Among the many things are customers expect from us is responsiveness.

This is the willingness to respond to customer needs by answering their phone or email requests quickly, by acknowledging them quickly in-person, and being willing to do what it takes to respond effectively to a service request.

Responsiveness is adopting a can-do attitude, and a willingness to go the extra mile for the customer. There is an increasing large body of research suggesting that soft skills (such as listening, empathy, courtesy and creating rapport) are more important than technical skills in your success in business.  Certainly, you must have adequate technical skills to meet your customers needs, but it's your "soft skills" that will allow you to develop lasting relationships with your customers.

A positive attitude is the first step in building good soft skills. You have control over your attitude. Just like you can choose what clothes to wear in the morning, you can also choose what attitude to assume every day. You can choose to see the glass as half-full, or half-empty. Cliche perhaps, but true nonetheless.  Your approach, or attitude, toward life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If your attitude is “Every experience is an opportunity!”, then you will interpret everything that happens to you as an interesting journey. On the other hand, if you approach your business and your life in a less than positive way, every bump in the road will seem like a huge obstacle.

Respond quickly to your customers and keep a positive, cheerful attitude and you're well on your way to winning customers for life.

It may seem a bit odd to think of “emo” in business.  We usually associate the cultural slang term “emo” with a genre of emotionally-charged music for 17-year-olds who wear black and don’t smile.  Anyone who deals in customer service, however, has on occasion dealt with emotionally charged individuals who aren’t smiling.  (Perhaps they’re even wearing black!)  Sometimes, those emotionally charged customers affect our own emotions and often in a negative way.  One way of learning to deal with such situations is to gain an understanding of emotional intelligence.

The science of emotional intelligence offers insights into ways to effectively manage our own emotions and influence the emotions of others.  The proponents of emotional intelligence believe that your emotional intelligence is more important than your IQ in predicting future success.

Emotional intelligence has become quite a buzzword in business and pop-psychology circles.  It is a popular academic pursuit, but also popular as a personal path of introspection and growth.  From a practical standpoint, I prefer to think of emotional intelligence as emotional maturity.

Regardless of the labels you choose to apply, emotional maturity can be boiled down to three basic concepts or abilities:

1. The ability to understand and respond appropriately to emotions within yourself and others:   This means that you understand what’s happening with your own emotions and the emotions of others, and respond in a way that achieves the desired outcome.
2. The ability to control your own emotions:  This means that you have developed methods of controlling how you feel and how you respond to your own emotions to achieve the desired outcome.
3. The ability to influence the emotions of others:  The means that you have learned ways to say or do things to influence the emotions of people around you to achieve the desired outcome.

Gradually, as we live and experience different people and situations, we develop methods of responding to those people and situations.  Sometimes, we learn how to deal with people and situations by watching others such as our parents, teachers, respected friends, or celebrities.  Sometimes, we read and study how to react to various people and situations.  Often, our responses are shaped by a combination of external influences and things we read and study.

Think of the various encounters you’ve had with people recently.  Are you always able to identify the emotions that people are feeling from their facial expressions?  How about their body language?  Often, we can identify others’ emotions from facial expressions and body language.  It’s important, however, to note that such physical cues are not always accurate.  For example, it’s a somewhat commonly held belief in the United States that people who don’t look you in the eye are hiding something or being deceitful.  In certain other countries, looking someone directly in the eye is a sign of aggression and polite people will avoid it.  The point is you have to consider many factors in making decisions about what another person is feeling.  A good way to gather information about the other person is to listen to what they’re saying.  Ask questions and give them a chance to say what’s on their mind.  Combine what they tell you with what you observe.

Once you’re able to recognize and identify emotions in others, you’re ready to work on responding appropriately to those emotions.

Think about how you have responded in the past to emotions in others such as anger, hostility, sadness, jealousy, excitement, pride, nervousness, or skepticism.  Now, think about whether your past responses were the best way to deal with these emotions in others.  Go through the emotions again and try to identify better ways of dealing with people in those situations.  You see, as in every other aspect of life, developing emotional intelligence is a journey; not a destination.  If we work on it, we can improve it.
How can you control your own emotions?

The term "emotional labor" was first defined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild as the "management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display".  A good example of emotional labor occurs when a server in a restaurant smiles and expresses positive emotion toward diners.

It’s easy to be pleasant and positive when you’re already in a good mood or when you’re dealing with people who are also pleasant and upbeat.  Your challenge comes, however, in being pleasant and positive when you don’t feel well, when you’re stressed because of personal or work issues, when you’re hung over, or when the other person is stressed, argumentative, or generally unpleasant.

Although there are many techniques that can be used to control your emotions and your responses to others’ emotions, author and psychologist Daniel Goleman suggests one short term and one long term solution.  First, the short term solution:  Perhaps as a child you were taught, when angry, to count to 10 before doing or saying anything.  Good advice.  Today, in dealing with kids, there are programs called social/emotional learning.  One of the programs uses a stop light metaphor.  The kids are told, when they’re upset, to remember the stoplight:

1. Red:  Stop, Calm Down, Think Before You Act
2. Yellow:  Think of a Range of Things you Can Do
3. Green:  Choose the Best One

So, the short term solution is to pause and calm yourself before you react, then consider the range of possible responses, and choose the best one.

The long term solution is meditation.  Studies have shown that, after as little as eight weeks of meditation, physical changes take place within the brain that help you respond more calmly and appropriately to stressful situations.  Meditation doesn’t require that you isolate yourself on a mountain top in the Himalayas.  There are many forms of meditation including one where you sit quietly with your eyes closed and focus on your breathing for eight minutes a day.  Search the web for more information on the myriad forms of meditation.  The point is to find ways to generally calm yourself.

In my own life, one of the lessons I’ve learned is the importance of taking my time.  I’ve learned to pause before I react.  That gives me time to calm myself in stressful situations.  It doesn’t need to be a long pause, but when I’m calm, I make better decisions.  I’ve learned to allow extra time to get to my destinations.  That gives me time to wait for slow drivers, raised drawbridges, and slow freight trains without stressing.  I’ve learned that time, appropriately used, is a great source of calming.  When I’m generally calm, I’m better able to deal with the stressful situations of business.  Perhaps not by coincidence, I’ve noticed that as I have learned to use time appropriately, my overall stress levels have gone down and I feel happier and more content.

The great news is that, unlike traditional I.Q. which most experts feel is fundamentally unchangeable, your emotional I.Q. is something you can work with starting today.  You can mold it, improve it, and begin to see the benefits almost immediately.

Don R. Crawley
Writer, Speaker, Trainer, Actor, Musician
On the web:  www.doncrawley.com
On the phone:  (206) 988-5858

© 2009, Don R. Crawley.  All rights reserved.

I like to write and talk about things TO do, instead of things NOT to do.  Talking about what not to do is similar to telling someone not to think of a pink elephant.  What immediately comes to mind of course is a pink elephant.  Cliche perhaps, but true.  We tend to do that upon which we focus, regardless of whether it's what to do or what not to do.  Having said that, I'm going to break my own rule with this list.  These are five fatal flaws of customer service.

Complaining

No one likes to hear someone else complaining.  People are simply not interested in hearing about your aches and pains, your spouse's shortcomings, the bad weather, your car's mechanical problems, your fights with city hall, or anything else.  I recently visited a small coffee shop that had just opened near my home.  I'd heard good things about it, it looked great from the street, and when I walked in the door, I was greeted by very pleasant decor.  I was excited to be there and looking forward to coming back.  Then it happened.  The owner started complaining to the other customer and me about his fights with city hall.  He didn't just tell us about the problem he was having, but he went on and on and on.  He spent so much time complaining that it took him ten minutes to prepare my drink.  The negativity was draining.  By the time I left, I'd changed from "Excited to be here" to "Can't wait to get out of here".  The next day, I stopped in at our neighborhood Starbucks and was greeted cheerfully by the baristas who had my drink ready within about three minutes.  It was a 180 degree change from the previous day's experience.  If a giant like Starbucks can master great customer service, there's no excuse for a small business not to do the same.  Our jobs, as business people, are to create a great experience for our customers in every way possible.  Certainly it includes the products and services we offer, but it also includes the way we make our customers feel.  Consumer decisions are emotional in nature.  The better we make people feel, the more likely they are to do business with us.  No whining!

Ignoring

In another recent experience, I dropped my lawn mower blade off to be sharpened.  I spoke briefly with the owner who assured me the blade would be ready by a certain time on a certain day.  He and I chatted briefly about a subject of common interest and I left, looking forward to picking up my blade on the promised day and time.  I was also looking forward to chatting with him more about our common interest.  I went back to his shop on the agreed upon day and time to pick up the blade.  He was talking with another customer.  I waited fifteen minutes, but he never even acknowledged my presence.  He didn't greet me, he didn't say, "I'll be with you in a minute."  He did nothing to acknowledge the fact that I was in his shop.  Eventually I noticed my blade, still unsharpened.  I retrieved it and left, never to return.  We all get busy, we all have customers that required more time than others, but we must always acknowledge our customers.  A simple "Hi.  I'll be with you in a minute." would have made all the difference in the world.

Deceiving

This seems obvious, but it bears mention.  We must always be completely honest with our customers about matters related to our business relationship with them.  If there's a problem with an order, if something goes wrong during a delivery of service, we must be candid about what happened and we must do so in a timely manner.  In spite of our best efforts, mistakes happen.  When we handle our mistakes with integrity, we have an opportunity to earn customers for life.  It's not, however, just a matter of dealing with mistakes and problems.  I once had a customer ask my firm to do something for which we weren't qualified.  When I declined the job, I was shocked to discover the customer was angry with me.  I would much rather have declined the job and maintained my integrity than accepted a job for which we weren't qualified and dealt with repercussions afterward.  This may seem especially difficult in today's world when we want to accept every piece of business that comes our way, but it's even more important now.  Maintaining our integrity today is what will position us for tremendous success when business picks back up.

Not Following Through

This also seems simple, but bears mention.  Do what you say you'll do.  If you need to do some research to provide an answer for a customer, make sure you actually get back to your customer.  It's okay to say you weren't able to find an answer.  It's not okay to not get back to them with something.  In my customer service seminars, we talk about under-promising so we can over-deliver.  If you think something is going to take two hours, promise it in four.  Customers rarely complain when something is ready ahead of time.  When something isn't ready on schedule, however, it can have a negative effect on their business or life.  Of course, things happen sometimes to cause delays.  Make sure, when that happens, that you contact your customer with an update before they contact you asking what happened.

Not Communicating

In the absence of communication, our customers’ minds fill-in-the-blanks.  Answer every email, return every phone call, even if it’s an auto-responder or a staff member who returns the call.  Several things are possible when our customers don’t hear back from us (none of them are good):

• They get angry at us
• They think there’s a problem with the business relationship
• They think there’s a problem with our company
• They think we’re sick (this only applies to our compassionate customers)
• They start looking for a replacement

Always respond to your customer in some way.  When you don’t respond, in effect you’re suggesting to your customers that they should sample your competitors.

Communication is not limited to just answering emails and returning phone calls.  Communication can be information you provide in printed materials or on your website.  The more information you provide, the more comfortable your customers are with your company and the easier it is for them to do business with you.  This concept even applies to restaurant menus:  I love fried chicken (it's necessary occasionally to feed one's soul), but great fried chicken takes longer to prepare than many other foods.  I appreciate restaurants that say, on their menu, "Please allow 30 minutes for preparation."  Armed with knowledge, I can make a decision about whether I have enough time for fried chicken or whether to just order a salad.  Restaurants that do that have done a good job of communicating with me.

Review your own customer relationship practices and those of your employees to ensure that these five fatal flaws are not part of your customer’s experiences.

Don R. Crawley
Writer, Speaker, Trainer, Actor, Musician
On the web:  www.doncrawley.com
On the phone:  (206) 988-5858

© 2009, Don R. Crawley.  All rights reserved.