Attitude Control in Tough Service Situations

Companies are facing unprecedented pressure from the financial crisis. As a result, many of their employees may get nervous and start complaining emotionally to their vendors - you! Here are 8 tips you can use to help you and your customer service team control stress and worry in tough situations:


Live in a compartment of the present.

The professional with a commitment to service seals off each interaction with a customer so that negative experiences don't poison future interactions. Don't allow past successes or failures or future anticipated success or difficulties influence your current performance. When it comes to customer service, live in the moment.

Don't fuss about trifles.

A "trifle" is something that is insignificant in comparison to other things in your life. When you focus on trifles, you lose perspective. Keep the bigger picture in mind. Doing so will help you objectively sort out the small stuff from the important issues.

Cooperate with the inevitable.

Realise when your situation is inevitable. If you can learn to recognise situations where you have no control, you can gain some control over the emotional aspects of the situation. By cooperating with the outcome, you are making a conscious choice about how to respond to an inevitable situation.   Decide just how much anxiety a situation is worth and refuse to give it any more of your energy.

Once you make this decision, it is easier to find ways you can improve on the situation or let it go and move on.

Create happiness for others.

This principle appeals to your nobler motives. It is difficult to sustain a negative attitude when you are doing something good or helpful for someone else. Simply put: Doing good for others makes you feel better.

Expect ingratitude.

In your job, you provide many diverse services. When you do so, you probably expect in return some signal of gratitude for your assistance. This expectation is rarely met. If you do receive heartfelt thanks from someone, you should count yourself lucky you are dealing with a grateful person. Most people are simply not accustomed to being grateful, even when you provide them with excellent service. You shouldn't let ingratitude deter you from providing top-quality service.

Put enthusiasm into your work.

Enthusiasm is the positive energy and sustained effort that keeps you driving toward your goals. Making a decision to have a positive outlook can be critical in enjoying your job and working with your internal and external customers.

Do the very best you can.

It can be difficult to deal with criticism, especially if you feel it is undeserved or if it hurts your self-esteem. One way to put criticism in perspective is to ask yourself if you are doing the very best you can with what you know and are able to do. If you are, then you can avoid taking the criticism personally. If there is room for improvement in your performance, you can look at the criticism objectively and take responsibility for improving your performance.

What about worry?

I’m a worrier.

I can’t help it. It seems that my natural reaction to having a bit of free time is to start worrying. I worry about my life, my future, other people and I even worry about the fact that I worry so much! I certainly don’t think I’m alone in this preoccupation of all things negative and what’s more I can prove it. Ask yourself the following question.

When you turn the light off at night and you’re lying in your bed, what do you think about?

Is it money? Is it the bills to pay at the end of the month? How do others perceive me? How’s the job going? What’s the update on that family member whose been struggling?

It’s funny how we hide our worry behind a smile. In the environments that often are the cause of our anxiety we let on that nothing is wrong and act as though we haven’t a care in the world. It’s only when there is nothing else to preoccupy our minds and no one else is around that worry truly takes over.

Worry negatively affects our state of mind, our health, our relationships and our performance. Overcoming it does not come around simply by the way we think; it takes discipline and structure. Here is what Dale Carnegie said on this issue.

"If you want to avoid worry… Live in "day-tight compartments." Don't stew about the future. Just live each day until bedtime."

If worry is something that you struggle with then I strongly urge you to do something about it. Don’t accept it as an inevitable burden you must carry for your life. Don’t let it plague your present, ruin your happiness and cloud your future. As an organisation, Dale Carnegie support individuals in overcoming worry and managing stress. It would be great to discuss with you how we can support you to.

Visit our website or call us on 0207 379 4323.

Brett Mills

The Beneficial Overspill of Mastering Stress

The beneficial overspill of mastering stress.

Those of you who are blessed enough to have a dream commute each day ought to be hailed genius. Your intuitive decision making on location and mode of transport is to be celebrated.

I still haven’t managed to master my commute. Tube journeys are squashed and uncomfortable, and then I’m to dash from platform to platform if the next driver has decided to take a jolly jaunt on route. My contingency, an hour long bus ride, whilst providing a seat faces multiple diversions and delays. This often means the journey takes 90 minutes and without warning the driver will terminate the journey in order to get back to the depot on time leaving passengers to fend for themselves off the beaten track. Not a great start to the day.

Knowing the likelihood of the ‘rug being pulled from under’ my smooth journey at any point has often meant me being fraught with underlying stress, and when things do go wrong I have reacted in a less than favourable manner, to say the least. This stressed and disgruntled state of mind has stayed with me through to midday on occasion, so I can only guess the words and phrases used by my colleagues to describe my. Not a great impression to create.

I recently completed the Dale Carnegie Skills for Success programme, and on the final session I spoke of the benefits I have gained and they were numerous. However yesterdays commute really demonstrated just how far reaching the benefits of managing my stress and worry are.

At just beyond the half-way point of my journey to work the driver politely announced he would be terminating the journey. “You can just follow this road until you get close to Marble Arch and then ask somebody from there if you don’t know your way around” was his solution for the tourist groups who had deliberately set out early to explore this wonderful city of ours. For the rest of us? “You know this can happen.” Helpful!

Usually at this announcement my knee-jerk reaction would be to openly express my disappointment, frustration and anger vigorously however on this occasion I simply listened, accepted and began my long walk toward the office. Each attempt to catch another bus failed however I kept moving in the direction of Covent Garden and kept my thoughts positive and productive. Not only was I calm when I arrived at work I had also come up with a couple of new ideas I couldn’t wait to test out so I was in fact fairly fired up and raring to go. What a difference! My next goal is to apply this more often when faced with challenges that are beyond my control but can often be costly in terms of my wellbeing.

I look forward to letting you know how it goes. Enjoy your day.

Angelina Foden

"Carpe Diem - So What?"

This popular phrase is often translated into, as we know, 'seize the day'. But it's not the full phrase and so, as we will see later, perhaps it became foreshortened because the full phrase is less easy to live by. It is an easy act, a simple behavioural affirmation. It infers take chances, perhaps take risks. To some it might mean those risks are ill judged. For others it might mean giving in, or giving up. For a few it just might stimulate an expansion of their comfort zone. For others it might just get them moved beyond their comfort zone and into the unknown.

I have recently grown to have great regard for the writings of M.Scott Peck, particularly his classic 1980's piece, 'The Road Less Travelled'. Right the way through this, its sequels and related works, the authors stress that we all have choices in life. I get the feeling Scott Peck admonishes the majority of us that make up todays society for taking the easy choices route. Indeed his opening sentence is 'Life is difficult'.

So let's now think about seizing the day and what it might really take:
Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero – "Seize the Day, putting as little trust as possible in the future"

Here's the real point, or at least my feelings about the point. If we should put little trust in the future then perhaps today is the only opportunity we have. Even, at THIS moment we have the opportunity. Later today we may not have. It is the only opportunity to love, smile, be happy, be there, be with, to create, to care, to .....

Dale Carnegie in his book 'How to Stop Worrying and Start Living', Chapter 1, suggests we 'live in day tight compartments. The easy thing to say is - 'I will not let the emotional experience of one event impact on the next'. The difficult thing will be not to let that moment pass without getting the very most from it, especially if the most is for the entire benefit of others.

The road less travelled will be to love, smile, be happy, be there, be with, to create, to care, to .....
You can make up your mind what follows the dots ....

Have a wondrous Christmas and glorious New Year

David Pickering

iphoney

People that know me will tell you that I am a massive football fan. So much so that some of my colleagues from Dale Carnegie have requested that I stop writing blogs about the sport or indeed my favourite team. So instead I want to talk to you about an incident that took place a couple of weeks ago and how it affected me.

A couple of weekends ago I received a letter with the logo of a famous mobile telephone provider on the cover. However, this was not my provider and upon opening it, to my horror, it was a welcome letter. Apparently, I had signed up for a two year deal with an iphone. I immediately went to one of their stores and explained the situation. I was told that I needed to contact customer services by phone.

At this point things began to look bleaker. I was explained that not only had I taken out the contract but the phone itself was delivered to my house and signed for. What?

Could it have been that I managed to do all of this subconsciously? I know there are many people that sleep walk and get up to all sorts of shenanigans. Could I have become a sleep shopper? The answer is no. I was just another victim of identify theft.

I went into work the next Monday feeling violated and so worried and stressed about what details of mine had been captured and used. I then spent the next couple of days talking to the provider to cancel the contract and also investigate why there was no verification or proof that I had made this purchase.

I sat down on my desk feeling defeated, just another victim of a major faceless corporation. It was at this point I found my salvation. It came to me in the shape of an experienced Dale Carnegie coach that lives and breathes the principles that our founder penned many years ago. He went through some fundamental principles for overcoming worry.

• What is the worst that could happen?

Well, the worst already has, I thought. The only thing worse would be if I now got a phone bill for this fraudulent account.

• Prepare to accept the worst.

Ok, I know I didn’t arrange this so I can make sure that I am not liable to pay a phoney bill should it arrive.

• Try to improve the worst.

After gathering up all the evidence I felt much better. I was now in a better position because now I not only knew I was an innocent victim but I could also prove it.

After talking to him and taking action I felt relieved and could concentrate on other more important things. The stress and worry seemed to evaporate.

If you would like to find out more about How to Stop Worrying and Start Living or How to Win Friends and Influence People then please join us on the Dale Carnegie Course which starts on Tuesday 28th June. If you would like to have a taster and experience a session for free prior to joining then please attend the complimentary session on Tuesday 14th June.

All the details can be found on our website - http://www.london.dalecarnegie.com/

Just before I let you go……I did get that phone bill last week. It amounted to £229.39 and yet I do not feel stressed at all.

Amar Garcha
Sales Consultant

www.London.dalecarnegie.com

A helping hand

Tragedy struck Japan in the last week. A major earthquake and a resulting tsunami struck on March 11 2011 which caused destruction, death and suffering to thousands of people.

Images have been plastered all over televisions the world over and every newspaper in the world has been covering the catastrophe.

Living just under 6000 miles away I can still feel the impact. The unbelievable loss of human life has left a permanent mark on my mind. To say this puts things into perspective is a major understatement.

We spend most of our lives worrying about things which at the time feel more important to us than anything else in the world. I have to hold my hands up and say that I am more guilty than most. I spend too much of my time procrastinating and worry about the past instead of taking action.

I have always been drawn to success stories. I remember reading books and articles about people that have come from nothing and achieved amazing feats.

Many of us are in a privileged position, unlike those suffering in Japan or the millions of people that are born into poverty and struggle everyday of their lives.

I do agree with those who say we should help others whenever we can. That could be donating to charity or volunteering to help others when they are in need.

In addition I believe we need to help ourselves. Think about it, there are millions, nay, billions of people that would swap their life for yours. I have often seen more drive and determination from people living on the streets of Punjab than I have in some office blocks in London.

It is our responsibility to make use of our position. To educate our mind, change our behaviours, improve our skills. The more we do this the more likely we are to be able to make a difference in the lives of those who can not.

Dale Carnegie Training is running a free preview of our flagship programme, The Dale Carnegie Course: Skills for Success on the 23rd of March, you are more than welcome to attend. I will leave you with a quote from Mr Carnegie himself.

'When ill luck besets us, to ease the tension we have only to remember that happiness is relative. The next time you are tempted to grumble about what has happened to you, why not pause and be glad that it is no worse than it is?'

Amar Garcha

Sales Consultant

www.London.dalecarnegie.com

Commitments

I’ve just read a blog about how Shakira is making $100 million a year.

It’s all about what she wants to achieve and earn! In business we call this the Vision. How often do we sit down with a piece of paper in front of us to write what we want in life?

Some people just do it once a year normally around New's Year Eve and some people never do it. Most of us are thinking it over every week and seeing if we are where we want to be without taking any commitment and writing it down.

Many Dale Carnegie graduates includingWarren Buffet say that the Dale Carnegie programme changed their lives and this is because we create an environment to think, to create and see something different in terms of how to act, how to behave and how to understand our lives.

I encourage you to read the book “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” and you will see why life is just our thoughts.

"The key to change . . . is to let go of fear."

Jose Bort
Sales Consultant

www.London.dalecarnegie.com

A happy ending

None of us could have missed the amazing news this week that all 33 miners who had been trapped under ground for weeks on end, had been rescued and brought safely to the surface.

They had spent ten weeks, trapped 2,041 feet under the desert in Chile. When the mine collapsed on August 5th they had no idea whether they could be saved. Living off meagre rations until they had been found alive seventeen days later, they faced and conquered something incomprehensible to most of us.

Whilst the country worked out a rescue plan, they coped and survived underground. No one can imagine what that could be like, whether arguments happened, or how they worked together to get through such a horrible event. As their stories come out in the following weeks, I am sure we will learn a lot more.

The leader of the miners, Luis Urzua carried his duty through to the end and was the last man to leave the mine, making sure all his men were safely rescued before allowing himself to be winched up. Chile’s President, Sebastian Pinera hailed Urzua for seeing off all his men before ‘leaving last like the ship’s captain’.

The rescue operation took weeks and the drilling to free the men veered off course twice, before a successful third time. I can only imagine what the leader(s) of the rescue workers must have been going through each time the drilling failed. Leading such a team on a life and death rescue attempt would have been challenging and stressful to say the least, so when the third drill was triumphant, euphoria must have followed.

This event was extraordinary and one which has captured the world. We all face stress, although hopefully nothing as awful as what the miners have been through. It can affect us in the workplace and our personal life. Stress has no boundaries and all of us at some point in our life, have it thrust upon us. But what can we do. Here are a few tips on taking charge of stress:

~ Get all the facts
~ Weigh all the facts then come to a decision
~ Once a decision is reached, act!
~ Answer these questions:
What is the problem?
What are the courses of the problem?
What are the possible solutions?
What is the best possible solution?

~ How to face trouble – ask yourself:
What is the worst that can possibly happen?
Prepare to accept the worse
Try to improve the worse

Dale Carnegie wrote the book ‘How to stop worrying and start living’ and if you are interested in finding out more, why not come along to our preview on 4th November.

In the meantime, it's nice to see a happy ending......

Helen Mills
Financial Controller
www.london.dalecarnegie.com