Satisfied the customer is depends very much on the ability of the CSR to develop rapport. This requires CSRs to quickly recognize the type or personality of customer they are working with and the benefits of doing this are:
- The customer becomes more relaxed.
- It makes the interaction smoother and o en more easy for both parties.
- The customer’s service experience is increased.
Customers come in all shapes and sizes and for this reason it is necessary to respond to their individual circumstances:
If the caller:
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Your response should be:
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Is angry
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Concerned
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Has an emergency
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Urgent
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Is friendly
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Friendly
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Is natural
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Natural
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Is overburdened
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Sympathy
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Prevaricates
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Set deadlines
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There has been much research conducted into personality types and there are many descriptions of the types of customers who might be found on the telephone: friendly, anxious, controlling, detailed, determined, etc. One of the most popular tools for describing personalities is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is based on the work of the psychologist Carl Jung. The MBTI maintains that each person has a primary mode of operation within the following four categories:
- a person’s flow of energy;
- how a person takes in information;
- how a person prefers to make decisions;
- a person’s preferred day-to-day lifestyle.
Contained within each of these categories people prefer to be either:
And, of course, people’s behaviour changes depending on how they are feeling and the circumstances.
Handling complaints
Where a customer is enquiring about an action that would appear not to have been completed, CSRs, ideally, should not respond, ‘I don’t know what caused that. I am going to put you on hold while I find out who was responsible. Is that all right?’ Or, ‘That’s Stephen’s responsibility, let me explore what went wrong. Please hold.’
Instead, it is be er to apologize and explain that you will investigate the specific circumstances. At the time of the call the full circumstances may not be known, eg delivery of the product/service may have been a empted but the customer was not at home at the agreed time. Blame should not be apportioned and a more suitable response could be: ‘I’m very sorry you didn’t receive your package. Let me investigate and try to find out what happened. Would you like to hold or shall I call you back as soon as I have more details? This should be within 15 minutes.’
Handling angry customers
Customers normally become angry for a reason and this must be addressed in order to bring the dissatisfaction to a conclusion and hopefully retain the loyalty of the customer. However, before this happens it is sometimes necessary to allow customers to ‘let off steam’ before their situation can be properly investigated. Generally, their frustration will build up before they make the call and this is likely to increase in the early stages of the interaction. During this time it is be er to just listen, because when people are angry reason and logic are not at the top of their minds.
Gradually people will calm down and it is at this stage that problem solving can occur through the use of appropriate questions. Once the problem is understood a solution should be proposed and it is important to ensure that the customer is satisfied with it.
The final stage is to ensure that the action required to rectify the situation is carried out. Taking responsibility for ensuring the resolution is a key role for advisers, but the problem is that o en they are not the person delivering the solution nor have they responsibility for the computing system design.
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