SCORE Minnesota

Set Your Company Apart with Customer Service

January 21, 2010

Almost everyone has experienced bad customer service: A rude flight attendant, an impatient waiter or the automated voice that too frequently says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.” For a business, one negative experience can shape the long-term perception for the consumer and is often retold among friends, family, colleagues and throughout social networks at the speed of light. .

As a consumer, experiencing good customer experience shouldn’t be as unlikely as winning the lottery – it should be expected and routinely delivered. I know from personal experience that it’s not always an easy aspect of business operations to manage. There are only a few firms that do it right. Many larger companies over rely on automated voice attendants. This inevitably leads to customer service experiences characterized by impersonal conversations and, as a result, frustrated consumers.

It is absolutely critical to create a customer service program that transcends standards and puts the personal element back into the relationship. Spend the time and the money to create a customer service program that knocks your customer’s socks off. It’s worth every penny.

Begin With Employees
Customer-facing employees can deliver great customer service only when it is reinforced as part of the company culture, expected as normal behavior in their day-to-day work and improved with training programs and measurement tools. A program that leaves customers talking in positive ways is a strategy many small and midsized companies can use to beat competitors in industries where big businesses seemingly dominate.

In order to create an industry-leading customer service program, a business needs to identify and develop company values and goals for the program, train their customer service representatives well and then implement tools to measure the success of the program. Hiring and training smart, thoughtful and qualified employees is an essential step in building a foundation for the future of your business. It’s the first, and quite possibly, the most critical step. This is especially true for a customer service program.

When hiring, you may choose to recruit employees with previous customer service experience. It’s important to remember, however, that despite their experience, your company is new to them. Train your employees so that they feel empowered and knowledgeable to solve a problem and can find pertinent information when a customer needs it.

By creating a focused and comprehensive training program, the transition for your new employees and your customers will be a smooth one. Without training, motivating and treating your employees properly, outstanding customer service will be very difficult to achieve. It’s worth repeating: Only employees who are treated with respect will treat their customers that way.

Get Inside Their Heads
Now you need to audit the current customer experience. A company should think about how to get inside their customers’ heads and learn their customers’ opinions regarding their service quality and needs. Discover the good and the bad and share it with your employees.

An effective and sustainable customer service plan can only be created after you’ve received feedback from your customers. No one’s opinion matters more than those of your customers. Obtaining honest feedback can be done through surveying customers directly or through an independent, third-party firm. The ideal is to measure customer service levels within two weeks of setting up a new account or service. Sure, it may seem too soon to gauge the long-term success of the relationship, but it’s never too early to start measuring how well you are doing relative to customer satisfaction.

Obtaining feedback further into the relationship is just as important. Follow up with a survey annually to see how well you’re meeting the needs of your clients.

It’s also important to make sure customers are educated and trained in your services. Walk them through all service options, help them understand how to read their invoice or explain how your products and services work. And when customers need attention, especially when a problem arises, they deserve immediate attention.

No matter what your business is, make sure your customers can connect with a live, local voice. It will go a long ways towards demonstrating your commitment to exceptional customer service and can actually have a dramatically positive impact on your business’s bottom line.

For everyone who thinks they will save money by not staffing their customer service line with live humans, you need to reconsider. This single area is so neglected by so many organizations, that those companies that employ people to answer phones really stand out.

Inspect What You Expect
There’s nothing more revealing than an in-depth and honest look at your program. How accessible are your customer service representatives to customers? How quickly are customer’s calls answered? Are issues resolved on the first call? If not, when? How quickly and accurately do you get your product out to your consumers and bill for services? How adept are you at resolving customer service issues? These are some of the key questions your measurement system should answer.

Of course there are more than quantitative methods to determine the success of your program. Explore other ways to evaluate customers’ satisfaction and learn if their experience has been a positive one. One way to do this is by appointing a dedicated customer service representative to make scheduled visits throughout the year, not to sell them anything, but simply to build a relationship and gather feedback.

It’s Customer Service 101
A well thought-out and executed customer service program can set your company apart from the competition. Invest in making your program the best in the industry. You may be surprised to learn that customers are willing to pay more for great service, especially after receiving less than satisfactory service from a previous vendor. A customer-centric program is a priceless component of running a successful business. No company can afford to operate without one.

For assistance in how best to improve the customer experience, contact SCORE by clicking the link on the right to the office nearest you or click here to request free face to face counseling and or mentoring.

LaVon Dennistoun, Minneapolis SCORE
View more posts by LaVon Dennistoun

Filed under: Customer Service,Management,Marketing

Tags: competitive advantage, customer feedback, customer satisfaction, Customer Service, customer-centric, inspect what you expect, satisfaction measurement, service quality, training