Customer service is one of the vital elements of exporting business and the backbone of our company development. In this case, the concerning training is hold on 9th July to make a difference by Wendy who is a sales director with tens of years of experiences in this field.
Wendy expounds her thoughts and practice of customer service with five main principles: The customer is God, Mutual respect, Sundown principle, Effective communication and Continuous improvement. All the principles are indicated clearly with exact cases that lead to positive reflection and discussion:
1. The customer is God
Firstly, customers should be always the center of our working and are god alike. Everything we do should aim to create more values for our customers. And all the solutions should be carried out from the view of customers. These should be the basic rules to build the relationship with our customers.
For example, last year, one of our heavy customers encountered shipping problems due to national tariff policy. Although it was the order with other suppliers in China, Wendy actively reached out and helped avoid tens of thousands of dollars in losses. Such customer-oriented practices make the profound and solid relationship.
Regarding the point, every dept contributes their own unique values and get their own different ideas to improve: the QC dept intend to optimize their inspection procedures to lower the error rate and deliver final high-quality products; the marketing dept are likely to take more efforts to make research and study the global market trending to provide more valuable information to our end customers; the IT dept would like to build a more effective and convenient system for our customers to check any info they need.
2. Mutual Respect
Secondly, mutual respect is the basic rule of communication. With the customer from foreign country, culture difference is quite common and are quite likely to cause some unnecessary misunderstandings. In this case, we should study on the customs, holidays, habits and characteristics of foreign cultures to make a fluent communication.
Let's take the attitude for the praise as an example. In Chinese culture, we are always taught to be humble and moderate. In this case, we hardly get the chance to appreciate others loudly and always intend to be limited to ourselves. In comparison, the westerners are always in a open mind and quite likely to praise others in their daily life. Therefore, we should learn and try to praise our customers in our daily life to fit the their local cultures. Let feel our customer feel in home!
3. Sundown Principle
Thirdly, it's the sundown principle. Sundown principle is based on that old saying that goes"why put off until tomorrow what you can do today." Sam implemented the rule at Walmart which meant that the company answers requests, whether by the customer (particularly important) or other vendors or partners by sundown on the day that they receive them, rather than putting the requests off until a later time.
The principles means high efficiency in the work. This means a lot for all of our departments and our customers as well. Take the common quotation for example, fast quotation will help our customers quickly evaluate the market trending or compete with their competitors. We should always keep in mind that the quick action and reply shows our care for customer's business.
4. Effective communication
Fourthly, effective communication is vital in the cross-cultural communication. And it should be the essence of customer service.
On one hand, all of our communication should start from the customer's point of view. We should always in the shoes of customer to think and solve problems. Only in this way can our service meets the customer's expectations.
Secondly, the prompt response keep the work efficient. The time difference between different countries is a quite typical problem in customer service that affects the timeliness. In order to keep the communication in high efficiency, sometimes we choose to wok overnight to help our customers deal with some complicated problem to make our services accessible anytime all over the world.
5. Continuous Improvements
Fifthly, service always can be better. We will never stop on the way to create more valuable service for our service. Each dept should be always make their own ways to deliver better products and help our customers win their markets.
The above five points are crucial in customer service. During the presentation, we have a quite warm discussion and each dept. conducted in-depth analysis around their own work. After meeting, with new ideas, each group has made their unique step by step plan to improve their service level to meet customers' requirement better.
Hebei Homleux always aims to win our customers with the best service that create the most values!
