In association with Machwuerth Team International
Nowadays it takes more than your products, promotions, or pricing to differentiate your company from the com- petition. To find a sustainable advantage, you must develop customer loyalty, as well as build and maintain long-term relationships with your customers.
Unfortunately, too often customer service is reduced to a mere add-on to a company’s performance. However, one inadequately trained employee or one displeased customer can create a long-lasting negative impression on customers and employees.Any company that is seeking to be competitive and successful cannot afford for this to happen.
Therefore, providing excellent customer service should be the main principle for organisations; part of their strategy, mission and values, and especially be apart of each employee’s mindset, from Front Line Staff to CEO.
Reaching Customer Service Excellence (CSE) requires more than a customer service department and handouts with guidelines for staff members. It is necessary to define concrete action plans and tailored customer service training, implemented and delivered at each level of employment.
Such action plans and training should focus on the most important key skills of CSE.These are customer oriented behavior and communication and complaint handling.
Customer Orientated Behavior and Communication:
Customer orientation training is especially aimed at employees who are frequently in contact with customers. De- veloping a common understanding of customer-oriented behavior to external and internal customers is the first step towards CSE. If your employees have developed a customer-oriented mindset it will consequently be easier for them to understand the customer’s needs, demands and wishes, and enables them to respond to the increasingly assertive and tough requirements and service expectations of today’s customers.Another central element of customer orientation is appropriate communication. For service staff it is especially important to communicate in an effective way, either through face to face, telephone or written communication via email or letters.
Complaint Handling:
A complaining customer can give your organisation valuable information and, if treated respectfully, a complaint also provides an opportunity to improve your level of service.Therefore, it is important that all relevant staff members are able to recognize a customer complaint and know the appropriate handling procedure. Robust and credible procedures need to be in place, in order to ensure that all employees with customer contact know how to react successfully in case of a complaint, how to satisfy displeased customers and how to solve problems in an optimal way.
Developing a tailored CSE at each employee level is a long and complex process but its benefits are beyond dispute. Excellent Customer Service leads to the development of customer loyalty, which can lead to growing revenues, market share and profit.These conditions can make a difference to the profitability and success of your organisation.They also positively affect employee satisfaction, staff retention and working climate, in turn leading to increased productivity.
Excellent Customer Orientation and Service enhance a company’s performance and image, through which it will be easier to win new customers and convince them of the quality your company provides through its products and ser- vices. In today’s tough and uncertain business climate, good CSE will give your company the competitive advantage it needs to survive.
