Customer centric culture should be a matter of interest of all the members of a company. Everyone, from de CEO to the office boy, should be in the same line about what is a great customer service approach, and how do it their particular company.
According to Jeff Toister, who is a specialist in Customer Service, there are 3 areas where companies can improve their customer service, wich are the following:
- Providing clear direction
- Using mile markers
- Needing course corrections
In this article I will explain every one of them. So, let’s dig a little bit.
1) Providing clear direction
When we talk about clear direction, it means that the set of instructions about how the customer service is going to be managed in the company is fully known and understood for all the company’s employees.
Three factors are involved to make this happen:
- Explain clearly and as plain as possible to all your organization what your goals in customer service are. Make sure everybody understood the message
- You need to focus in your clients. Define what you are going to do for them and make them the center of the strategy
- Measure always what did you do today and plan what you hope to do in the future. This way you can know is you are getting better
After creating a customer centric culture in your company, I mean, make customers the center of your business is it clear you need to decide based on them.
This applies to several aspects of your company, like communications, policies, etc.
Juan Carlos Jiménez, in his article “The value of a culture of care and customer service” tells a work experience in a call center.
On that occasion he helped 25% of leaders to radically change their supervisory practices. This resulted in a 120% improvement in service quality.
If you find it difficult to create or communicate the client-centrist culture in your company, one option is to get advice from an expert who can not only help you as a leader, but also to the members of your organization.
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2) Using mile markers
Do you remember when you were a kid and use a marker to check your growth? You always were expecting to be bigger than before.
That could be similar to customer service. Is needed to check if every decision, effort and action the company is performing, give results.
This can be done through customers surveys, testimonials, etc. In any case, is convenient to have a well set scoreboard or KPI and quantify if the goals are being reached.
Is this kind of measure that can make clear if the goals are been met. Or if a improve in any area is needed as soon as possible.
But, if we are going to measure goals, is important to set a good lineup of goals.
Goals should be focused in results, not in the way to get it. For example, a goal could it be: “get a rate superior to 4.5/5 stars”.
But, even is good to have a bigger number of reviews, “having X reviews” it should not be a goal.
Also, goals should be set for the sake of getting better. But personals goals or try to improve something just for brag about, is not good. That shouldn’t be part of a customer centric culture.
Sometimes individuals inside the company could be pushing some goals to obtain a personal benefit. That could leads to a competitive behavior that may blur the focus of customer service.
Is a good idea to set ways to collaboration between individuals and teams in the company when defining customer services goals. So, focus less in rewards and more in your clients.
3) Needing course corrections
Is normal that, along the way, some obstacles may interfere in our way to a great customer service. Nobody can predict everything, so, plan for the unexpected.
What if a client reaches us with an unheard complaint? Or we have to change a product? In this and many other cases, our customer service is going to be affected.
A real problem about customer service is when the team directly in charge to face the clients is unhappy. We are not talking about a light sadness that could pass in just a while, but a deep or rooted unhappiness.
They could be unhappy for a lot of reasons. For example, they could be unhappy with the company for long shifts or low paycheck, etc. Or they could be unhappy for internal or personal reasons.
Sometimes an employee could be unhappy because feel is in a meaningless job or have not direction neither goals.
In any case an unhappy employee in unable to give a great customer service.
A good suggest to face this kind of cases could be propose brand new challenges for the customer service employees. Give a spin to the way the job is done.
Of course, the company needs to make corrections in the course when this happen. Use a customer service or a customer centric culture training to reenergize the team.
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Customer centric culture: A summary
Companies who are really committed to their clients are the ones that give an outstanding customer service. They exist and work for them, ergo, the put them in the center of everything related to the company.
The three key factors mentioned above involve all the employees of the company.
That mean that customer service should not only be a department who makes its own rules and lives separately from the rest of the company. All the employees should be hands-on in customer service.
Successful companies in customer centric culture, like Amazon, Zappos, etc. to name a few, have a list of corporate core values.
These should not be just a sign in some wall. They have to be meaningful and the reason to any action or area of the company.
What else do you think people and companies can do for improving customer service? I will love to hear your comments.