Customer service:
*Look after employees, they will look after customers
October 16, 2011, 6:15 pm
Welcome
Welcome to the sixty first edition of this regular column. Here, we discuss a wide range of topics around Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), many aspects of Business, Education, Entrepreneurship, Creativity, Innovation and the Society at large.
Customer Service
Today’s topic is Customer Service. Yes, that’s something we all expect, don’t we?
Simply put, customer service is about providing services to customers before, during and after a purchase.
Customer service can also be expressed as a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.
Customer service happens in many ways. Face to Face, over the phone, through email/fax etc. Voice BPOs that we discussed last week, which are often called Call Centers, provide outsourced customer service over the phone. However, almost any organization has some element of customer service and it could be either outsourced or managed in-house.
Call centres are also called contact centres, because they act as contact points for customers of the client company. This could happen in two ways. The call centre may call customers to help or discuss certain things while the customers may also call the contact centre to obtain assistance with their specific queries. These two are identified as in-bound and out-bound.
Customer care is applicable in both cases but it is more applicable for in-bound call centres where customers call the centre asking for help. Out bounds usually engage in tele-marketing type of work to sell products and services to customers.
Following are few areas that are important to ensure customer satisfaction:
Timeliness – The time taken to respond to customer queries.
Flexibility – The options available for customers. If the customers are pushed for just one option, they aren’t going to be too happy.
Friendliness – Is the customer being dealt with in a friendly manner?
Honesty – Is the customer support agent honest in what can be done for the customer and what cannot be done?
Customer Expectations – Once someone gives a customer a promise, they set an expectation on the service. Is that expectation delivered on?
Quality of Service – Customers do expect correct information and quality service as they are paying the organisation for whatever the service they are getting. So, a level of quality needs to be maintained.
Value Addition – Do you add value to the customer in addition to what they are already paying for?
It is important to greet and welcome the customer when they call or visit the organsation. Then a good customer service professional needs to understand the customer’s problem and be empathetic towards the problem. Empathy is a word that I personally had a lot of trouble coming to terms with. What it means is not just to understand the other person but be able to get into their shoes and think from their perspective to really feel the way they are feeling. Once that’s done, it’s easier to help the customer from that point onwards and make sure they are ultimately happy with the service. If the customer feels that they were well treated and that they received value for their money, they will be ambassadors promoting your organisations. This is something to reflect on for businesses that provide customer support for their products and services.
Every customer is different in some way from others. Discovering and understanding these differences results in a high probability of delivering service in a way that is perceived to be satisfying to each customer. Its advised to get feedback from customers at all times and then listen, especially when it hurts.
Skills
Interpersonal skills, verbal communication skills, listening skills and basic computer skills are important for customer care professionals. In addition to that, they need to know about the service or products that the customer needs assistance with. For example, if they are helping customers of a bank, they obviously need to know well about the products and services of that bank.
A good customer care ‘professional’ needs to develop certain skills to be able to do their job well. I would like to emphasise the word ‘professional’ in the last sentence. There are people who think call centre and other customer support jobs are easy, or that you can do it without any training, support or professional development. However, a good training would make real professionals.
As mentioned earlier, customer care is one of the most crucial aspects of any business. At the end the day, all businesses exist because of customers, and their survival is highly dependent on how well the customers are serviced. There is this famous saying, "If you don’t take care of your customers, someone else will", and that is very true. So, if the customer care/support personnel aren’t well trained, how do you expect to manage that critical element?
Following are a few principles around Customer Service.
* Be approachable and welcoming.
* Ask the right questions to find out what the customer needs.
* Listen carefully and show that how the customer is feeling is understood.
* Take responsibility for meeting customer’s needs – don’t leave it to others or blame others.
* Treat every customer as an individual and treat them with respect.
* Be responsive. Go the extra mile to help the customer.
* Be reliable. Don’t make promises that can’t be kept.
* Turn a complaint into something positive by dealing with it effectively
A Few Quotes
A few quotes around customer Service would be a good read I guess.
The Customer is King. - Unknown
If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends. - Jeff Bezos
Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong. - Donald Porter
The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary. - Sam Walton (Wal-Mart)
People expect good service but few are willing to give it. - Robert Gately
Here is a simple but powerful rule - always give people more than what they expect to get. - Nelson Boswell
You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied. - Jerry Fritz
Although your customers won’t love you if you give bad service, your competitors will. - Kate Zabriskie
Customer service is not a department, it’s an attitude! - Unknown
Sales without Customer Service is like stuffing money into a pocket full of holes. - David Tooman
An Experience
I would like to share a personal experience that explains customer care in different perspectives.
When I was in Australia, I had to once travel from Sydney to Brisbane on Qantas airways. We were on the last flight of the day and unfortunately the airline had to cancel the flight. As a customer, I was in difficulty as I had booked the night flight so that I can be at my destination that night and be available for an event early the following morning. However, the cancellation of the flight was probably due to a reasonable matter, and I understood and accepted the situation.
Therefore we were put in a 5-star hotel for the night. And I was late to my event after taking the flight next day morning.
However, to make up for the inconvenience caused, they later inquired into the situation that took place, and sent us a valuable gift voucher to be used for travelling with them in the future.
Now this shows how an organisation tried to provide customer service to the best of its ability and when it had some lapses still took some action to ensure the customer was eventually happy. That’s what you call as good customer care.
Look after your employees, then they will look after the customers
Last week, I was invited by the Rotary Club of Colombo Metropolitan to make a speech to their members. And the topic revolved around Semco, the most unusual workplace in the world. That is a topic we talked about in this column too. People were interested to hear Ricardo Semler’s democratic ways of managing the organisation. If you remember the story, SEMCO has many schemes to provide flexibility to its employees. In fact their core effort is to provide employees with flexible work, allow them to do what they like to do and manage work-life balance. They believe it will ultimately help the business significantly as well as provide better service to customers because employees are happy and empowered.
A quote from Richard Branson (The Virgin Entrepreneur) from one of his speeches made at University of Sydney:
"Convention dictates that a company should look after its shareholders first, its customers second and its employees last. At Virgin we do the opposite. It seems common sense to me that if you start with a happy and motivated workforce, you’re much more likely to have happy customers – which, of course, leads to larger profits and happy shareholders."
Semco and Virgin shed light on another side of achieving better customer service.
I will save more of Sir Branson for a separate column.
See you next week!
Oct 16, Colombo: University lecturers in Sri Lanka have warned of severe trade union action if the government fails to grant the due salary increase in the 2012 budget proposals. 
