Hello, everyone. Welcome to How to Lead a Team That Provides Great Customer Service. This is an educational program that's part of the 2024 Deer Oaks Supervisor Excellence Webinar series. I'm glad that you've joined us today. We have a great turnout, well over 200 people. Thank you so much for spending some of your valuable time with us today.

As most of you are aware, the 2024 Deer Oaks Supervisor Excellence Webinar series is a leadership development series that Deer Oaks has been providing now for, I believe, that we're going into our 12th year. And so, I'm so glad that again, that this content is of interest to you, and that so many of you are taking advantage of it today.

This is the fourth topic in this year's quarterly series, How to Lead a Team That Provides Great Customer Service. If you missed any of the previous ones, we started in January with the Keys to Creating a Thriving Team Culture. We came back in April with Successful Approaches to Difficult Employee Conversations. And then most recently, in July, we presented Advanced Coaching Skills for Leaders.

If you missed any of those sessions and you wanted to be sent the link, we record all these sessions. So if you wanted to be sent the recording link, we'd be happy to send it to you, or the PowerPoint presentation. All you need to do to request those is to reach out to our staff by hitting Reply to your GoTo Webinar invitation or reminder for today. It goes directly to our administrative team's email inbox.

And just let them know which of those sessions, the Keys to Creating a Thriving Team Culture in January. Successful Approaches to Difficult Employee Conversations in April, or Advanced Coaching Skills for Leaders in July. Just let our staff know which of those that you wanted to receive the recording link or the PowerPoint for, and we'd be happy to send it to you. And remember, when you do reach out to our staff, remember to remind them that those sessions are part of the 2024 Deer Oaks Supervisor Excellence Webinar series. Thank you for that, folks.

Again, so today we're here to talk about how to lead a team that provides great customer service. And so, I do want to remind you that before we get into the content today, participants will be in listen-only mode. What I mean by that is you won't be able to audibly ask questions during the content portion of the presentation, or the formal part of the presentation, which really should take about 30 minutes today, give or take.

But your questions are important to me. When we get to the end of the content portion of the presentation, I will open it up for questions. At that time, please feel free to type any questions you have into the question box that you'll find in the GoTo Webinar software on your screen.

Last but not least, before we get started today, I want to make sure our technology is working for us. If you can locate please the Raise Hand icon in the GoTo Webinar software on your screen. And if you can see the slides clearly and hear my voice clearly, could you please click on the Raise Hand icon now.

Thank you, folks. Looks like we're good to go technology-wise. Let's go ahead and get started. Let me begin with a quote by Damon Richards, who is a customer service expert. I love this quote. It's a great jumping off place for a conversation like the one we're having today is that, "Your customer doesn't care how much until they know how much you care." I love that.

Think about that, folks. We are all consumers, right? All of us are. We go to grocery stores and buy our groceries. We go to coffee shops, like Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks and get waited on while we're ordering our coffees. We call in sometimes to our credit card companies to get customer service, or to our wireless company wireless provider company, to get customer service.

And just think about that. When you have your customer hat on and you're reaching out to an organization that you work with or you're visiting that organization, or you're a customer of that organization, we want to know that the people that are waiting on us aren't just going to provide us with information or answer our questions, that they care, right, that they will listen to us, be concerned about what our needs are, and do their very best to be responsive, to meet our needs to the best of their ability.

And so I love this. I think this really sets the stage for the kind of attitude we have to have when we're providing customer service. because remember, folks, when people come to you. and I know we have, again, well over 200 people on the call today from all many different organizations, some public sector, some private sector. And all of you, of course, are clients of Deer Oaks EAP services. That when your customers are coming to you, we want to remember that they don't just want you to answer their question, or just want you to be responsive to their needs. They want to know that you care.

And we demonstrate that in a lot of different ways. By being a good listener, by being compassionate, by showing empathy, by being responsive. And we're going to talk a lot about how to do that consistently today as you're coaching your team. All right. Let me give you an overview of the four sections I'm going to cover today. And again, this session is really geared towards supervisors and managers. Right?

But If you're not a supervisor or manager, and you're just interested in learning how to provide more effective customer service more consistently, hopefully you'll get a lot out of this session as well. But am going to present the information, really from the perspective of to assist managers and supervisors in coaching their employees, teaching-- or training their employees, and managing their teams, so that those individual employees and those teams are more consistently focused on providing great customer service.

So, Section One is going to be how do we encourage our staff to have-- to adopt and embrace a customer service, attitude or mindset. Then we're going to come back and talk about encouraging our teams and our individual employees to better manage their stress. Section Three, we're going to be talking about helping our employees to keep their emotions under control. So they're not so reactive when they're dealing with customers. And last but not least, we're going to talk about how we can encourage and coach staff to work more effectively with customers who might be upset or might be angry, which sometimes become really difficult conversations for our team.

Let's start with encouraging customer service attitudes. Let me put it this way, encouraging our team, encouraging our staff to embrace a customer service mindset or a customer service attitude. Let me begin with the impact of an individual's attitude or a mindset on the level of customer service they provide.

Folks, I know I'm preaching to the choir about this, but the beliefs that our staff have, the attitudes that our staff embrace when it comes to providing great customer service, will help determine if they prioritize meeting the needs of customers, how they behave when they're interacting with customers, particularly customers who are difficult to deal with.

As we all know customer service is not easy, right? Sometimes people come to interact with us and they are escalated. They are angry. They may not be interacting with us in a very respectful way. When people are upset and they reach out to an organization that they work with, a lot of times when they're upset about something, I mean, they will complain loudly. They sometimes will complain in a way that's not really respectful. Sometimes they'll take out their frustrations on the person that's trying to help them. right? I know we've all been in that situation or in those situations from time to time in our careers.

But I want us to recognize that when we're coaching our team, when we're helping our team embrace and prioritize providing great customer service, it starts with attitude. And so, I just want us to keep in mind when we're training our staff, when we're coaching our staff, when you're discussing the importance of providing great customer service or being responsive to the needs of our customers, that we're really encouraging our staff to really have a good attitude about it, to recognize that, obviously one of the reasons we exist, right.

So whether you work for a municipality, whether you work for a private company, whether you work for a college or a University. I mean, whether you're working in a retail establishment, I mean, the responsibility of the staff and any of those organization is really is to take care of the customers that are coming to them. And again, customers may be coming to get different things. Some people want service from us. Some people want information. Some people want to be educated. Some people want you to just listen as they vent.

But if we can prioritize-- and this is what I like to share with supervisors, and I'm a supervisor for Deer Oaks. If we can prioritize just being responsive, if we can prioritize making sure that we're willing to sit down whatever we're working on at the time to give that customer our full attention, chances are, because we've got a good attitude and we're prioritizing customer service, we'll provide pretty responsive and effective service to the people that come to us for help, right?

But if your staff sees customers as an interruption, if they see customers as just really, really a pain to deal with, if they get really frustrated easily when customers come to them for support, if they're not-- if they're impatient with people, folks, we're not going to be as effective. Obviously, our team's not going to be as effective in providing great customer service. So it starts with attitude.

I really think it's great to have conversations and staff meetings with our staff about, let's talk about the importance of providing great customer service. And do it often because human beings, we are, as human beings, right, we are multitaskers. But we're going to focus on what we're reminded to prioritize. That's the thing I think is really important about how we coach our staff.

If you want to have a team that consistently provides high levels of customer service-- because everyone's busy. Everyone has a to do list. All of our staff members have a to do list. They all have projects and tasks to complete and other job responsibilities other than just responding to citizens or customers, again, depending on what environment you work in.

And so I think if you want your staff to consistently be responsive, be respectful to people that they're serving, to prioritize taking care and meeting their needs, being good listeners, we have to remind them periodically to prioritize that right. Because, again, it's so easy for employees, who are busy. We're all busy nowadays. Gallup, the polling company, says we're living in some of the most stressful times in history.

It's really easy for our staff members to get so focused on their work product, on their do list, on the task that needs to be done, completed that day, that they may not prioritize putting customers first, and so which could result in them not being as responsive as they need to be, which could result in them being more impatient with customers as they're trying to provide service and listening to what the customer's needs are. And It may. Inhibit their ability to provide service at the highest level.

So let's remember to regularly talk to our teams about the importance of serving our customers well, being responsive, being caring, being respectful, and to be willing to put aside the other work that they have to do to put customers first. And most organizations, would agree, right. Most leaders of most organizations would agree that most organizations exist, at least in part, to serve the customers that they work. right?

Without customers, we wouldn't have the business or the revenue that we need to have to be viable organizations, right. And to be successful. So it is really important that we remind our staff regularly that dropping everything and being responsive to the needs of customers and doing a great job with that, being patient, being respectful, things that we'll talk about today, is something we should prioritize.

Now, I want to remind you of a saying that many of you have probably heard. And I want to give you a little bit of a definition of it is, and that is the customer is always right. Now I want to define that. Many people I've talked to over the years about customer service have said, yeah, but I can't always give customers what they ask for, so they're not always right.

Let me define my understanding of the old saying that the customer is always right is, it's not that the customer is correct in what they're asking for. Because sometimes, as we all know, this is important. As we all know, sometimes customers ask for things we can't provide. Either what they're asking for is unreasonable, or what they're asking for is outside of our organizations procedures or policies, or it's just not something that we're able to respond to.

And so living by that mantra that the customer is always right doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to say yes to everybody, and give them everything they're asking for. Sometimes that's not possible. But what the customer is always right really should mean for us as customer service providers, right. Deer Oaks is a customer service organization, Like your organizations are as well, is my goal is to provide every one of our customers, both external customers, like all of our clients that have our EAP programs in place, and internal clients, my colleagues, my supervisor, other stakeholders that I work with, to provide each one of those individuals, day in, day out, with a caring and positive interpersonal experience.

And think that's what the customer's always right means. At least it should mean, I believe, is that every customer who comes to us for support, for assistance, that needs us to help them meet their needs. We may not be able to give them exactly what they're asking for, because sometimes people will ask for things outside of our ability to deliver that right.

But every customer should always be treated with kindness, with respect. We should be responsive to their needs and make sure that they have the best possible interpersonal experience when they interact with us. If we can do that, 99% of the time, we're all human, right. So we're going to have times we miss the mark. But if we can coach our staff to focus on making that the goal to provide each internal and external customer with a caring and positive, positive interpersonal experience, whenever possible, and consistently, then we're doing it. Then chances are you'll be providing a really high level of customer service.

All right. Next, let's talk about helping the team to manage their stress. So as I know, most of you recognize, right, high levels of stress can get in the way of our teams providing great customer service. When people are overly stressed, I know I'm preaching to the choir about this. It's much harder to use our best interpersonal skills. So if our goal is to every internal or external customer to the best of our ability a positive and respectful interpersonal experience, as they're interacting with us.

When we're stressed out, it's going to be harder to do that. People who are stressed out, people who are on deadline, people who are overwhelmed, people who are just exhausted from a heavy workload or people that maybe aren't keeping their lives in balance, they may have a hard time listening patiently. They may have a hard time feeling for the customer or putting themselves in the customer's shoes, and having some empathy for the customer.

Let's face it, folks, when we're stressed, it's hard to be the best version of ourselves, right? And so, that's one of the reasons why I do think we need to coach and encourage our employees to take care of themselves, to practice self care, and we'll talk more about that in a minute, and manage their stress effectively, so that when a customer comes to the front desk at your organization, or when they call your organization on the phone, or when they're reaching out virtually, people who are not stressed out, when our employees have their stress level under control, and their they're the best version of themselves, they're going to be much more able to patiently listen, demonstrate empathy, so on and so forth.

I think most of us recognize that stressed out individuals not only are experiencing that fight or flight response, where you're feeling those stress hormones, like adrenaline, and cortisol flowing through your bloodstream, right? But stressed out individuals also become overly emotional when we're stressed out. Folks, if you're a little angry and annoyed with how someone's treating you, you might become really angry with how someone's treating you.

If you're a little frustrated when you're stressed out, you may become really frustrated. If you're a little anxious, you may become a lot anxious when you're stressed out. So again, it's important for us to coach our teams and to encourage our employees to take care of themselves and keep their stress, their stress levels under control. And keep their lives in balance so they can be in a relatively calm place throughout the day.

People who are relatively calm-- I love the picture of the woman with the headset on there in the lower right hand corner of your screen. You can tell that, she's smiling. She looks calm. People who are in a good place, who are calm, who are not overly stressed, are typically much better prepared to effectively handle or respond to customers' needs, even difficult customer conversations more effectively. So again, we got to keep our stress level under control so we can be the best version of ourselves and use our best interpersonal skills during those customer service interactions.

Now, it's easier said than done, right. Because life is stressful. And like I mentioned, Gallup, the polling company, said that we're living in the most stressful time in history. One of the things I think supervisors can do is to model good stress management skills, like model living a balanced life, like take your breaks, don't work through lunch every day.

If your employees see you working through lunch every day, they're going to feel-- modeling is very powerful, folks. Employees watch their supervisors behavior. And if our supervisors are working late every night and working through lunch every day, a lot of times that sends a nonverbal message that that's what's expected in your department, right?

But if everyone sees the supervisor modeling a balanced life, taking their lunch breaks, and actually telling people, I'm going to get out of the building for a little bit. I need a good break. So I'll be in a good place to get done what I got to get done this afternoon. I need to go recharge my batteries. I mean, the I really think that supervisors need to be thinking more consistently about communicating and modeling people taking care of themselves. We live in a very stressful world.

Especially if you want your staff to be in a good place, to respond effectively to customers, throughout the day, make sure your team is taking their lunch breaks. Make sure that you're encouraging people to live a balanced life, to use your vacation time when they need to. Just to take care of themselves.

And so two of the things I think supervisors can encourage people to do on a regular basis that are somewhat job-related is to talk about You work really hard for our organization-- I know I had this conversation with one of our team members at Deer Oaks recently is, hey, I noticed you do a lot of work on the weekends. And I said to this colleague of mine, I said, I want you to know I'm grateful for how hard you work. You do such great work for our organization.

But I also want to encourage you to have some downtime over the weekends, because I don't want you to burn out. You're really important to us. And I was glad to be able to have that conversation with my colleague, because a lot of times, people won't stop and think unless someone reminds them that, hey, maybe you're burning the candle at both ends.

Now, obviously, as a supervisor, we can't tell people what to do in their off time, right? That's their business. But we can encourage people to take care of themselves, right? Take their lunch breaks during the workday. You can help them monitor their workload and help them when you can tell that they seem like they're overloaded. And also, you can help encourage people to take care of themselves. I always tell people about how much I exercise.

One of the things that keeps me really healthy and able to respond to people that I need help during the day is have energy through exercise. I skate. Most of the people I work with know that I'm a hockey coach, in addition to what I do at Deer Oaks. So on Wednesday nights and Saturdays, I'm at the rink skating. And I'm working with the players, and teaching lessons.

But while I'm doing that, and it's something I've done my whole life and I love it, but it helps me stay physically fit, and it gives me energy. And by exercising regularly, I feel like I'm more resilient. I can handle difficult situations and difficult customers more calmly. And I can hang in there with people a little bit more because I've got more resilience.

And so just do whatever you can to encourage your staff to take care of themselves. Get outside when the weather is nice. Get out of the building for lunch. And encourage them to keep their lives in balance. You can do that again through modeling and by encouraging people in whatever way you're comfortable.

Next, let's talk about encouraging our staff to practice emotional intelligence. I know that's a term that a lot of us talk a lot about in the world nowadays. And basically, how I want to talk about that in terms of supervisors coaching employees is to remind people that if we're reactive to customers, and what I mean by reactive is when employees aren't managing their emotions really well, and dealing with difficult customers can be triggering to people. It can create emotional reactivity in people. I know I'm preaching to the choir about this.

So I believe in providing customer service training for my team around how do we react emotionally to people that are difficult to deal with, right? How can I stay patient with customers who are being pushy, or just maybe take taking their frustration out on me, and I'm feeling uncomfortable about that?

And so, I think it's important for us to coach our employees to practice not reacting emotionally to how people treat us, but thinking before they speak or act so that they can be more effective when they're responding to customers who are difficult or who are venting. And so people in general-- and I'm going to give you some techniques around this here that you can actually coach people around.

And I know I'm preaching to the choir about this. Most of us recognize people who can manage their emotions well, who can stay calm under pressure, who are able to take a step back and think before they speak or act, so they can be more rationally or effectively responsive to difficult customers instead of just emotionally reacting to them.

And a good example of that, I know you're all familiar with this example, is you get an email from a customer, and maybe the tone of the email is kind of rude. And so it's always tempting to just respond back, right, directly. And the advice, I think, many of us have received over the years, if you want to be effective in responding via email and you receive an email that maybe pushes your buttons or triggers you or rubs you the wrong way that you want to pause and calm yourself before you respond to that email.

So when you do respond, it's after you've calmed down a little bit. So, so your email response can be more rational and more thought through and more effective than just reacting in the moment and hitting reply and hitting send, right, right when you're feeling kind of triggered.

Folks I want us to recognize that there are certain things that trigger us. I think it's important for us to coach staff around how they respond to customers. And I think a good coaching place is to talk about the difference between emotionally reacting and thoughtfully responding, again, the difference between emotionally reacting and thoughtfully responding.

And to talk to your staff, especially staff that you realize are not providing as effective a level of service as you'd like them to. Maybe you've gotten complaints from customers about a particular staff member. Or you've observed some less than ideal customer service behavior is to coach employees about how they respond to how customers are treating them.

One of the things I like to help people remember is that we all have triggers, we're all human beings. And it's not a bad thing to feel triggered. I mean, we're human. We all have buttons that can be pushed, right? Sometimes people push our buttons by treating us disrespectfully. Sometimes people just act in difficult ways and treat us in ways that make us uncomfortable. Maybe they raise their voices at us when they're venting and that's making us feel uncomfortable, right?

But I try to coach the staff, and we'll go around the room when I'm doing customer service training and I'll coach the staff around. Let's be honest with each other. How can customers treat each of us in ways that would make us really uncomfortable, where we would-- we'd get real impatient or we'd be really tempted to react emotionally.

And just so we can talk through and keep that top of mind, so the next time that happens, because one of the best customer service skills is the one I mentioned a moment ago, is when we feel ourselves triggered, when we feel like someone's treating us disrespectfully or someone's treating us in a way that's making us uncomfortable.

Or maybe you're just exhausted and it's harder to keep your emotions under control, which is true for most of us when we're tired, right is to practice taking a step back and thinking before we speak or act. Folks, that to me is one of the best customer service skills I've ever learned. And I love to share that with people, with the people that I supervise. Is that, folks, we're all going to get triggered. We're all human beings. And when people don't treat us very respectfully or they come at us in an aggressive way. I mean. People, we're sometimes going to get triggered. And we're going to get upset or we might get angry, or we might get nervous or whatever the case may it be.

But to remind people to don't-- be careful not to react out of that intense emotion. Emotion is energy. We experience all intense emotion as energy. And so, people will be tempted to just hit Reply and push-- and hit Send, right? Or to just blurt out something in the moment if they don't like the way a customer is treating them. But as you all know as supervisors of your organizations, right, is that we have to stay-- we as employees for our organizations have to stay calm and professional to the best of our ability.

And so one of the ways we're able to do that is to take a step back and think first before we speak or before we act. And so by thinking first and calming ourselves down, when we do decide it's time to send that email or it's time to call that customer back, whatever the case may be, you can be thoughtfully responsive to that customer instead of just reacting out of the emotion of the moment.

I find that if I can take a step back, calm down a little bit, and think first, my responses to customers that I'm dealing with, even those that are treating me disrespectfully, tend to be a lot better, a lot more rational, a lot calmer, and a lot more effective. So that's a skill. I think, it's really important for us to coach our employees around.

All right. Last but not least, and I'll open it up for questions, folks. By the way, we ended up having almost 300 people on the call today. I really appreciate so many of you taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us today. So the last skill I want to talk about today is making sure to coach and teach our staff to work effectively with people who are angry and upset. And I talked a little bit about that in the last section, about being-- keeping our emotions under control, not being as reactive, being more responsive instead of reactive.

But there's some strategy. I want to go a little deeper in this, or some strategy and some techniques that I know a lot of you know about working with angry and upset individuals that I want to share here today. And hopefully give you some additional tools to coach your staff members around, so that they can work with difficult and angry and upset customers more effectively.

And so one is self-management. And that's the piece I started with a few minutes ago, is when we know we're upset, when we know we're angry or frustrated, but we don't like the way-- I like this picture of this woman, you can tell-- and so I saw I saw this as a woman providing customer service. You can tell she's not-- you could tell by look on her face, she's probably not particularly happy about the way that the other person is talking to her.

As when we get to that place. OK, you can do a couple things to take a step back. One is, if you get a call or an email from someone that you know is-- a customer that you know is difficult to deal with, and you're not having a great day. Let's say you know yourself, you know you're kind of frustrated, you're feeling a little impatient. You didn't have a good night's sleep the night before. And it's just been a rough day, maybe that's not the best time to call that customer back or write that email to the customer, right?

So one of the ways we manage ourselves and our response to customers and potentially improve the level of service we provide is to pick our time wisely. Like think to yourself, is this-- what kind of-- where am I at right now? Do a self-check. Am I having a good day? Am I in a good place, a good headspace to call this customer? If you're not, maybe you wait till later in the day or till the next morning to return that call.

And now, I don't want to make it worse by making customer wait. But sometimes you can just send a quick email to someone saying, I got your message, I'm looking into it. I promise to get back in touch with you by tomorrow morning. And that can buy you a little bit of time to have a good night's sleep, become a better version of yourself by tomorrow, if you know you're not in a good place right now. So that when you do interact with that customer or get back to that customer, you can do a better job. You'll be calmer, and hopefully more effective. So be aware of the timing of the interaction and consider choosing a different time to get back to that customer if you know the timing isn't good for you.

The next thing is to remind us that when you are talking with a customer from one of your organizations, you're representing your organization, right? I mean that customer is going to see you as representing the-- let's say if you work in healthcare, representing the hospital. Or if you work in-- like give some other examples here-- in a retail environment, they're going to see you as representing the store. If you work in a grocery store, they're going to see you as representing the grocery chain, right?

And so we just have to remember, folks, that we need to maintain a calm and professional demeanor, because we do represent our organization to that customer, right? And so if we lose our cool, if we start acting argumentative or unprofessional, or we get escalated because a customer is getting escalated, right, I mean, that sets a bad example of our-- it's a reflection on our organization. And we can't do that.

We owe it to our organization to be the best version of ourselves to the best of our ability, to stay calm and be as professional as possible and treat everybody, every customer that we're working with as respectfully as we can, right? And so part of that is try not to take things personal. It's not easy to do sometimes.

Sometimes it'll feel personal if someone's getting escalated and they're being real aggressive in the way they're coming at you when they want your assistance, sometimes you can feel like they're taking out their anger on the organization on you. But I think it's important for us to remember is it's not personal, because especially if this has nothing to do with you, they're not-- if they're not coming to you to complain about something you did, but they're just complaining about some level of service that they did or didn't get from your organization that they would be venting and being agitated the same way they are now with anyone they talk to. So it's not personal.

And so try to remember that. I try to think to myself, OK, this is not about me. And I just need to do my best job to stay calm. It's not easy to do, especially if someone's escalated. But here's some strategies to help calm people down. Use a low tone of voice. I know we're all familiar with that. Group dynamics says that if one person is escalated and the person they're talking to is kind of calm, the person who's escalated may start to calm down a little bit. See, I'm trying to calm my voice inflection right now. Just to calm down a little bit.

And oftentimes a calm response can help de-escalate a person who is angry or upset, because they will come down to meet the other person. It is human nature. Not always. Some people are so upset by the time they get to us, it doesn't matter how we act, right. They're just going to vent. They are going to get it out. And you just have to do your best to hang in there.

But I try to commit to a customer at the beginning of the conversation. This is really important thing for us to be thinking about, folks. Please try to take at least the first minute or a minute and a half of every customer interaction just to listen, to be there for that customer, to hear them out, to listen. Let them know, OK, I'm sorry. And I say, when they're upset, I'll say things like, I'm sorry you're dealing with that. I'm sorry that happened.

And I'm not apologizing for my organization. I'm being empathetic. I'm saying I'm sorry that you're going through this right now. And I'm sorry to hear that, man. That has to be hard for you. And I can relate to that. I've been in that situation before, and I can understand why you're upset.

I mean, that's empathy, right. That's listening to a customer, demonstrating to them that you care about them. Remember what we started out with today? People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And so make sure you take the first minute or a minute and a half just to empathize. Listen. A lot of times people just want to be heard, right?

And so we want to be careful. This is important. We want to be careful not to quote, policy or tell people what we can't do in the first minute, OK, folks, in the first minute, you may have to say no to someone, right? They may be asking for something during this interaction that you can't provide because it's outside of your organization's ability or policy to provide.

But you don't want to say no and send them away in that first minute, because we want to connect with people first. Remember, the most important part of a customer service interaction, that was the foundation we set of our conversation today, is to give someone a positive interpersonal experience. Which means in the first minute or so, please just listen. Do your best. Just listen.

Don't try to tell people that I'm sorry I can't help you in the first minute. You may have to say that a couple minutes into the conversation, but try not to say it right away until they know you care, remember. I think it's really important to give the customer that first minute or so to bond with them. Listen, let them know that I'm here for you. I'm going to do my best to help you.

In the end, even if you have to say no, if you spend that first minute or a minute and a half bonding and showing empathy and being a good listener, and then you have to let them down at the end. When you do say, I apologize, I can't do that because that's outside of our policy. But you know what I'm going to try to do. I'm going to try to do some research and see if there's another place I can refer you to.

The customer may go away disappointed that they didn't get exactly what they were looking for, but because you treated them respectfully and you showed that you cared, you listened, and you went above and beyond to try to help them, chances are that customer is going to go away, maybe not happy about the end result, but pleased that you as the representative of the organization treated them respectfully and you were there for them. And remember, that's what's within our control, is we give every customer a very positive and respectful and caring interpersonal interaction, even if we can't give them what they're asking for.

And so last but not least, OK, be as kind and respectful throughout the interaction as possible. And sometimes it's hard to do when someone's not treating you real well. But we remember again, you're representing your organization during those interactions, and we want to be as professional and helpful and respectful as possible.

And remember, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. If I have to say no, I don't want to say no abruptly, right, or in a dismissive way. I want to say it like, ma'am, I'm so sorry. I'm not going to be able to do what you're asking for here. And here's why. And this is now a couple of minutes in, right, after I've already listened and connected with the customer. And I wish I could do more. I apologize.

What I do commit to you is I'm going to do some research and see if there are other resources out there that can provide for you what you're looking for. And if you give me that opportunity-- or something along the lines, just be this helpful as you can. Because we want the customer to know that we care about them. We care about what they're upset about. We care about their frustration. And we're going to do whatever we can to be as helpful and caring as possible. So we want to be kind and let them down, when we have to say no, let's say no with graciousness and with a caring heart. So that customer, again, if they go away, they're not going to go away really upset.

Folks, remember this, that oftentimes customer service complaints to the higher ups and organizations happen not only because someone didn't get what they were looking for from the organization, but because they feel like they were treated, either disrespectfully or in a non-caring way by the person that was trying to provide the service.

So what we can control in every customer service or interaction, like we've been saying throughout today, is how respectfully and in a caring and empathetic way that we are there for that customer throughout the interaction. Because, again, if we do that, which is within our control, even if the customer doesn't get exactly what they're looking for from the interaction, they'll at least remember that, hey, that person, that representative of that organization treated me really well. Sure, I whis I would have gotten XYZ from them, but I really, really appreciated the way they treated me.

All right, folks, I know we've covered a lot in a very short time today. We still have plenty of time for questions. And so I want to open it up for questions. If you have any questions, please type them into the question box in the GoToWebinar software that you'll find up on your screen. Again, if you have any questions or you want to share any comments or you want to share any strategies, any customer service strategies that you coach your employees around with everyone else, I would welcome that.

But if you want to communicate with us, please just use the question box in the GoToWebinar software on your screen. Again, we got plenty of time for questions today. So again, if you have any questions, please type them into the question box and then GoToWebinar software. Here's a good question. How can we remind other departments within our institution that customer service is also between each department, not just outside entities?

I think that's a really good question. Excuse me. One of the things I like to recommend is for department heads, so the department supervisors to have good communication about how their teams interact. It's so important, because you're right, some people, some employees and this is human nature, some employees will be quick to recognize an external customer as someone that they need to provide good service to but they won't necessarily think of their colleagues like people from another department as a customer.

Folks, everyone that we're interacting with throughout the day, whether it's an external customer or internal customer, we ought to really see as a customer. And so if you've got two departments that are working together and they're not working together effectively and people are not being really helpful with each other or being impatient with each other, I think the two supervisors should get together and say, hey, how can we get our teams to work together more effectively.

Because sometimes I think they're not as responsive to each other as they could be or they're more impatient with each other. And to talk together about either individually coaching your respective teams around. Let's remember that the other employees and the other departments there are customers too, and we want to be responsive and respectful to them.

Or maybe you do a team building event between the two departments that are having some friction just to get people bonded together. So that they will be more mindful to treat each other respectfully as they're interacting together. Thank you. That was a great question. Here's advice from one of our colleagues, sometimes silence is your friend and if you're quiet long enough listening, the other person will calm down. And it also gives you a chance to stay calm.

Thank you. One of our colleagues gave us some great advice. I'm want to read that again. She said, sometimes silence is your friend and if you're quiet long enough while you're listening, the other person who's escalated will start to calm down. And it also gives you a chance to stay calm. I agree. I agree. Folks, that's great. I love that. That's a great technique.

So to stay quiet while you're listening and a lot of times when you're quiet, the other person who's venting will start to that venting will start to run out of steam and they'll start to calm down a little bit. And you're right, staying quiet helps us stay calm. The more wordy we are, the more amped up we'll tend to get. Great advice. Thank you for that.

Here's another good question. How would you recommend coaching an employee on the difference between being kind during interactions versus being kind but sounding condescending? That's a really, really good question. I feel like kindness-- honestly, I feel like kindness is not necessarily giving people the answer. It's how we're interacting with someone, right.

Sometimes when we're telling someone things, when we're giving them an answer, it can come off like a lecture or like you could treat someone like they don't get it. And here's what they need to understand, which can feel condescending to someone. But what I'm talking about in terms of being kind is it's how we're interacting together. It's not what we're saying. It's how we're saying it. It's being kind is being patient with the other person, showing interest in what they're saying, smiling, making good eye contact, being friendly.

That's what I think about when I think about kindness. And that's a little bit different than actually providing answers or providing resources to me. We have to make sure we don't provide answers or resources in a know it all way or in a condescending way. And we have to make those explanations it as humbly as we can and say and say, do you need any additional information or did I explain that well enough.