Almost a hundred years ago, Harry Gordon Selfridge, founder of the landmark London department store Selfridges, came up with the mantra: ‘The customer is always right’. Yet, as recently as the 1970s, ‘customer satisfaction’ was something of a running joke
Take for example the pantomime rudeness and thinly-veiled contempt exhibited to his guests by hotel manager Basil in the sitcom Fawlty Towers.
It’s a good job recommendation websites like TripAdvisor weren’t around in Basil’s day. The user’s comments would have been sufficiently damning to give potential guests second thoughts. In short, put a foot wrong in the realm of customer service, and even loyal customers may well vote with like appendages – namely, their feet. But, looked at in a more positive light, excellence in customer service is the differentiator that creates a strong reputation for a business in today’s marketplace.
Customer service defined
So what constitutes good customer service? Where do you start? It pays to begin with the straightforward activity of placing the customer at the centre of your entire business. It’s also useful to remember what the definition of good customer service is, according the Institute of Customer Service (ICS): ‘Customer service is the sum total of what an organisation does to meet customer expectations and produce customer satisfaction’.
‘Customers expect businesses to know them and respond to them,’ explains Robin Mackenzie, director of strategy and transformation at BT Business, ‘These days, that’s the baseline.’ Edwina Dunn, chief executive officer of marketing consultancy, dunnhumby, has a simple take on the core customer service driver, but one worth keeping in mind, ‘Customers just want to be looked after.’
Are some customers worth looking after more than others? ‘It’s short-sighted to discourage customers who aren’t regarded as immediately profitable,’ says Paul Cooper, director of the ICS. ‘Someone who’s unprofitable at 20 could become extremely profitable by the time they’re 35.’ He adds that banks often get this right, drawing in ‘unprofitable’ students who, provided they remain loyal, increase in value as they get older.
And it’s not just about the money that your existing customers spend. ‘My most valuable customers are also the ones that are the best advocates for me,’ says Cooper, ‘rather than the one’s that spend the most, because they have the potential to influence other people and bring in more custom.’
Know your customer
For your service to be effective you need to know your customers. This can be as simple as chatting to them or more formally collecting, storing and managing the information you gather. You can then identify spending patterns, use your findings to develop more effective marketing techniques, and enhance the customer experience. There are many ways to gather this data, from asking customers to register their details online, conducting telephone surveys, sending out questionnaires or asking staff for their feedback. You need information that allows you to identify customers when they call and categorise their behaviour.
‘Smaller companies can steal a march on the corporates when it comes to customer feedback,’ observes Cooper. Often they’re in a position to literally talk to their customers and find out how the customer experience can be improved. ‘Measure customer service in terms of satisfaction and loyalty, and then ask the customer what they want.’ Also ask your staff what they think about the company’s customer service. They will often have a better overview of the issues affecting customers. Compare what you think of your service with feedback from staff and clients – what you think is important but it crucially may not match up with their feedback.
‘Real customer responsiveness means constant delivery on a promise,’ says Mackenzie. ‘To achieve this, you need to be absolutely relentless about having up-to-date customer information and managing it properly.’ Organising information can be as simple as having a paper-based rolodex – but technology can help here. Either way, when you speak to your customers it is crucial you know their background and they feel known by you.
While technology isn’t in itself a solution to the problem of delivering customer satisfaction, it can ease the process. ‘Technology is fundamentally an enabler of good customer service,’ says Mackenzie. ‘It can help with the gathering and organisation of information, making sure the conversation you’re having with the customer is the right one.’ He cites tools that steer a representative’s conversation towards particular offers, as used by mobile phone companies, for example, to recommend a particular calls package. ‘It demands a lot of discipline,’ says Mackenzie, ‘but technology can enable both good service and the sort of understanding that allows you to recommend something to your customer before they even realise they need it.’
The satisfaction culture
However, it pays to be wary of over-reliance on the processes involved in technology-based customer service. ‘Automation is fine, in its place,’ says Cooper. Culturally we don’t have a problem with it otherwise we wouldn’t have embraced Amazon and eBay as enthusiastically as we have. ‘However, people usually want to talk to a person when things go wrong. Given this is a crucial area for satisfaction, you need to make sure customers can opt out of an automated process easily and at any time,’ he says.
Often it’s not a faulty product or service that people mind as much as the way their complaint is dealt with. It should be seen as an opportunity for excellent customer service. If you or your staff listen carefully, take responsibility, try to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and follow up it can turn out to be a positive experience. So if customer service is to be a success you must have the enthusiasm and support of your staff.
‘It’s crucial to hire the right people,’ comments Cooper. ‘You can train staff in particular skills, but you can’t manufacture a particular attitude. They have to be the type of people who have that attitude at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, as well as first thing on a Monday morning.’
Dunn emphasises the point. ‘The “service” you deliver to your staff sets the tone for the service they deliver to your customers.’ Additionally, says Dunn, make a single person responsible for overseeing customer satisfaction. ‘Someone should be responsible for all the different elements in the business – winning new customers, retaining clients, providing customer incentives – and think how they look and feel to the customer.’
Herein lies the basic principle of customer service; see the world from the customer’s point of view. Mackenzie says, ‘The customer is much more in charge of the relationship than ever before and this has created a need for businesses to listen like never before. It’s always been true that the customer is right, but they’re getting righter and righter!’
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