How to give great customer service: The L.A.S.T. method

Do you work in customer service? What do you do when your customer has a problem? In this video, I will teach you how to give great customer service. You will learn many polite expressions you can use with your customers. I will explain the Listen, Apologize, Solve, and Thank (L.A.S.T) method, which will help your performance at any customer service job. I'll also give you my customer service tips for dealing with an angry customer. After this video, watch Rebecca's video about phone customer service: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBSrZYXkkyE

Take the quiz at http://www.engvid.com/how-to-give-great-customer-service-the-last-method/

TRANSCRIPT

Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's video I am going to teach you a very, very important thing for customer service. I used to work in customer service, and this is actually one of the most important things I learned, and this is called the L-A-S-T or LAST approach.

So, to get started, let's talk a little bit about: What is customer service? So, customer service is when you have customers, of course, and you're trying to make your customers as comfortable and happy as possible. You're also trying to meet their needs and expectations, and solve any problems or situations that they might have. So, customer service is a huge category. There's many, many different jobs where you use customer service. If you work in a hotel, for example, as a clerk, you know, in the lobby, as a bellhop, you will be using customer service. If you work at a restaurant as a server, you'll be using customer service, or as a hostess. If you're the manager of a store, you'll be using customer service. If you work in a business or even in a hospital, you'll be using customer service. So, pretty much any time you're dealing with people from the public and they're customers and you're trying to help them, you're doing customer service.

So, there are many different problems that a customer might have. What are some examples of some problems? Can you think of anything, a problem a customer might have? Maybe somebody charged them too much for something, maybe they're in a store and the lineups are too long, maybe a customer is at a hotel and they're very unhappy because the Wi-Fi isn't working or their bed's uncomfortable. So, there's so many different problems customers might have at different types of businesses.

In this video what I'm going to teach you is: What do you do when a customer has a problem? Okay? So, a very easy thing to do when a customer has a problem is called the LAST approach. "LAST", what does it stand for? Well, if a customer has a problem, the first thing you should do is listen to their problem, the next thing you should do is apologize, solve their problem, and thank them. So: Listen, Apologize, Solve, and Thank. We're going to look at expressions we use to show we're listening, expressions to apologize, expressions that can help us solve problems, and expressions to thank customers.

Okay, so the first step when a customer has a problem is to listen. So, the first thing you should do is find out what the problem is. You can ask them: "What seems to be the problem?" or "How can I help you?" Okay? Once they start explaining what the problem is, very important that you look like you're actually listening and that you do listen. Okay? So, you shouldn't look at your watch: "Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm." Okay? That's a bad idea. You shouldn't look at the sky: "Uh, when is this person going to stop talking?" Okay? You shouldn't roll your eyes. Okay? No, no, no. You need to show that you actually care about what the customer is saying.

So, showing you're listening is very important. You can repeat back to the customer what they're saying to show that you understand and to make sure that you did understand. So: "So what you're saying is, you know, there's no hot water in this hotel.", "So what you're saying is the Wi-Fi's not working and you're not happy with that." Okay? These are some examples. "So what you're saying is _________." You can also say: "Let me get this right..." "Let me get this right, what you're saying is that, you know, there's a problem at your table.", "What you're saying is that you've been waiting for your food for a really long time." So it's important to show that you are listening and you acknowledge what they have said.

Okay. Now, sometimes with customer service you get a customer who's very angry, and maybe they start swearing, they start using very bad language. Okay? So if this happens, very important that you don't get upset. Okay? When this happened to me in the past, I would actually pretend to be a computer. I would not take anything personally. I would just smile and pretend to be a computer, and that's how I got through angry customers. So, if the person is rude... You know, it's not right if somebody is saying something rude to you, if they're swearing at you, or they're making you feel uncomfortable. So, be polite. Okay?