Customer Service is the New, New Marketing.

The topic of empowering your customers so that they become an extension of your marketing isn’t new. Transforming people into a surrogate sales force is the dream of any service organization.  The difference today is that the landscape has shifted to the point where good customer service is no longer the minimum ante to play the game. Over the next year, customer service will fuse with marketing to become a holistic inbound, outbound campaign of listening to and engaging with customers that will rewrite the rules of the game.  And, most importantly, the lessons learned in the field will be fed into the marketing department to create and run more intelligent, experienced, and real world initiatives across all forms of marketing, PR, sales, and advertising.

Handling The Upset Customer

Many times in my career I have been exposed to a simple and effective system to help deal with an irate or upset customer. There are other variations of this system, but the most effective I have found, and use, is what is called the service LEAP. If you are facing a customer that is angry, upset, irate, or any other form of dissatisfaction, you can effectively handle the situation by taking the LEAP. Just four easy to follow steps that can make a huge difference in your customer service skills. Remember these simple steps and add them to your service toolbox. You will find the LEAP to be one of the most effective tools available, I know I have.

Build Your Self Confidence

Everybody could do with a confidence boost sometimes, so to start with, here are a few basic tips…
1) How to Feel Good When You Need to
Because self confidence and feeling good has a major ‘hormonal’ element, you can change the way you feel by re-living good times. If you can remember a time you felt really self confident, then excellent – use that! If not, then use a time you felt contented or happy. You could use a photo taken at such a time to remind you. This is just a start but an important one; taking deliberate control of your thoughts and emotions will have a huge impact on ourself confidence and other areas of your life.