Happy Friday!

First I want to direct you to the comments made by Sudie to my previous blog post. Thanks for the great ideas Sudie and for taking the time to respond! To read them just click on responses underneath the blog entry.

Customer service. Broken record, I know. The Marketing Profs offer some great ideas in this "three steps" article- check it out. The address "uncustomary customer service."

It starts with leaving the customer alone. I'm with them. Yes, I like to be greeted and invited to ask questions. Maybe you can drop by if I am dumbly looking at a product trying to figure something out. Sometimes I'm in a chatty mood, sometimes I have two minutes to get to my son's daycare before I get billed for overtime and I need to get outta there. I will depend on you to sense which kind of mood I'm in and act accordingly. Read my mind!

It's interesting that in our efforts to provide customer service training we tend to write down our list of rules or commandments that all employees should follow. I think this is a good idea but should be treated as a starting point.

If you've ever called the phone company or insurance company, you know what I mean. As a consumer, I'm not into following someone else's script. The kicker is when you just ranted and still didn't get satisfaction and the operator says- "Did we answer all of your questions/take care of your issues/ solve your problem today?" The operator's ears were just singed off and she still has to eat crow and and ask the question. Not such good customer service, I'd say. Not so good for employee morale either, I'd wager.

Even as a retail buyer,  you can be "turned on" or "turned off" by a person in a booth who is following the script for the show. You will choose to do business with an independent rep because you can see that they are generally interested in you. Goodness knows I've been sucked in by a sales pitch for a product that I couldn't cover in a million years but the person is so darn likeable I can't resist giving them a shot.

I have frequently been told by company owners whom I greatly respect- "Hire people for their customer service abilities. Hire friendly "people persons." you can teach them about craft supplies but you can't teach them how to be good with people." So true.

Enjoy your weekend, can September really be right around the corner?--Beth