It's amazing to me how often people misunderstand what it means to provide customer service. It isn't about putting on a fake smile, enduring all of the hassle, and getting through the day. Customers can tell when you do things like that, and while they may not react unfavorably, they certainly will never leave your establishment feeling great about the service they received. In fact, great customer service isn't even about the customer at all. It's about the employee. I'm not talking about any bullshit preaching about 'attitude' or anything like that. I'm talking about how open an employee is, and how willing they are to truly connect with the customer on the other side of the counter. It is truly incredible how much you can get away with, not just by being helpful or polite, but by honestly establishing a connection with a customer, and allowing yourself to empathize with them.
Too often, my coworkers and I gripe about hearing a "life story" when a customer wants, for example, a single copy of a single piece of paper. These stories typically consist of a few minutes of rambling about the nature of the piece of paper in question, its history, the customer's current financial/medical/employment situation, or any number of other things.But what dawned on me today is, when a regular customer comes in to tell you a similar story, of similar length, we are typically more than happy to listen and provide an honest response. The only differences between the crazy old bitch rambling about her grandfather and the nice, fun, charming older lady telling you her exciting family history lie in the perception of the employee.
That being said, I had an incredibly good customer interaction today, as well as an incredibly bad one...and the only difference, honestly, was how much I gave a damn about the customer. The good one was early in the day. An older woman came in to have some things printed, and I've dealt with her on numerous occasions in the past, so I was having a fairly friendly conversation with her while I was sorting through her things, and when I asked about the specifics of her job, she began to have a sort of rambling, nervous, over-thinking panic attack. I didn't even think about the possible repercussions of my actions at this point, and instead took her gently by the wrists, set her hands down on the counter, looked her in the eye, and told her to take a deep breath, and stop worrying. She smiled, breathed in, and started laughing when she realized how worked up she had let herself get over something so trivial. I agreed, and after a moment or two for her to settle down I managed to get her job done quickly, while talking to her about her children (one is a UI law student, the other lives in New Hampshire and has a child), my school goals, my job, how long I'd been in Moscow, and all sorts of other things, which really just adds up to a very pleasant, legitimately friendly conversation between two people. It's moments like these that I remember why I still work in customer service.
Later in the afternoon, another, younger lady came in to have some things printed, and I was frustrated, as I was trying to take care of some other things, as well as preparing to close, and she began our conversation with, "So, I've got a project to print, and there are quite a few files on here for you to deal with." I was less than thrilled with her demanding tone, her judgmental looks at me, and her snide, half-sneering face as I took her drive, grabbed all of her files, and began to convert them from Word documents to PDF files, so I could combine them all and print them at once, instead of having to open and print 27 different files. After I printed them, I discovered that I didn't have her font, and so her files all looked weird. I explained that to her, and she glared at me, asking "well, what does that mean?" I asked her if she could convert the files to PDF on her computer, so that I wouldn't need the font, and so that they would print correctly, and rather than being helpful or cooperative with me, she got a shocked, almost-offended look and said, "So...am I getting a discount for wasting so much of my time?" I reluctantly agreed to give her a discount, and she went on to explain that "You know...in the Portland store, I just give them my files and they take care of everything for me. So I don't think I should have to waste all my time converting these..." I explained that obviously Portland has her font, and I don't, and so she asked if I was working tomorrow, which I confirmed, and then asked if I was the manager, obviously implying that she was going to be speaking with him about my interaction with her, before storming out of the store, stating "You know...I'll just deal with this later. I don't have time for this. It never took this long in Portland."
Yeah, I can look at that and say, 'You know, she was a bitch, it happens.' But that's not good enough. The truth of the matter is, I honestly cared about the first woman, and not about the second, and furthermore, I tried to be as genuine as possible to the first woman so that she would care about me as well, which I did not do with the second, and that made all the difference in my body language, tone and expression, all of which contributed to a shitty experience for the later customer.
QOTD:
"I am a storyteller. The type that went from place to place, gathered people in the square and transported them, inspired them, woke them up, shook their insides around so that they could resettle in a new pattern, a new way of being. It is a tradition that believes that the story speaks to the soul, not the ego... to the heart, not the head. In today’s world, we yearn so to ’understand’, to conquer with our mind, but it is not in the mind that a mythic story dwells." —Donna Jacobs Sife
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