Archive for the ‘Customer Satisfaction Programs’ Category

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Customer satisfaction

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

One could say that the main objective of customer service is customer satisfaction. It is not the only one, of course. Since it is so important, companies should have a way of gauging customer satisfaction.

On OpenForum.com Suzy Frisch writes “Are Your Customers Satisfied?” and suggests the following steps to find out:

1. Develop a strategy to measure customer satisfaction.

2. Provide a way for customers to give feedback: surveys, Facebook pages, etc. and be responsive to it.

3. Survey your employees

Remember too that customer satisfaction is also expressed in return business. Keep track of whether customers purchase more than once. If you have a high rate of return business, chances are your customers are at least partially satisfied with something you are offering. You may want to follow up with customers who have not dealt with you a second time. Are they simply not needing your product or service or are they unhappy with something that happened during the sales process?

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Customer service metrics and social media: some tips

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

How do you know how you are doing? One way is to quantify what you want to measure. For instance, you may want to find out how long a typical customer service call takes or what time of day is busiest for customer service. This may help you to then make decisions about staffing.

Kate Legget’s Blog on Forrester.com points out that there is one type of metric that will measure the success of your customer service efforts. Ms. Legget provides some good guidelines for choosing the right types of metrics. She advises starting with understanding your objectives and then choosing the right activity to measure and quantify. For instance, you may want to measure the cost of service. In this case, the metrics to track would be talk time, agent training times, and others.

Social media has become an integral part of most customer service operations. People are using social media as a channel to interact with companies, much like the 1-800 number was the preferred channel just a few years ago. Making the most of this opportunity to interact with customers is the focus of the article “26 Tips for Adding Customer Service to Your Social Media Strategy” on Social Media Examiner.  It is worth reading the entire piece, but some takeaways are:

Allocate resources:

Assign a number of team members the responsibility of managing social networking profiles to ensure they’re all covered throughout the workday.

Listen to what people are saying:

Set up a good listening strategy and be sure to not only listen for customers’ compliments, but also keep your ears tuned to hear their complaints.

Answer customer questions:

Answering consumers’ questions often ends up taking a back seat to responding to customer complaints. However, the timely response to a question will make customers feel heard and potentially can alleviate dissatisfaction.

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Be careful on what you survey

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

Last week, we discussed the availability of online surveys.  Many businesses also use follow-up telephone surveys. Surveying is a good way of measuring customer satisfaction, if you are asking the right questions and using the right benchmarks.

Surveying is really a science yet many small businesses think they can create a good survey themselves. The way questions are phrased, for instance, can affect the outcome.  Although not every business can afford to hire a market research firm or consultant, you can think about the following:

What indicators am I trying to measure and why? Indicators include satisfaction with service, speed of service, professionalism, etc.

What will I do with the information once I have collected it?

What will I do with negative surveys? Will I follow up?

Once you have developed a survey, you will have to make sure that it is not leading or biased. You will also have to figure out whether you want it to be anonymous.

Finally, you should think about separating customer service representatives from the survey…meaning there should be a wall between them.  Patty Azarello writes about how BMW representatives pushed her to grade them a five on service surveys (the highest grade).  Obviously, this will result in skewed results.

Read Azarello’s cautionary statement: Customer service or torture?

One issue Azarello brings up in surveying on speed of resolution. Is this the right metric to determine whether service was performed correctly? Whether the problem was resolved? Also, if speed is a measure, are you determining whether the problem occurs often?

As you can see, surveying is tricky, although necessary.

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How much time are your customers waiting?

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

When customers are put on hold or made to wait, they get increasingly unhappy. The longer the wait is the greater the unhappiness will be. Many large companies struggle with this issue. Some companies deal with it by automating the responses and hoping that customers will find the answer here. Unfortunately, this can alienate customers because many time the answer is not one of the options.

The other day, we tried calling the post office to complain about delayed mail. We called the customer service number and there was no option to talk to somebody. It was all about finding zip codes and changing addresses. This is a failure in the automated service.

On the Harvard Business Review blogs, Michael Schrage talks about the idea of paying to cut wait time. Would customers pay an amount like $5 to skip to the front of the hold queue?  He also asks whether companies are doing what they can to minimize the amount of customers that are calling. In his case, he was trying to get information from an airline that was not posted anywhere on its website.

Then, there is the case of the man who drove from Virginia to Detroit because he was tired of getting the runaround on the phone.  The man had trouble with a defective part from General Motors, and customer service was not giving him a satisfactory answer, so he took matters into his own hands. Read the story here.

Making customers wait for long periods will certainly result in bad blood with your customers. Organizations must figure out a way to minimize wait times. They also must figure out a way to provide good, up-to-date information to avoid having customers queue up. And finally, customer service should never let a customer get off the phone without the information he or she needs.

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Meeting customer expectations

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

It seems self-evident, but anyone dealing with customers (retailers, wholesalers, realtors, etc.) should try to meet their expectations. Meeting expectations is the minimum requirement for customer service. To have stellar customer service, you should exceed expectations.

And yet, many local and national retailers fail to meet expectations. Take for example ATT. ATT Wireless has an exclusive contract to sell the IPhone, a popular device. However, ATT does not appear to have network capacity and many customers complain of dropped calls. Read an article in Techcrunch that details customer unhappiness with ATT.

Another example of failing to meet expectations is Walmart, according to this blog post on ABC News. The post claims that Walmart has reduced the amount of products available on store shelves, does not sell organic produce, and has low quality grocery items. Many customers have stopped shopping at Walmart because they are not finding what they want and they dread the long lines and bad service.

And then there are all the small breaks in customer service, as this editorial from the Wichita Falls, Texas newspaper  Times Record New says. Calls are not returned, appointments are not met–all resulting in lost sales and unhappy customers. As the editors write:

In an economy where money is hard to come by, on either side of a transaction, customer service becomes even more critical. None of us should take a customer for granted, and we need to listen to their concerns, strive to make things right and never forget that we’re in this together.

The bottom line is that an organization that wants to retain customers, keep sales steady and aim for growth, must at the very least, meet customer expectations.

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Customer service leads to customer retention

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Good customer service leads to customer retention. It is simple and straightforward. Most customers will continue to do business with a company that responds to their needs/issues/wants. Customer service ensures that customers are able to express what they need, and then provide the requisite response. Customer service aims to provide customer satisfaction.

In a world where there is a choice in companies to do business, customers choose those that provide the best service.  The best service could be a variety of things: ease of communications, quick problem resolution, personalization, and so forth. It gets more complicated when a company has a monopoly (as do most state utilities). Customers can’t leave but they can complain. If a customer is satisfied, he/she won’t complain and won’t seek alternatives.

There are steps a company can take to increase customer satisfaction (and thus,retention). According to Cheryl at the Service Untitled blog, these steps should be ongoing. She counsels the following:

  • Hire the right people who have the right attitude. Are they friendly? Do they thank you?
  • Do what you promise. Customers remember, and customers leave if you disappoint them by not delivering what you promise.
  • Pay attention to your customers, and what is going on around you in your business.
  • Help the customer even though it might not mean a sale at that particular time. Go beyond your own needs.
  • Handle complaints in a mature manner. Admit when something has gone wrong, and correct your mistake. Always apologize to the customer.
  • Stay in contact with the customer, and know their needs.

    • If you keep a database of addresses and email lists, send your customers birthday cards, promotions, and current interesting information. You want to stay in their minds, but never make it seem as if you are being a pest.

Instituting some (or all) of these customer centered strategies makes sense because they can lead to customer satisfaction, which is of course, the ultimate goal of customer service.  Generally, satisfied customers will not look elsewhere.

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Lessons from a customer service survey

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

MSN Money conducted its fourth annual customer service survey, where it found the top ten companies for service in the United States, and the bottom ten. You can read a recap here.

From the survey, the companies that did best had all or several of the following attributes:

  • Providing a positive experience in the store (for retail outlets)
  • Having knowledgeable staff
  • Fair pricing of products/services
  • Providing quality services
  • Promotions that make customers feel appreciated (like checking baggage for free on Southwest Airlines)
  • No taking customers for granted
  • Not penalizing customers excessively with fees and add ons
  • Avoiding surprise charges
  • Reducing customer’s stress
  • Delivering what is advertised

What ties these attributes together is that they are customer-centric, rather than company-centric. When companies forget that they are working with customers, and become too focused on bottom-line concerns, customers notice and complain or even defect. Companies that did poorly on the survey seemed to not practice these “rules” but to do so over the long term.

What are you doing to ensure you customers remain satisfied?

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Staff, catering to your client

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Every company or organization should evaluate its customer service, its customer experience.  If you don’t have a way to get feedback,  make that a priority. Getting feedback may be the only way you will know what your customers like and don’t like.

Even if you don’t have “problems” you can probably always work to improve the customer’s experience and perception of your company. There are many actions a company or organization can take to improve its customer service.  Tali Yalom, writing in  Inc. Magazine shares several top notch ideas:

  • Hire great staff, starting with managers
  • Cater to your clientele
  • Use CRM software
  • Monitor social media and online reviews

Read the entire article here.

What ideas have you implemented to improve customer service?

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The extras

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Good customer  service involves making sure the customer has a good experience with your product or service, including if there is a problem with your product or service.  However, there are many things that make your customer service great, taking it to the next level.

In high-end department stores, customers may be treated to special services like personal shopping or tailoring.  In the airline world, frequent fliers accumulate miles and special treatment. The more miles you have flown with a certain airline, the higher your status with the airline, which means you get preferential treatment. Some will argue that this is not customer service but rather customer loyalty or retention programs.  Even so, it all is part of aiming to make certain customers are pleased with their interaction with your company or organization.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Macy’s, the national retailer, will be ending gift-wrap services.  Macy’s blamed the cost and the small number of customers who used this service. Yet critics like Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing, disagreed that this was a good place to practice cost cutting:

Danziger said department stores like Macy’s need to set themselves apart from the discounters by “recapturing the customer-service experience and delivering it to their customers.” She says customers will pay more for quality service that extends to walking out the door with a perfectly wrapped gift.

Many would argue that gift-wrapping is one of those extras that make something more special. Can you gift-wrap at home? Of course you can, but it looks (and feels) much better when it is done for you.  On the other hand, perhaps Macy’s no longer is a high-end retailer that owes its customers this particular extra service.

Extras add something special to service. The question remains: which extras are worth the investment?

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Daily practice

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Customer service is akin to exercise, the more you do it the better it is for you (and for your customer). And, as David Evans, chairman of the Grass Roots group, says, customer service should be practiced every day. Evans, who is interviewed in the article Customer Service to be Practiced Every Day, in the U.K.’s Economic Times,  concludes the following:

a consistently well-delivered product or service at good value goes much further than programs that focus on retaining customers with “bribery.”

To Evans, customer loyalty programs are the “bribery.”  The article says that Evans:

doesn’t care for loyalty cards and says price-driven loyalty is often the lowest form of loyalty. Instead, Evans tells his clients that the best way of retaining customer  is to enhance the overall value of their product or service.

In sum, maintaining a customer relationship is about offering a quality good or service, consistently. People will seek out the better product or service.

What do you think?

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