The Art of Good Customer Service

Nordstrom has long been known for its gold standard customer service.  When you are shopping at Nordstrom, a good sales representative makes sure everything revolves around you - what you are looking for and what else you might like.  A few days later you get a personal note from your new BFF thanking you for the purchase and looking forward to your next visit.

Nordstrom isn’t the only store with a reputation for customer service - the Ritz Carlton Hotel, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe’s are just a few of the well-known companies known for great customer service. 

A more recent entry into the excellent customer service arena is Apple with their Genius Bar - the cadres of high tech geniuses who will remove the evil spirits from your Mac or iPhone without making you feel stupid in the process.

Great customer service creates brand loyalty.   When it is a great experience, you’ll return and buy again. You feel good. You are pleased with your selection. However, there is a lot more than soft and fuzzy feelings motivating great customer service. 

A great customer service representative will help you make decisions - decisions to buy things. You won’t notice.  You’ll think you made that decision on your own.  But while you are focused on the product, the store representative is focused on you. 

They are watching for hints about what is holding you back from saying “Yes” to the deal and  then relating that information to their sales approach. Your attitude, your expressions, and even your body language are all providing information about what is standing between you and the “cha-ching.”

If you hesitate about a new outfit, you might hear, “I bought that same skirt last month and wasn’t sure where I would wear it either but I found it can be the right outfit for almost any occasion.”   You express reluctance about learning something new and the techie might say, “I don’t like to change systems either but when I had to upgrade I found it was easy to install and the computer ran faster.” 

The scientific theory about what is going on is called Emotional Intelligence Competencies or EI Competencies.   First studied in 1998 by Daniel Goldman, EI Competency skills relate to both intra-personal awareness skills and inter-personal social skills.  The better you are at being aware of your own emotional state, controlling your emotions, and using your emotions to motivate your behavior, the better you will be at empathizing with others and building positive relationships.

Often a sales representative will offer you three choices.  Just a coincidence?  No – that too is based on research. It is easier for humans to choose between three products than it is to choose between two.  Too many options overwhelm but three are just right - and mostly likely the choice will be neither the premium nor the least expensive options but the value option in the middle.

Knowing that customer service is based on reading you may sound intrusive or manipulative.   But it shouldn’t.  Yes, the goal is to make a sale - but to make a sale that you are happy with and that makes you feel good.  And if you later decide it wasn’t a good purchase - no problem - good customer service means easy returns with no questions asked.