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Customer service - how to become "easy to do business with".

This may sound like a very basic phrase but when it comes down to it, the key thing that customers are looking for from any of their suppliers is the appropriate product or service
but delivered in a straightforward, user friendly way.
This applies to both external customers as well as to our internal customers and as much as anything it is based on our attitudes, behaviours and relationships.
When working with staff or managers on management development or customer service programmes we have developed a straightforward approach to bringing this “easy to do business with” approach to their attention. We break the course down into syndicate groups and ask them to start by debating the sort of characteristics – attitudes and behaviours - that typify a person who is easy to do business with. We also ask other syndicate groups to come up with the characteristics that typify a person who is “difficult to do business with”.
The sorts of characteristics that participant’s have come up with were as follows:-
• Open, honest.
• Consistent, easily understood.
• Listening, questioning, responsive.
• Clear, decisive.
• Approachable, available.
• Well prepared.
• Trustworthy.
• Friendly, warm.
• Direct, straight talking.
• Sensitive, patient.

The groups asked to come up with the “difficult to do business with” list of characteristics usually produce virtually the opposite of these descriptions e.g.
unclear, unprepared, unfriendly, abrupt, insensitive etc.

Having established and agreed this list of characteristics we then ask each person to think about their own attitudes and behaviours and to rate themselves against this list on a 1 to 10 or high, medium, low scale. This then can be translated into a list of strengths and weaknesses or development areas for each person to consider and to work on in order to improve their customer service approach and relationships.
It is often quite telling to do this work with a team of people who know each other and work together – because they can readily identify with each others list of strengths and weaknesses and are able to question, challenge or joke with their colleagues if they have misrepresented themselves or lack self-awareness of how they might come across.
A logical extension to this work is to send a questionnaire out to a sample of your key customers asking them to rate you against a core list of these behaviours and to suggest any areas where they would like to see you improve!