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National Customer Service Week 2014: What’s on the agenda?

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National Customer Service Week starts on 6th October, 2014, a chance to celebrate all that is good about managing services and keeping customers satisfied.

Each day in the week focuses on a different aspect of customer service so I thought I’d share an idea or two about each.National customer service week

Monday:  Understand your customers – Three words that cause so much trouble.  Why?  Failure to recognise that every customer is unique.  Unique in their perspective, how they find value in your products or services and whether they are paying for your product or service, just consuming it or both.

Think dog food…”Doggy Chunks” only 75p a tin at your local store…customer view…bargain.  Get it home and put it in the bowl and Fido thinks “not that muck again”…user view…totally different.  Key: Understand your customer at all levels. Strategically, tactically and operationally.

Tuesday: Easy to do business with – the old sales adage is make it easy for a customer to buy.  Websites offer one-click purchase, a “here’s what you bought last time” memory, helpful “other customers purchased this” hints all to make buying as easy as possible.

Good customer service extends beyond that and should also make it easy for people to feedback (good or bad), too. Key:  Feedback is THE most powerful customer data.  Without it you are shooting in the dark.

Wednesday: Dealing with problems – A big issue I find time and again is blame culture.  Customers know nothing about your organisation, the supply chain or logistics supporting it.  “It’s the supplier’s fault” is THE lamest excuse on the planet.  Blaming another team likewise.

Imagine complaining about your meal at a restaurant and the waiter tells you “Don’t blame me.  It was the Chef’s fault.  He prepares it”.  Not sure you’d go there again!  Key: Take ownership and assume collective responsibility for problems. 

Thursday: Business Impact – It’s not unusual in any organisation to find those individuals who understand the technical impact of failure but are frankly clueless when it comes to translating that into what it means to their internal customers (colleagues) let alone external ones.

Worse still some don’t even care!  The ultimate insult is when you are blissfully unaware of the overall cost of non-availability of product or service to yourself or your customer.  Key:  Test yourself regularly.  Do you really know the true cost of unavailability of product or service to your customer?

Friday: Recognition – The rewarding of good customer service with the tired old employee of the month trophy is viewed cynically by many…”Whose turn is it this month?” While the management may want to promote good examples of customer service many employees are embarrassed at public recognition for what they believe is just doing their job. Key:  Wide ranging recognition programmes are best.  They must be constantly reviewed to ensure they are still valued by your staff.

As we move through our customer service journeys we’d all do well to remember the wise words of Tony Alessandra, the US entrepreneur and motivational speaker “Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game.  Service wins the game.” Which restaurant you go to, which airline you take, which home shopping experience you choose…SERVICE wins the game.

If you’d like more information on National Customer Service week go to their website.

The post National Customer Service Week 2014: What’s on the agenda? appeared first on Global Knowledge UK Blog.


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