Advertising Your Business:
Change behavior to improve customer service

How is it possible? Customer service is so critical to the success of almost any business. Yet not nearly enough businesses make it a priority.

The reason why organizations are not any better at customer service than they are is two-fold, according to Sid Hurlbert, a consultant in the field of employee motivational training:

Front-line workers are typically stressed out in their jobs, often tired, multi-tasked until they’re cross-eyed.

But more importantly:

No one has trained them in the people-to-people aspect of their jobs.

“85% of an employee’s success is communication skills, while only 15% of that success is technical skills,” observes Hurlbert. Yes, technical skill training is a no-brainer. But leave out the people-to-people skill training and you’re missing the largest piece of your puzzle.

Try putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. No matter where you shop or do business, you always remember how someone made you FEEL, says Hurlbert.

Now step back into the seller’s shoes. When it’s our turn to affect another person, we have it in our power to make them FEEL better. Because the fact is, we can CHANGE how we react to people and events.

Following from that premise, there is a simple, five-step formula Hurlbert recommends for any employee in almost any business category (and he recommends it as a simplified training module which employers can use, too):

S…Smile (Act the part.)
T…Tone of voice
E…Expression on your face (When you smile, it changes your tone of voice.)
P…Posture, body language
S…Start putting into people what you want back

“STEPS” actually sounds like the Golden Rule, doesn’t it? So it really is that simple! At least for starters, it is.

The better you and your employees become at the people-to-people aspect of doing business with your customer, the more you will be able to outperform your competitors. Good people-to-people skills lead to good word-of-mouth about you out in the marketplace. And that’s the best kind of advertising there is!

Note: Hurlbert made his remarks on the Binghamton University campus at a special event for employees of United Health Services on the occasion of the organization’s 25th Anniversary. A native of Southern Tier New York State (Elmira), Hurlbert now operates from Kerrville, TX.

For more information on his approach to employee motivational training check out:

www.SidneyCHurlbert.com

Or go “people-to-people”:
Sidney Hurlbert
P.O. Box 293806
Kerrville, TX 78029
1-800-896-4612
seminars@sidneychurlbert.com

This Riger article originally appeared in Southern Tier Business News. For more on this topic, see our article Delivering Great Customer Service: Our Seminar Notebook.

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