Page 95 - The Apple Experience

Customer service associates need to put on their party hats and treat their
next busy shifts like they are hosting a get-together in their home, to ensure

their customers feel welcomed and satisfied when they leave. More times

than not, though, associates freeze up when too many customers show up at

the same time. The common response is no response. Vanessa recalled a

recent visit to a large home improvement store where she stood with an

inquiring expression near an associate who was talking with another customer

for more than ten minutes before he acknowledged that she was waiting for
help! (She would have sought another associate for help had there been one

around.) Would you wait ten minutes to greet one of your party arrivals? Not

if you’re a good host.

Three Steps to a Happier Customer

Some people are simply better at multitasking than others, but it is a skill

that can be acquired and, in the real world, employers may not have the

luxury to screen for customer service reps who are multitasking superstars. In

her role as a tasting room manager, Vanessa quickly learned that if her

employees were skilled at multitasking, customer satisfaction would rise, sales

would go up, and bonuses would be bigger! Needless to say, it didn’t take the

tasting room team long to buy in. The system that Vanessa developed, based

on fundamental psychological principles of human behavior, is similar to the
Apple experience described earlier. Her three-step process that helped the

tasting room’s sales soar is very simple. Rookies can adopt and use it to be

more effective multitaskers when servicing more than one customer at a time:

address, assess, assign.
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