Customer Service Exam 1: Chapters 1-5

Characteristics of an Effective Listener

1. Empathy 2. Understanding 3. Patience 4. Attentiveness 5. Objectivity

External Obstacles

1. Information Overload 2. Other people talking 3. Ringing phones 4. Office and maintenance equipment 5. Speakerphones 6. Physical Barriers

12 Strategies for Service Success

1. Partner with customers 2. Explore your organization's vision 3. Help communicate the culture and organizational vision to customers-daily 4. Demonstrate ethical behavior 5. Identify and improve your service skills 6. Become and expert on your organization 7. Demonstrate commitment 8. Work with your customer's interest in mind 9. Treat vendors and suppliers as customers 10. Share resources 11. Work with, not against, your customers 12. Provide service follow-up

Elements of a Successful Service Culture

1. Service philosophy or mission 2. Employee roles and expectations 3. Delivery Systems 4. Policies and procedures 5. Management support 6. Motivators and rewards 7. Training

Strategies for improved listening

1. Stop talking 2. Prepare yourself 3. Listen actively 4. Show a willingness to listen 5. Show empathy 6. Listen for concepts 7. Send positive nonverbal cues 8. Don't argue 9. Take notes, if necessary

Six Key Components of Customer Service Environment

1. The customer 2. Organizational culture 3. Human resources 4. Products/deliverables 5. Delivery systems 6. Service

Two key elements in making your interactions with customers successful are...

1. To recognize how you tend to communicate 2. Understanding how the communication process works

Message

A communication delivered through speech or signals, or in writing

Customer-focused Organization

A company that spends energy and effort on satisfying internal and external customers by first identifying customer needs, then establishing policies, procedures, and management and reward systems to support excellence in service delivery

Hearing

A passive physiological process of gathering sound waves and transmitting them to the brain for analysis. It is the first phase of the listening process

Feel, Felt, Found

A process for expressing empathy and concern for someone and for help that person understand that you can relate to the situation

Recognition

A process that occurs in thinking when a previously experienced pattern, event, process, image, or object that is stored in memory is encountered again

Service Culture

A service environment made up of various factors, including the values, beliefs, norms, rituals, and practices of a group or organization

Learning Organizarions

A term used by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline to describe organizations that value knowledge, education, and employee training.

Customer-centric

A term used to describe service providers and organizations that put their customers first and spend time, effort, and money identifying and focusing on the needs of current and potential customers. Efforts are focused on building long-term relationships and customer loyalty rather than simply selling a product or service and moving on to the next customer

plAn

Address your customer's expectations positively

RUMBA

An acronym for five criteria used to establish and measure employee performance goals

Two-way communication

An active process in which two individuals apply all the elements of interpersonal communication in order to effectively exchange information and ideas

Listening

An active, learned process consisting of four phases

Customer Service Environmenet

An environment made up of and influenced by various elements of an organization

rumbA

Attainable: Given the right training, management support, and organizational environment in which the tools, information, assistance, and rewards are provided, you can attain your goals

rumBa

Believable: For any goal to be attained, it must be believable to the people who will strive to reach it and to the supervisors or team leaders who will monitor it

Small talk

Dialogue used to enhance relationships, show civility, and build rapport

External Obstacles

Factors outside an organization or the sphere of one's influence that can cause challenges in delivering service

Receiver

Gathers the sender's message, decodes the message based on his or her interpretation, and then decides how to react to it

Congruence

In communication, this relates to ensuring that verbal messages sent match or are in agreement with the nonverbal cues used

Mentors

Individuals who dedicate time and effort to befriend and assist others.

Closed-end questions

Inquiries that typically start with a verb and usually result in short, one-syllable answers

Training

Instruction or information provided through a variety of techniques that teach knowledge or skills, or attempts to influence employee attitude toward excellent service delivery

Assertiveness

Involves projecting a presence that is assured, confident, and capable without seeming to be aggressive or arrogant

pLan

Let your customers know they are important

ruMba

Measurable: Typical factors such as time, productivity, quantifiable results, revenue, and manner of performance are used to determine your accomplishment of goals

Motivators and rewards

Monetary rewards, material items, or feedback that prompts employees to continue to deliver service and perform at a high level of effectiveness and efficiency

Body Language

Nonverbal communication cues that send powerful messages through gestures, vocal qualities, manner of dress, grooming, and many other cues

Spatical Cues

Nonverbal messages sent on the basis of how close or far someone stands from another person

Deregulation

Occurs when governments remove legislative or regulatory guidelines that inhibit and control an industry

Sender

One selects a communication channel and then creates and encodes the intended message to the receiver. The start of the communication process

Internal Customers

People within the organization who either require support and service or provide information, products, and services to service providers, such customers include peers, co-workers, bosses, subordinates, and people from other areas of the organization

Employee Expectations

Perceptions about positive and negative aspects of the workplace

Plan

Prepare for positive customer interactions

Filters

Psychological barriers in the form of personal experiences, lessons learned, societal beliefs, and values through which people process and compare information received to determine significance

Rumba

Realistic: Your behavior must be in line with the reality of your particular workplace and customer base

Pet Peeves

Refers to factors, people, or situations that personally irritate or frustrate a service provider and that, left unchecked, can create a break down in effective service

Service Sector

Refers to organizations and individuals involved in delivering service as a primary product

Noise

Refers to physiological or psychological factors that interfere with the accurate reception of information

Responding

Refers to sending back verbal and nonverbal messages to a message originator

Faulty Assumptions

Service provider projections made about underlying customer message meanings based on past experiences

Employee Roles

Task assignments that service providers assume

Channel

Term used to describe the method through which people communicate messages ex. face-to-face

Gender Communication

Term used to refer to communication between genders

Customer Service

The Ability of knowledgeable, capable, and enthusiastic employees to deliver products and services to their internal and external customers in a manner that satisfies identified and unidentified needs and ultimately results in positive word-of-mouth publicity and return business

Networking

The active process of building relationships and sharing resources

Management support

The availability of management to answer questions and assist frontline employees in customer interactions when necessary. Also, the level of management involvement and enthusiasm in coaching and mentoring professional development

Service Philosophy or mission

The direction or vision of an organization that supports day-to-day interactions with the customer

Policies and Procedures

The guidelines that establish how various situations or transactions will be handled

Products and services

The materials, products, and services that are state of the art, are competitively priced, and meet the needs of customers

Service Delivery System

The means by which an organization effectively gets its products and service to customers

Attending

The phase of the listening process in which listener focuses attention on a specifics sound or message being received from the environment

Comprehending or assigning meaning

The phase of the listening process in which the brain attempts to match a received sound or message with other information stored in the brain in order to recognize or extract meaning from it

Outsourcing

The practice of contracting with third party companies or vendors outside the organization to deliver products and services to customers or to produce supplies

Perception Checking

The process of clarifying a nonverbal cue that was received by stating what behavior was observed, giving one or two possible interpretations, then asking the message sender for clarification

Service Recovery

The process of righting a wrong or correcting something that has gone wrong involving provision of a product or service to a customer. The concept involves not only replacing defective products, but also going the extra steps of providing compensation for the customer's inconvenience.

Offshoring

The relocation of business services by an organization from one country to another

Employee roles and expectations

The specific communications or measures that indicate what is expected of employees in customer interactions and that define how employee service performance will be evaluate

Decoding

The stage in the interpersonal communication process in which messages received are analyzed by a receiver in an effort to determine the sender's intent

Encoding

The stage in the interpersonal communication process in which the sender decides what message will be sent and how it will be transmitted along with considerations about the reciever

Feedback

The stage of the interpersonal communication process in which a receiver responds to a sender's message

Globalization

The term applies to an ongoing trend of information, knowledge, and resource sharing around the world. As a result of a more mobile society and easier access to transportation and technology, more people are traveling and accessing products and service from international sources than ever before

Delivery Systems

The way an organization delivers its products and services

Empowerment

The word used to describe the giving of decision-making and problem-resolution authority to lower-level employees in an organization

External Customers

Those people outside the organization who purchase or lease products and services. Includes vendors, suppliers, etc.

Protege

Typically less-experienced recipients of the efforts of mentors

Open-end questions

Typically start with words like who, when, what, how, and why and are used to engage others in conversation or to gain input and ideas

rUmba

Understandable: You must have a sound understanding of your performance goals before you can act appropriately and effectively, just the way you need to understand how to do your job or how to communicate with others in the workplace

Top-down Oriented

Upper management at the top of their hierarchy and customers as a final element or afterthought

PLAN acronym

a guide to effective communication with those with whom you come into contact

Nonverbal Messages

a variety of unspoken signals sent by people

The first step a company should take in creating or redefining its service environment is to make sure...

it knows who its customers really are and how it plans to attract and hold those customers

plaN

nurture a continuing relationship

Memory

the ability to gain, store, retain and recall information in the brain for later application