Written by Offering great customer service while you’re trying to complete a job can be a home service tech’s worst nightmare. Not only do you need to determine and fix a problem, you need to do with a smile. Field service techs: here’s the best way to communicate with your customers while fixing their problems quickly and efficiently.
Tips to Choose the Right Words
Tone Matters
The tone of your voice needs to match the words coming out of your mouth. When your tone and word choice doesn’t match, you sound forced and fake. Conversely, if you’re not using your tone to convey a feeling, your customer might not believe you. Try using different tones of voice for different types of conversations. Happy conversations and good news should be delivered with a positive tone, while bad news should be conveyed with a regretful one.
Think Positive
Sometimes you can spin bad news into good news. If you think positive, your tone will reflect your feelings of happiness. If a job is going to take longer than anticipated, you can say, “It’s going to take another day to get the job done, but I’ll get it done right this time.”
The Best Words in Customer Service
Active & Affirmative Words
Customers want to know that you’re actively doing something to fix their problems. Try to use as many active and affirmative words as possible to convey this information. Telling a customer that you’re going to fix their pipes and that you want to fix their pipes are two different things.
Emotive Words
Use words that convey the appropriate emotion. If you’re delivering bad news, say you’re sorry to have to tell them this. If you’re giving good news, try saying, “I’m happy to report that the problem has been fixed.”
Empathetic Words
Empathy is all about telling customers that you understand their situation. Try to use phrases like, “I understand; one time I was in a similar situation.” Even if you’ve never been in a similar situation, you could say, “I understand why you are upset”, putting yourself in the homeowner’s perspective. The idea is that you want to emote to the homeowner that their reaction or rationale is completely understandable.
Great Words To Use in Customer Service
Field service technicians should turn to these active, affirmative, emotive and empathetic words when working with leads and customers:
- Definitely
- Surely
- Absolutely
- Gladly
- Certainly
- Fantastic
- Great
- Assure
- Understand
- Appreciate
- Happy
- Help
- Thank you
- Right
- Sorry
- Hear
- Yes
- Pleasure
- You
- Quickly
- Right Away
- I will
- Please
- Realize
Techs – from your experience, what words work best when working with homeowners? Share it with us in the comments section below!
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Last modified: April 5, 2018
