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In providing customer service, the priorities of your organization should match the
priorities of your customers. At a minimum, you should be sure that you are
meeting customers’ basic needs.
Friendliness: Friendliness is the most basic of all customers needs, usually
associated with being greeted graciously and with a smile. We all want to
be acknowledged and welcomed by someone who is glad to see us. A
customer should never feel they are an intrusion on your work day.
Understanding and empathy: Customers need to feel that you understand and appreciate their
circumstances without criticism or judgment.
Fairness: We all need to feel we are being treated fairly. Customers may get annoyed and
defensive when they feel they are subject to unfair treatment.
Control: Control represents the customers’ need to feel they have an impact on the way things
turn out.
Options and alternatives: Customers need to feel that other avenues are available to getting
what they want accomplished. They realize that they may be in unchartered waters, and they
depend on us to be “in the know”.
Information: Customers need to be educated and informed about our products and services,
and they don’t want us leaving anything out!