What do your customers really want?

When it comes to customer service, show genuine appreciation toward the people who pay your salary. Go the extra mile to learn their name and listen to them. Take their concerns to heart. Treat customers like a friend, or at least a very good acquaintance.

Always be looking out for their best interests. Your job is more than supplying a product or service; your job is making people’s lives better, in some way or another. Try to go above and beyond with your customer service skills. If someone accidentally calls your place of business trying to order a pizza, why not take a couple of seconds to provide the correct number by Googling it for them? Maybe they’ll remember, maybe they won’t, but you’ll have demonstrated a genuine care using your customer service skills.

Salespeople in particular have got a bad rep over the years because of “snake-oil salesmen” shouting false promises from the back of a caravan. If a customer emails you, respond as soon as possible and certainly within 24 hours. Pick up customers’ phone calls on the second ring with a pleasant, caring greeting, and respond to voicemails in a timely fashion. What customers want is follow-up and follow-through; without that, trust and reliability are lost.

Learn your product and stay up to date. In the technology age, customers already have a pretty good understanding of what you have to offer. You should, too. If you’re going to try to sell ice to an Eskimo, you’d better know more than that it’s cold. You should at least understand the Wegener–Bergeron–Findeisen process, and know that falling ice is formed when droplets of two-part hydrogen and one-part oxygen are vaporized and frozen in mixed phase clouds.