Last fall, a flustered employee
came into Ann H. Durr’s office at Valley Savings Bank
asking for help with an aggravated customer. The president
of the 31-employee regional
bank had dealt with angry
patrons before, so she didn’t
panic when she found an agitated elderly woman demanding a
certificate of deposit for more
than $5,000. She simply
remained calm and listened.
After taking the customer into
her office and letting her vent,
Durr eventually got the information she needed to assess the
problem. The patron, it turns
out, had actually closed the
account in question during a
previous visit and was ultimately very apologetic.
To quell such customer service meltdowns, Durr says you
must avoid rash action and give
patrons a chance to express
their frustrations before suggesting solutions.
The philosophy is paying dividends at Valley Savings. The
bank recently celebrated its
85th anniversary and reported
total assets of $109 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Durr about how to wake up
from a customer service nightmare and how the 24-hour rule
can prevent you from making
bad decisions.
Listen to customers. I might be
listening to a customer, and
they are 25 percent of the way
through their story, and I’m
already thinking, ‘I know
where we should go with this.’
The thing you need to tell
yourself is, ‘Now, I’m going to
be a good listener. I’m going to
listen all the way through until
the customer is done, and then
we’re going to determine a
course of action.’
Sometimes, there is a course
of action, and sometimes,
there’s not. A customer may be
speaking to something that isn’t
going to change. Just the fact
that they can feel like their opinion has been heard is satisfying.
Do what you say you’re going to do. If you say, ‘Let me investigate
that; I’ll call you back,’ you call
them back. Or, if I have certain
policies and procedures that I
have implemented that I ask
my employees to follow, I’m
going to follow them, too.
Everybody’s watching when
I’m confronted with a situation
or just having a pleasant conversation with a customer —
whatever that looks like. So be
mindful. If you’re trying to
implement good customer service as a CEO, you have to be
mindful that everybody’s taking
notes of how you’re conducting
yourself on a daily basis.
We might have a customer
who is in the lobby, and
they’re difficult to deal with or
they’re frustrated. Everyone’s
becoming frustrated. I’m not
uncomfortable to go up there
myself to talk to the customer.
I like doing that because it
shows the employees and the
customer the value I personally put on customer service.
You’ve got to walk the line. If
you’re going to put certain
parameters out there for your employees to follow, as a
leader, if you can’t follow them
yourself, it’s not a very inspiring message.
[The benefit is] your employees have a sense of pride and
see your responsibility and
commitment and so do the
customers. What happens with
the customers is the greatest
of all — word-of-mouth. It’s
encouragement to their friends
and family to consider you for
their needs.
