Ever see a receipt bearing the words “thanks to you, our valued customer” – and how often do you scoff? Especially when the receipt comes after you’ve scanned and bagged your own groceries, punched in your own loyalty code and made your own change. Oh yes, you feel valued: you’re doing the work of an employee and paying for the privilege.

This self-service practice, seemingly everywhere, saves money for the companies who pay fewer employees to deal with customer concerns, but what does it do for customers? “I went into a store where I’ve shopped for years and found new management,” a busy woman said. She’d stopped in, planning to buy a baby gift for a friend having twins, but she couldn’t find what she wanted and none of the employees offered to help. “I finally left because the manager was too busy talking on her cell phone to answer my questions,” she said.

This scenario could be repeated in any chain store coast-to-coast, with profits up and customer service scarce. “But we take care of the customers in my business,” you say. Can you anticipate what a customer may want or recall a service you provided a year ago? The gap between saying you value your customers and demonstrating how you value them is the difference between the customer who migrates elsewhere and the one who takes to heart the notation “we heart our customers.”

What new ways can you show your customers their value?

Have you ever had an idea you know others would applaud if they’d just take time to embrace it? And when their reaction is less than supportive, do you continue to nurture the idea? It happened to a determined author who’d created a new, offbeat character. She’d enjoyed success featuring a traditional male protagonist but wanted to branch out and write about a different kind of heroine and tried out her creation in a short story.

“That was the story that killed so many magazines,” the author recalls. Every time she sold it to another publication, hopeful that her clever prose would finally appear, it didn’t. Magazines, struggling in a tough economy, dropped fiction pages or ceased publishing. Wondering if perhaps her character was a bit too outrageous, she kept trying. Eventually the story did run in a small magazine. It featured a tall, red-headed private detective who moonlights as a Boston cab driver, plays volleyball and blues guitar, and is in love with a mysterious businessman. Carlotta Carlyle, the offbeat P.I., may have been a tough sell, but she instantly appealed to readers and became the star of Linda Barnes’ ongoing series of mystery novels. Even when a thread of doubt crept in, the author trusted her instincts and stuck with her idea.

When you’re focused on customer service, does uncertainty change your course of action or are you dedicated to letting your own ideas shine?

As managers, senior or junior level, we get caught up in the policies and procedures of running our departments or corporations. This happens no matter how large or small the organization. Daily, we make decisions based on what we know to be right, fair, politically correct, justifiable, and profitable. Some take their responsibilities as managers so seriously that they become mired in the bottom line-bogged down with fear that if we do the right thing by the customer, we’ll lose money. We tend to forget that when we treat our customers with respect and make every attempt to satisfy their needs and expectations (within reason), the customer returns to do more business with us. Some may even tell their friends about their experiences with us generating positive word-of-mouth advertising.

As a morning ritual, consider starting each day by asking yourself, “What can I do today to make the life of my customer easier?” Encourage each member of your staff to do the same. Establishing this as your daily mind-set will generate customer loyalty, respect for you and your organization, and will automatically make you more profitable through the power of repeat sales.

Do you have a morning ritual? What is it and how does this serve you, your organization, and most importantly, your customers?

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Philadelphia sports fans are very excited this week. I know because I am a Philadelphia sports fan. Our beloved baseball team, the Philadelphia Phillies, have captured the National League East pennant for the fourth year in a row. There’s a lot of celebrating going on in this city and for good reason. Everyone loves a champion-especially Philadelphia!

Champions also exist in business but we define them differently. Besides being winners, champions are those who defend, advocate, or support a cause, and they come in many different forms in the world of business. We are all familiar with the senior management team who champion our organizational policies, procedures, and budgets to our boards of trustees. Our sales agents champion our products and services to our prospects. Customer service representatives champion our organizations to our customers and clients and managers champion their employees when they have achieved success and performed outside of the norm.

But let me challenge you to consider recognizing and rewarding those who champion the customer. Who, in your organization, is their advocate? With the rise of social media, it has become too easy for customers who have had a perceived negative experience with us, to broadcast this information publicly. In the past, it was only the Better Business Bureau that we had to worry about when it came to protecting our good name. How things have changed. With customers’ ability to destroy the positive public relations we’ve worked hard to build, in the heat of anger with the push of a button, it makes sense to appoint someone who understands the customer and who will act as their advocate when the normal customer service strategies and policies don’t seem to be helping.

Consider taking the following approach:

• Develop a customer service log that lists the hot issues needing attention. Prioritize based on level of customer dissatisfaction.
• Appoint a customer champion to reach out to those dissatisfied, angry, and possibly even hostile customers to attempt resolution.
• Provide training and support to the champion to give them the tools they’ll need to resolve disputes and smooth over customer dis-satisfaction.
• Be sure to monitor the various social networking sites where you have a presence and establish a “Google Alerts” to notify you when your organization has been mentioned on the web.
• Consider a team approach when it comes to customer champion responsibilities. Rotate the responsibility to ensure that your champions don’t experience burn out. (Even baseball teams rotate their pitchers!)
• Coach your managers to be sensitive and aware of customer dissatisfaction and their need to support the customer champions in the organization. Too often, passive aggressive retaliation on the part of the customer has ruined organizations.
• Mystery shop on a regular basis. Ask your customers how well you deliver on all aspects of your operations – from marketing to customer service. Head problems off at the pass!

Does your organization have a customer champion?

Millions of viewers tune in each weekday to watch the Dr. Phil show. This psychologist and author appeared on nationally syndicated television with his own TV program in 2002, and he continues to bring his own brand of pop psychology into homes across the country each weekday. Known for his witty comments, and amusing ways of expressing his thoughts, Dr. Phil often asks a conversation stopping question of the couples who appear on his show who are experiencing marital discord. I love the question because it literally stops the squabbling couples right in their tracks. He asks, “Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?”

As business professionals, we often deal with customers who can be demanding, difficult, and sometimes downright angry. Think about how you can apply the wisdom of Dr. Phil as you train your employees on the finer skills of dealing with difficult customers.

When an angry customer is in your midst consider taking the following action:

1. Stop what you are doing and focus all your attention on the situation at hand. Like a bomb, it has the potential to explode so focus and be careful.

2. Take a deep breath. This has a calming and centering effect on the employee who is being attacked.

3. Tell the employee to remind themselves that altercations present opportunities to discover not who is right and who is wrong in each situation but for finding solutions to problems that can lead to the creation of positive experiences for customers. Borrowing from Dr. Phil, the employee should ask themselves, “Do I want to be right, or do I want to keep this customer?”

4. Instruct the employee to ask what the customer sees as a reasonable solution to the problem. All too often, we are ready to give away the store when sometimes, all an angry customer is looking for is an apology.

5. Finally, let the employee know that they should always apologize for inconveniencing the customer. This is not an admission of guilt or blame in the problem, but an acknowledgment that, for whatever reason, the customer experienced some level of inconvenience. Saying, “I am so sorry you were inconvenienced by this,” in a very sincere manner can go a long way to calming down that irate customer and getting everyone in a space where problem solving can occur – and isn’t that where you really want to be?

So don’t shy away from those difficult customers. Use conflict situations to create positive customer experiences for your clients.

Do you have a favorite way of handling difficult customers? I’d love to hear about it! Leave a comment!

And in keeping with the spirit of Dr. Phil…..”Let me know how that’s workin’ for ya.”