail, simply because we know we won’t be personally affected, we’ve created an emotional barrier that makes it a lot harder to benefit from our relationships.
These kinds of people aren’t hard to find either… It only takes one tiny exchange with someone in this state of mind to realize how it feels.
Why Attitudes Matter
Our attitudes affect every interaction with other people. Whether we like it or not, whatever we have going on internally is going to show externally.
Knowing this (and remaining conscious of it in spite of your own ups and downs) is the first step of providing excellent customer service.
Keeping our own negative emotions in check is one of the hardest things to do. It takes a larger perspective. The reason is, well, that we love to wallow in our own negativity. Whatever bad feeling we may have, it is much easier to keep right on feeling that way. Even though we know we are operating in a state that is bad for us, we often choose to remain there.
Whatever the reason (especially in a customer service setting), it is irrelevant. What matters is that we recognize our behavior, and make the choice to see things in a different light. One of the best ways to clear our heads like this is to simply take a break.
How To Apply What We Know
Gaining a larger perspective means pulling ourselves out of that negative state. Doing so requires us to realize that we have a choice in every single situation. We can literally say “I am not mad” and choose not to reframe our emotions away from anger. Sure, whatever we were mad about may not disappear, but life is never all black and white – if we really want to, we can see the silver lining in any given situation (or at least try to – an attitude change in itself).
We may need to tell ourselves this a hundred times a day, but as long as we make that choice to operate in positivity every time, we will have won the battle.
These victories are so important in providing the best customer service. Yes, we can fake empathy and just pretend to care about our clients, we can still have all the answers that our customers might need, we can do the job with a (forced) smile… But this type of service is what we would expect from terrible businesses – and we still see right through it.
At LongerDays, we offer something better than that… We are humans that care about our work and our clients. When we start our days knowing that we can overcome any negative situation that might occur, we allow ourselves to provide a better service to ourselves and our clients.
If things get rough, we power through – making the conscious choice to do the right thing, not take complaints personally, and always, always look for the good in every scenario we encounter.
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