Customer Service:
How to Ensure your Company gives good Customer Service
We want to think that our company gives good Customer Service. But how can we make sure this happens?
One of the most important things a company has to ensure good customer service is feedback from their customers. This can take the form of either direct feedback, where the customer tells the company directly about their experiences, or where the company hires a market research or similar firm to hold focus groups or customer service surveys to gain the feedback.
Both of these methods allow the company to receive first hand feedback - be it complaints or compliments. The first way, direct from the customer, is usually precipitated by the customer. Unfortunately, this usually takes the form of a complaint. However, if you look at complaints carefully, you will usually be able to determine a genuine problem, from one that is only perceived to be so.
However, if it's a perceived problem, then it's still a problem that needs to be looked at. Only 10% of customers with a complaint actually complain - so if you get one complaint about an area, you must assume that there are another 9 people with the same problem.
A way to get that feedback is to have a way that your customers can easily contact you. They should be able to use the phone, e-mail, fax, feedback form on your website, or snail mail. All feedback should be personally acknowledged and you should have a dedicated staff member who, as part of their duties, is in charge of this feedback - responding and working with other teams to fix problems.
Feedback should be gotten on a regular presence from both internal and external customers. You should do this on at least a yearly basis.
Internal Customer feedback may be best being done by a third party company (like a market research firm) so that your staff feel more comfortable about giving uninhibited feedback. It is often astonishing what comes out - your front line staff will always have more of a handle on what customers think than anybody else, and they will often come up with problems that nobody has thought of, but that impacts customers greatly.
Another way is to know what your customers need, want and desire. Whilst this sounds similar, these three things are all very different.·
- A Need is something the customer must have - it could be value for money, it could be even having a "real" person answering the phone
- A Want is something that they would like to have - perhaps a store that sells cookware could provide free cooking lessons to customers.
- A Desire is something that goes above and beyond "the call of duty" This is where the company provides outstanding customer service. It could be a free home delivery service that is offered without them having to ask. Or even opening hours that aren't "normal". A very good example of a "desire" in Brisbane coming true was when supermarkets started to open until 9pm each weeknight, and the advent of Sunday trading.
Of course, the most obvious way is your profit and loss statement. If your profits go down, then you have to look at why your customers are not buying from you.
So, the bottom line, and the most important thing to remember, is that Customer Service is reliant on good communication. This communication must be encouraged and without prejudice.
