If customer services staff don't know this, they may be feeling useless.

Since 2010, the Lightbulb Training Solutions team have been working with businesses across Australia to create teams of frontline staff who work together in harmony and provide excellent service to every customer.

We call these people Customer Service Professionals, and every business wants them, and every industry needs them.

Lightbulb Training Solutions specialise in soft skill development which simply means, we provide the training that gives customer service staff the knowledge and the skills to interact professionally with all types of customers - the chatty, the quiet, the demanding, the delightful, the friendly and everyone in between.

We believe that customer service is not a ‘one size fits all’ process and staff need a ‘toolbox’ of skills to delivery excellent service to meet the expectations of a diversity of customers.

We believe that the more diverse your customer service team, the better your business will be.

If you’ve built or are trying to build a diverse and service skilled and confident frontline customer service team, there is 1 thing staff need to hear and be reminded off regularly. (Because we humans forget stuff)

It can take up to 12 positive experiences for an unhappy customer to 'forgive' 1 negative experience.

In practical terms, this means that staff may be interacting with ‘unhappy’ customers even though they are providing excellent service ie: a customer who received a less than positive experience with the business in the past, may need multiple positive experiences for the ‘damage’ to be forgiven. How long that takes, is up to each individual customer.

Interacting with these customers can make staff feel that their excellent customer service skills, and efforts are useless.

You don’t want that so …

Remind frontline staff that if they feel a customer is being less than polite or friendly, it may be that the customer is on a journey to rebuild trust with the business and all staff are a vital step in that process. Give them the opportuinity vent their feelings but also thank them for remaining professional and not dropping their standards of service.

Service excellence should always be recognised, especially when the customers make it tough.

If you don’t, you risk staff droping below the business standards of service excellence.

For more help for your frontline customer service staff, grab a copy of “The A- Z of Service Excellence”.