Do not just ask customers if they liked something or did not like it. Ask them whether it is important to them or not. Then you get a two by two matrix of the percentage of customers for each benefit of your product/service:
Unimportant and did not like it - watch impact on your overall reputation, maybe delete the benefit
Unimportant and liked it - waste of money except for impact on overall reputation. Is the extra cost worth it?
Important and did not like it - trouble.
Important and liked it - primed for growth
Posted by Chtistine 31/03/08
Try to understand why customers do not buy as much as you understand what customers like and do not like about your service. The customers who do not buy are telling you more about your sales process, ease of buying and your communicated value than customers who do buy. Posted by Bridg 10/04/08
When you get customer comments, read through the comments once or twice and write down "categories" into which most of the comments would fit. Typical categories would include items such as speed, accuracy, courtesy, pricing, product, product availability, business hours and business location. When you have finihed categorising them (into negative and positive comments), analyse the resultant information for patterns and over time, trends. Posted by Kerry 13/05/08.
Don’t limit customers in the ways they communicate problems – give fax and email contacts and consider the differing needs of customers in your particular market place. Posted by Johnson 27/06/08.
CUSTOMER NEEDS
An often forgotten customer need is to be able to buy your product or service! How sure are you it is easy to buy your products? Do you have multiple confusing phone numbers? Do you have confusing price ticketing? There are hundred similar questions you could ask yourself and your customers in completing an ease of buying review. Posted by Sally 10/04/08
Remember that customers need professional service, not friendship. Being friendly is not a substitute for professional service. Posted by Mussa 12/04/08
Deliver on your promises. Customers expectations can be dashed in a myriad of means. Do not add your inability to do as you say to the list. Posted by Danni 13/04/08.
If you claim to offer Excellent Service or Extraordinary Service, define it. Don't rely on a label that anyone can use to describe your extraordinary service. Posted by Phil 01/05/08.
Map your moments of truth from your major customer's perspective. You can do this by a combination of one or more of qual groups, surveys of your customers and employees and by mystery shopping. Try to find out what moments under what circumstances would make an interaction with you memorable, either positively or negatively. Then find out what your segment's expectations are at each moment of truth. Posted by Lisa 24/05/08.
Study the competition. Think about their customer service and the customer service you provide. What can you offer your customers that is “better” than the competition? What can you do to meet currently unmet customer needs in your business? Posted by June 23/05/08.
Cross selling helps uncover unmet customer needs. Service representatives are in an ideal position to propose that the customer purchase additional services or products based on the customer's apparent need. Doing so helps the customer by addressing their stated need or identifying new ones. Posted by Ingrid 27/05/08.
Visit your compettors to see if they are meeting customer needs which are unknown to you. Don't visit with an eye to criticising what your competitor does. Go with an eye to learning what they do better than you. Posted by Belinda 25/05/08.
Invite customers in to talk to your staff about what it is that you do well, what you could do better and what they would like to see you do that you do not do now. Also ask them to tell your staff what they should stop doing. Posted by Jennifer 31/05/08.
The events that drive customer contacts should be primarily those occurring in their lives and not solely as a means to sell the company’s products and services. Posted by Cristina 22/06/08.
Respect for customers’ time is paramount; the company that can provide the most valuable information to help customers comfortably make informed decisions in the least amount of time is the one that earns their loyal business. Posted by Cristina 24/06/08.
CUSTOMER SERVICE STATISTICS
22% of consumers who had to repeat information after being transferred from an automated system to an agent will do less business with the company. Posted by Jeff 01/04/08
It can cost five times more to buy new customers than retain existing ones. Posted by Suzanne 03/04/08.
65 percent of the average company’s business comes from its present, satisfied customers. Posted by Brett 14/06/08.
A 5% increase in customer loyalty increases the lifetime profits of a customer by as much as 95%. Posted by Brett 15/06/08.
A study carried out by the Warwick Business School revealed that 53% of examples of outstanding service resulted from complaints handled well by a business. Posted by Jason 24/06/08.
A dissatisfied customer tells 10 to 25 others about a bad experience. Posted by Jope 27/06/08.
Less than 20% of customers who experience 3 mistakes come back. Posted by Jeff 28/06/08.
DELIVERING GREAT SERVICE
Great service starts with the greeting. Whether it is an internal or external customer, whether it is on the phone, by email or in person, a cheerful heartfelt greetng will lift your customer's mood. With that done you are halfway there to being seen to provide great service. Posted by Lilly 30/04/08.
Good service is about being likeable. Almost any error can be forgiven if you like a person. So building rapport is a key skill. Rapport is difficult to build if you are ingenuine and easy to buld if the reverse is true. Appraise your rapport building skills at the end of every shift. Think about ways you could have built rapport better with the myriad of personality types you get. Ask your colleagues what they might have done. Keep on building your rapport uilding skills and you will soon get a reputaion for delivering excellent customer service. Posted by Lilly 30/04/08.
Remember distance matters. Generally, two women who do not know each other will find that they are comfortable talking with each other at a distance shorter then two men. Two men will find the distance at which they feel comfortable is shorter than for a man and a woman. Barriers sch as desks, couners and dspalys shorten all distances. Posted by Frank 02/05/08
Instruct your staff to speak in full sentences. Short sentences such as, "Customer number?" appear discourteous. Better to say, "May I have your customer number, please?" The extra few words adds very little to the interaction and shortens the overall interaction by helping to build a better rapport with the customer. Rapport builds trust. Trusting customer say more about what the really want. Knowing what a cstomer really wants shortens the interaction. Posted by Ingrid 04/05/08.
Never let an untrained employee have customer contact. Working with customers is the most important thing they will do. Give them the tools necessary to react positively to customers through adequate training (induction) to deliver an experience to customers they will remember with a positive perception. Posted by Johann 03/05/08.
Give customers the benefit of the doubt. Proving to them why they are wrong and you are right is not worth losing a customer over. You will never win an argument with a customer, and you should never, ever put a customer in that position. Posted by John 28/05/08.
If a customer makes a request for something special, do everything you can to say yes. The fact that a customer cared enough to ask is all you need to know in trying to accommodate them. It may be an exception from your customer service policy, but (if it isn’t illegal or dangerous) try to do it. You are just making one exception for one customer, not making new policy. Posted by Priti 22/05/08.
Do not forget personal hygiene and grooming in your mix of what it takes to deliver great service. The best service at a retaurant or at a shop delivered by somebody with nose piercings, gravity defying hair, body odour and dirty fingernails would only be considered great service by a very rare customers who are unlikely to be in the target market. Posted by Olivia 26/05/08.
Help customers self serve to save them and you time. Use FAQ's to anticipate customers' information needs. Posted by Grant 01/06/08.
Make follow up calls. You will one of the few who do. Follow-up calls have been known to help word-of-mouth generate sixty percent of new sales. Posted by Annie 07/06/08.
When communicating with your customers, keep your language positive. Rather than say, "We won't be able to see you before Friday", rephrase your statement to "We'll be able to see you on Friday." Posted by Francesca 10/06.
Keep customers regularly informed on progress and developments - but make sure this is welcomed by the customer. Posted by Francesca 10/06/08
One of the most important things your customer expects from you is accuracy. You've probably thought the same yourself as a customer. "If they can't even send my account to the right address, how can they look after my ...", or "I ordered herb bread and you've brought out garlic. How hard is it to get THAT right in a restaurant?" Make sure your employees are well aware that any information given or sent to customers must be accurate. Posted by Tom 12/06/08.
Customers like to do business with businesses who maintain long-term employees. Posted by Katia 17/06/08.
DIFFICULT CUSTOMERS
Make sure your staff know that they can be assertive (and what that means) with difficult customers. Whilst it is important not to be aggressive with difficult customers, it is also important to be assertive rather than passive about how you can help solve their problem. Posted by Jackie 03/04/08.
Solve the customers problem, not yours. This means asking questions; open question to find out what the problem might be and closed questions to confirm. Posted by Anna 12/04/08.
Follow up. A customer's problem solved is positively related to more people than an unsolved problem is negatively related. Follow up allows you to subtly remind the customer of the effort you made solving their problem. Posted by Jack 13/04/08
Remember CARP (the fish)when dealing with difficult customers.
Control
Acknowledge emotions
Refocus on the problem
Problem solve
Posted by Suzanne 18/04/08.
Always treat peple with respect. Your attitude is important and is conveyed more by body language and the tone of your voice than by the words you speak. Maintain even slow hand movements and an even low voice tone to appear calm. Posted by Francesca 23/04/08.
If someone is verbally abusive tell them that you cannot help them if they do not lower their voice and tell you about their problem without yelling or swearing. If they continue, tell them you will end the conversaton if they continue further. If they do not heed your warning, tell them you are ending the conversation and walk away. Almost all customers will follow and calm down. They still want their problem solved. Posted by Garth 25/04/08.
The most important thing you can do for a difficult customer is to show CONCERN for them. Demonstrate that you want to help solve their problem. Posted by Lilja 10/05/08.
ENFORCING STANDARDS
Be consistent, insistent and persistent about standards. It is OK for there to be a conscious reason to not uphold a standard on any given day. However, the unconscious disassembling of standards by not atking action when standards are breachd without good reason leads you to mediocrity. Posted by Jeff 20/04/08.
Where it makes sense to do so, use checklists to ensure standards are adhered to. Create the checklist with a space for a staff member to sign confirming that the task has been carried out. There are many tasks which must be completed to a standard "behid the scenes" to deliver good customer service. For example, keeping stock up to par levels in a food establishment. It's not great customer service to have a food item out of stock because we forgot to replenish the stock. Posted by James 04/05/08.
The quality of customer service cannot exceed the quality of the people who provide it. To enforce standards you need people with the right attitude. Paying the lowest wage, giving the fewest of benefits, doing the least training for your staff will show. Posted by Jennifer 20/05/08.
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
Delivered on time, in full to customer - by order. Posted by Sam 31/03/08.
Be careful thinking you have good customer service when responses to a five point Likert scale indicator reaches something like 80% at agree or strongly agree. Some research shows that customer loyalty kicks in only when the number approaches 90%. Posted by Stephen 11/04/08.
Restaurant KPIS - revenue per cover, costs per cover, menu item cost, revenue per menu item, percent of beverages sold as a function of total meal cost, percent premium beverages sold, side orders sold as a percentage of mains, entree as a percentage of mains sold, desserts as percentage of mains sold, percent wastage (food and wine). Posted by Alf 11/05/08.
Customer invoice accuracy and customer documentation accuracy. Posted by Rennie 12/05/08.
As a general rule, measure the impact of your customer service efforts, not the activity. For example, measure the level of sales conversion in a call centre rather than talk time. Posted by Brenda 22/05/08
MARKET RESEARCH
A rule of thumb in market research is to maintain specific time frames for interviewing: 30 minutes for telephone interviewing and 50 minutes for personal interviewing. Evaluation criteria should not exceed 26. Posted by Kara 19/04/08
If you own a website use on-line polls to understand customer issues. Poll different audiences. Use different questions to find different perspectives. Use the same queston to determine trends. Posted by Erin 17/05/08.
Don't forget you can use market research techniques on your employees. Most employee surveys tend to measure employee satisfaction but that rarely is the driver of perforamnce. Understanding what the organisation is trying to deliver and what their role is in delivery is usually a more important driver. Use market research techniques to see if you understand employee's needs with regard to understanding their job and being skilled to deliver it. Posted by Jeff 04/06/08.
RESOURCES
Customer Service Manager has articles, forums, advice on events and loads more from independent sources. Posted by Deanne 28/03/08.
Customer Service Point is similar to Customer Service Manager. Posted by Deanne on 28/03/08.
Customer Service Zone has a range of resources but is particularly good in the area of handling difficult customers. Posted by Annette 22/04/08.
Fenman Training is a general training site from which you can download short training programmes. This link goes straight to their customer service training offering. Posted by Tommy 23/04/08.
Up Your Service is a specific site for improving customer service with a lot of free resources and tools. Above all, Ron Kaufman who runs the site, offers genuinely novel approaches to improving customer service. Posted by Jane 16/05/08.
This customer service video shows how not to do it as a general manager!
Posted by Frank 15/05/08.
A good motivational video. Great for playing on a loop before a meeting starts whilst everyone is gathering around. Posted by Frank 15/05/08.
A crash course on the psychology of anger and how to deal with angry customers. Posted by Frank 29/05/08.
A great video on lessons on customer service. It explores customer service concepts in an unusual way that is memorable. Posted by Joachim 20/05/08.
SETTING STANDARDS
Keep learning styles in mind when creating standards. Most people do not read and assimilate large areas of text well. Use a combination of text and pictures/charts/drawings to get you message across. Poted by Mike 09/04/08.
Keep standards separate from work instructions. Standards are what is necessary as an outcome. They can be short and sharp. Often they are all people need to know. Work instructions are how a task should be done and are used mainly for first timers and infrequent tasks.. Messing them up together creates confusion. Posted by Chroong 25/04/08.
Write standards starting with a verb. Staarting sentences with a verb shortens the sentence. Reading short sentences is easier than long sentences. Making comprehension errors is less likely with short sentences. Posted by James 26/05/08
Use pictures and diagrams wherever possble. The majority of people are visual. Include text for people who prefer this method of communication, but do not use it exclusvely. Posted by Jared 02/06/08.
Go even further than Jared suggested and use cartoons with humour. It fits what Jared mentioned about the preference for visual communicaton and it also creates emotion wth humour. Do "Right way" and Wrong way" cartoons and get a laugh whilst embedding learning. Posted by Abigail 03/06.
TRAINING
Don't rely on big one-to-many training sessions to get your staff enthused and knowledgeable about customer service. Complement major training sessions with weekly skill builders about your products and service standards.. Posted by Kim 02/04/08.
Test the effectiveness of training. This can be done a number of ways including on-line tests, audits of practice e.g. watching a waiter serve in a restaurant or going on a sales call with a sales person, role plays, quizzes and surveys of the trainee's customers before and after training. Posted by Ingrid 18/04/08.
Use games to enhance the ability of people to remember what training they received. Pub syle quizzes and TV style games like Jeopardy are great for getting people engaged in learning. The competitive spirit helps build emotion. High levels of emotion whailst training help peopel remember. Cartoon competitions with prizes for the best drawing and the best tag-line (for those who are a little nervous about their drawing skills) of either great or poor ustomer service helps wth creativity. Poste by John 29/04/08
When training concepts such as service, try to get the trainee in the customer's skin experiencing the emotion of the customer. Emotion is a powerful memory jogger and memory encoder. Poste by Leonie 27/05/08
Train your people in other departments and if you have more than one location, in other locations. There is nothing like spending a day in someone else's shoes to get an understanding of what they do. Better understanding between departments will result in better internal and external customer service. Posted by Miriam 29/05/08
A preferred ratio of training is 50 percent on hard and soft skills, 35 percent on products, and 15 percent on systems. Posyed by Julia 20/06/08.
Training must be continual in order to reinforce the skills and behaviors employees need to perform well for your customers. Train each employee within the first two weeks of hiring and provide additional training at least every six months. osted by Jonah 20/06/08.
How do you measure the impact of an employee is who empathetic with customers and solves their complaints quickly and to their satisfaction? - One way to do so is to determine the lifetime value of each of your customers. If that value is $1,000 and the cost to train an employee is $200, you will lose at least $800 by not training your employees to provide the type of service that will maintain that customer’s loyalty. It’s not uncommon for a business to lose 15 to 20 percent of its customers each year. Posted by Ralph 21/06/08
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