Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

I found a good article by Jack Aaronson today concerning customer service. Because of the steady mantra of offering great customer service and so many companies still not knowing what it means, it is interesting to hear an example of overkill in this area.

After a customer has been continually greeted by workers asking how she is, she eventually walked out of the store frustrated and possibly feeling violated.

Aaronson mentions that:

'On paper, I'm sure it was a good idea. "Be friendly to customers when you interact with them. If you make eye contact, engage them in dialogue. Ask them how they are." In reality, customer contact needs to be a little more carefully planned. If greeters want to ask someone how she is, fine. That's their job. Everyone else should be cordial and respond to questions, but don't violate a customer's personal space. And don't interact with people in artificial ways when you really don't care about them. Instead, make yourself available to help if they clearly aren't finding what they need.'

To me customer service is more of an art than a science, by which I mean that you can't simply implement this type of one-size-fits-all way of greeting customers. Now a customer that is the outgoing, like-to-be-noticed type, would probably of really liked the way this was performed. Whereas a quiet, more inward person may be really intimidated or embarrassed by being publicly scrutinized (which is how many would take it).

I've seen better customer service when it is taught as an art where you take in each customer and somewhat flow with who they are. Let them know that you know that your aware that they're there and if they need any help they can ask you. I have seen this work much better in businesses than any other way of doing things.

I know with myself I will look at their body language and their faces (discreetly) to see if they need assistance or are just browsing around. I have found this much more effective in sales and customer ease.

You almost have to feel your way through each customer to quickly adapt to who they are. Once you do this for a while, it's not as hard or subjective as it sounds. You almost can enter into a rhythym in doing it, without even thinking about it. It really works well.