[cincopa AoLAcqadEKdJ]By Jon Hilton
In many occupations, an individual will be faced with providing customer service of some kind. In my experience, great customer service is the best way to help your business grow and flourish, no matter what the economy is like. In order to provide a customer with a positive experience interacting with you and your business there are a few simple rules to follow that will lead to sure success.
Treat the customer like they are the most important person you deal with all day. This may sound simple, but I am constantly shocked by the poor disposition of some people in this role. When you get a phone call or a visit from someone with questions, it is your obligation to treat them with respect and devote the total sum of your mind and intellect into helping them solve whatever issue they have. Acting distracted, that you would rather be doing something else, will let a consumer know right away that you don’t value them or their issue. Simply making them feel validated in their question or concern will go a long way to making that one time buyer a lifelong customer.
Put yourself in their shoes. You may have answered a question a thousand times, and to you it may seem simple and not a big deal. However, the customer you are dealing with is crossing this bridge for the first time and may feel intimidated or silly for asking for your help. Never let a customer feel this way, empathize totally with the situation of the customer and the relationship between you will easily progress. When someone feels that you are on their side both searching for the best answer to their problem, they are going to remember that. They will feel that you really care about your job or product and want to make it and your customers the most successful that they can be.
The Customer is always right. It is an old adage from business, but every consumer who goes to your business or buys your product should be treated this way. You don’t want to get into a debate about how their actions are the problem, or that they didn’t use the product correctly. You want to recognize, clearly to your customer that you see the problem and you will use every resource available to you to solve their problem and validate the faith they showed in you as a provider of a service.
Always be friendly and as courteous as possible. In the course of your career, you are going to come in contact with people who are angry or not very polite. This usually comes from a frustration that they feel, something has caused them to feel powerless to fix or use something. Perhaps they feel a promise, spoken or implied has been violated. You can never match anger with anger which means you should never take this behavior personally. Most people are not mean for the sake of being mean, they are frustrated and feel nobody is listening to them or that someone is trying to take advantage of them. The more rude someone is to you, the more courteous you need to be to them. This will help disarm their hostility and then you can get to work on solving their problem.
Be a great listener. It is hard for some people to do this simple thing. Often times in a conversation we jump to conclusions and assume what someone is saying before they say it. This will cause you to make mistakes in satisfying a customer’s needs. Give them your complete attention and listen to them and their concerns. You may think you’ve heard it before, and maybe you have but this person you are listening to is a unique individual with a unique personality. You need to understand as much about a person as you can so that you can help them in the most judicious manner. If you assume you have heard the question before you are going to be thinking about the solution before they are done explaining their concern, you won’t be paying attention and a customer may notice that. That could be enough for a poor interaction and result in a loss of a customer.
Always follow through with whatever conversation you have with a customer. If you say you will email, email. If you say you will call, call. If you find out about a problem after you have spoken to a client, get in touch with them immediately to inform them. It never ceases to amaze me how these simple things are often forgotten. Your word is your bond, how can someone ever take you seriously if you don’t follow through with what you promise. A simple phone call or email can prove your integrity to someone and not only complete a sale but ensure future business. Never promise something you are not sure you can deliver.
Customer service should be the best part of any job you have. Every person that you come in contact with has something to offer you on some level. It may be a future sale, positive public relations or maybe even a new idea that you have never thought of before. You can learn something from any interaction with anybody, you just have to be a good listener, and show that you care.
He profits most who serves best. -Arthur F. Sheldo
A man without a smiling face must not open a shop. -Chinese Proverb
A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us – we are dependent on him. -Unknown
There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. -Roger Staubach
Mistakes are the portals of discovery. -James Joyce
It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself. -Eleanor Roosevelt
In business you get what you want by giving other people what they want. -Alice MacDougall
Always give your customer something. -Kevin Stirtze
Always do more than is required of you. -George S. Patton
Always be a first-rate version of yourself. -Audrey Hepburn
Although your customers won’t love you if you give bad service your competitors will. -Kate Zabriskie
Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much. -Helen Keller
A sales is not something you pursue, it is something that happens to you while you are immersed in serving your customer. -Unknown
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Maine Web Connection is a company I started to provide affordable web design services to small businesses that need them. Just because a business could benefit from having a stronger web presence, and work with web developers that don’t force them to spend $1,000 to get it.
This is why I decided to provide this service. To give top notch professional assistance to businesses at a price they can afford. In fact, at a price they can’t afford not to pay. An increased web footprint can mean thousands of dollars to a business. In this economy, I think that is pretty important. You can see our website design samples by clicking here
If you have a small business and need a greater internet presence than you currently have, I can help you. Here are some of the services I offer:
Web Design- will design a new website for your business that is totally unique and one of a kind.
Website Re-Design- If you have a site, but you are not happy with the look, feel, performance or the service that you have received, I can help you!
Search Engine Optimization- Optimizing your site for the search engines should be job one for any web designer. Choosing, analyzing and optimizing keywords for your website should be a high priority.
Training- I can teach you to make simple changes on your site yourself, I can teach you as much as you are technically able to handle, until my knowledge runs out.
Marketing- Today it is important to understand that marketing goes a lot further than buying an ad in the local paper. You have to at least be willing to look at Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon and Linked In, to name a few, as potential sources for future revenues.
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On this page you will be able to view the slideshow below of some of the graphic design work I did for the Moosehead Messenger. You can hire me to do your graphic design work at Maine Web Connection.
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For 14 years of my life, I was fortunate enough to be a teacher. In that time I learned many lessons about life, people and how to treat others. I was most interested in having a forum to teach valuable life lessons in the relatively safe environment of the classroom. Where else can you learn about responsibility, work ethic, honesty and integrity in such a safe environment.
Let me share a few universal truths that teaching taught me.
Set standards for behavior. Good teachers, as well as managers, know you need to be specific and spell things out. This is not micromanagement; it is positive reinforcement. I always made sure that there were clear expectations for behavior and experiencing success in my class. There can be no real gray area or the confusion will lead to wasted time and wasted effort. Setting clear standards for the behavior you expect is paramount to success.
Insist on those standards. It is up to the teacher to make the standards real. For example, if participation is important to you, you need to explain that when students don’t participate , they deprive the class of their unique perspectives in the learning process. I wanted students to draw conclusions about what I taught based on material I shared with them and what they heard from fellow students. When some students didn’t participate, they hurt the learning of others in the class. Likewise, when an employee fails to work productively, he or she hurts team performance.
Hold people accountable. Leadership begins with accountability. When people don’t fulfill their obligation to a class, call them on it. If a student doesn’t get their homework done or doesn’t study for a test properly, it is your job to hold them accountable. Managers do this by docking pay; teachers do it by issuing lower grades. All people have to be held accountable for their actions. If you can teach a student about this then they may not have to learn this lesson in a more painful and financially distressing way later in life.
Students, like employees, are accountable for results. They do the work and they are graded, compensated, and possibly rewarded. But too often we overlook the human dimension. Teachers should insist that students must abide by the three C’s: cooperate with one another, coordinate tasks inside and outside the classroom, and collaborate with each other for the greater good.
Every person is unique. And every time I interacted with another person during my classes, something magic happened. It’s hard to describe it but when you allow someone the space and ability to grow you grow yourself. Suffice to say that I drastically improved my interpersonal skills.
Daily Humor is VitalIf you have a positive attitude and a sense of humor, you will find things to laugh about each day. Sometimes it will be silly jokes you will make up as you teach that might get a laugh from your students. Sometimes it will be jokes that kids share with you. And sometimes students will come out with the funniest statements without realizing what they’ve said. Find the fun and enjoy it!
Being around young people everyday will help you remain knowledgeable about current trends and ideas. It also helps break down barriers.
Unfortunately, not every student will succeed in your class. However, this fact should not keep you from believing that every student has the potential for success. This potential is so exciting – each new year presents new challenges and new potential successes. Student success is what drives teachers to continue. Each student who didn’t understand a concept and then learned it through your help can be exhilarating. And when you actually reach that student that others have written off as being unteachable, this can truly be worth all the headaches that do come with the job.
It is no mystery why most people get involved in becoming an educator, you have an opportunity to make a difference in someone else’s life every day. Most people can look back to a time in their youth when they found an adult figure who liked them and believed in their abilities. The chance to have that impact on people and to take advantage of it is a truly awesome thing.
Building relationships is another aspect of teaching that I think is often overlooked. You are constantly building new relationships as each year brings new students into your classroom. You are also in a position to benefit from the relationships you build with your co-workers as well. Each individual that you come in contact with leaves some kind of impression. It may be a small one or a large one depending on the interaction, but all leave an impression. I can honestly say that 99% of the students and teachers I worked with made a positive impact on me.
Teaching is fun, most of the time. I can remember all of the fun I had working with kids, getting them to learn about history despite themselves and their own dislike of the subject. The most fun came from getting to know each other.
Here is a short list of things I learned while being a teacher.
- How to organize my time efficiently
- How to speak in front of a large group and small groups effectively.
- How to work well with individuals who have different interests.
-To look for the good in all people and the talent that they possess.
-The ability to handle a crisis, and give comfort to others.
- How to follow and enforce initiatives I don’t personally agree with.
- Being creative is ok.
- There is often more than one answer to problems
- Leadership
- Responsibility
- That I never have, nor will I ever, know it all.
- How to be respectful of others especially those that have different beliefs than you.
- Work within a system
- Putting extra time in is a requirement of the job.
-How to communicate effectively.
-How to analyze a problem, form a plan of action and implement that plan to solve the problem.
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“Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you.” – Eddie Robinson
Coaching has been one of the more rewarding activities I have ever participated in. The ability to teach valuable life lessons in the relatively controlled environment of an athletic season is a powerful experience.
My basic philosophy of coaching is simple. Learn as much as you can, then provide the skills and information necessary to allow an individual to experience success. As a leader, it is your responsibility to demonstrate the values that you feel are important. If you say being on time is important, then you had better never be late. If hard work is important, than you had better demonstrate that in the way that you approach your task.
As a young coach, I always put so much into developing practice plans, building skills, and forming game plans that I always took the failure of a player or a team too personally. It is a mistake that is easy to make. Instead of keeping my focus on the big picture, the team, I dwelt too much on the mistakes that were a natural part of the process. In life, mistakes are opportunities for growth and that is no different in the realm of athletics. As a more experienced coach I found that unfortunately mistakes will happen, and the best you can do is to make them teachable moments and learn from them. What I found was that individuals, given the ability to experience this became more proficient at whatever they were trying to accomplish.
Coaching also taught me to be more patient with people. Nobody is trying to fail or make a mistake. Giving them the proper feedback and tools to do something right without belittling them or destroying their self-esteem is the job of any coach. I watch some coaches who just berate a player almost mercilessly for an error made on the field or court. I listen to them yell and scream. I wonder how well they would perform at their job if they were treated in such a manner.
Coaching also taught me that it is important to realize that you are working with the team and they are not working for you. You are all committed to an activity to reach a common goal, winning. It isn’t about you and what you are recognized for, it is about the accomplishments of the group. Which in the end are far more satisfying than individual accomplishments. The experience of being part of a cohesive group that can achieve it’s goals is one of the most rewarding things I have experienced.
Bad calls are part of life, often times things happen that do not seem fair or just. The ability to overcome these obstacles and still experience success is possible in almost every circumstance. It is easy to look at a bad call at the end of a game which seemingly costs a team a victory. However if you look at the whole contest you can always find many things that you had control of and didn’t do which allowed the game to come to that situation. A recent example happened in the NCAA tournament when Butler faced Pitt. Pittsburgh was called for a foul with virtually no time left to lose the game. The focus should have been on the free throw they missed prior to that that would have virtually iced the game for them. If you focus on what you can do throughout the game and in life you will find, bad calls or tough breaks will more often than not go your way.
The way that you approach every practice, every day will directly relate to your performance and the quality of the finished product. If you are lazy and take short cuts when the opportunity presents itself, you will often lack the work ethic and determination required when things get difficult. In life you have to strive to do your best in anything that you do. It may seem extreme, but if you put your best into everything, always, success will come when the chips are down, and the pressure is on. Putting all of your effort into a practice to make yourself and your team better, will allow you the ability to put all of your effort into your job, everyday and make yourself and your company more successful.
If you don’t have a plan and prepare your team for the circumstances they might face, you can’t very well be upset when those situations do occur and the team doesn’t handle them.
For me as a coach, practices were always split into three parts, physical, technical, and tactical. The physical in being capable of performing whatever task or challenge you are facing. This includes fitness and conditioning. The technical involves teaching the skills necessary to be a success. Skill development should never stop as all individuals have the propensity for growth, always. Then there is tactical, that is where you prepare your team for whatever situations they might face. This could be generic clock management in any basketball game, 30 seconds left, down two your ball, what do you do? Or it could be relaying a scouting report, what you know about an opponent, plays they run, defenses they play, how to best find success against them. I have found this approach helpful in life. Developing the physical skills needed to effectively do your job is vital to success. If you don’t take care of yourself physically, you will miss time from work and be unproductive. Strive to be proficient in how to do your job. Take time to develop your skills and continue to develop your skills to continually improve. This will allow you to achieve success and to feel a fresh approach about your job and not feel “burned out”. Thirdly, master the tactical aspects of your job. Know the situations and duties you have to perform and understand them in the context of what you are trying to accomplish. If you are prepared for what might happen you will succeed when it does happen.
In athletics and in life every person, every day is either getting better and improving or you are getting worse or diminishing. There are not many instances where you stay the same. The positive thing about this I learned is that you have almost total control over what type of person you are. In athletics, a player who doesn’t continually practice properly will more often than not regress as a season progresses, while an athlete that continually strives for improvement, will almost always get better. It seems simple, but if you implement that into your daily performance, how would you stack up? Are you continually trying to improve your game? Or are you satisfied with your place in life? You are either getting better or worse, you decide which.
Your past does not define you
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