I’ve been thinking a lot about customer service. I believe that as a small business, this quality is an important discriminator. It is amazing how infrequently excellent customer service exists. Businesses talk a lot about customer service, but many spend little time ensuring that it exists.
Doug Howardell at the ACA Group defines excellent customer service as “as the ability of an organization to constantly and consistently exceed the customer’s expectations.”
This is by definition a challenging task as a customer’s expectations will naturally shift and frequently increase over time.
So I pose the questions?
- How do companies organize themselves to ensure excellent customer satisfaction?
- What do companies that have excellent customer service do?
- How does a company ensure that excellent customer service is maintained?
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Two things, the on-topic one first.
I read somewhere that the best customer service is designing a product that actually satisfies a need. Its rare that someone creates a novel product and people re-organize their needs to fit the product. When you have a good product design, and of course flawless execution of the product, customer service is moot. I think in the same book (i doubt this) they said that customer service reports should be input into future product modifications (CS data goes to the R&D department). So with this bias I submit that companies that display excellent customer services practices funnel information from the customer service department to other areas of the business (especially R&D).
Second:
The book The Escher Cycle by Finn Jackson is, I think, the penultimate book on explaining how a business works. He’s got this one diagram that’s so simple it’s profound. His first chapter is on defining a market for yourself, identifying the optimal customer profile (in terms of who needs your product, not how much money they have) and then marketing to them. I think if/when a business does this properly, they almost undermine the need for a CS department.
From my experience,
1. Hire good employees and empower them to take action to satisfy a customers needs.
2. They go out of their way, and share the best examples with other employees.
3. You’ll know.
I think companies with great customer service are those that have a well established company culture from top to bottom. When employees see upper management so passionate about satisfying customers, they are motivated to be/do the same. It is hard to maintain a company culture as the company grows, but it's not impossible. It's amazing what a group of people with the same values can do together and work towards a common goal.
I think companies with great customer service are those that have a well established company culture from top to bottom. When employees see upper management so passionate about satisfying customers, they are motivated to be/do the same. It is hard to maintain a company culture as the company grows, but it's not impossible. It's amazing what a group of people with the same values can do together and work towards a common goal.
Warm,sincere greeting in first contact. provide or suggest better alternative, satisfy the customer sincerely wormly thanks the customer for the better business and invite them to come back again if they need any help again.