# How to engage in customer service

In general, the art of customer service is behaving like a nice person, even when other people are *not* behaving nicely.

- Working with customers is a generally unpleasant experience, proportionally to how little you know how to navigate interactions with complete strangers.
- There's a way to be polite with customers while also setting boundaries, but it requires using a [higher-context](culture.md) approach than they do.

The art of working with the public involves many small details of [tact](people-3_boundaries.md), but adds behaviors that make the consumer feel important.

- One rude clerk will completely offset *hundreds* of well-placed and well-framed [advertisements](marketing.md).
- Therefore, it's wise to over-invest into how everyone in an organization interacts with the public.

## Support systems

The quality of a customer's interaction starts with the information available to the workers.

- Once an organization is large enough that it has more than one site, it *must* have a written and centralized system.
- With computers, the easiest system for keeping track of customers is often as a [database](database.md) with employee-specific [permissions](computers-cysec-authentication.md).

There are two major ways to manage the customer's information:

1. Problem-focused - keeping it based on "cases", "tickets", or "events".
2. Customer-focused - basing the information on that individual.

Either way, information can fail to present itself to a worker:

1. Problem-focused creates challenges if there's a long-term relationship with the customer (i.e., where issues are resolved, then arise again with no knowledge of former issues).
   - This isn't usually an issue, but can make [break-fix](https://adequate.life/fix/) difficult.
2. Customer-focused can fail if an issue involves multiple people (i.e., it's not clear where to find the previous information).
   - While it's usually easier to resolve customer issues, they may feel unimportant if an issue corresponds to another person and they're not aware of it.

The solution is to make sure everyone links the non-automatic information:

- Most computer databases, by default, do *not* associate information across multiple database entries unless strictly told to do so.
- In problem-focused, link any prior issues associated with the customer.
- In customer-focused, link any associated people and entities with them.
- No matter what, everyone must make sure they leave sufficient [documentation](language-writing-documentation.md) about what happened, with a focus on how the past events may influence future interactions.

## Greeting

After ringing a doorbell, take a few steps backward to give distance.

Always greet them with a smile.

- Even over the phone, a smile will transfer intuitively through how your voice sounds.
- Alternately, in a high-speed professional position, greet them with an expression of minor overwhelm, followed by a pleasant disposition with them.

If everyone is busy, immediately inform the customer that someone will be with them soon.

## Conflicts

Most [conflict management skills](people-5_conflicts.md) that assert a win/win are *not* useful in most customer service capacities.

- While you often *might* have some authority as a manager, you're also facing competing interests with the organization that employs you.
- Before providing any solutions, let them throw their adult tantrum and run at least some of their energy out.

At some point, a customer may start becoming irate and make threats.

- Often, their threats are meaningless, but the types of people who cause lots of trouble are also more likely to post their information on [social media](networks-social.md).
- The best solution is to do what you can to help them within your power, then later confront any falsehoods they indicate on social media with clear facts about their alleged encounter, preferably with proof.

Avoid words that may provoke adverse feelings, such as "canceled", "declined", "failed", and "broken".

- Instead, use framing that uses the negation of a positive concept, such as "not in force anymore", "did not go through", and "isn't working anymore".

## Disengaging

At the end of a phone call, ask, "Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

## Recording

Whenever possible, stay [legally safe](legal-safety.md) by keeping a record of what was said, promised, and performed.