Jerry Gregoire is noted as saying that “Customer Service is the next competitive battleground”. Maybe when he said this, it was a future reality. But today this is the completely true. Customer service is not the next competitive battleground; it is THE primary competitive battleground. If you are in business and you don’t know this yet, you need to take a step back and examine your growth and sustainability potential.
The bulk of what I will share comes from an old Karen Dunn and Keith Bailey article. They echo my strong belief that organizational success cannot be tangibly expressed outside of returns from loyal customers.
First, there are two things I want to address. On one hand we have structured businesses that have explicitly articulated customer service standards including a published charter, standard procedure documents etc. However in practice no one serves the customer ‘by these standards’. What is written as policy is eons away from how customers are being served.
On the other hand we have [sometimes] smaller organizations who have not given a thought to the service standards they should hold themselves to. Neither do they see customer service as anything in need of strategic attention.
For excellent quality service culture every organisation needs Quality Service Standards; they need to set objective criteria for every engagement with customers. Customer engagement takes place digitally, face to face, on social media, in virtual reality etc. Quality service does not just happen; it has to be well thought out and intentional. It must be strategic. Is your service strategic? Do you want it to be? Yes? This is a good time to mail me, yes?
To have a team that is customer centric and high performing you will need Top Down Commitment. Managers have to practice what they preach, practice has to reflect theory. Life must imitate explicit policy. Leadership and management must be inclusive and provide an enabling environment for learning (Peter Senge calls this a Learning Organisation). Do you have a learning organisation? Instead of thinking of how to fire the next offending employee; do you think about how to shore up latent potential and upskill?
Until all service problems in every system in your company – from the phones to after-sales follow up are resolved, upgraded to become intuitive and sustainable any ground to be gained in quality service improvement is limited in its efficacy. Therefore you need Customer-Friendly Systems.
I like to give the example of a buffet I was invited to a while ago; the spread started with a soup course. However, when I got to the head of the display and searched for a soup bowl I was told that the soup bowls were at the end of the table with the cutlery. Yes…that doesn’t make sense. Their reason for doing this is another blog article altogether (I asked), but suffice it to say that this buffet service was not customer friendly at all. Are your services intuitive and friendly to your customers? When you lay out your spread, do you plan it all with your customers in mind?
Tony Robbins famously said, ‘where focus goes, energy flows’. To ensure continuous quality service, you need to be hands on in respect of customers’ perception of your service. Are your customers really as excited and satisfied about your product/service? Or are they just waiting for a credible competitor/alternative to arise, and then they will jump ship faster than you can blow out a candle.
Make sure you capture client feedback and measure it over time. Is it going up? Is it falling? Then ask your open ended questions – ‘why are customers defecting?’; ‘what do I do about customers consistently asking for a service that I do not provide?’ etc. You need to Measure customer Feedback.
As someone who runs a business that provides best in class customer service training, I am perplexed why too few organizations invest in their people by offering them customer service learning opportunities. Organizations will pay money for staff to learn how to use the latest widget, but side step customer service courses. It begs to say that when there are no customers to serve all you have is a shop full of widgets. It is imperative that you provide Service Education & Training. See some of the courses Eva Wright offers
Ever heard of reinforcement theory before? In this context, it means that the behavior you reinforce, recognize, reward in your people is the behavior that they will repeat continuously. So, if you consistently reinforce, recognize and reward stellar service, what will your people continuously repeat? You got it! They will repeat stellar service – consistently. So as a manager, you must Ensure Recognition of Service Excellence by team members.
These seem easy enough to accomplish don’t they? Moreover they can be accomplished with even the most meager budget. I worked for years as Customer Service Manager at a financial institution and I didn’t have a large budget. [http://lizspire.com/about/ ] But that didn’t stop my team and I from digging deep and becoming one of the most valuable and high performing teams in the company.
I believe that when you bring the points above to play in your organisation, you too can achieve high performance, exceptional service quality, reward and recognition. You can do it, I believe in you.
I have to ask… are you currently experiencing any challenges enshrining quality service standards in your business? I would love to discuss ways I can help you create a an affordable strategy to make your company the best in service in your niche within 6 months.
Do you have any experience with these points above or any other you may have come up with? How did that go? I would love to hear your perspective, please share in the comments section.
