How to Talk to Customers: Create a Great Impression Every Time with MAGIC®Diane Berenbaum & Tom Larkin
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007
I just finished reading this book while preparing for a customer-service training workshop. I appreciated the authors' concrete suggestions—based on 25 years of consulting work—to help empower front-line staff. Thanks to Becky Carroll from Customers Rock! for the helpful book referral.
The book is all about being proactive: making a choice to improve the situation and bringing the customer closer to a solution by collaborating with them. See what I wrote about the importance of being proactive here.
The acronym MAGIC stands for:
M - Make a connection: build the relationship
A - Act professionally: express confidence
G - Get to the heart of the matter: listen and ask questions
I - Inform and clarify what you will do
C - Close with the relationship in mind
They give specifics and examples for each step, and the book is loaded with stories of both “magic” and “tragic” interactions. While I don’t think the acronym works... without looking at the list I couldn’t tell you what the “G” stands for... overall this book is a great tool for front-line staff empowerment and training. The idea of creating magic for customers, however, is great and clearly works in all the examples.
The helpful exercises sprinkled throughout the book will be useful to anyone managing or training staff, especially in call centers. I especially liked this factoid:
A good personal telephone interaction has twenty times the impact of an ad both on customer opinion and referrals.
They also back up their recommendations with research studies they’ve found. Many people wrongly believe that call center staff should be short and to the point in order to be more efficient. But the authors cite a study that shows that expressing empathy shortens call center interactions, solves the problem faster, and leaves customers less likely to need to call back again to resolve their problem. Not to mention it provides great word-of-mouth advertising and increased customer loyalty.
As a side note, this book is beautifully designed and a nice, slightly unusual size, which increased my enjoyment of the reading experience. Definitely worth purchasing if you need a nuts-and-bolts training book.
