We look at something today that’s almost a cliche in business-Customer service. In fact, I see customer service the most taught in all training programs. Somehow companies still do grapple with substandard customer service. And i think customer service in our part of the world here is a problem. Why because you interact with staff on phone and in offices who just don’t seem get it. They can be so laid back and show little pro-activity in dealing with customer issues. How can we get round this. I would suggest a few pointers..
1. First establish your desired customer service standards
2. Develop your standards into a charter that governs your service and that binds on everyone
3. By all means don’t stop the training
4. But very importantly measure your customer service performance, and this is where I think many organisations fall short.
So people are sent on training and yet there is no follow up to ensure that the knowledge gained by staff from such training is actually translated into action. So to get your money’s worth, find a way to measure every individual, department, business unit and the entire organisation per the standards set in the customer service charter.
Reward the high scoring individuals or units, find ways to develop the laggers and obviously punish consistent offenders. It is when there is a trusted and fair system of measuring customer service performance at every level that the organisation incrementally builds good customer service as part of its culture. Once that is achieved, it is easier for the business to reap the benefits. Good customer service would not just become a PR talk by business leaders during interviews, but a realistic attribute of the company which customers would talk about and sell you. we know this customer advocacy thing in theory right, well it can also be a reality! I believe that if I should interact with your business at every front, I would be a satisfied customer and I would talk well about you.
I m sure you probably know bout this internal customer to external customer thing that has been propounded. That management teams and departments like HR, Finance and other back office functions serve the staff who are internal customers and when they re happy then the internal customers i.e staff would in turn make. External customers are also happy. Well not so with this thinking. To this school thought there is only one customer and that is the external customer. This is that one customer who pays everybody including the back office staff and that this external customer is who everyone in the company should see.
The back office guy should serve the process and the staff with the cash paying customer in mind. Since cash is king in business, if everyone in the organisation is seeing this cash paying customer their orientation should change. All my talk this morning is about breaking down the internal vs external customer concept which we have and do read from business books and to drive this concept that there is only one customer, the external one, the one who pays cash and keeps the business going. This customer should everyone in the organisation see and serve because you know what he puts food on the table.
So if the finance or HR person is serving a staff, they know they should do this to make the only one external customer happy, the one who puts food on the table and not just making some internal customer happy, who by the way could be some annoying colleague. You may disagree with this singular customer thinking. Lets keeping talking about it.
Author: Yaw Korankye Antwi || ghanatalksbusiness.com
