Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

REN'E EVENSON is a small-business consultant specializing in workplace communication and conflict resolution strategies. She is the author of several books, including Powerful Phrases for Effective Customer Service and Customer Service Training 101.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

The heart of all great service is in knowing what your customers need, want, and expect. And there’s no better way to get that information than from the daily interactions between customers and your service team. Well-trained service representatives turn issues into opportunities, problems into solutions, and customer interactions into new sales, repeat business, loyalty, and great word-of-mouth advertising. So a great customer service manager will have a direct, significant, and positive effect on the way his or her company is perceived by its customers.

It all starts with the right learning tool: Customer Service Management Training 101. Whether you are a new manager or a veteran, the accessible, step-by-step guidance in this book is designed to help you:

Manage yourself

• Identify your own management style and create an improvement plan. How do you manage, and what are your strengths and weaknesses?

• Develop leadership qualities. How do you rate yourself as a leader, and how do you turn your own desire to achieve into strong leadership skills?

• Plan and organize your team’s strategy according to tangible goals that reflect and meet customer needs.

Manage other people

• Build a cohesive team. Define your team’s purpose, decision-making, and problem solving processes.

• Train, develop, and manage your employees. Develop their interpersonal, technical, research, and business skills—and keep doing it.

• Handle challenges. Anticipate problems and have plans in place to help avoid and alleviate them.

• Communicate clearly and effectively—with team members, other managers, executives, customers, suppliers, and others.

Manage for results

• Monitor and maximize performance.

• Motivate your employees with constructive, applicable feedback.

Each chapter begins with an overview and features an example of “the wrong way to manage,” followed by step-by-step lessons illustrating what could have been done better—culminating in a “right way” to handle similar situations in the future. The chapters also include checklists, real-world application practice lessons, and goal planners to create powerful, repeatable strategies.

The better manager you are (and the more effective your service team is), the more you’ll enjoy your job and grow in it. The book’s final chapter talks about putting your best FACE forward—that is, Focusing, Achieving, Caring, and Exemplifying. This chapter offers refreshingly practical tips for developing and improving your own professional skills, keeping positive momentum going, creating and leveraging opportunities, realizing personal goals, and making yourself even more valuable to employers—now and throughout your career.

Renée Evenson is a business consultant and writer specializing in organizational psychol­ogy in the workplace and the roles and relationships between customers, employees, and management. She is also the author ofCustomer Service Training 101. She has a degree in organizational psychology from Ohio University and has devoted more than thirty years to the customer service field, including her fifteen-year career as a customer service and staff manager for BellSouth.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGEMENT TRAINING 101

AMACOM

Contents

Acknowledgments...................................................ixIntroduction......................................................11 Understanding Your Management Style.............................72 Developing Your Leadership Qualities............................263 Planning and Organizing for Results.............................444 Communicating Up, Down, Across, In, and Out.....................695 Training for Excellence.........................................916 Team Building for Success.......................................1117 Dealing with Challenges Successfully............................1318 Monitoring Performance for Excellence...........................1579 Motivating Through Meaningful Feedback..........................17510 Putting Your Best FACE Forward.................................193Index.............................................................209

Chapter One

Frontline management is not easy. You have employees for whom you are responsible. You have a manager to whom you report. And you are, quite frankly, caught in the middle. The expectation of your employees to get results while responding to your own manager's needs can leave you feeling overwhelmed. How do you do it all without cracking under the stress?

In addition to having employee and upper management responsibilities, you are also accountable for customer satisfaction, for ensuring that your employees provide exceptional customer service to every customer all the time. How do you accomplish that goal, especially when you are keeping so many balls in the air?

Well-trained frontline employees are your key to customer satisfaction, and knowledgeable and engaged managers are the key to well-trained employees. By effectively training, observing, and motivating, your employees will learn to do their best and that will result in the level of customer service that both your company and customers expect.

Customer Service Is Job #1

Customer service may not be your only job duty, but it is the most important one. As a frontline manager, your success depends not only on how well you perform, but on how well your employees perform. In other words, your success depends on your mastery of leadership and management skills and how well you are able to transfer those skills to your employees.

The first step to becoming a successful manager is to understand and identify your personal management style. Knowing who you are, how you communicate, and why you behave as you do helps you develop the positive skills that result in effective management.

The truth is that not every manager is a good manager. Some lead by controlling others, taking an upper-handed authoritative approach, with little or no trust in their employees. Others lead passively, taking a hands-off approach and wanting more to be liked by their employees than to manage them. The most successful managers take a hands-on, participative approach and find the balance between being controlling and remaining passive depending on the employee and the circumstances.

By learning about different management styles and characteristics, you can assess your personal style and determine your strengths, as well as identify areas needing improvement. When you define those strengths and, more importantly, see where improvement is needed, you can create a developmental action plan and move toward becoming the manager your employees and coworkers appreciate and value.

Remember that your success is directly linked to how well your employees perform. While it is great to be liked by your employees, it is more important to have their respect. When you follow the steps below, you will develop effective management skills that will earn the respect of both your employees and coworkers.

STEP 1: Learn Management Styles and Functions

STEP 2: Analyze Your Personal Style

STEP 3: Define Your Strengths and Areas Needing Improvement

STEP 4: Create Your Developmental Action Plan

SPOTLIGHT ON MANAGEMENT

The Wrong Way to Manage the Frontline

Jack, a frontline manager for a large office supply chain, manages ten sales employees. He is a gregarious man who likes to tell jokes and make others laugh. To be well-liked means a lot to him. He read somewhere that it is important to have fun on the job, so he manages by making sure his employees are having a good time.

Jack does a great job training new employees, but he does little follow-up to make sure they are doing their jobs correctly. He also allows his employees to hang out in his office and does not feel comfortable telling them to get back to work. Consequently, customers are often left to wander around the store when employees are in his office joking and having fun.

One day, before storming out of the store, an irate customer said to one of the employees, "I've been walking around this store for ten minutes, and no one has come to help me. I just wanted to let you know I'm going to the store down the street where I know they appreciate my business."

Later, when the employee was in Jack's office relating this conversation, another employee asked, "What high horse did he ride in on?" Everyone laughed, but Jack knew he should have done something to prevent the situation from occurring in the first place.

What Went Wrong?

Jack tends to be a passive manager. Because he wants his employees to like him, he did not take the necessary measures to ensure they were putting customers first. He hoped his employees knew what to do, but when they did not demonstrate that knowledge, Jack did not speak up and change the situation. Rather than being more assertive when he needed to, he sat back. When the employee made a disparaging comment about the customer, Jack laughed along with the employees rather than pointing out their mistake.

What Could Make This Right?

Jack never took the time to assess his management style, define his strengths and areas needing improvement, or create a developmental action plan. Honest self-analysis and skills development could have helped him find the balance he needed to manage effectively—and still create a happy work environment.

STEP 1: Learn Management Styles and Functions

The most important function of frontline management is to lead and develop employees. When you manage people your job is to accomplish tasks and achieve goals through your employees. How you achieve this result depends on the employees and the circumstances.

The methods you most often apply to employee interactions and various situations define your personal management style. Your management style determines how you communicate, make decisions, solve problems, and put your critical thinking skills to use. The most effective managers do not apply the same style all the time. Rather, they are able to adapt their style as needed.

The study of management has been widely researched. Similar managerial styles, ranging from overly controlling to a complete lack of control, emerge. The style now viewed as the most effective is participative. Yet, researchers also conclude that participative management actually incorporates...