Investing in Customer Service

May 10, 2018

ISSN# 1545-2646

Investing in Customer Service

A lot has been written about customer service. It is not a new topic, but it is critical to the success of your business. Some organizations excel at providing it while others simply hope it works out for everyone.

There are many options for training your people on what makes up good customer service. The question you need to ask yourself first is: what does your organization define as customer service? In addition to defining customer service, you need to articulate what does it look like so customers and fellow employees can recognize quality customer service when it is taking place. Everyone can then catch everyone else providing good customer service.

The importance of knowing what it looks like as a standard in your company gives everyone involved the opportunity to STOP bad customer service when that, unfortunately, trickles into the business. If everyone is not top of mind conscious about providing good customer service, then individual definitions can take root and lower the overall customer experience.

This is one of those areas where when left alone it does not stay status quo. The workplace is a busy place. We are all being pulled and pushed in many directions. This high volume of distraction causes us to get off track. We all want to provide the best customer service possible but when things get crazy, the customer service experience suffers. It is not intentional by any means. Your staff does not wake up in the morning and come to work to dis-service your customers. If they did you would have already acted on that situation.

Your team or like in the photo, “The Crew” are working together to provide a best in class customer experience. They have been not only trained in doing the specifics of their duties but are attentive to the details of each customer interaction. It is not a hurried or rushed situation. By doing things too fast almost always contributes to chaos and in the end, the customer experience is sacrificed in the process.

At the core of having your “Crew” provide the best customer service possible, you need to start with your core values. These boundaries define the internal and external expectations which your business will not violate. From your core values emanates how each person on your team must perform when providing any level of customer service. You must give everyone the ability to provide customer service in all situations. No, I’m not promoting unlimited budgets but each person at their given level of contribution must know they can extend service when needed and not have to answer to leadership as to their reasoning for taking the situation into their control. Yes, there will likely be some abuse of this privilege, but the investment will be returned in great brand awareness in the marketplace and that is hard to place a budget on.

This week take a look at some of the numbers which are indicators of possible areas which your customer service can improve. Areas such as callbacks, returns, bad social media post etc., these may lead you to a fuller understanding of where you need to bring clarity to what is customer service at your business.

Customer Service not up to expectations? It is time to call JKL Associates at (313) 527-7945 and begin making a change to your customer service practices.

Investing in Customer Service

May 10, 2018

ISSN# 1545-2646