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Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development

Power to the (Customer Service) People!

If you had to describe effective customer service in a single phrase, what would it be? I would define it as the ability and authority to take whatever action is necessary to make a customer happy. I believe mine is a reasonable definition given the nature of customer service itself.

With that said, effective customer service requires that staff members be empowered by their employers to both make decisions and take action. This leads to a question: does each and every employee in your organization, with jobs that involve customer contact, have the ability and authority to make decisions that are in the best interests of customers? If not, they are not empowered to keep customers happy.

You must understand that customers looking for help from your customer service team want immediate answers. They want solutions to their problems, not customer service reps transferring them from one department to the next. They certainly don’t want to be dismissed with a promise that a manager will call back later.

What Does Your Customer Service Department Do?

Modern business has unfortunately evolved into a rigid, top-down organization that is reluctant to give people at the bottom of the organizational chart the freedom and authority to do what they need to do. Modern business is more about micromanagement than actual problem-solving.

To that end, one of the first questions I ask clients in this regard is this: what does your customer service department do? I’m hoping to hear an explanation of customer service reps empowered to do their jobs. That is not always the case. More often than not, customer service reps are merely phone-answering personnel who defer all decisions to supervisors or middle managers.

Maintaining this kind of top-down customer service department leads to unhappy customers. Why? Because customer service reps not empowered to make decisions:

  • Do not present an air of confidence when dealing with customers;
  • Frequently have to put customers on hold in order to talk to supervisors;
  • Don’t tend to make an effort to understand answers and solutions;
  • Often do not have any real answers to give customers; and
  • May not really care about the end result once the customer interaction is complete.

Are You Willing to Empower Your Staff?

I hate to paint such a negative picture of customer service, but that is what customers often encounter. The question for you is whether you are willing to empower your staff to take care of customers. If you are, you will reap the benefits that come with an empowered customer service team. If not, your current level of customer service may never improve.

There are three things you need to do to empower your staff. First is to give them the authority to make decisions without necessarily consulting a supervisor or mid-level manager. It’s true that decision-making authority comes with a certain level of responsibility, but almost every employee will rise to the occasion if given the opportunity.

Second, customer service staff need to be trained to keep up with company standards and solutions. It’s not reasonable for employers to expect staff members to make wise decisions if those staff members are not kept up-to-speed at all times.

Finally, those customer service representatives who take good care of customers should be rewarded for their efforts. Rewards are an excellent incentive for taking ownership of one’s work. And it’s not necessarily money that your employees want. It’s often acknowledgement and validation that motivates them.

So, are you ready to power up your team?

 

Randi Busse, President, Workforce Development Group

www.workdevgroup.com

 

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

How to Listen Better to Win More Negotiations

“When asking questions, listen to the response! Be sure to hear the meaning and any hidden meaning in the message you received.” –Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

To win more negotiations, listen better. When you negotiate, how well do you listen? The better you listen, the more negotiations you’ll win.

… but he didn’t answer the question! Good negotiators are very adept at diverting questions that don’t serve their purpose. In some cases, they’ll give superficial responses that appear to answer the question, or like a good magician, draw your attention in another direction without you noticing that they’ve done so.

To enhance the probability of winning more negotiations, listen to how questions are answered, and listen to the words used to represent the answers. In so doing, you’ll gain invaluable insight into hidden meanings and the thought process behind those meanings.

Listen to how questions are answered:

Take note to what degree a question is answered, avoided, and/or modified. As an example, if you ask, “Is that your best offer?” You might receive several responses:

A.) In the past, that’s as much as we’ve paid.

B.) Due to our current ‘situation’, we have a ceiling on the amount we can pay.

C.) Other vendors/suppliers are accepting our price structure.

In each of the above answers, you received a response to your question but what you did not receive was a direct answer to your question. Depending on your alertness or how diligent you wanted to appear, you might rephrase the question, point out that you’d not received an answer to it, or accept the answer given in order to address the situation from another perspective. The course of action you adopt should be aligned with how you wished to position yourself and the person with whom you’re negotiating to enhance your negotiation position.

 Listen to the words used to answer questions:

Words are the representation of the thoughts being conveyed. In the above answers, the word choice conveyed additional insight per how that person was thinking. In response ‘A’, the information conveyed is stating, “That’s our norm.” It could also be perceived as, you shouldn’t consider going outside of the norm. Conform to our standards.

In response ‘B’, the subliminal message is, “We’re in a challenging time, please bear with us. Help us by being understanding.” If you acquiesce, you might attempt to acquire chits that can be used in future negotiations. If you do so, attempt to instill in the current negotiation when and how you might use such chits. Keep in mind, you’ll also be setting a precedent to ‘help them’ again in the future, since you did so this time.

Depending on the value of your offer, you could position it so that it’s seen as ‘added value’ that warrants a ‘higher investment’ on the part of the purchaser, or one that you can fit into the current pricing structure because of the reason that’s best suited for the situation and your purpose. The point is, after you’ve gleaned the additional information based on how your questions are answered, you have a better understanding of how to position yourself.

You make decisions based on your interpretation of the situations you’re in. Then, based on your interpretation, you decide how you’ll act and react to situations. Thus, you and only you control your actions in a negotiation. So, to control more of the aspects of the negotiation, listen to the meanings and hidden meanings in the answers given by the other negotiator. Your reward will be in winning more negotiations … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

 

 

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Personal Development Women In Business

Expert Advice on How to Negotiate With a Bully

 

“To be fearless against a bully display what he fears.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

 

“Expert Advice On How To Negotiate With A Bully”

Follow this expert advice to negotiate with a bully.

  1. Differentiate between a bully that may be controlling versus bullying. Some people don’t see themselves as bullies. They may be the type that likes to be in control of situations and display overly aggressive means to maintain that control. The two perspectives possess different mindsets.
  2. Identify the personality type of the bully you’re negotiating with (you’re always negotiating). Thus, even in your first encounter with a person (and after that time), you should assess that person’s traits, demeanor, and characteristics. Doing so will give you the insight needed to formulate a negotiation strategy.
  3. Determine the best environment to negotiate with a bully. He may be stronger in one environment as the result of resources surrounding him or those he has to ‘save face’ for; this may also tend to make him cockier than he’d normally be. If that’s the case, get him out of his environment; this should be done physically and/or psychologically. In doing so you’ll dilute his psychological powers and weaken him mentally in the process (i.e. power is perceptional).
  4. If addressing a bully on a one-on-one basis doesn’t achieve your objective(s), marshal forces to use as leverage against him. Depending on the situation, let those that he has more respect for take the lead on your behalf; never let a bully know how strong your forces are. You must be prepared to send in a second, third, fourth, etc., wave that’s stronger than what preceded it. For maximum effect, the timing of your next foray should occur just when the bully thinks he’s squashed your best efforts. In normal situations, over time you’ll wear the bully down and he’ll acquiesce to your wishes. Be mindful of the bully that won’t acquiesce over a period of exhaustive negotiations when forces have been marshaled against him. You might be dealing with a bully that’s willing to destroy himself for the sake of denying you any kind of victory. To prevent from making too many concessions, establish exit points that indicate when you should depart the negotiation. Always be mindful that, the longer you stay engaged in a negotiation, the likelier you are to make concessions to your disadvantage. This is due to the psychological need to see the negotiation to its end. This could be to your severe detriment.
  5. Once you’ve achieved your objective(s), over a period of time reengage the bully from a polite perspective and observe how he interacts with you. To the degree the relationship is important to you, be prepared to let him win an encounter, but never let him bully you again. Your prior actions should be engrained in his mind to the point that he’d not want to experience the prior encounter that you two engaged in.
  6. As further insight into the affects your engagement has had with a bully, note how those closes to the bully engage with you after an encounter. Their actions will allow you to assess the degree of sting that still resides in the bully.

Bullies only pick on those that they perceive to be weaker than themselves. Don’t let a bully perceive weakness in you and he’ll have no target to attack … and everything will be right with the world.

What are your takeaways? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

#HowToNegotiateBetter #HowToNegotiateWithBully #PreventBullying

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Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development

5 Signs Your Customer Service Might Be Lacking

Take a look at your business. Do you suspect your customer service needs improvement? If so, there’s no need to panic. If you can recognize where your organization is falling down, you can implement the necessary changes to fix things. To get you started, here are five signs that suggest your customer service might be lacking:

1. Consistent Customer Complaints (even if there are just a few)

Statistics indicate that just 4% of dissatisfied customers actually complain about a poor customer service experience.  Just because you’re not receiving many complaints doesn’t necessarily mean you are providing good service. The question is one of consistency. If you receive a consistent stream of complaints, even if the volume is relatively small, take it as a warning sign.

Also consider that complaints presented to the front-line staff may never make it to you or your management team! A complaint is a gift from a customer who doesn’t want to just leave and never come back. Treat it as such by establishing guidelines that guarantee all complaints make it to the top.  Be open to complaints and then learn from them.

2. Loss of Long-Term Customers

Long-term customers leaving on a regular basis could be an indication that you have a real problem.  Once a relationship has been developed between a company and a customer, the likelihood of retaining that customer increases. Yet when customers who would normally give you the benefit of the doubt take their business elsewhere, it’s probably due to your service or the lack thereof. Statistics show that 68% of customers stop doing business with a company because of the attitude of an employee. What kind of attitude do your employees have?

3. Few Repeat Customers

One and out is not a good business strategy.  Loyal customers do your advertising for you; they represent your largest profit potential. When customers routinely go elsewhere after their first experience with your company, you have to look for the reasons. What are they experiencing with your company? How are they being treated?  Make them feel like they are your only customer. They will come back – and tell others about you too.

4. Poor Employee Morale

If your employees are dissatisfied, your customers will be too. Unhappy employees make no effort to make customers happy. That’s just the way it is. For the record, poor employee morale is not a result of poor customer service. It is the other way around. The solution is to model the behavior you want your employees to demonstrate. Treat your employees well and you will be teaching them how to treat your customers well.

5. Employees Not Empowered to Handle Problems

Everyday customer concerns should be handled by the person serving the customer. The customer doesn’t want to wait to get issues resolved. If your employee is not empowered to make a $5.00 decision without consulting with a manager, you have a problem. Do you want to save $5.00 or save a customer? Hire employees with the right attitude who have confidence in the decisions they make. When they keep the customer in mind, they will make the right decision.

If your customer service is lacking due to any of these five issues, what are you doing about it? Ignoring the symptoms and pretending nothing is wrong isn’t going to make the problems disappear. Remember this: if you suspect your customer service is lacking, you can almost guarantee that your FORMER customers agree!

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Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development

Thanking Your Customers: How To Do It Correctly

Do you thank your customers for doing business with you? If not, you’re in good company. Most businesses don’t make an effort to thank the people who keep them in business. Yours doesn’t have to be one of them.

Don’t you want to stand out from the rest?  Of course you do!  I’m here to tell you how to do it for the ridiculously low price of just forty-nine cents!

Step back and think about the last time you received a hand-written card from someone you did business with.  Can’t remember?  It’s probably because you never received such a note. Still, think how good you would feel if you did. Your customers would feel just as good to receive a note of thanks from you. Making customers feel good equals stronger relationships with them, which translates into more referrals.  More referrals mean more business.  Get it?

How to Do It

The most effective way to thank your customers is to handwrite notes. So invest in a package of cards. Not standard ‘thank you’ cards, but a box of cards that resonate with you. I personally have several boxes. One has flowers while the other has beautiful landscapes.

With cards in hand, start sending them ASAP.  Every time you get a new customer, send a card thanking them for choosing to do business with your company. They could have gotten the product or service you provided from another company, but they chose to get it from you. You are obviously pleased by that decision – let the customer know.

I don’t know about you, but when I see a personal, handwritten card in my mail, I make sure to open it first. Handwritten cards sure beat bills any day of the week. They make me feel valued and special. Isn’t that a feeling you want your customers to experience after doing business with you? I think so.

Follow these quick tips to show some love to your customers or clients.  I promise they’ll love you back.

  1. Be timely. Send a personal thank you note in the mail within a few days of receiving business from a customer or client.
  2. Don’t send a cheesy corporate card. Instead, find something that represents you or your customer.
  3. If all you’re going to write is “thanks for your business” and sign the card, don’t bother. You will be wasting a stamp. Instead, write a short note thanking them specifically for the product or service they bought or the referral they made.
  4. Don’t skimp and send an e-mail. While it’s free and easy to do, it won’t stand out like a handwritten card Remember, the point is to stand out from the competition.

Notes for Potential Customers

Let’s close by going one step further to thank potential customers. It can be very productive to thank someone for contacting you about your products or services, even if it doesn’t result in an immediate sale. In some cases, the process of making a sale is a long one.  Let’s say a potential customer is thinking about making a purchase. How do you suppose he or she will respond to a personal note card from you? I’m willing to bet that your note could tip the scale in your favor.

 

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

You Always Have Control

“Change is ever occurring. Thus, you can embrace change and control it, or you will be controlled by change. The choice is yours but if you don’t make a choice, change will make the choice for you.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

www.TheMasterNegotiator.com

No matter what occurs in your life, you always have control. That’s true because you have the power and ability to change anything that doesn’t suit you. That change may be limited and limiting, but there’s a degree that you can influence change, you just have to seek what it is and what it means to change.

So, when you don’t like the outcome of a situation, seek to change it or the way you view it (i.e. change your mind per the meaning it has). Once you realize that you don’t have to be held captive by the outcome that change thrust upon you, you’ll feel better about how you can control the change that has occurred. That will allow you to see the perception of negative change from a more positive perspective … and everything will be right with the world.

 

 

 

 

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Entrepreneurship Management Personal Development Women In Business

Good Times or Bad – You’re Still the CEO

Good Times or Bad…You are Still the CEO

Imagine coming home after a long day at the office as a mid-level manager in a small busy company. You are one of 175 employees, and it is hump day – the week is half over. Work is stressful and you are looking forward to decompressing. You stand in the entry of your home totally stunned by the notice in your hand. Your bank has sent a notice that the paycheck you deposited in the bank on Friday has bounced. What would you think or do?  In a company with a consistent degree of transparency this might be annoying but not a surprise. Your CEO may have warned you that times were rocky. You might be asked to reduce your salary but because of your belief in the company’s cause and your contribution to a cure, you stay the course. You believe.

In another home just down the street a different scenario is at play. Another bounced check another manager but the reaction is different. This manager had no idea what was happening behind closed doors. His imagination started running rampant and he is getting angrier by the minute. He goes to the phone and calls one person after another to vent and check if their checks bounced too. He goes to his computer and resignedly finds his last resume. He has had it!

Which type of CEO are you?  Not all CEOs are created equal. Some are hired guns others are the genius who came up with some bright idea in the first place. Some CEOs, the ones we usually hear about, are public CEOs whose high incomes are reported in good times and bad times.

There are many challenges that keep a CEO up at night.  As a CEO or C- Suite member you always have a choice of whether to be proactive or reactive.  What’s your plan?

 

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

You May Not Be As Influential As You Think You Are – 4 Steps to Increase Your Self-Awareness

Click here to watch You May Not Be As Influential As You Think You Are – 4 Steps to Increase Your Self-Awareness

Have you ever given thought as to how your communication may be sabotaging your influence without you even knowing it?

Most leaders haven’t given thought to this question, much less taken the steps to increase their awareness of how their listeners hear and see them rather than what they believe to be true.  That is why self-awareness is the first step to greater influence Monday to Monday®.

To enhance your influence, you need to evaluate your communication based on facts, not feelings. You need to get to the heart of what is really going on by experiencing your communication through the eyes and ears of your listeners and readers.

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Entrepreneurship Management Personal Development Women In Business

Discovering Your "Why" Is An Inside Job

Discovering Your “Why” Is an Inside Job

Does the thought of your company becoming extinct keep you up at night?

Do you wonder how to motivate and keep your people engaged and focused?

The answer to the challenges that keep leaders anxious is in having a simple but highly effective business tool – know what you stand for. Know your “WHY”. The concept is simple; understand, accept and articulate your own purpose and that of your enterprise.

The path to discovering your Why begins with “I”. It is a reflective process and requires self-examination of your belief systems and where they originated. The clues are easily found. They are in the stories you tell about your life. They could be moments that deeply affected you in your childhood or in your school years.

Many years ago I was coaching a wonderful young doctor.  I asked him to share his challenges and successes from the age of 21. As I listened to the peaks and valleys of his life I suddenly felt I was missing something in how he formed his decisions. I asked f anything significant had happened earlier in his life that guided his decision making. His response changed the way I asked the question forever after – he told me that his father took his own life when he was 19. Now I ask YOU, wouldn’t that change how you behaved and how you would make decisions with such a traumatic event influencing your thinking? That story was a big clue to finding his Why.

Influences don’t have to be traumatic but they are usually formed by young minds. Examining the stories that you tell your friends, your children, or your employees is therefore the logical place to begin to discover you Why, your purpose for existence.

You may wonder how your personal Why can then relate to that of your business. When you are authentic and passionate about what you do, you will find that they are in complete alignment. People will follow you, not because they have to but because they want to. You will attract those people whose beliefs are in alignment with you.

The bottom line is that in communicating internally or externally everything you say and do will be better served through the filter of your Why.

 

 

 

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Personal Development

The Value of Reading Body Language to Gain Influence in Negotiations

“The value of reading body language is like possessing the keys of influence to unlock someone’s mind, by gaining unguarded access to their hidden thoughts.” –Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

www.TheMasterNegotiator.com

You can gain the value of influence in negotiations by reading body language accurately.

Momma told me not to run. Don’t move too quickly! You might miss something right in front of you. No, that’s not an oxymoron. Such were the wise words then and now related to the value of reading body language to gain insight and influence in negotiations.

Take the following insight I gained from my mother on just that topic.

I recall a time when I was 17; I’d saved my money to buy an advertised car I saw at a dealership. My mother and I went to the dealership only to find out that the car had just been sold. The salesperson said ‘not to worry’, as he showed us another car; it cost slightly more than the original car that was advertised.

My mother attempted to get a lower price for the car, but the salesperson only budged a little and wouldn’t go any lower after that. He said that was his best price. After sparring in several negotiation sessions after that, my mother got up to leave; I was dejected, dispirited, and disappointed at not getting a car, and it showed on my face. The salesperson looked at my face and said to my mother, “You don’t want to disappoint your son, do you?” To which my mother replied, “You’d be the one disappointing him. He came here on good faith to buy the car you advertised. Now, you’re telling us the car was just sold (defiant look of disbelief). How does that sound to you? Would you want someone to do that to your son or daughter?” The salesperson replied, with a fallen-face, “You can have the car at the same price as the one advertised.”

Is was at that moment that I observed the effect that body language could have on a negotiation, along with how to utilize a negotiation strategy based on the body language being discussed. With one-fell-swoop, my mother turned the body language strategy the salesperson attempted to use on us (i.e. my sadness/disappointment) against him and into one of reflection. She did so by invoking fairness when she asked the salesperson if he’d like that dejected feeling I was displaying thrust upon one of his kids. She went deeper into his emotional psyche when she implied, with added emphasis via her body language, the disbelief she possessed that the advertised car had just been sold. Note that she didn’t confront him by saying so, she let her body language speak for her.

From the time two people shake hands at the start of a negotiation, they’re negotiating. Actually, they started negotiating before they reached the formal negotiation via any communications they’ve had. That occurs even if it was in the form of one person gathering information about the other and developing strategies based on what was gleaned.

If you wish to gain influence in your negotiations, learn to read body language more accurately. You see and sense the appropriate times to employ negotiation strategies, based on the body language signals you see. Once you add reading body language to your negotiation rapport, you’ll become a more dynamic negotiator … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!