Customer Service: My Top Ten Rules

On the theme of taking charge of things in your business that you can control, let’s dig a little deeper into the realm of customer service. In a recent review article entitled What Service Customers Really Want by Dougherty and Murthy in the Harvard Business Review (Sept. 2009), we find a discussion of the extent to which the consumer landscape has shifted. Dougherty and Murthy discuss that while superior customer service is essential as companies emerge from the recession, it is important to understand how the consumer has changed. They point out that brands have weakened, customers have easy access to vendor information, and the barriers to switching among competing products have eroded. Bottom line, we now have the creation of a much more competitive market place in the area of service.

What this means is there is a new type of customer. When a customer contacts a company for service, they care most about two things: Is the frontline employee knowledgeable? And is the problem resolved on the first call? As the owner, manager or leader, ask yourself this question: Do I measure my service by speed or hold time? If so, you may be rushing your front line person too much and succeeding in your eyes, but failing in the eyes of your customer. Customers want to know that their service will be efficient and thorough, and that time will be taken to handle their issue.

This article continues to suggest a few ways to assess and understand what your customers are experiencing. A manager can draw on a variety of information to include customer service surveys and even recording customer-agent conversations for training purposes. In the end, when there is an issue to solve, do you give your employees the leeway and authority to meet individual needs and provide positive experiences?

As you create your own vision of customer service, think about the following. I call it my Top Ten Ways to Improve Customer Service.

10) Enjoy your work. Specify what your drivers are in business. For example, my drivers are leadership, learning and fun.

9) Work in such a manner that even your competition will speak highly of you

8) Be honest and clear about what you can (and can not) deliver

7) Be faithful to your work and give your best

6) Get and Take Customer Feedback Seriously. Don’t put the “cuss” in Customer Service

5) Take care of the person in charge, and remember to thank the person, big or little, who insures that things get done

4) Take Time to Study and Prepare

3) Speak well of others or not at all. Stay away from office politics

2) Have a mentor and bug them to death

And finally, the #1 way to enhance Customer Service is:

1) Support something bigger than yourself, and share a common goal with your customers

I will leave you with this last thought and case study example. Think about the last time you went to Chick-Fil-A. We have two in the Gardendale and Fultondale area.) This company trains their employees on customer service as rigorously as they train their employees in product preparation. It is no rare event to have someone say “It’s my pleasure!” as they give you your change, or deliver your meal. According to local manager Mike Holmes, empowering the employee to handle a customer issue immediately is part of their success, and training them how is part of their strategy.

I hope these ideas will be of assistance to you this week. Sharing a few ideas on improving customer service has been my pleasure!