Harvard Business School social psychologist professor Amy Cuddy says people judge you based on 2 criteria when they first meet you:

* Can I trust this person?

* Can I respect this person?

Psychologists refer to these dimensions as trustworthiness and competence respectively, and ideally you want to be perceived as having both. Interestingly, most people, especially in a professional context, believe that competence is the more important factor. After all, they want to prove that they are smart and talented enough to handle your business. But in fact trustworthiness is the most important factor in how people evaluate you.

While competence is highly valued, it is evaluated only after trust is established. And focusing too much on displaying your strength can backfire.

This may sound simple, but problems with customers recurrently begin with simple misunderstandings on either or both sides.

Make sure you fully understand what the customer's complaint is, and really listen to the complaint entirely.

Don't interrupt, think defensively, or break in impatiently – the answer may be a lot simpler than it seems at first.

“Don’t judge me by my successes, judge me by the number of times I fell down and got back up again.” 

Nelson Mandela

It takes 64 seconds to retrieve your train of thought after an interruption by an e-mail. (T. Jackson, PhD, Loughborough University)

That means if you check your inbox every 5 minutes, you waste 8.5 hours a week.

Try intervals of 45 minutes, and turn off the "new email" pop-up alert.

Learning something new requires effort, time and is often frustrating. Once we get good enough, it's easy to get in the habit of giving a half effort, being happy with the Status Quo, shrugging our shoulders and moving on.

The professional in us that was once eager to find tools that added value becomes content with the 'good enough'. And that is how by avoiding the time and frustration required to learn a new tool or a new skill, we forget about all the time and frustration we will encounter down the road.

Sometimes we lose sight of how much of a difference one person can make when it comes to customer service – in good ways and in bad.

You can be that strong link – that person that resolves the issue, regains the trust, and saves the relationship.

Or, you can be that weak link – The one that promised and didn’t deliver, the one that thought no one was listening or watching, the one that finds excuses.

Customer service is a chain, and a chain is as strong as its weakest link… it only takes one for the chain to break.

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."

Thomas Jefferson                                                                                          

Behavioral scientists have found that about two to four feet (0.6 to 2 metres) is the accepted amount of personal space most North Americans need to feel comfortable; in Latin America and the Middle East that distance can shrink to less than a foot or two (0,3 to 0,6 metres).

Be aware of this cultural difference with yourself, your customers, and your colleagues.

Ultradian rhythms are the cycles of activity and rest that alternate during the day. Many of the functions of your body and brain are set for performance in cycles of roughly 90 minutes each.

Every 90 minutes, we need to take a mental break because otherwise our concentration, attention, motivation, memory and learning ability of the task at hand start fading.

The initial moments of an interaction can set the tone for the rest of the encounter.

Make sure that you create a positive, professional and trusting impression the moment you greet your customer.

An acquaintance of the great philosopher Socrates came one day to tell him what he had just heard about a friend.

Before allowing him to tell his story, he made him pass a test, the one of the three sieves.

- Before you tell me your story, said Socrates, let’s try to filter it:

The First Sieve is the Sieve of Truth. Is it true?

The Second Sieve is the Sieve of Kindness. Is it kind?

The Third Sieve is the Sieve of Usefulness. Is it useful?

The acquaintance answered “no” to all three questions.

–Then, concluded Socrates, if what you have to tell me is neither true, or kind or useful, why bother telling me at all?

Be careful and be kind before you tell stories about your colleagues or superiors. It’s worth taking the time to filter what we wish to say. Avoid hallway noise and toxic rumours, since we are all responsible, on a day- to-day basis, of our workplace atmosphere.

Do you want to be an active, effective team member and earn respect from your coworkers and your bosses?  Here are two things you have to do:

1. Be good at what you do

If you want respect for what you do, you have to be good at what you do. Find a niche where you can become The best, then be an insatiable student and become an expert.

2. Be a go-to person

Be the person that people turn to when they are looking for help. Be honest, walk your talk, and make a point to be interested about the people around you.

In Quebec, we have BIG winters! We get ready for the snow and cold. We take out our coats, our scarves, our mittens and our boots. We also take out our shovels, we change the tires on our car and we buy the salt to melt the ice.

We know that we can’t change this reality and the general attitude of Quebeckers is simply to get ready to face it. Without drama, without resistance, without hyperventilating. We take ownership of it the best we can, while daydreaming of summer days and imagining ourselves living in the Bahamas!

This is what happens for most problematic situations. When we prepare ourselves and we get used to them, they don’t represent a problem anymore. They simply represent reality.

Statements such as "I just work here”, "It’s not my responsibility" or "I’m just following orders" are the worst kind of ethical excuses since work ethic is a value based on hard work and diligence.

People with a strong work ethic feel personally responsible for their job performance and care about the quality of their work.

Patience is not only a virtue; it is a necessary skill in order to deliver excellent service.

If you deal with customers on a daily basis, be sure to stay patient when they come to you confused or frustrated. Be sure to take the time to truly figure out what they want, to understand their problems and needs.

But patience shouldn't be used as an excuse for apathetic service either.

“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them — work, family, health, friends and spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls — family, health, friends, and spirit — are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.” ―Brian Dyson, former vice chairman and COO of Coca-Cola

When we want to influence, we absolutely should not be using strategies to deceive others because, in the long run, it hurts our reputation. We must profit from influence strategies with the perspective of a positive use.
Influence is a matter of human relationships. The more you have influence and the more your relationships are solid, the more you’ll be able to bring people to collaborate. At the closing of a negotiation, if influence has been used, there will definitely be two winners.

Feedback shouldn’t be a judgement on personality. It should be an objective message on behavior and its consequences – be it on a job well done or a suggestion on the way to improve it.
The objective of giving feedback is to encourage the receiver to go forth by learning, growing and changing not what he is but what he does. 

It’s easy and natural to want to tell a customer they are wrong in what they are saying. However, this won’t help you in your efforts to diffuse a customer from getting more upset while sharing a complaint.

Put your ego aside and instead of challenging their complaint, listen to what they are saying, then just as calmly reply by telling them what you have to say.

When feeling overwhelmed, it’s tempting to respond by working harder. But humans are "cyclical" so working more doesn’t just make you miserable, it makes for worse work too.

First, give yourself permission to ease up. Don’t add unnecessary pressure by trying to "motivate yourself", which really just means beating yourself up for feeling bad.

Second, respond correctly by taking productive action and focus on pacing yourself. Re-introduce rhythm to your routine, start small, one action at a time.

If customers get angry or start yelling, employ calming techniques to defuse the situation. Keeping your tone of voice even can compel someone who's screaming to lower their voice.

When customers go off on tangents or are indecisive, bring them back to the issue at hand by asking pertinent questions.

Knowing how to identify and handle difficult consumers can help you turn a negative situation into an opportunity to build a stronger relationship.

If speaking in public causes you anxiety and concern, make an effort to stop thinking about yourself, your nervousness, and your fear.

Instead, focus on your audience: what you're saying is "about them." Remember that you're trying to help them in some way, and your message is more important than your fear.

Concentrate on your audience's wants and needs, instead of your own.

It's just about impossible to convince a customer that he's wrong. To argue until the customer says, "I was wrong and I will change my mind." It is more effective to help the customer make a new decision, based on new options and a new perspective.

When decisions aren’t made, procrastination kicks in, nothing gets done and time is wasted. Avoidance uses up more time than actually making the decision. When something needs to be decided or done, just do it.

Diversity is much broader than ethnicity, race or gender. Diversity is otherness or those human qualities that are different from our own and outside the groups to which we belong, yet present in other individuals and groups.

It’s the variety of experiences and perspective which arise from differences in race, culture, religion, mental or physical abilities, heritage, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation,  … without excluding…  diversity of thought!

Stress makes your body release out two hormones: cortisol and adrenaline. These chemicals put your body into fight-or-flight mode, ratcheting up your energy level and causing your heart to pound and your muscles to tense. Exercise gives you an outlet to release some of that tension (instead of taking it out on your customer or your colleague)  and increases your levels of "Feel-good" chemicals called endorphins.

So why don’t you make yourself (and everyone else) a favor and go for a walk on your lunch hour today!

John never includes the proper documentation when submitting his requests to accounting. Sam at shipping never answers the phone from customer service reps who are dealing with unhappy clients about not getting their delivery. Diana never pitches in to help when her coworkers are overloaded.

Undoubtedly the most neglected aspect of customer service is internal customer service. It's unfortunate, because it plays a crucial role in an organization's ability to deliver outstanding service to its external customers.

“There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.”

― Peter F. Drucker

To work together successfully, team members must demonstrate a sense of cohesion. Cohesion emerges as team members exhibit the following skills:

Openness

Trust and self-disclosure

Support

Respect

Besides knowing how to develop a healthy group climate, team members also need to know how to function so that they are productive and accomplish their tasks effectively. An effective process will emerge as team members exhibit these skills:

Individual responsibility and accountability

Constructive Feedback

Problem solving

Management and organization

Knowledge of roles

For a team to function effectively, team members must attend to both the climate and the process.

They ask you to give a presentation to your customers, peers or superiors because you have the knowledge in the subject; you do it every day, you master it and you are known to be the one …
the expert in the attic!

You give your presentation and you realize that you are not reaching your audience. You are hiding behind your expertise and none of it means anything. You are giving a long one-sided conversation.
You are just giving a monologue.

Great presentations don't come out of nowhere. It requires preparation, refinement, revision, practice … and the skill to interact with the people you seek to change.