10 Tips for Improving Customer Service

From the about.com website

Good customer service is an integral part of almost any business - and one that can have a significant impact on your bottom line. It can help turn a one-time customer into a repeat customer. It can inspire customers to tell their friends about your product or service, and in turn, those customers tell their friends. Here are 10 things that your business can do to ensure good customer service:

1. Answer the phone. When a consumer or potential consumer calls your business, he or she needs to be able to get through to a live person or, at the very least, an answering service that ensures that calls will be returned promptly.
2. Listen to your customers. When your customer talks, you should listen attentively. Ask your consumers what you can do to better their experience, and listen to what they tell you. The key to giving customers what they want is to understand what they want - so listen when they talk.
3. Focus on the positive. Don't begin to address a complaint or start a conversation with the negative. Try to focus the conversation on what you can do for the customer, not what you can't.
4. Handle customer complaints effectively. Although it is tempting to ignore many customer complaints, almost all of them should be addressed. At the very least, let the customer know you are looking into the situation, and if you are working on resolving the complaint, let them know that as well. Diffuse their anger with a soothing tone of voice or by reassuring them that you are trying to handle the situation.
5. Keep your promises. If you make a promise to a customer, honor it. If you know you can't keep a promise, don't make the promise to begin with.
6. Be helpful and kind, even when there is not an immediate profit in it. When people pop into your establishment to ask directions, when they lose something at your business, when they need help, you should step in when you can - even if there is not an immediate profit in doing so. This kindness and helpfulness will build goodwill with the person, and may inspire them to return to your business.
7. Let customers know you appreciate them. Tell them "thank you" for the business, give them something extra - anything that signals to the customer that you care about them coming back.
8. Go the extra mile. If someone asks where an item is, don't just tell him or her, take him or her there. If they buy something from your store, throw in a little freebie. If they had a complaint that you resolved, follow up with them later to make sure they are still satisfied. When you go the extra mile, customers usually notice and are more likely to come back.
9. Ask if there is anything else you can do. Not only does this open the lines of communication and give you insight into your consumers' needs and wants, it makes customers feel appreciated.
10. Train your staff*. All of the above customer-service points should be communicated to your staff via a thorough training session. Every single member of your business should practice good customer service at all times.

*) Ask about our proven customer service and service leadership training programs: Customers Forever. We will be happy to send you an overview.

Maintaining Customer Service and Loyalty During Cut Backs

By Darrell Zahorsky: About.com Guide to Small Business


The mantra of business this past year has been to reduce spending, cut staff and save money. One area to easily neglect during crisis management of during a recession is customer retention and loyalty. Yet, customer loyalty can ultimately save your business. With reduced staff and a greater focus on the bottom line, how can you build greater customer loyalty? Consider the following:

Find Touch Points:
Your business has a range of touch points during the entire sales process and customer service cycle. Determine the vital points of contact for your customer. Find what is most important to your target market through conversations and surveys. Is it after sales support or product selection help? Understanding your touch points can help increase loyalty.

Focus on Your Top Customers:
Not all customers are created equal. Sure, everybody is looking for a good deal during an economic slowdown but your most important customers will spend more, provide better profitability and have a greater propensity for loyalty. Put more of your customer service dollars into your best clients.

Re-invent the Customer Experience:
The ways you are servicing your customers may be costly and outdated. Employ technology to help customers find answers fast and reduce costs. For instance, your customers highly value the setup following the purchase of your product. While you lack the resources to have staff service this touch point, consider alternatives such as building an extensive FAQ section on your website or creating an online forum where your customers can help each other.

Manage your Moments of Truth or be mediocre

In 1981, Jan Carlzon became CEO of the problem-ridden Scandinavian Airlines. By 1994, he had turned the airline around by focusing on what he later called "moments of truth," the various points at which people with the airline came in contact with airline customers.

These days, the term used is Customer Experience Management (CEM), because every hot trend needs a three letter acronym! CEM has filled in some of gaps in conventional CRM thinking, which often is too internally focused on managing customer data and revenue.
Meanwhile, it's the customers' perception of all their interactions with your (company) brand that drives much of the value they receive.


FYI: My proven Customer Experience Workshop helps comapnies take stock of their Moments of Truth and identify improvement opportunies as well as internal barriers to success. Email me for a service brochure.

Customer Service & Experience: "Executives Have No Idea What Customers Want".

This is a recent Forbes blog entry by Andrea J. Ayers, president of customer management at Convergys. The findings are sad but true, in my experience also.


A new study shows a major, dangerous disconnect.

Convergys recently surveyed several thousand U.S. consumers across 10 major industries to find out what they really think about customer service. We also surveyed executives in each of those industries.What we learned is surprising.We learned that we've shifted from a service economy to the experience economy, where customers are in control, unsuccessful brands are commodities and successful brands create consistently superior experiences.

We also learned that company executives are woefully disconnected from their customers when it comes to delivering the customer experience. One result was truly shocking in its implications for consumer-driven businesses: While most company executives say they have a solid understanding of their customers' experience and expectations, consumers vehemently disagree.
In fact, consumers say that companies not only don't know their needs, they also don't care. Where executives would give their companies' customer service "B" grades, consumers give them "D" grades. What's even worse is that executives have no idea how this disconnect is affecting their companies' futures.

Nearly half of consumers (47%) say they don't believe company executives understand their experiences, citing problems such as rude customer service staff or employees who provide the wrong information or never solve the customer's problem. More than one-third (41%) of the customers who take the time to complain don't think companies listen to or act on their feedback.

But that doesn't mean customers are doing nothing. On average, more than half will defect--leaving a company flatly--based on bad customer experiences, without ever telling the company why.

And the problem doesn't end there. Nearly nine out of 10 customers will tell their friends and colleagues about their bad experiences, creating a negative ripple effect in the prospective customer base that has serious implications for a company's future success. Yet the executives we surveyed thought that only 20% of customers shared the news about their bad experiences--a significant mismatch with the customer view.

And the biggest misunderstanding among executives? If customers don't complain to them, it means they don't have a problem and everything is fine. This is the silent but deadly company killer.

This silence is masking broken feedback channels and customer attrition, which can be lethal for certain industries. Across all industries, 17% of interactions result in a customer leaving the company. In the credit card industry in particular, 43% of customers will stop doing business with a company after a bad experience they did not take the time to report. Our research found that hanging on to existing customers is critical, because their lifetime value increases exponentially over time. In the credit card industry, a small retention increase of 5% can have a huge profit impact of 125%.

To compound matters, the "millennials" are here. The arrival of this younger generation has raised the stakes significantly for companies trying to build solid relationships with their customers. These young customers are tech-savvy and prefer to have their customer service needs met through a wider variety of channels--more than just the call center and the Web. Mobile applications, social networks and virtual worlds such as Second Life, to name a few, are their realms.

If executives think they have a handle on what their customers want, they need to try analyzing the customer service experience of a millennial. Unless a company changes its customer management strategy to address them on their turf, millennials will leave quickly and quietly in large numbers and head for the companies that do "get" them, making silent attrition an even bigger challenge than it is today.

Based on Convergys' research, here are the 10 most important things your customers want you to know:

1. The sharp contrast between what executives think they know and what customers say they don't underscores a fundamental management problem: managing inside out for maximum efficiency instead of taking feedback from the outside and using it to improve the customer experience.
2. Customer perspectives and preferences are the formula to feed into internal efficiencies. Execs would do well to scrutinize the information on those feedback forms and satisfaction surveys and put them to work.
3. With no actionable information available, companies are doomed to make the same customer service mistakes over and over, unless executives get serious about their customers. Executives need to understand that negative customer experiences--even those they'll never hear about--have a direct correlation to attrition, so it's important to work on improvements that drive customer satisfaction.
4. The fact that a customer won't tell a company about his or her dissatisfaction but will tell others means that not only has the customer gone, but also that the company has no idea why, and word is spreading throughout a widening circle of potential customers.
5. A satisfied customer isn't necessarily a loyal one. Even a satisfied customer who rates a company's service as exceptional will leave that company for one that provides better value. Customers are satisfied when a company successfully completes transactions and understands their needs; customers are loyal only when they receive value beyond the ordinary parameters of service. The more extraordinary the value, the greater their loyalty, but it differs by customer. The millennial population might see automated, fast interactions as a value that engenders loyalty, for example, while a retiree might attach special significance to personalized instruction.
6. Silent attrition varies by industry, but in general, companies are losing about 12% of their customers this way, with the defectors poisoning the well among potential new customers. Silent attrition, particularly in this economy, can spell the difference between a company's success and its failure.
7. Service is paramount: No fewer than 78% of consumers believe service trumps personalized features, and 86% of customers say service defines the brand. Customers rate brands based on their own experience with a company, and virtually all leading brands can charge a premium by making service their defining characteristic.
8. Skepticism is on the rise, with 86% of customers becoming more distrustful in the last five years. A prime example? When the economic crisis hit full-swing in September 2008, 95% of U.S. customers said they distrusted the financial services industry. Companies must understand that they have to convey trust from the front line. Smart companies in beleaguered industries are committing substantial resources to ensure concerned customers contacting them have superior experiences that boost trust.
9. One size does not fit all. Those consumers preferring automated channels have doubled in the last four years, with 55% of the population preferring automated resolution to waiting to speak with someone on the phone. Companies must balance automated self-service with agent-assisted service and deliver a seamless customer service experience every way they serve their customers.
10. Millennials are 43% more likely to seek assistance through their preferred automated channels. Nowhere is the preference for self-service more notable than among younger customers who have grown up in the Internet era. For millennials, online interaction is ingrained. They see value in social networks, perceive needs through viral communications with colleagues and order and pay through the Web. They want their service needs handled the same way. Actively embracing the value shift to social network-based service and multi-channel automation is mission critical now to ensure the loyalty of a new generation of customers.
    

The ability to deliver an excellent customer experience is a competitive necessity. This experience is not a fixed is critical to building strong relationships with those customers. Skill in managing the customer experience across an array of changing service channels and segments now plays an increasingly important role in a company's success.

Here are the steps companies need to take to reconnect with their customers:

• Cover the Basics First: Help customers when they need it, and present personalized offers only when they make sense. Our data say customers don't want to hear about special offers or add-ons when they need service. Companies should make those offers only at times when and via channels where customers are receptive.
• Ensure "One and Done": Companies need to refocus their customer service on resolution, not speed. Customers want a "one-and-done" experience, and they don't care how they get it as long as their problem is solved quickly. Companies should favor policies that empower employees to resolve issues without needing to transfer to the customer or escalate the issue, even if it means taking a little more time.
• Take and Outside-In Approach: Create multiple options, using multiple channels, whereby customers and employees can provide feedback and incentivize decision makers to act on that feedback. Resolution has to be immediate, or it won't help. It's worth remembering that every successful communication can be a customer saved.
  

In summary, customers want very reliable help packaged as good customer service, yet companies are still struggling with basic customer service. Of the factors that mattered most to customers, personalization--the focus of so many customer-experience initiatives--ranks at the bottom, below knowledgeable, helpful employees who are able to address a customer's needs on first contact.

True personalization doesn't mean that the customer service agent knows a customer's name when he or she contacts them; it means the company has taken the time to know how best to serve every individual customer well. The companies that understand this will succeed.