Customer service should be easy, shouldn’t it? It’s just common sense, right?

But there are many different interpretations of what constitutes common sense – my common sense might not be yours and vice versa.

Take an example that we will all have been through or seen at some point of a young child throwing a tantrum in a public. There are lots of books and experts that will tell you what a parent should do if this happens.. but which one do you follow? Walk away? Get down on the floor with them? Pick them up and hold them till they stop? Give in so they stop embarrassing you?

While all of these methods will have a sound rationale behind them the most important thing you need to do is know how this child responds and what will most effectively stop the tantrum while maintaining boundaries. It’s the same with customer service. Not every customer will react one way, sometimes you just need to band-aid the situation and sometimes you need to be a little flexible.

With that in mind, help your staff to help your customers and therefore you:

1. Clearly define outputs – what does “finished” look like? Usually along the lines of a satisfied customer.

2. Clearly define expected behaviours – what you should and shouldn’t say to a customer.

3. Allow staff a little discretion – give them a little leeway for the individual touch.

Now, think about in this social media terms… if you phone a call centre, there is every chance that the person you are talking to is being treated like a drone and they’ve been given a script to work from. If you Tweet and someone replies from the company in question, how many companies have got as far as preparing social media scripts. Not many I would bet and also hope – the promise of social media is to remain human.

So, what companies need to be thinking about for making this stuff work in Twitter or Facebook (yes Nestle, I’m looking at you) is to make sure there are savvy staff in place that have been well trained and briefed. If you are a company and you want to make this work, stop reducing customer service to the lowest common denominator or treating it as a cost centre.

Tell your staff clearly what finished looks like, what behaviours are expected of them and then let them go. It’s easy, it’s just common sense…

Anyone who has ever hired or managed staff will tell you that common sense is a rare commodity – where do you get your supply?