Empowered and personal

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

There seems to be a groundswell of support for having personal customer service, as opposed to automated customer service.  People would rather speak with a human being instead of a computer. But having personal customer support is not enough. Customer support personnel must also be empowered to help the customer to resolve his or her problem.

We’ve discussed here before that having the right customer service staff is important because customer service is about solving problems, and problems do not always follow a script. You can train people to follow a script, but you can’t train people to problem-solve.  Customer service personnel who know how to problem solve are invaluable, but if they are not allowed to implement their solutions, then it will be useless for them to have this skill.

The Arizona Republic has an article entitled “Best customer service comes from empowered employees,”  which is part of a series about specific workplaces in Arizona. In the article, the author Erin Zlomek writes the following:

The best customer service comes from employees who are empowered to resolve matters on their own, said the owner of Tempe’s Cartel Coffee

Lab, Jason Silberschlag.

Silberschlag routinely does confidence-building exercises with employees so that they will take the lead in high-pressure situations.

It bears repeating: empowered customer service personnel provide the best customer service. If you manage customer service for your organization, are you giving your staff enough leeway to fix problems?

Tags: empowered customer service, personal customer service
Posted in How to improve customer service | Comments Off

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?

Tags: Actions to improve customer service, customer feedback, Inc. Magazine Customer Service
Posted in Customer Satisfaction Programs, Customer service, How to improve customer service | Comments Off

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?

Posted in Customer Satisfaction Programs, Customer service, How to improve customer service, customer loyalty | Comments Off

How do you know?

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

If your customer service is really bad, or really good, are you aware of it?  Usually, when something goes really bad you hear about it.  A customer that is unhappy may decide to escalate his/her response and go straight to the top to complain, or he/she may decide to go a more public route,  like a complaining on a blog, Twitter or in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.

What business owners need to be more concerned about is the unhappiness that does not escalate. Why? Because when you don’t know there is a problem you can’t fix it. If someone is unhappy with your product and service, but does not tell you why, he or she is cutting you off completely. That customer will most likely never come back, and you won’t know what went wrong. Also, that customer may mention something to his/her colleagues and friends, causing a negative word-of-mouth effect, which you also are not in a position to fix.

How do you prevent this pernicious effect? The truth is you can’t prevent it, but you can alleviate it. The easiest way to gauge how your customers are feeling is to have an easy way to get feedback. For instance, if someone buys your service or product, you can always send a follow up note (via email or regular mail) to see if he/she is satisfied, why or why not. You can have a feedback option on your website, perhaps allowing anonymous comments. You can allow comments on your blog. You can have other social media presence, like a Facebook Fan Page and encourage your followers to post anything relating to their experience with your product or service.

The only way to know how your customers are feeling is to ask them to give you feedback. If you avoid feedback, you also are avoiding dealing with negative perceptions, and thus, allowing them to fester and grow.

What methods do you use to track customer experiences? Please share your best practices with us.

Tags: encouraging customer comments, feedback and customer service, importance of feedback
Posted in Customer service, How to improve customer service | Comments Off

Customer service IS marketing

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

At ARMA, customer service is one of our tenets. It is part of our philosophy on how we interact with anyone we do business with.  It is why we share ideas on customer service on this blog.

We came across an article in Adweek Magazine, a leading trade journal for the advertising industry, entitled “Customer Service as the Key Differentiator” by Joseph Jaffe.  He articulated what we have argued here before, namely, that without good customer service, you will lose customers, in spite of great advertising and marketing.  He argues that customers ARE the business, and that marketers have to consider them.

Jaffe even says the following:

My belief is that “customer service” (or “servicing customers” — it’s the same thing) is the new marketing, the new PR, even the new crisis communication.

Ultimately, Jaffe is arguing that customer service helps you keep and grow business and perhaps that is where you should be spending your marketing effort. We agree. Do yourself a favor and read the whole article.

Tags: Customer service and marketing, Customer Service as the Key Differentiator by Joseph Jaffe
Posted in Customer service, Importance of customer service | Comments Off

To improve customer service, communicate

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

In an interview with the Boston Globe, Richard. A Davey, general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company, said the following:

Safety and customer service are the bottom line. Folks only talk about safety after an accident. Safety is key not only for our passengers but for our employees.

Reliability is absolutely the first key that [customers] expect and then we’re looking at other things, things like Wi-Fi, things like enhanced customer communications. Our customers are forgiving if there’s a delay in service for whatever reason. But what they aren’t forgiving about is if we can’t communicate it to them quick enough, and I agree with that.

We added the bolding because at ARMA we agree that good, fast communication is key to improving your customer’s experience.  In fact, we believe that it is necessary that any person who deals with customers, in any capacity, have excellent communication skills. What does this mean? It means the ability to relay information clearly, and thus minimize misunderstandings. To communicate clearly means to have a great command of the language, being able to say what you mean in a plain fashion, and finally, it also means being able to understand and respond to the customer. Communication has to be two ways.

Communication may be the most important factor in excellent customer service. People are often more upset when they receive no response than when they receive a negative response. No response (no communication) is assumed to mean that the other party is ignoring your question/request/presence.  It is human nature to want acknowledgment.

To improve communications, and thus to improve customer service, follow the following steps:

• Listen to the customer carefully
• Respond as quickly as possible (if you don’t understand what the customer said, ask for clarification)
• Use clear language
• Use a friendly, open tone

What do you do to improve your communication?

Posted in Customer service, How to improve customer service | Comments Off

Great customer service cannot be scripted

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Perhaps for large companies there is no getting around the low wages and low expectations that customer service departments have to live with. Generally, being a customer service representative is not a career choice, but rather a stop gap or entry level position. When you call the customer service department at a major utility or company, chances are good that you will get an inexperienced person who has been trained to follow a script.  If your conversation goes according to the script, you will most likely have no problems. But if your problem or situation does not conform to script, the customer service rep will not be able to handle it. He or she is not being paid to think outside the script.

For most common problems (I need to cancel my order, change my order, fix a billing error), there is a script and training. And in most cases, customer service reps are not expected to do more than scripted, nor are they trained to think on their feet. This is when a supervisor or manager has  to deal with a “problem” customer.  You can see how this can be frustrating to the customer.

Some people are not capable of thinking of innovative solutions. They can only provide cookie-cutter responses. Those types of people should not be in customer service. Customer service that is really great is not scripted  and is not cookie-cutter. It responds to the customer’s SPECIFIC problem/situation. And it tries to resolve it, creatively if need be.

Scripts do not allow for problem-solving. And indeed, problem-solving is not easy to teach.  And yet, problem-solving is exactly what customer service should be.

What do you think?

Tags: characteristics of customer service representatives, customer service scripts, problem solving in customer service
Posted in Customer service, How to improve customer service | Comments Off

Being personal

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Customer service is a person-to-person interaction.  Computers have a hard time resolving problems and that is why when we are faced by the dreaded robotic answer tree we get more upset.  People can respond immediately, not only because they are thinking about what we are saying but because they are able to pick up cues from our voice, our tone  and put it all together.

The more personalized your customer service is, the happier your customers will be. As Aileen Bennett discussed in her article “Customer service should be more personalized“on TheAdvertiser.com, a bit of personal attention can go a long way.  Bennett says the following:

It’s amazing how these days a little bit of customer service that seems personal rather than corporate can really stand out. I understand that policies need to be put in place, and as companies get larger, they are even more important. But there must be a way to still let people be themselves — to use their personality.

I don’t want to feel as though I’m a generic customer, a number or a statistic. I want more, and I notice when I get it.

On the subject of personalization and customer service, many companies think the answer is social media. While social media certainly allows for more immediate response, it may not be the cure-all many think it is. Bridget Carey writing in the Miami Herald says:

Our weekly column strives to help the business community practice good online etiquette and use social media effectively. But when you just hear about good business examples from Twitter, it can give a false impression that Twitter alone can save your sales numbers.

The truth is, balance between real world and online solutions is key.

In effect, what Carey is arguing is that although Twitter can help, having people to handle customers directly can be more helpful in the long run.

Customer service IS about people. No sense forgetting that.

Tags: personal customer services, personalization and customer services
Posted in Customer service, How to improve customer service | Comments Off