The Art of Customer Service Jobs
It’s never really been clear why, or how, a segment of the population could look down on customer service jobs. They do, of course – as anyone who has ever held a customer service position will be able to tell you. That’s half the art of the customer services employee. Being nice to people who manifestly are not being nice to them.
There’s an art to the whole idea of customer services – an art so subtle, and practised with such skill by a good customer service employee, that the boys and girls, the men and women, who do them should be given the recognition they deserve. Customer service jobs, after all, are about managing the expectations of hundreds, if not thousands, of clients every day. That’s something that not even the highest paid company executive could pull off – not unless he or she had paid his or her dues behind a bar or in the foreign exchange concession in an airport terminal, first.
In all seriousness: if everyone in the country did a stint in a customer service position, for at least three years, before being allowed to go on and do anything else, the world would be a much nicer place. It’s one of those things. You don’t know, and you’ll never know, unless you’ve done it: the skill, the consideration, the finesse and the subtlety involved in doing customer service jobs.
Customer services, as all the best employees know, is about psychology. It’s about getting people (customers) to do what you (well, the company, but you as a representative of the company) want them to do: whilst letting them think that you are letting them do what they want to do. It’s that simple and that hard. Anyone capable of making an obstreperous or otherwise unwilling human being, do what they need them to do, whilst thinking that they have got their own way, is worth his or her weight in gold.
We’ve all heard the motto, of customer service jobs a million times. Usually, we hear it trumpeted back at a complaints desk by a customer who thinks that he or she knows exactly what he or she is entitled to. “The customer is always right”, of course, is the motto. Its meaning is known only to those who have really done a customer services positions properly. The kinds of people who succeed in customer services; who are talked about by happy, satisfied customers, recommended to their managers and become the subjects of glowingly effusive letters of thanks. The real meaning of the motto of customer service jobs is this: “the customer must always be made to think that he or she is getting his or her own way.” The customer, in reality, is might not always be right: because the customer, given his or her head, would want everything for free, right now, and never mind waiting in line. The customer is made to feel right. That’s the difference – that’s the secret. Anyone who understands that is a top quality customer services employee, and worth his or her weight in diamonds.
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