Refine & Redefine

Five Ways to Create a Customer Service Culture

The reason an organization can deliver good or bad customer service comes down to one thing; what is happening on the inside of that organization. To sum it up in one word: culture.

The culture inside of the organization is impacting your customer service. It’s more than just hiring the right people, and it’s more than customer service training. At the same time, it’s simple. It’s just setting an example of customer service behavior at the top, and pushing its way, through all employees, toward the customer.

Starting at the top means that leadership and management must set the tone. Then, they must practice what they preach. They must treat employees like they want the customer treated – even better, just to accentuate the point. (If that last sentence seems familiar, it may be because you recognize it as my spin on the Golden Rule, which I refer to as the Employee Golden Rule: Treating employees the way you want the customer treated.)

This is where the customer focused culture begins. It starts with people who want to do the right thing. From that point, we can layer on customer service training (and other types of training) that focuses on creating an amazing place to work.

So how can you accomplish this? Here are five ways that you can create a customer service focused culture.

1. Hire for the culture. It’s an old adage that says hire for the attitude and train the skill. This is a little different. Even with the right attitude, will the new employee fit in to the culture you are trying to build or sustain? Look beyond the attitude to the personality. Make sure there is a cultural fit.

2. Train for the culture. If the employee has the right attitude and personality that meshes with your culture, get him/her up to speed and entrenched in your culture as quickly as possible. They must understand what the company stands for; it’s goals, mission and vision.

3. Everyone must be on the same page. I call this alignment. Understanding the company’s goals, mission and vision is one thing. Employees must be able to articulate the essence of these statements. I love the concept of the “mantra,” which is a sentence version of the goals, vision and mission that succinctly sums up what the company’s culture is about.

4. Allow people to experiment. This is another way of saying people are empowered to try and do new things and is especially true in the world of customer service. The outcome should be favorable for the customer, not hurt the company (financially, legally, etc.) and enhance the relationship with the customer.

5. Create a learning environment. If you really let people experiment, and they are truly empowered, there will be much to learn from the successes and failures of your employees. Celebrate it all. Encourage people to learn from their successes and their failures. Share these lessons with everyone.

If your company is amazing to work for, if people love coming to work, and if there is a contagious enthusiasm because people really love how they are treated, what they do and who they are doing it for, then don’t you think the customer is going to feel it? That’s what a customer service focused culture is about.

Source: B2Community

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The six elements of customer service evolution

Customer expectations are evolving and customers are more vocal and willing to share both when something is good and something is bad. Customer service is also evolving, frankly, in order to keep pace with customers; but is the pace fast enough? The pace of the change; driven by customers, is accelerating because the social web (commerce and network) has enabled and empowered customers.

Try and think back 10-15 years ago; did you make purchases online? Other than ask friends, did you read online reviews? What levels of service were tolerable, did you accept? When you needed to contact a company did you consider sending a text? You might have sent an email, but when something really needed to happen, you picked up the phone. You might have even sent a letter, you know, the kind requiring a stamp.

In the chart below, I worked to encapsulate and share my view of the top-level changes within customer service. I intentionally did not assign dates to the past, nor the future; the past could be yesterday or last year, the future tomorrow or 2015. This is a not an all or nothing phenomenon, your organization may have certain elements well within the futures bucket and others stuck in the past.

Element One – People

The people involved in customer service, historically, had been the people with customer service somewhere in their title, yes that simple. Organizations need to change this, if they want to grow and prosper (survive?). Products and services are becoming more complex, other parts of the organization absolutely need to become part of the customer engagement process. I am not simply talking about transferring phone calls; it is much bigger than that. I am talking about collaboration and knowledge sharing. You might even call it social business, but I do not want to get ahead of myself.

Element Two – Process

Gone are the days of a paper manual with defined processes for as many scenarios as management can think up. Actually, for some those days are not actually gone. Customers are no longer interested in listening to the script, following the guided path nor being pushed towards the efficient route . If the ‘people’ part of the evolution is accurate, then organizations will also need a way to coordinate activities with other parts of the organization. Yelling over the cubicle does not count as collaboration and sticky notes do not count as knowledge management.

Element Three – Technology

A technical discussion could be approached from many different directions. With respect to this conversation, the more interesting technical element has to do with the channel match which needs to occur between the desire of the organization and the needs of the customer; i.e. the channels of communication used by each. Not only do organizations need to adapt to the changing channel usage by their customers, they need to realize that customer ‘channel hop’ – changing their mode of communication even mid-stream within an interaction happens. Organizations need to consider active pull, versus push to optimize their channel strategy. Active pull means that the value offered on channels you would like people to use is valuable to them, not just you. Real-time, synchronous channels are more expensive, but studies show that satisfaction rates are also higher on these channels.

Element Four – Duration

Historically, the length of time spent by either side of an interaction was limited to the specific activity performed, or issue discussed. Customer Service metrics are often tied to duration, like average handle time. While not every interaction will take on a life of its own, interactions will create a string of communications and form the basis of an ongoing relationship between customer and organization. Enhanced, more sophisticated activities like co-creation and ideation will now take place as well, during product use when it can be most beneficial. This is not about creating life-long friendships, your customer does not want to be your BFF either, this is about working together to mutual benefit. Take the time required to solve the problem, and make sure the customer’s concerns are heard.

Element Five– Centricity

As noted above, metrics and KPIs have been driving Contact Centers since the beginning of time . The truth is handle time and concepts such as first call resolution will continue to be used, but they will not be the only driving force. As a matter of fact, these metrics will move further down, possibly even to tertiary consideration. As opposed to simply figuring out how quickly they are able to get the customer off of the phone, customer service professionals will consider more than just the current case and will be given latitude to do the right thing and stay on the phone to help the customer. Insights towards customer need by the agent will be augmented by business intelligence both real-time and in aggregate.

Element Six – Approach

Few people appreciate being caught off-guard, unprepared or surprised. Customer issues are more often than not identified first by the customer. What if the customer service teams could identify potential issues and do something about them before the small issues become very large issues? This can be accomplished simply with operational metrics made available to agents (insights). Spending a few more minutes on the phone with a customer, to really understand the root cause of an issue is worth the time and effort. Or, how about proactive notifications of outages, or product issues (positive call deflections)? Further, taking the time to collaborate with the internal organization, providing superior value to customers, will also reap rewards in the form of loyalty and future business.

Is it possible to put it all together?

Yes it is. It is going to take work? Yes it will. I do not believe you can accomplish it all at once, nor should you try. That said, understanding how all the of the elements are interrelated is an imperative. Some of the elements are within the control of the IT department; some are in Sales and Marketing, while you can control some as well. In the end, it not really about control; Customer Service is about doing what is best for the customer. What do you think?

Source: MYCustomer.com

What Business Customers Are Looking For From
Customer Service Of Business Websites

Your Customer Service Is a Unique Strength as you control this one hundred percent. Here are just some of the things your customer is looking for:

• Comprehensive service. Customers will appreciate a smooth, seamless process for addressing their needs as for example going back to the initial autoresponder, if your resolution process is for them to fill out a contact form, one way to provide comprehensive service and a “Golden Rule” experience is to set up an autoresponder acknowledging their communication and letting them know how they will be contacted.

If there are several steps needed to take care of their concerns, keep them in the loop – update them so they know you are working on the issue and progress is being made. By updating them, you are letting them know they are important to you.

• Trustworthy service is essential to retaining customers. Promising a customer anything and delivering nothing is the surest way to not only lose a customer, it will get “word of mouth” bad press.

• Courteous service. When you’re running an internet based business coutesy is essential for success. Those companies which make a personal connection, both through their marketing but also their customer service, will still be around ten or twenty years from now. The customer demands more.

• Honest service. You must keep your promise. If you make a claim, you must be able to back it up. Overblown hypey claims will serve to discredit you, unless you can back them up and demonstrate to your customers that they are receiving the benefits you promised.

• Pro-active service. Anticipate your customer’s needs before they happen. Give people an answer right away and provide them with a resolution.

Of course, if you state you’ll respond in 24-48 hrs, you have to follow through on that resolution as well and actually contact them within your specified time frame.

Anticipate the needs of your customers and follow through. Don’t wait for the customer to ask you what you are willing to do – anticipate the question and answer it before they can ask. Customers want you to take the lead – acknowledge their unhappiness, offer a solution or solutions and explain to them how you are going to follow through.

Source: Home Based Business

Image Credit: IMSI Design

Workshop on Operational Excellence in
Mystery Shopping

The Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) is happy to announce a Full Day Workshop being organized in J.W.MARRIOTT, Mumbai , India on 20th September, 2011. The workshop will focus on “OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE IN MYSTERY SHOPPING” and will be hosted by Aftab Anwar, Chairman of the MSPA Global Board, CEO of Startex Marketing Pakistan and Steven Di Pietro, Vice Chairman of the MSPA Global Board, CEO of Service Integrity Mystery Shopping – Australia & New Zealand.

This is the first-ever workshop being held in India by Mystery Shopping Providers Association Asia Pacific-Chapter (MSPA AP).

Click here to download the brochure providing details of the workshop and the registration form for participating in the workshop. Kindly complete and send the registration forms for the nominated participants from your organization to us at the earliest. We strongly urge you to make the best of this opportunity by nominating maximum people from your company as this workshop is packed with sessions that can boost your business.

Look forward to your participation and see you in Mumbai.

Contact Anu Mehta: mspa-ap@mysteryshop.org
or
Venessa Di Olliveira: +91 (22) 6554 1001

MSPA Asia Pacific Website

RSVP for this Workshop Click Here

Follow MSPA-AP on Twitter
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Mobile Brands: Customer experience a priority

To this point, mobile may have been all about the convenience factor, but new research from OpinionLab finds that moving forward mobile will be about the experience – just as online and social have become. The data, conducted during the Forrester Customer Experience Forum, found that 84% of respondents believe a customer experience strategy is ‘as important’ in mobile as for other online experiences.

Regardless of whether the platform is a mobile device, tablet or computer, online customer experience is fraught with issues,” said Geoff Galat, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing with Tealeaf. “As is the case with fixed websites, how successful companies are with their mboile channels will depend largely on their customers’ ability to complete transactions easily.”

Other interesting findings include:

1. 87% believe online customer experience management should be a top priority.

2. 50% have customer experience as a top priority now, 50% plan to adopt a strategy soon.

3. 28% are adopting a CEM strategy to improve satisfaction, 19% to attract new clients.

Meanwhile, data from General Sentiment finds two mobile brands fighting to be the top global brands. Google, primarily known as a search engine, surpassed Apple as the top brands for Q2 2011. Google’s buzz factor has been helped along by the release of Google+, an increase in adoption of Google’s Android mobile platform and Chrome browser.

“The tech sector continues to drive the top ten brands as consumers tend to follow these companies closely and discuss new technology products heavily in social media sources,” said Greg Artzt, CEO, General Sentiment. “However new product innovations and strong earnings are driving brand value for non-tech companies.”

Google, Apple and Microsoft are the top three global brands for Q2, following by Mercedes-Benz and Ford. Yahoo, Sony, Intel, Canon and Panasonic are also in the top ten.

Source: BizReport
Image Credit: Benchmark