CA
FEATURE
Why
Customer Service Matters Excelling at it is no easy task, but experts agree it has become much more than simply giving customers what they want. By David Chilton Saggers
PHOTO: THINKSTOCK IMAGES
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hat is customer service? It is difficult to say, because it means different things to different people. To the executive it means one thing; to the employee it means something else. To the customer it is different again. Still, there is enough crossover from all three points of view that a working description of the practice is possible. For Shahan Fancy, corporate sales development manager at Superior Cabinets in Saskatoon, SK., it is delivering on a company’s or product’s brand promise. In other words, says Fancy, “Say what you are going to do for the customer then do what you said you would do.” Amy Morrell, chair of marketing, entrepreneurship and fashion studies at Centennial College in Toronto, says it is about adding value. She uses the example of the Starbucks coffee shop chain to make her point. When it came to Canada, she says, service was slower than in coffee shops already here, but there was more of it. “You felt you were ge ing more for your money,” Morrell says, who has extensive experience in retail at Canadian Tire and the LCBO, Ontario’s provincial liquor monopoly. Others, such as Ken Parson, president of the Customer
Service Association of Canada in Vancouver, have yet another take on customer service. He says it is an area of business unto itself, like human resources, and for those who deliver it the best it is the driving force of their enterprise. Common aspects of customer service include greeting customers as they enter the retail space, asking them what they are looking for and being polite. Less common are comprehensive product knowledge, good communications skills and problem solving abilities. “Anybody can learn facts and sell product, but you cannot teach empathy.” The salesperson becomes a trusted advisor. “You go back to him or her. It is about selling confidence,” says Stephanie Brown, sales manager for kitchens and baths at Cabinetsmith in Barrie, ON. In other words, it is brand messaging, trust, empathy and service that combine to put the customer at the heart of customer service: they create a relationship that will endure and, as Brown underlines, will keep customers coming back. As crucial as these qualities are, they do not exist in limbo, but are delivered by frontline staff. They are at the sharp end; they interact with customers
CONTRACTOR ADVANTAGE
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015
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