Connecting rapport to outstanding service

- Building rapport with the people you serve is one of the most essential skills in customer service. This involves creating a personal connection with the other person and hopefully getting them to know and like you. After watching this video, you'll be able to recognize the benefits of creating rapport. Think about your favorite places to be a customer. Perhaps it's your hair salon or barbershop, maybe it's a coffee shop, a local hardware store, or the hotel where you spent your last vacation. How do employees make you feel whenever you go there? How do they make you feel comfortable and welcome? My favorite restaurant is a good example. Employees greet my wife and I with enthusiasm and call us by name. Our server always spends a few minutes with us chatting and servers from other sections even come over to say hello. We even say hi to the chef when we're seated near the kitchen. It's no wonder we go there a lot. They have great food, but more importantly, we always leave feeling incredible. That's the power of rapport. Rapport helps break down barriers between you and your customer and makes everyone feel more comfortable. It can make serving someone feel less like a job and more like helping out a friend. Let's look at some of the benefits of building rapport with your customers. Customers are more trusting and willing to listen to your advice when they feel comfortable working with you. Customers tend to be more loyal when you establish rapport. Rapport also helps customers become more forgiving and mistakes because they like you and they want you to succeed. Now there is one caveat. Rapport must feel authentic to really make a difference. Customers can often tell when someone is just going through the motions without putting in the effort to make a genuine connection. I once went into a smoothie shop to order a drink. It was slow at the time and I was the only customer with three employees. One employee took my order and another employee made my drink. The third employee approached me as I was about to leave and handed me a survey invitation. "Hi," he said, "My name is Jacob. Would you mind filling out this survey? I've written my name on the survey so you can be sure to mention me by name." Of course, the only service Jacob provided was asking me to mention him in a survey. He made no effort to disguise the fact that he wasn't really interested in me as a customer. Rapport doesn't work well when it's obviously fake. Now, every situation is unique so the opportunities you have to build rapport with your customers may be completely different than mine. Perhaps you only interact with each customer for a brief moment, or maybe you have the opportunity to get to know your customers over a long period of time. Take some time to list some situations where you can authentically build rapport with your customers. I've created a downloadable rapport situations worksheet to help identify some ways that work for you.