Self check: Do you have a customer-friendly attitude?

Having a warm and pleasant attitude when interacting with other people is perhaps one of the most overused reminders being passed around in the world of customer service. Despite being a popular consideration, however, maintaining a customer-friendly attitude is not exactly easy to accomplish, especially if you’re working in a fast-paced work environment, such as a call center in the Philippines.

If being friendly to customers was a piece of cake, everyone would’ve been practicing it, but that s not the case. Knowing the importance of having the right attitude and living up to the promise are two customer service tasks that require a considerable amount of commitment and sincerity.

What it means to be customer-friendly

All businesses with excellent customer service train their employees to adopt a genuine customer-friendly attitude. What exactly does this mean? Having a customer-friendly disposition means that you are treating your customers as if they are the most essential part of your daily work by sincerely appreciating their choice of doing business with your brand. An ideal customer service employee does not look at the customers as if they are distraction to his daily work routine. He doesn t have to fake a smile while secretly wishing that they would just go away so that he can get back to his tasks.

Customers who are treated by employees with genuine willingness to help will pay more just to have such kind of service. Good customer experience can motivate people to sharing their positive stories to their peers and the Internet. Poor customer service, on the other hand, will lead the same group of people to spread the bad news to twice as many people. If you want your customers to be loyal to your brand, spreading the customer-friendly attitude in all corners of your organization must be your priority.

How to check if you have the right attitude

In order for you to assess if you have a customer-friendly attitude, you can start by stepping back and evaluating how you usually go about your normal work day. Typically, customer service employees have to multitask and work diligently in order to meet their daily goals and expectations. It’s no joke working in a crowded and fast-moving environment where you have to dive into piles of emails to respond to, phone calls to answer, meetings to attend, documents to process, and so on.

Now, imagine yourself going about this busy schedule but with the addition of customers entering the store, asking you questions, requesting you for items, or simply initiating a conversation with you. How do you respond to the customers attempt of interacting with you?

Customers feel connected with the employees if they spare a few seconds to recognize their presence. Addressing customers by name when returning their credit card, telling your loyal shoppers that it s nice to see them again, or smiling at people before proceeding with your work are only some of the simple gestures that customers will appreciate.

Although a customer service job may entail several functions, connecting with customers is its ultimate core. Regardless of how busy your day is going to be, you must anticipate random moments with customers where you have to take the lead in ensuring that those shared experiences will make them happy and encourage them to come back.

Having a customer-friendly attitude means having awareness that ordinary moments can potentially turn into great opportunities of leaving good impression in the customers minds. These ordinary moments are your moments of truth. Your challenge is to seize these opportunities and make sure that the result of each of your interaction with any customer will lead to a positive lasting impression.