‘Our customer service is terrible. The boss has told me to come up with ideas on how to transform our performance. What should I suggest?’
Excellent customer service is about improving the experience that customers have with your firm. It often improves customer satisfaction, increases loyalty and enhances sales revenue.
Improving customer service can be expensive so you must be careful that the cost of implementing it does not exceed the extra revenue. You need to understand your customers and what they value about your firm.
In general, at least three areas are of immense interest to customers. First, the product must be accessible. This means that a product should be available when the customer wants it and information about its use and the terms of sale must be clear, straightforward and understandable.
The second is speed of service. This is stated in the service level promises that firms give. Different products require different times for completion. The most crucial thing is to reduce queues and waiting times to the bare minimum.
The final area is customer engagement. Customers expect to be treated with courtesy and respect. To do this your staff should be trustworthy, honest, friendly, respectful and patient.
Where possible they should pay personal attention to the customers. This is even more important when customers need a resolution to their problems and complaints. When these are handled well customers not only tend to stay, but increase their commitment to the firm.
If you want to improve your processes related to customer service, sign up for the CIMA Mastercourse “Achieving process excellence” (details on our website). I can also recommend using customer surveys and looking at what others in your industry are doing to learn what works and what doesn’t.
Getting information directly can be costly and might only be suitable for larger firms. Smaller firms can talk directly to their customers as they come into contact with them and supplement the information with what can be found from trade journals. Remember that the rewards for getting it right can be very high.
At Ten Lifestyle Concierge our members can ask our lifestyle managers to organise anything they don’t have the time, contacts or expertise to arrange themselves, such as booking entertainment, restaurants or flights. We know that we have to get things right – first time, every time – so they can see the value in coming back.
Customer service has to be part of our business DNA. If your customer service is terrible it can almost certainly be improved quickly, but only made excellent through long-term commitment. My first tip is to make it measurable. Make this someone’s priority and reward your team on results.
We use a monthly review and cash-bonus system to incentivise our lifestyle managers to deliver outstanding customer service. We know how people are performing by reviewing member feedback and by listening to and rating more than 1,000 calls a month. Ask your customer-facing staff to give their opinions. As a rule people don’t like giving bad service and will know what does and doesn’t work. A high proportion of our service improvements come from our lifestyle managers.
Do not tolerate the tyranny of being asked to choose between efficiency and outstanding service. They are not mutually exclusive, but people who want to fight change will argue that they are.
Finally, to ensure that we’re always thinking of our customers at every meeting we appoint “member chairs” to represent the interests of our members. They sit in and play devil’s advocate. If we are about to make a decision which will affect our members, a member chair can voice their concerns and veto the decision, if necessary. This way we can always be sure that we are putting the interests of our members first.
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