The Holistic Approach to Customer Service

6 min

Don’t rush through your day.

Take a larger view of customer service.

Taking a holistic view of customer service involves building patience, prioritizing tasks, managing your time, and using a consistent framework to deal with customer service request.

If you take ownership of customer service, your time at work will improve in the following ways:

You’ll have better relationships with customers

Often, the customer service provider and the customer feel like they are at odds with each other. But when you prioritize and are patient with your best customers, you both join the same team. You can communicate and work toward solutions that help you both.

For example: the customer wants a refund, and the customer service provider doesn’t want to (or cannot) give it to them. If you’re just trying to churn through customers, you and the customer will just be at odds.

But if you listen to the customer, you might find that while you can’t give the customer a refund, you can discount their next purchase and replace their item. After providing them with that solution, if there’s a problem in the future with that same customer, it’ll be easier to solve.

You’ll be able to work more easily with your coworkers 

If you know what requests are truly impactful, and don’t feel like you have to rush to fulfill them, you can communicate that to your coworkers.

And because of that, they won’t feel like you’re demanding unreasonable things of them.

For example, you might find yourself requesting that a customer get their cable service turned back on ASAP. If that customer is high-priority, and if you've managed your time well and asked with plenty of lead time, the request will seem reasonable to your coworkers.

You’ll enjoy work more

When you know what a customer needs, when you do what’s important instead of handling things when they come in, and when you have more time in your day, you enjoy your work more.

You spend less time dreading calls from “difficult” customers and more time collaborating with your team. You help customers and make their lives easier. And the next time you interact with a customer you helped in the past, you’ll feel proud and satisfied with your work.


Time for a quiz.

Calvin, a customer service representative at a printing company, has been struggling with his work lately. Which of these parts of his job will be improved by taking a holistic view of customer service?

Quiz 1 of 1

Which of these parts of Calvin’s job will be improved by taking a holistic view of customer service?

a
He’ll be able to have more productive conversations with the hospital that gives his company a lot of business.
b
He will impress his manager and start making more money.
c
He’ll understand how different departments in his company work together with customer service.
d
He’ll be able to handle every customer issue perfectly, and never have another unhappy customer.

The correct answer is A: He’ll be able to have more productive conversations with the hospital that gives his company a lot of business.

Knowing which customers are important (prioritizing) and being patient with them will help Calvin improve relationships with them.

Consider this:

What is your current view of customer service? Is it about getting through tickets or issues, or is it focused on the customer? If it was more focused on the customer, how would your everyday life be better?

The Holistic Approach to Customer
Video Transcript

Lesson complete