Adapting Your Approach to Different Customers

In order to be able to build the best help desk tool for my clients, I need to understand how they’ll be using it, the customer service questions they’ll face, and the emotional situations they may encounter. I also need to make sure I myself am providing great customer service to HelpSpot’s clients.

So I’m constantly studying how we all can better serve our customers.

This weekend I read, “How To Put Some Emotional Intelligence Into Your Customer Service Scripts,” contributed to Forbes by Mark Murphy of Leadership IQ.

It starts off with an interesting premise:

“Research tells us there are six basic things most customers want: individuality, understanding, kindness, to be their ideal selves, transparency and truth. The trick is that while most customers share these six wants, they don’t all want to receive them in the same way.”

I certainly know that to be true, and I appreciated the quick reminder that though they may share the same goals, customers vary in how they need to be approached.

Mark Murphy’s blog goes on to describe how you can adapt your customer service scripts to be appropriate for each individual customer, as well as how to avoid some common pitfalls (like not always defaulting to asking how the customer is, when you know they’re calling because they have an urgent technical problem – you know already, they’re frustrated).

It’s a good quick read; I recommend it.