“We recently had the opportunity to have Dean come speak at a Global Service Meeting. We appreciated the fact that Dean took the time to talk us about the event and customize his presentation to focus his vast experience on our goals. The feedback from the attendees was OUTSTANDING! Dean was humorous, energetic, and very relatable – everyone walked out reenergized too!! We would highly recommend Dean for any event and plan to have him back soon.”

– Greg Pressly

Vice President of Customer Operations

MetroPCS

Watch Customer Serivice Video Clips from Speaker Dean Lindsay

Booking info for Dean Lindsay, Customer Service Speaker

4.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out - Show Appreciation & Compliment

Sincere appreciation and compliments are great way to show you know Service is Everything. 

 We thank external customers, right? 

We know we should never take our external customers for granted, right? 

How about our internal customers?

 “A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skills of the others.” — Norman Shidle

Sincere compliments cost us nothing yet can become priceless for both the giver and receiver.  As Mark Twain wrote, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.”  It takes some confidence to notice good things about others and to tell them about it. Smile, say thank you and mean it.  Giving team members a lift has the power of raising our confidence even further because when we start noticing good things about others, we often start noticing more good things about ourselves.  But be careful, compliments that are ill-timed or thought to be insincere are likely to have the opposite effect than intended.  Start by finding something, however small, to genuinely thank or praise others for.  The more specific the better because it shows the person we truly noticed them. 

“If people did not compliment one another there would be little society.” – Marquis De Vauvenargues

 5.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out - Don’t air dirty laundry.

Resolve internal conflicts so they don’t seep into the service.  Grumbling, complaining about co-workers and lack of cooperation will start to chip away at confidence in you and ECI.  If we don’t feel good about our team, our team won’t either. 

 6.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out - Spread the bounty

When a manager or someone on the team receives a thank you or Holiday gift from a customer or vendor, sharing it with the ECI team is a progress –heavy teambuilding move.

 7.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out - Cherish and Cultivate Constructive Communication

All should be in the loop as to developments within the company.  Team members must feel they are not only ON the team but important TO the team. 

“If you get everybody in the company involved in customer service, not only are they ‘feeling the customer’ but they’re also getting a feeling for what’s not working.” — Penny Handscomb

All team members must feel they are ‘being progress’ for the organization.  Just like with our external customers, internal customer feedback needs to be encouraged and their insight followed up on.  Work to make all communication ripe with respect, kindness and goodwill.

Service is Everything.

Be Progress.

Most of us know it is mission critical that every contact between internal customers and external customers be professional, positive and effective.  Unfortunately it is common to overlook the fact that it is also mission critical that every contact between two internal customers be professional, positive and effective.

The cool thing is that the tips and strategies about how to treat external customers apply to internal customers also.  Listen.  Care.  Smile.  Respect.  Bathe.  All rock solid tips when it comes to treating co-workers, employees, direct reports and others.

Consider for a moment the internal customers you serve.

How can we serve fellow team members better?  Will we?

Here are the first three of Seven Solid Tips for Serving Inside Out.

1.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out  – View co-workers as customers.

Helping fellow employees do their jobs more efficiently and effectively not only helps our organization, it helps us too!  It is important to learn to view team-focused interruptions as solid opportunities to help our organzations.  When our organizations progress, we progress.

Providing service that helps other team members rock ‘n roll is what it is all about.  Get jazzed about your role in sharing information and take pride in helping your colleagues.  As a bonus: when we are cool about helping co-workers get their jobs done, they will likely be cool about helping us. 

2.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out - Have Fun Together

Create an company sports team, or better yet you’re creative, come up with something unique that fits your organization’s unique vibe.  Sure some of your ideas might take some extra time and bit of money, but the company-wide results will far surpass the effort and added expense.  Even a monthly breakfast or lunch on the company dime is good for morale.  It would be a good move for the breakfast or lunch to cost the company more than a dime.  Super cheap is a buzz killer.

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 3.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out – Surpass the expectations of your internal customers.

I don’t know about you but I get a kick when someone exceeds my expectations.  It makes me want to exceed theirs.  That old saying of ‘under-promising and over-delivering’ works with internal customers as well.

Next up 4 more customer service training tips for Serving Inside Out!

Service is Everything.

Be Progress.

“More than a motivational speaker, Dean Lindsay is The DEAN of Sales and Service! Energetic, Funny and Thought Provoking, Dean delivered an outstanding presentation to our elite group of business people. We look forward to inviting Dean back to our next business event!”
- Jeff Chernoff, President, Consumers’ Choice Award ®  

Booking Info on Customer Service Training with Dean Lindsay

For the first time, I am trying out “Posting a video” to my blog.  Let me know if you have in trouble watching the clip.

Customer Service Training with Dean Lindsay

Video Clip of Author and Customer Service Speaker, Dean Lindsay

www.DeanLindsay.com

Author of The Progress Challenge: Working and Winning in a World of Change

“The Progress Challenge is a much needed kick in the pants for all of us. Dean Lindsay’s witty words and questions will wake up your sleeping intentions and challenge you to move forward with purpose in your life. What an enlightening book!”
– Ken Blanchard,
coauthor of The One Minute Manager®
and Leading at a Higher Level
 
“The Progress Challenge is an excellent guide to both personal and professional success.  The book helps the reader understand that change is inevitable, yet progress is a choice.  In Lindsay’s words…”be progress”.
– Jim Keyes
CEO, Blockbuster

“The Progress Challenge is a fun to read book crammed full of thought-provoking, practical and motivating take-aways.  With the 6 P’s of Progress, Dean gives us all the incredible opportunity to be purposeful in creating progress, not just change, in our lives and work.”
– Julie Weber
Senior Director, People
Southwest Airlines Co.

For example: A tremendous amount of human energy is used unproductively in conflict. Many employee disputes have to do with people talking past each other. Employees are failing to value each other because they are coming with a set of expectations, a set of behavioral preferences, that do not mesh with those of the person on the other side of the dispute. There is a failure to communicate because the understandings and expectations that people bring to the job are different. Effective communication strategies are paramount. Failing to establish these strategies will result in an ongoing and expensive recruitment program that is not supported by a successful retention program.

One proven communication strategy is understanding and embracing the different behavioral styles with in a workforce. Doing so makes one better able to act with respect toward other persons, even those who are different and sometimes hard to understand. Learning the DiSC® model of behavior is a valuable tool that hundreds of businesses at every size level have used to help increase individual levels of understanding of behavioral tendencies and increase trust levels and keep communications open.

DiSC represents four dimensions of preferred behavior: (D) Dominance, (i) influence, (S) Steadiness and (C) Conscientiousness. When employees understand how to respect behavioral differences in themselves and others, they put more energy into helping the organization. They get past judging how someone does their work and instead focus on the goals and organizational objectives. By the use of DiSC, teams have been able to explore their differences more openly from a behavioral approach rather than ethnicity, gender or lifestyle.

Companies desiring to make the most of their diverse workforce need to ask themselves enlightening questions, such as: Does the company have effective leadership that is committed to embracing a diverse workforce? How has the company impressed upon its managers and team leaders the benefits that come from understanding behavioral differences and embracing diversity appropriately? What communication enhancement programs are in place to offer team members tools that can be used in understanding diverse behavioral strengths?

By beginning to answer these powerful questions, team differences are harnessed for the good of the company rather than being used as wedges to drive employees apart. By creating inclusive communication programs that focus on team members’ unique behavioral strengths, companies are maximizing every possible opportunity to discover how to utilize each person’s unique strengths. And that makes a whole lot of Cents.