Narrative of Customer Service Experience

¶ … narrative of customer service experience over a 10-year period. The writer uses the Kolb model to explore the experience and narrate it in terms the reader can understand. There were five sources used to complete this paper.

Customer service has been an important part of the business world since business began. If a company has strong professional customer service representation, the product or service that the company sells can be showcased at its best. Customer service provides the customer with an avenue to get their questions answered or problems addressed. Customer service gives the company an outlet for which their customers feel their voices are being heard. Whether it is the placing of an order, a complaint or a need about an order or product or general questions that need to be answered, customer service representatives are often the first human contact a person has with a company.

When it comes to telecommunications, customer service representation is often the only contact a customer has with a company. Telecommunication customer service is specifically important because those representatives can make or break the company with the way they handle and treat the customer who calls in.

Customer service in telecommunications is a fast paced and exciting field. One has to remember at all times that their voice represents the product or service that is being sold. The voice provides a smile, a frown, concern or confidence all at the same time. A voice in customer service in telecommunications assures the customer that things will be worked out and that they are valued. When I first began my work in customer service in the telecommunications field I had a lot to learn. I was not aware of how the tone of voice can make all the difference, nor did I take seriously the importance of representing the company in the best possible light with each and every call. As my experience expanded, and I began to develop skills in the field I realized that customer service representatives are the backbone of the company. Over the past decade I have developed skill sets that provide me with a base to work in any field but I prefer telecommunications because it is the one field in which the customer service representative is truly often the only contact the customer has with the company. I enjoy that responsibility and the challenge of keeping each customer a happy customer.

Concrete Experience

The concrete experience that I have had in the field of customer service telecommunications has developed to the point I am now charged with the supervision of 50 customer service representatives within the company.

When I first began I was assigned a small desk in a room with many other customer service representatives. Our job was to answer the phone, and provide support to customers who would call in and ask about their order. We had a computer on each desk from which we could look up and track the orders to determine what stage of the game they were in. The orders were for telephone services for a cellular phone company. Most of the calls that came in were customers who wanted to know when their service could be turned on, or if it had been turned off because the invoice was not paid on time they wanted to know when they could get it back on and how much it would cost to do so.

It was a bit of a baptism by fire as most customers who called in were not happy. It was our job to make them happy, fix their problem, assist them in correcting their invoice issues and create a relationship that would encourage the customer to stay with the company even though they had the complaint.

A enjoyed that position because it taught me how to be happy and positive sounding even under stressful circumstances. Customers would call in and deny that they had failed to pay their bill. They would become irate and demand that I figure out a way to get their service turned back on, and I would have to try and guide them to pay their bill, with the late charge, without making them angry so that they took their business elsewhere.

One of the things that helped me in this position was the fact that the customer signed a contract when they opened their service, therefore they could not just walk away. This was a point that both helped and hurt me during my initial entrance to the customer service field as people called in and I practiced with each call.

With the calls I would gather information, enter the computer and access their account. I would then dispense the information that they needed to correct their particular problem or need. I was also charged with following their progress. We had certain times during the week where were we were charged with follow up calls. In these cases we would have to call back customers we had helped earlier in the week with certain specific issues and ask if their problem was resolved. If so we asked if they had been happy with the service they received. If not we would help them work it out at that time and provide them with a discount on their next bill for the trouble they had encountered.

This part of the job was stressful because we did not call our own customers, but we called the customers of others that we worked with. This meant that someone else called my customers and found out if I handled the situation well and professionally. It was an eye opener to say the least. It showed me that I didn't always present myself the way thought I had, and it also showed me that I could handle constructive and not so constructive criticism and use it to improve my job performance.

After several years at this company I moved to another company that offered more money. In this company I worked in a cubicle with one other customer service representative. We were the initial contact the customer had with the customer as they had to do their ordering through our department. It was not considered a sales position however, because of the tasks that we performed to assist that customer with their customer service needs. We would answer the phone when the customer was in the phone que, we would ascertain the customer need, suggest several products and follow the order through to the end. In addition we answered customer service calls in which established customers who had questions, complaints, or needs could ask us for assistance. Our job was to be sure they were treated professionally and with courtesy at all times.

It was at this job that I undertook my first training experience. We had hired a new customer service representative and my supervisor asked me to let her sit with me and learn the job. I was nervous at first because I was afraid I would not train her well. At this point I was confident in my abilities as a customer service representative but was not sure I had the skills to teach someone else how to do it.

My fears were unfounded however, as the girl turned out to be bright, eager and pleasant. These qualities made it easy for me to instruct her and guide her in the position she had been hired to fulfill.

Once I trained the first person my boss began to send all new customer service representatives to me for training. I developed a training method that I followed each time. It was about three days long. On the first day they would simply observe me doing my job as I explained each call when I would complete it. On the second day they would begin to take calls during the slow periods while I stepped in when it got busy so that we would not get behind or disappoint customers by making them wait on hold too long. On the third day they would run the show with me acting as observer and mentor.

This was something I enjoyed doing but my heart was still in the actual work of customer service so I eventually moved to a company that did not need me to train the new customer service representatives. It was at this company that I became a customer service supervisor.

Most organizations approach customer service as purely a training issue. Although there are aspects of a customer service initiative that relate to specific skills, the issue is a much broader one than that. Customer service is a way of life and a part of the culture of successful organizations. Programs based just on teaching employees to smile and be pleasant almost always end in failure. These skills are short-lived, if good employees are working in flawed systems (Clark, 2004)."

Customer service tasks that I performed at this company included testing the system by calling out and determining whether customers were happy with the service they had received, accepting incoming calls and assisting the customers with their needs or addressing their problems, Working with the sales reps to be sure that their customers were getting what they needed and had been promised and working to develop relationships with the customers so that they could call on me personally again and again. This is one company that encourages the customer service representatives to develop relationships with the customers so that they can ask for individuals when and if they need to call back. I enjoyed this aspect of the job because everywhere I had worked before, we had a contact with the customers and the chances were extremely slim that we would ever hear from or speak to that customer again. There were many customers I enjoyed talking to and wished I could handle their future needs.

A learned through my experience that customer service can make or break a company. Several of the things my experience has taught me include:

set yourself above your existing competition (Customer, 1992).

A make it difficult for new competition to get a foothold in your market (Customer, 1992)."

Observations and Reflections

When I first began my career in customer service I believed it was a means to an end. I wanted to have a job that would pay my bills and work with the public without having to have face-to-face contact with the customers. I found that in customer service positions in the field of telecommunications.

A began as a young green employee with little experience or knowledge in any job. I initially had much to learn about how I presented myself to the customers. I remember having days where things were stressful in my life and I brought that stress to the job. Customers would call in and I would give them half hearted answers, or worse I would not smile or exchange pleasantries with them as I helped them resolve their questions or problems. I had to learn to leave my life at the door each day as it did have a direct impact on the way I treated the customer. I remember one time being in a bad mood and having a customer complain that I acted as if he was wasting my time calling in for assistance. I will never forget what it felt like to have my supervisor sit me down and talk to me about the complaint. Now that I have been in the industry for a decade I am aware that there are invalid and valid complaints, but this one was valid and I was embarrassed and ashamed that I had caused a customer to complain because I let my personal life impact the way I had treated him.

From that point on I worked to improve my method of handling customer service. I found that if I really smiled while talking to them that they could hear the smile in my voice and they often responded in kind. I found that taking the most angry customer on earth, and treating that customer with respect and professionalism, usually turned that customer into someone who thanked me in the end for helping resolve the problem they had called in about.

Over the years I saw many customer service representatives come and go.

It seemed that certain personality types fared better in this field than others. I discovered over time that customer service representatives who were concerned with their own problems and lives more than assisting the customer did not last. Whether they were fired or they quit it was not long before they were gone and another one was in their place.

On my first job I was determined to become the best customer service representative that I could be. One of the things I did that I believe helped me in the quest was to find a mentor. I observed the other customer service representatives and located one who I felt emulated the type of attitude and skills that I wanted to acquire. I watched her work, I listened to the way she spoke to the customer and I watched her handle her outside life while not letting it impact the way she performed from eight to five each day. I watched her carefully and used her example to incorporate with my own skills so that I could be the best customer service representative possible.

Looking back through the past decade there are many things that I did not know initially which I learned by doing.

It seemed the more excited I was about the position the better I handled the customers. If I was happy and content in my job, the customers had a better rate of return and more complimentary things to say about my services. If I became unhappy in a position it seemed that the customer could pick up on that and it colored their attitudes as well. This let me realize it is important that customer service representatives be encouraged to maintain high morale and work satisfaction. When I became a supervisor three years ago it was something I did not forget and worked hard to implement in my own customer service department.

Another valuable element of customer service that I have learned throughout the years is that customer service representatives are able to handle administrative tasks and while it seems to make their job more difficult it actually makes it easier (Sharples, 1995). When a customer service representative is involved in many aspects of the total customer experience then that customer service representative is better equipped to help that customer with all of his or her customer service needs. When I worked in positions where I was dependent on others to provide me with answers, I was always having to put the customer on hold or promise to call that customer back once I got the answer. I know that can be frustrating to a customer as I have been the customer on the other end many times (Sharples, 1995).

Customer service creates the way the public feels about the company. Many times when talking to friends they have complained about their experience with a customer service representative and the end result is they do not like the company any more and refuse to do business with that company ever again. Hearing these stories in my outside life is a constant reminder for me to be diligent in my desire to remain professional and polite at all times while on the job.