Beware of customer service phonies.
Nobody likes a phony.
Many customer service professionals are incredibly authentic. Their service is genuine because it comes from the heart.
Other customer service professionals are as fake as a $1,000,000 bill.
Some of these phonies are in leadership positions. They demand service greatness from their employees while treating these employees with contempt.
Other phonies are frontline employees. To them, customer service is just a job and not a calling. Quitting time can never come soon enough.
Still other phonies are talking heads. They blog, tweet, and train, filling their audience’s brains with disingenuous platitudes. These people talk a good game but rarely follow their own advice.
Authenticity matters in customer service.
Customers can hear it in your voice. The see it in your actions. They feel it in the way you treat them.
Genuine service professionals treat everyone as though they were an important customer. They listen. They’re warm and friendly. They follow through and do what they say they’re going to do.
Phonies operate as though there’s some sort of customer service switch. They flip it to service mode when a customer is near and plaster on their Cheshire Cat smile. But the truth comes out in their actions. They don’t listen. They’re not genuinely friendly. They definitely do not follow through and do what they say they’re going to do.
The odd part is the phonies can’t wait to tell you how great they are. Thanks to an odd phenomenon called the Dunning Kruger effect, they really believe it. Phonies like to perpetrate the myth that customer service is easy.
The authentic customer service pros would rather show you. And, secretly, they worry about being a phony. It’s one of those things that keeps them hungry to always do better.