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Serious Soft Skills

Podcast 12: Interview on How Everyone Has a Customer-Service Job

The soft skill of customer service is often misunderstood. Serious Soft Skills Cohost Bob Graham interviews Neal Woodson, a customer service expert, in the first part of a two-part interview on the topic.
Neal's view is that customer service is the most important aspect of what organizations provide, and it ultimately is what is necessary to find any success.
Introduction
Dr. Tobin Porterfield (‘0:21'): Welcome to Episode 12 of Serious Soft Skills. I am your host, Dr. Tobin Porterfield. Today we will have the first of a two-part interview, where my cohost, the sultan of soft skills, Bob Graham, talks to Neal Woodson about how he develops soft skills related to customer service. Neal has 35 years of experience across a range of environments, including 19 years in the event technology industry. Neal currently serves as director of service excellence for PSAV, where he helps management and line-level team members collaborate in driving service excellence by analyzing customer experience, coaching the development of actionable strategies, and creating education and training techniques that ensure consistent delivery.
Soft Skills at Core of Customer Service
Bob Graham (‘1:11'): It's great to be here with Neal Woodson. I am really looking forward to the discussion….I hope for our listeners and our viewers that the weather is good for them. Let's get right to it.
Graham (‘1:29'): You are an expert on customer service. Beyond being a great golfer and great friend, and I want to talk today with you about soft skills and how they apply to customer service because believe it or not customer or client focus is one of the soft skills we uncovered in our research. You're someone who really spends your days working on it. Give us an overview of what it means.
 
Neal Woodson (‘2:01'): As far as customer service, I don't know if I am an expert, but it is something I work with all day every day. It's always on my mind. I don't like that term “soft skills.” I know that is a popular phrase. I prefer to say they are any number of things: social skills, collaborative skills. That doesn't even cover it all, obviously.
Soft skills have gotten shunted to a second-class citizenship. They have been pushed to the back of the bus.
Importance of Customer Service
Woodson (‘2:57'}: I don't think people realize how important they are. I deal with business and how business works with customers. Everybody thinks that soft skills are what customer service people do. it's not really necessary for what anyone else does in the business. So when it comes to like a soft skills training, they will send all of their customer service people or call center people to soft skills training. one of the things we forget about in business is that everybody in business deals with somebody. You deal with people no matter what. In my role, you would think that all I deal with is customer-facing folks. That's not true. I'm a big believer that what we do all throughout a business affects the customer. In other words, the way the CEO operates and the manager treat the workers — all of that affects how the company treats the customer. The best way I can put that is that if you are a parent and you come home every day and you scream and yell at your kids. Would it be any surprise to you at all to see your kids screaming and yelling at other kids?
What we do with others inside the house impacts what we do outside the house.
Need to Keep Improving Soft Skills
Woodson {‘4:26'}: To me, it's crucial that everybody in an organization works on continuously improves their soft skills. How does my job role connect to the end user customer. Say you're in accounts payable. You say that your job doesn't connect with custome...

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