The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Customer Service

The good news is that you have customers.

The bad news is that once you have them, you have to take care of them.

It's easy to get so busy trying to win new customers that you forget about the ones you already have. That's where customer service comes in.

I once worked for a life insurance salesman who was very good at selling life insurance. But once he had those customers, he hated having to take care of their needs. Simple requests for a change of address or beneficiary made him very unhappy. That’s why he had someone like me: to keep his customers happy by giving them timely and friendly customer service. If he had to do this work himself, it would have made him very unhappy, he would have put off doing it, and he would have less time to sell—something he not only loved to do but did very well.

Sales people are very good at what they do, but they may not be so good at following through with the details of the sale or checking up on customers to make sure they’re happy.

Sales people tend to be people--not paper--oriented. How can you tell if you have the right person for your sales force and the right person for your customer service work?

It can get ugly when your sales force is getting the sale but forgetting to fill in key paper elements of the sale. That’s where the DiSC® assessment tool comes in. It can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your sales force. Have you put together a team of good people who work together from the start of the sale to the finish?

Using an instrument like DiSC® can assist employers in evaluating potential employees as well as assess the appropriateness of an existing employee who may not be as productive as you like. It may not be just about poor productivity, but about poor job placement. Your employee is pushing paper instead of connecting with people.

Using DiSC® is about building a team.

This instrument will help you determine whether your sales people prefer people friendly skills and whether your sales people are backed up by people who prefer details and follow-through work. It's sort of like having a built-in monitor for your sales people—someone to help check that a sale’s “i’s” are dotted and “t’s” are crossed. Your super sales person out in the field may get so involved in the process of connecting with the customer and making the sale that he or she neglects to fill out critical information on the order form. Enter the team member in the office who follows up with those details, the actual order processing, and addressing future customer needs. Behind every people person is a paper person!

And DiSC® is one way to cut to the people and paper chase.

For tips to effectively train your people and streamline your organization, and for other solutions to your staffing challenges, visit www.traininginabox.com. Sign up for our free newsletter at www.quicktrainingsolutions.com to make your HR training and development life easier. Diane Owens is a contributing author and partner with NTG, a business development and training company.

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