Creative customer service wins every time.

We’re told all the time to ‘think outside the box’.  In school it meant looking at a passage in a book to see the symbolism; that the words were more than mere words.  In the call center it means something as simple as creatively solving a customer’s problems.  I recently tried to book a summer vacation house and after tireless research and dead-ends I called the Board of Tourism.  There I spoke with a lovely woman that gave me countless phone numbers to try, web sites to further my research and even offered to call some of her contacts in the area to see if they could assist me.  I was blown away at her resourcefulness and willingness to help.  She called me back the very next day with vacation packages and pricing as well as the personal phone numbers of her contacts.  Too often agents lose that can-do, problem solving spirit.  Here are some recent customer comments from External Quality Monitoring programs:

“I called about a service issue recently and your agent not only was able to successfully troubleshoot the problem over the phone, but the agent gave me his direct line to call him back any time.  Great service!”

“When my package went missing I called to try and figure out what happened.  Your agent spent an hour on the phone with me tracking down the package, radioing the driver and even stayed with me on the phone until she had confirmed that the package was on its way to me.  It was delivered the very next day!”

“I called today to cancel my account after ten years with you.  Peter asked me about my issue and then proceeded to help me change the type of account I had to better fit my current situation.  Not only am I not closing my account, but I see no reason why I won’t be a customer for life.  I am really happy to not have to leave!”