The Courtesy of Customer Service

After living in India for nearly 15 years, moving to the West was an eye-opening experience, especially in the field of business and customer service. While India is known and celebrated for many glorious things, unfortunately customer services is not one of them and I’ve experienced more than a decade worth of bad experiences to come to that conclusion. The US was a breath of fresh air in comparison. Businesses would go out of their ways to make customers feel comfortable and cared for here in the West. Mistakes are owned up to and responsibility taken for any errors committed by the business.  Here the customer ultimately called the shots and is truly the ‘king’.

But what is the cause for this disparity? My illustration above might deceivingly give the impression that this is a cultural phenomenon. While culture may be a dynamic it is not the whole picture. It ultimately comes down to an ethical business understanding of customer values. And that has more to do with corporate culture than national culture. Customer experience is a highly valued tenet for businesses and translating that from mere external furnishings and interior decor to one on one relational dynamics is an entirely different enterprise. There are many aspects of customer service that makes a difference to the customer. But the most important of them – Courtesy.

Professional courtesy deals with anticipating the customers’ needs ahead of time, creating a conducive environment that caters to the customer’s shopping experience and servicing the numerous needs of the customer through multiple options. While customers are generally satisfied with the bare minimum that business services offer, the real deal-clincher is when businesses go above and beyond their ‘call of duty’ in order to please the customer or make his life easy. The old adage, “No one cares what you know unless they know that you care”, certainly rings true in the world of business!

Customer Service Training is a specific type of program that businesses these days expect their employees to participate in to train them in appropriate standards of business courtesy that suits the needs of the customer. 
MMM Training Solutions are experts in the field of customer service training, corporate training, leadership skills training, soft skills training, cross cultural training and many more, for corporates in India and abroad.