“Customer service is a critical element of services marketing. In services companies, customer-contact employees serve as the face of the company to the consumer. Therefore, it is reasonable for these companies to mandate that customer-contact employees act “happy” when they are on the job as this is what they are hired to do”.
Rather than saying that customer service employees should act happy because the management requires them to be, it would have been better to motivate the employees to be empathetic. Internal marketing means the services company must keep their employees to be motivated to be customer oriented. The quality of buyer-selling interaction determines the success of the transactions and ultimately of the business. The notion of being happy in front of the customer is a critical attitude that companies would want their customer service employees to demonstrate all the time. This is for the reason that companies would like position the brand as customer centered and for such the management mandates the employees to always act happy. Such policy can mandate on the grounds that it should be imposed as an official company policy so that employees are made aware of the policy before they get even started on the job (entrepreneur.com).
However, being happy all the time may not be advisable as the customer service employees’ attitude should be flexible and always relative to the customer’s situation. It looks very awkward to see a customer service representative acting happy in front of a very frustrated customer; the notion of acting happy should be demonstrated depending on the situation (Hiladio). The most important attitude that should be mandated is being empathetic. In situations where the customers are not satisfied about the service provided by the company, the first thing that the customer service representative needs to do is to show empathy and be apologetic with utmost sincerity. The promise of resolving any customer issues should solely rely on acting happy, but a sincere display of enthusiasm on the part of customer service representatives. Acting happy in front of a frustrated customer might send a different message and may result to the problem escalating to the point that the customer bringing their business somewhere else.
Works Cited
Entrepreneur.com. "30 Ways to Show Your Customers They're Always Right .com." Entrepreneur. entrepreneur.com, 2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2014. <http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/65768>.
Hiladio, Mary. "Happy Bosses + Happy Employees = More Profits : American Business Magazine." American Business Magazine. americanbusinessmag.com, 4 Oct. 2013. Web. 5 Mar. 2014. <http://www.americanbusinessmag.com/2013/10/happy-bosses-plus-happy-employees-equal-more-profits/>.
