While Julia Louis’ article focuses on cultural diversity, the core message is still relevant to neurodiversity and inclusive practice. Contemporary businesses are seeing the importance of being responsive to individual customer needs, rather than having a one size fits all mentality and, how these responsive actions can benefit their overall employee and customer satisfaction.
Below is an excerpt from Julia Louis’ article. You can read the full article here: www.providesupport.com/blog/customer-diversity
The world is getting smaller. Nations and communities are becoming more diverse. Due to advances in communication, the spread of e-commerce and the ease of travel, many businesses today can expand to cross cultural and geographic boundaries. With the rapid changes in technology, modern day customers have grown comfortable with shopping online from whichever corner of the world they like, and e-commerce businesses may easily receive orders from virtually anywhere.
Professionalism in customer service means different things to different people, but all of them are worthy of your time, respect and attention. When customer service representatives acknowledge and respect diversity, they have a greater opportunity to attract and retain diverse customers, build better rapport with them and increase customer satisfaction.
In this article I’d like to highlight some ideas on how you can develop your cultural competence for customer service to better understand the different needs and expectations of diverse groups of customers.
Respecting customer diversity is more than simply good manners
We all know the old golden rule: treat others the way you want to be treated. But simply treating customers with the same courtesy and dignity is no longer enough in this shrinking world. In order to truly succeed, you need to grow beyond the “one size fits all” mentality and learn to understand and respond appropriately to the preferences of customers from varying ethnic, social, and economic backgrounds. In this truly global economy, skills like cultural awareness, flexibility, and effective communication are critical for customer service representatives to properly deal with the expectations of people from different cultures.
Kelly McDonald, the author of “Crafting the Customer Experience For People Not Like You“, emphasizes that by creating a customer experience that addresses a specific customer group’s needs and wants, you can differentiate yourself from your competition and grow your business with new, incremental customers.
It doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Just learn how to create positive experiences for those groups of customers “who are not like you” by letting a specific customer segment know that you understand and are responding to its needs. And you’ll get a great opportunity to shine and develop a significant competitive edge.
Targeted marketing and service efforts aimed at diverse customer groups can pay big dividends, – highlights Jonathan M. Tisch in “Chocolates on the Pillow Aren’t Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience“. Sometimes it takes out-of-the-box thinking to understand the varying segments of your market… Devote time and energy to open-ended brainstorming about your customer subsets as well as to quantitative research into their needs and wants, and then develop programs to attract and satisfy those preferences. Your organization may be able to build a significant new business base among once-neglected customer groups.
Read more of Julia Louis’ article here: www.providesupport.com/blog/customer-diversity
