The Principles Of Great Customer Service

Every business, large or small, depends on customers for its livelihood. Surprisingly, a great many businesses fail to honour this common-sense principle.

Excellence in customer service is arguably the single most important element in determining your company's future success or failure. Regardless of the product or service you provide, you are in the business of serving customers.

The CEO/MD must transmit three essential principles to all employees:

Every function of the company must look at the business through the eyes of the customer. Each person in the company must add value on top of the product or service. The customer, not the company, determines value. Building customer loyalty

All too often, companies focus their energies on going after customers and too little effort into building a solid customer base. This short-term strategy usually ends up backfiring on the bottom line.

Successful companies focus "outside-in" (looking through the customers' eyes), not "inside-out" (looking through your own eyes). They maintain an "outside-in" focus through the following techniques.

Model the behaviour. Create an environment where employees can make decisions at the tactical level. Leaders need to model the behaviour they want employees to exhibit, not the "do as I say, not as I do" model. Know your customer. Allocate time to go out and meet with customers and suppliers. Manage out, not up. If an employee's orientation is to please the boss, he or she won't focus on pleasing the customer. Put customer service first at your management meetings. If you always ask questions about cost cutting or meeting the budget, your management team will focus on these issues, not on customers. The first question every customer asks (or thinks) is: "What's in it for me?"

To keep the focus where it belongs, we offer these tips:

Guarantee your products and services. Stand behind everything you do or make. Otherwise, what possible reason can anyone have to buy from you? Make on-the-spot decisions. No one wants to hear: "Let me check with ..." or "I'll have to get back to you". A customer who comes to you with a problem and gets an immediate decision will – more often than not – walk away satisfied. Keep your promises. In an attempt to outdo the competition, you may occasionally be tempted to over-promise delivery of goods or services. Don't do it! Make promises you know you can keep. Customers appreciate it. Measuring customer satisfaction

Most businesses measure success by such typical key indicators as profit margin, sales and accounts receivable. These indicators measure what's in it for the business. The real challenge lies in measuring what's in it for the customer.

In addition to the most obvious measurements (referrals generated from current customers, level of repeat business from current customers, rate of customer complaints), we recommend these future-customer-focused key indicators:

Time to answer enquiry. Business studies show that a customer lead loses 1% of its potency for each day it remains unanswered or unfulfilled. Responding faster than your competitors translates into a clear advantage. On-time delivery. If your product doesn't get to the customer when he or she needs it, the value of that product is diminished severely. Promising a specific delivery date and not sticking to it creates...