The reality is that career growth is all about professional differentiation. This means you stepping out of the queue, differentiating yourself from the ordinary. No one is honestly going to admire you if you have precisely the same characteristics as them – if you have nothing more to offer than they do. If they admire you in such a context, it is artificial – it is sycophancy.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that being “nice” and “okay” takes you through your career (in terms of career growth) at bicycle speed while being “strange” and “unique” takes you through at jet speed. Understandably, you can’t drive through a crowded road at full speed. This is why you need to come out on your personal lane and drive up your career at breakneck speed. This is what personal branding is more about.

You have to establish a characteristic novelty as emblazoned in your personal brand. According to Michael Brown (author of the Fresh Passion: Get a Brand or Die Generic) personal brands that work best in typifying the individual are those which pour in fresh solutions. You must be able to drive uncommon results even in the most unsupportive circumstances. You must have that knack for “delicious weirdness” and an urge for adventuring beyond the perimeters of the normal – for doing the extraordinary! This is the only way to beat the abundance of genericness loitering around. This Michael Brown emphatically explained in his Fresh Passion book.

To make it more practical, you can learn from a story sourced from the book Fresh Passion: Get a Brand or Die Generic. It is about Michael Brown himself. By the age of 15 when other kids were bubbling away in the exuberance customary to the teenage phase of life, Michael was already in the act of creating a personal brand – giving uncommon value to customers.  He was already peddling sweets and candy and strategically grew my fragile business from one of $40 a day to about $300 – $400 a day. This was by delivering exponential results to his customers – even more than they could get from the concession stand.

Now after synthesizing your personal brand, you still have to sell it. This is the phase of self-promotion. As Michael Brown put in his book Fresh Passion – Get a brand or Die Generic, “self-promotion is an art, not a science”. Here you have got to craft the interpersonal skills of evangelizing your brand and winning “souls” for your brand in terms of admirers. More especially these admirers best serve your upward growth if they are your superiors. According to Michael Brown, it is not really the best shinning your light from a “static candlestick”. Rather be mobile, move around and let the people that matter see your value. This is about building a nourishing network and selling your exponential value around.

Watch it here, this doesn’t say you should be an over-aggressive salesperson. Make contacts intelligently, expand your reach and your professional territories. As Michael put it in his book, nobody will hire you if they don’t know you in the first place. In most cases, you have to meet them. This is kind of nomadic self-marketing. But most especially, you must proffer fresh solutions – show them what you have got, that they have not got on their team. If you can successfully pitch your uncommonness to them such that such uniqueness possesses high economic value, you are hired!

Good products or services and excellent customer service are the ingredients for a successful business. While you may easily locate your satisfied customers and know that you are providing amazing customer service, tracking unhappy customers can be difficult. This is because most customers who find your customer service poor and unprofessional, usually back-off without providing feedback.

The following are indicators that you should focus on improving your customer service:

1. Customers leave your company

Poor customer service is a danger to your business; not only because you lose existing customers, but also because you lose some potential clients. Customers, whether or not they provide you feedback, give feedback to their friends, family and acquaintances about a company’s service. A happy customer guarantees more customers in the future, as well as a dissatisfied customer means fewer.

Keep an eye on how many customers are leaving your company. If you see an increase; poor customer service could be the reason.

2. Too few complaints

Too few complaints do not always mean you are providing excellent customer service. For many people, it is easier not to complain than it is to share your concern or resolve a problem. If you are not receiving many complaints, you could be doing great. However, you could also have underlying issues that customers are not willing to put effort into resolving.

Rather it should be taken as a wake-up call that your CSRs are not performing their job well. Because most of the customers when faced with poor customer service, simply back-off without giving their feedback.

3. Long waiting time

Nobody likes waiting in a queue, whether on the phone or in a physical line. Customers want to get in touch with a customer sales representative as soon as they can, and with as few obstacles as possible. If your customers have to wait long, you should find out why, and try to minimize the wait times. This may mean customer service training, hiring more staff, or developing more resources.

4. Customers not given complete information

If customer service representatives do not provide complete information about a product or service, then customers may find problems in the future. If you want to build a long-term relationship with customers, you need to make sure that your customer service representatives provide all necessary information. Information can be product features, service information, total cost, and additional costs.

5. Decreasing referrals

Asking your new customers ‘how did they find out about your company’ is important to see if your customers are happy and satisfied. Bad customer service annoys customers who in return complain about your company, resulting in a decrease in referrals. If you do not receive customers through referral, you may want to reach out to your customers.

6. Customer service representatives do not have the knowledge or skills

If your customer service representatives do not have complete knowledge about the product or service they are selling or if they do not have the power to resolve customer complaints, then they have to refer the customers to other employees. This lack of information is annoying to customers, but more so means your employees lack necessary skills.

6.5 Get rid of those who are not willing to improve

Everyone makes mistakes, and it’s perfectly okay to do so as long as you learn from them. But if employees are not ready to learn from mistakes and not willing to improve, then you may have to consider replacement. While terminating current staff should occur only after exhausting all other improvement steps, sometimes it is needed for the benefit of both the employee and the company.

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Research shows that contrary to a happy customer who will tell only two to three people about their good experience; a dissatisfied customer will tell at least eight to ten people about his or her bad experience. This disparity shows how much just one displeased customer can negatively impact your reputation. It also shows the importance of providing quality customer service to your customers. The following are ways to improve and maintain good customer service, and avoid down-grading your service and company reputation.

1. First impression is the last impression

This adage is foremost true in customer service. If a customer does not have a good first impression, the customer will leave with a bad impression of your company. Examples where customers may find a poor first impression:

• Customer service rep (CSR) had a poor interaction with customer
• A customer’s questions were not answered
• CSR did not have good knowledge of product or service
• Customer had to wait too long
• Website is not user-friendly

2. Treat your customers the way you want to be treated

The golden rule equally refers to business as it does your personal life. Think how you would feel if you, as a customer, are not treated well. Likely you will be upset and frustrated. Even more likely you will end up telling a friend or colleague about your bad experience. If you think as if you are the customer, you have a better opportunity to provide customers with a great first impression.

3. Keep your promises

Broken promises lead to lost trust and ruined relationships. This is also true with customer service. Cancelling appointments or not responding to customers’ concerns can damage your customer relationship. What many people don’t realize is that poor communication is rampant in customer service. If you are one of the few who can deliver timely communication you will stand out against your competitors.

4. Be all ears

Customers are likely to get satisfied if a CSR listens to his needs or problems and then come up with a solution. Same goes with angry customers. Make sure your CSRs listen attentively to whatever the customer has to say before making suggestions or selling a product or service.

5. Don’t stop at ‘I don’t know’

It is likely most people in your company don’t know everything. This is okay. It is also okay to say, “I don’t know.” However, don’t stop there. If you don’t know the answer, the real key to good customer services is going out of the way to find out the answer. Providing a timeline to the customer for when you will follow-up will show the customer that you didn’t blow them off and builds a level of trust.

6. Empower your frontline staff

Customers get angry when they hear a CSR say he can’t do anything regarding their problems. Mostly, this happens because a CSR does not have the power to make decisions and has to ask senior management. Make sure you empower your frontline staff enough to resolve customers’ complaints. At the same time, you must establish boundaries and escalation procedures for more complicated matters.

6.5 Organize frequent training sessions

Many companies provide an abundance of front-end training, yet do not train consistently as the employee develops in the company. Providing regular training and customer feedback to your CSRs will help your team grow and develop in a positive way.

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Businesses today are more than just sales and profits. They are about building strong relationships with your customers and putting in every effort to retain them. In today’s world, customer service has to be pitch-perfect if the goal is to establish strong relationships with customers. Developing a strong customers service team, you need to be efficient and better than your competition. If customer feedback is an up and down road for your company, this may be an indicator that your customer service needs a tweak or major overhaul.

1. Customer calls

Just because a customer calls with a concern doesn’t mean you are providing bad customer service. In fact, customers who call are doing so because they trust your customer service can help. However, if your customer service is poor when a customer calls, or your company does not respond to fix the problem you may find yourself in catch-up mode to provide a good customer experience.

2. Discounts and promotional offers aren’t bringing in more sales

If your promotional sales and discounts go unnoticed or unused, it’s a red flag that there may be something wrong with your product. Such disengagement from your customers toward your product or service must be resolved if you wish to retain your existing clientele.

3. You have a difficult time retaining customers

Losing a loyal customer is more than just losing sales. It’s about losing someone who initially trusted and chose you to facilitate them. A loyal customer is one who was confident in providing quality feedback. If you fail to retain loyal customers, you are losing more than you think.

4. Your employees aren’t trained for the job

If your first-contact staff isn’t well trained or empowered to handle basic concerns, your customer service may have problematic holes. Customers don’t enjoy explaining their concern to multiple customer service employees. Unless you wish to hand your customers to your competitors, take the time to train your employees.

5. You hardly get any referrals

A wise man once said, “Satisfied customers buy from you, but delighted customers sell for you.” If your existing customers aren’t satisfied with your services, they will not only stop buying from you but also stop others from doing so. Customer referral is a sole indicator which clearly depicts where a business stands regarding customer satisfaction.

6. Your ignorance isn’t bliss

Another sign that your customer service is in need of help is when you are ignoring what the customers want and instead pressuring them to try more services and products. Not only does this agitate your customer, but it also mentally prepares him never to reach out to you again. If someone is in need, give them what they want even if it is a refund or cancellation.

6.5 There aren’t enough complaints against you

At first glance, it may seem like a good sign that your phone isn’t always buzzing with complaints – suggesting your product or services satisfy your customers. But that is not always the case. While many customers do complain, many more don’t, resulting in customers walking away without you realizing there is a problem. Validating customer experiences through follow-up calls and feedback requests are a great way to stay on top of underlying issues customers aren’t reporting.

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