The Importance of Customer Service
January 27th, 2010 |
Customer service is an essential part of any business. I have been working in customer service since I first started working at the tender age of 16 in one way or another. I understand that as a business, making the customer/client happy is important to my bottom line. I currently hold two positions in which this statement is true. By day and during the week I work as an administrative assistant for a property manager. On the weekends and sometimes in the evenings I am a trumpet player in an all-female mariachi ensemble.
As an assistant in the property management business, I see the need to make not only the property owners (the client) happy, we also need to keep the tenant (customer) happy. This is a fine and narrow line to walk. It is our fiduciary responsibility to do what is best for our client, the property owner. They are the ones who entrust, us, the property management company with maintaining and protecting their home or property. They also entrust us to collect and properly distribute the income from those properties. It is our responsibility to find good tenants and to keep them.
On the other hand without a tenant to pay rent the property becomes a burden to our client. In turn we also have to keep the tenant happy to insure that we keep a good and paying tenant in that property. Sometimes this means making certain concessions to the tenant on behalf of the property owner. This is where good customer service skills become essential. In the end we all need each other in some way, so it becomes our responsibility to keep that balance of customer/ client relationship.
This becomes the case in mariachi business as well. Depending who the client is it is our responsibility to keep them happy. In mariachi the approach is somewhat different. A song and dance may not be appropriate in the property management business but is what is expected in mariachi business. Our customer/clients pay us to entertain. For example, in my current situation the client is a well established restaurant. Our customers are the diners in said restaurant. Sometimes it is hard to balance out what may be a disgruntled diner upset about the “noise” in the restaurant to the family celebrating a birthday requesting La Bamba for the fifth time. The trick here is good customer service. A smile and acknowledgment of the disgruntled diners discomfort can go a long way.
This is how we show good customer service. Showing the disgruntled person that you are actively working with them to solve what ever problem they may have is what matters the most. But we must remember there is only so much we can do to make the client/customer happy and sometimes we just have to take the hit. However, in the long run, great customer service can take you far.
Leonor Norzagaray has been playing the trumpet for over 20 years and has recently started working in the Property Management business. She is working toward her Real Estate License but currently works as an Administrative Assistant at Century 21 1st American. She also works with Mariachi Pasion, an all-female mariachi ensemble based out of Tempe, AZ.
http://www.realestaterangers.com
http://www.mariachipasion.com
