Customer Service
Those two words use to be at the front of every employee handbook and part of the foundation for many businesses, but where has it gone?
Recently I visited a very well known fast food restaurant drive-thru and was greeted with a bored and mundane “Can I help you?” It was almost as if s/he felt that I was bothering them by even being there. Later that week I was in a grocery store and when given my change, I politely said “Thank you” and the cashier responded with “Your welcome.” When I first started working at the tender age of 14, I was told never to say thank you after a purchase. Why? Because it implies that I did the customer a favor by taking their money, when in reality, I should be thanking them because they helped support the business which in turn gave me a paycheck every week.
At Gonink we’ve always prided ourselves on our friendly and customer service. We take pride in knowing customers by name and calling them as such when they walk through our doors. We want every single person that comes in to feel pampered, to feel like they are special and are unique. How often can you walk into a ‘big box’ store and actually be walked to aisle 637 to find the item you’re looking for? Okay, so we don’t have 637 aisles and come to think of it, we really don’t even have aisles. Be that as it may, we can still treat our customers like we’re walking them to that aisle and make them feel important.
Other companies are realizing that customer service is nearly non-existent in their business model and they’re taking note. IBM has actually developed a piece of software to help their Indian customer service reps lower their heavy accent and make it easier for people to get tech support without a lot of “I didn’t understand you” on the other end. At least the company is taking customer service seriously and trying to improve on their customer service.