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In the Boardroom
Date: Friday, January 13, 2012, 6:00am EST Take these steps to fully satisfy your customersPremium content from The Business Journal - by Ruth Kinzey, Contributing writerIt’s a simple concept: Meet customer needs, if you want to retain your current market share and grow your business. But when companies focus on cost-cutting measures, operational efficiencies or infrastructural changes, customer service can be compromised. Why? Because the emphasis is no longer on the customer. When this happens, consumers may go elsewhere. Or, they may opt to leverage their social media skills, expressing dissatisfaction, tarnishing your reputation and causing you to lose customers. While there are many solutions and systems designed to help business improve service, the following seven principles are foundational to achieving exemplary customer service: Prepare. No single individual can make everyone happy, so how can a business please everyone? It can’t. Consequently, recognize you will have some level of customer dissatisfaction and make preparations to manage the complaints before they arise. In fact, good preparation can help you identify and solve problems prior to a customer ever encountering the issue. And, that’s the best way to avoid complaints. Know your customer. Whether conducting customer research, leveraging market information available or reviewing consumer data already on file, you must discover what the customer wants and when they want it. Only armed with such information can you design a customer service program that will serve your clientele. Train your staff. Whether the customer service center is managed in-house or outsourced, training is essential. The person responding to customers must know company policies, what steps can be taken to solve an issue and the procedure for thoroughly addressing the matter. It’s also critical that someone is assigned to follow-up, ensuring the customer is pleased with the resolution. In fact, customer service training should occur throughout the entire organization to help all employees understand how their individual role contributes to customer satisfaction. Keep Your Promise. If promises are made, they must materialize. When corporate commitments are perceived as being abandoned, don’t be surprised if the customer strikes back with an attorney, an investigative reporter, or a Youtube video. Be respectful. Respect must be a core organizational value. The best way to teach the workforce to be respectful to customers is to model this positive behavior. Likewise, a company that treats its personnel with disregard is more likely to witness negative conduct toward customers. Honesty Is Still the Best Policy. Transparency continues to be a business imperative. The recent New York Times gaffe, which sent a special subscription offer by email to 8.6 million addresses rather than a few hundred, is a good example. Once the error occurred, the paper made matters worse by indicating they didn’t send the email and then retracting that statement. Worse yet, the policy for handling the special subscription requests was changed in the midst of the ordeal so all subscriber requests weren’t treated the same. If your organization has made an error, know exactly what happened, admit it, say how you plan to correct it and then do what you said. Make It Easy. Companies recognize the importance of a smooth and easy shopping experience but sometimes fail to incorporate this attribute into their customer service program. A bureaucratic or inconvenient process may save the business money by deterring returns or claims. However, it could be very costly in the long-run because of lost customers and negative word-of-mouth or social media campaigns. When it comes to customer service, there is an old adage, "If we don’t take care of our customers, someone else will." While the axiom still is true today, this updated version might be more appropriate: If we don’t take care of our customers today, someone else will; and the disappointed consumer may just tell the world. Ruth Kinzey is a corporate reputation strategist, consultant, and professional speaker. Want to hear more about a specific topic? She can be reached at (704) 763-0754. To read some of her blogs, go to the Resource page |
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