Your Customer Service Image

Customer Service—it can be the golden nugget to trigger customer loyalty or it can be a nightmare that drives a customers away. Good or bad, one thing is for sure, it is often memorable.

The other day I was in a store buying flowers. I asked the young girl for some specific flowers that I did not see setting out. She smiled and kindly offered to run to the back and get what I needed. When she brought them up to me, the owner came by and blew up at her snarling that these were not what I wanted. In a mean, upset tone, he said “If you (meaning the employee) had put the tags on the tray, you would have known that these weren’t right and he stomped off to get the right ones. In a confronting, coarse manner, he managed to bring his employee to tears. Once out of ear shot, she was quick to say that she wasn’t going to be working there anymore. The owner wasn’t understanding and always belittled her in front of customers, embarrassing her and making her feel awful.

I felt myself being caught in the middle. I appreciated the owner’s dedication to giving me what I wanted but I did not appreciate the manner in which it was done. It goes to demonstrate that customer service is more than just the customer’s end result. It’s the entire journey. A great question for your next Customer Service effort—How can you make the journey a pleasant experience?