Customer Service - Winning Customer Experiences
Winning Customer Experiences Much research has been done on what the makes a winning customer experience. What is it that makes customers come back to your business instead of going to someone else s? If your repeat business is low, what is it that you are doing to drive your customers away? There is a consistent theme that emerges across the research - winning customer experiences are built on consistency. Michael Gerber in his book The E-Myth Revisited calls this orchestration. Orchestration is the glue that holds you fast to your customers perceptions. This may seem a glib response to a complex issue, but take a moment to consider it from the customer s viewpoint. When dealing with a business for the first time, the customer probably has no set expectations on what the experience will be like.
Employee Retention: Keeping the People Who Keep You in Business
The retention of highly skilled knowledge workers is one of the major challenges today for all organizatons. Knowledge workers are those whose work primarily requires the use of mental power rather than muscle power. For example, they are the developers and caretakers of the computer networks that keep your business running. They are also the producers of the dazzling graphics presentations that help your sales force land new customers. And they are even the account reps who look into data bases to decide whether to grant a bank loan request or explain investment options to potential customers. Knowledge workers are therefore extremely valuable because they keep the factories churning, the customers satisfied, the new products coming out the door - -they are the backbone of your company. So how do you keep these highly skilled and valuable workers from jumping ship - -from going to a competitor?
The 3 Rs of Customer Service
What I am about to tell you may seem very obvious - you may even say DUH!!! but the fact is, - many company s forget the 3 R s of good customer service- Respect your Customer, Take Responsibility for Your Actions and Products and give your Customers a Full REFUND when it just isn t right. I promise you that if you follow these 3 simple rules you will never have to run after the same customer again! Respect the customer! Just about as plain as the nose on your face Right? Wrong! How many times have you been greeted in a less than courteous manner or worse yet- not at all!! Never lose the opportunity to make a great first impression- very rarely do you have a second chance to undo the damage done by that first encounter.
Customer Service: Stop Sabotaging Your Customer Relationships
If you ve called for customer service recently you re familiar with this recorded message This call may be recorded or monitored for quality purposes. I immediately think to myself, Oh great, here comes the game of 20 questions. Now don t get me wrong. I spent many, many years training Customer Service Reps. CSR s. I m all for making sure customers receive the best possible service. What I m not for is the pre-scripted list of questions CSR s are required to ask, regardless of whether they are applicable to the situation at hand. I ve seen some checklists with as many as 25 pre-scripted call quality standards that CSR s are required to use. If they don t, and someone happens to monitor the call, they get marked down.
What Do Employees Wish for Most And How To Get It
What do many employees wish for at work? A bonus or raise. At least that s so according to results from a recent survey developed by OfficeTeam, a global staffing service that specializes in placing administrative professionals. The telephone survey, conducted by an independent research firm in February, polled 571 men and women in the United States over the age of 18. All respondents were employed full-time in professional positions. Survey results revealed that almost half 48 of the respondents put a bonus or raise at the top of their wish list at work. But that wish probably doesn t surprise those of us who already feel overworked and underpaid or are in need of just a bit more money for personal financial reasons. But is that wish based in reality and if so, why isn t it happening for some of us?
Have You Hugged a Customer Today?
It all started a couple of weeks ago when a friend asked me if I could scan and print some of her slides. No problem, I said. Boy, was I mistaken.... As it turns out, I seldom use my scanner for slides. And no matter how many different Kathy techniques I tried to get it to work, nothing. I even resorted to reading the online manual what was I thinking?. Still didn t work. After several okay, many! bull-headed attempts to figure it out myself, I called the Epson tech help line. The good news, they actually answered the phone near midnight. The bad news? My scanner was out of warranty, so I d have to pay 9.95 for their tech service. I was pretty desperate, so 9.95 seemed a bargain. And indeed, I got the help I needed.
Helping Mid-Life Employees Find Meaning
People work to live, but most also live to work. A study on the meaning of work conducted back in 1987 revealed a strong attachment to work as a way of life. The study found that 86 percent of people would continue working even if they had enough money never to work another day. There could be no better indication that work is not simply a matter of putting food on the table, but is core to the being of most adults. Adults in mid-life in particular often find this sense of work as a central component of their lives under direct assault from a business culture that undervalues personal fulfillment as an essential driver of productivity. I believe the next wave of workforce management for enlightened corporations will be to focus on softer indicators of productivity.
How Managers Can Help Retain Their Best Employees
A major problem for employers today is attracting the best talent, and then retaining key employees. Research shows that the key ingredient for retention lies within the manager s ability to understand what employees really want. The survey results below first came out in 1946 in Foreman Fact, from the Labor Relations Institute of NY and was produced again by Lawrence Lindahl in Personnel magazine in 1949. This study has since been replicated with similar results by Ken Kovach 1980 Valerie Wilson, Achievers International 1988 Bob Nelson, Blanchard Training Development 1991 and Sheryl Don Grimme, GHR Training Solutions 1997-2001. Pay particular interest to the top three things managers thought employees want from their jobs, and then look at what employees said they REALLY want: WHAT MANAGERS THINK EMPLOYEES WANT, starting with the most important: 1. Good wages 2. Job Security 3. Promotion and growth opportunities 4. Good working conditions 5. Interesting work 6. Personal loyalty to workers 7. Tactful discipline 8. Full appreciation for work done 9. Sympathetic understanding of personal problems 10. Feeling in on things WHAT EMPLOYEES SAY THEY WANT, starting with the most important: 1. Full appreciation for work done 2. Feeling in on things 3. Sympathetic understanding of personal problems 4. Job security 5. Good wages 6. Interesting work 7. Promotion and growth opportunities 8. Personal loyalty to workers 9. Good working conditions 10. Tactful discipline You can see there is quite a discrepancy.
Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction
Researchers have undertaken numerous studies to look at the connection between customer and employee satisfaction. A majority of these studies were able to uncover a correlation between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and profitability. In a recent study for an international computer firm, the data reinforced the crucial link between customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and profitability. Some of the key factors they found: Profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer satisfaction and loyalty. Employees who are satisfied in their jobs provide higher levels of customer service. Employee satisfaction results primarily from internal high-quality support services and policies that enable employees to deliver results to customers. Putting employee and customer satisfaction in the spotlight when planning strategy is one of the top priorities for organizations committed to continuous improvement, both internally and externally.
Becoming A Solution To Your Customers Problems
Those of us in home based and small businesses are in effect selling our product. So becoming an effective salesperson is very important. Remember, however, that selling is not the only thing you do. Don t forget to use your time wisely. What you want to do to help you move forward is to: Plan and prioritize. If the majority of your day is spent with your customers, you will need some down time. You need to have time to look at the trends in your business. By this I mean go over your customer records, see where patterns are, what changes you need to make and then set up a plan to implement those changes. If you spend a little time at the end of each day going over what transpired during the day and set up your plan and schedule for the next day, you will be much better prepared for the next day and the subsequent days.