What do you think is the most important factor in how your business puts attention to customer focus and engages its customers? Like many things in your business, we believe the answer to this question is the quality of your customer facing employees.
How customer facing employees engage customers can make or break any business. It all depends on how employees relate to customers. We say it many times to our clients, this problem is solved by getting the right employees into the business (75% of the required solution) and then training and empowering these employees (25% of the required solution). Today we will focus on how to select the best customer facing employees.
Here is an excellent short video on recruiting tips.
So what skills and qualities are required facilitate positive initial engagements with customers? Here are the recommendations we give our clients:
When dealing with customers, things can go bad often at the wrong time. Employees have to be adaptable enough to roll with the punches and think outside the box when meeting customer needs.
Customer focus … multitasking abilities
Often employees must to deal with multiple customers and their questions and needs, and at the same time, attend to their other store duties. You need your staff to keep cool and do well with multitasking at all times.
Customer focus examples … patience
Dealing with unruly customers means that you will have to take the good with the bad. Your customer facing employees must have the composure to deal with all types of stressful customer situations without ‘losing it’. That composure is vital.
Confidence
The confidence to make eye contact and strike up a conversation with strangers is absolutely essential … there is no substitute. It takes all-out determination at all times.
Friendliness
Customers don’t want to deal with personnel who don’t seem to care to be friendly. Unfriendly is the quickest way to close customers.
Easily understandable.
Understandable
Your staff must have the ability to be conversational and, at the same time, have the ability to formulate answers and provide easily understood information when asked.
Customer focus competency … initiative
It’s never a good idea to wait until a customer is stressed or agitated before offering assistance. Being one step ahead to gauge when someone needs help is the best way to minimize a brewing situation. It is also a great way to show a customer you care.
Respectful
Customers might not always be right, but they always have the right to choose. Customers must be treated with respect, even if they are rude and unruly, in the most challenging situations.
Positivity
The ability to smile in the face of a long and possibly chaotic day can make a world of difference to customers. Losing it at the end of an otherwise great day is not acceptable.
Rapport
Being able to look at a situation through the eyes of a customer is an extremely valuable skill that can enable you to provide customer rapport and the highest degree of service. It takes a great deal of patience as well as practice.
Related post: Employee Traits … 7 You Need to Be a Social Business
At the end of the day, it’s all about how an employee interacts with a customer.
How that interaction goes will ultimately determine if that customer will buy and recommend the store to her friends and family, or turn around and walk out, never to return again.
So you can NOT accept unacceptable or average employees. If you do that is where your business will end up.
Remember, to lead is to measurably help others succeed.
Need some help in finding ways to hire the best employees? Such as creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential competitors? Or perhaps finding ways to work with other businesses?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your continuous learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on improving hiring from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
