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Customer Service - why some people just shouldn't own shops
I had a call last week from a friend of mine who is an advertising agent and copywriter. He gave me a referral to the owner of a franchised coffee shop who had called him seeking help with advertising and marketing. My friend said that he thought...
What is Great Customer Service?
In almost all cases customers come to your business because they have a problem and believe that you may have the solution. Whether you do, or whether you can build enough trust with the customer to let them solve their problem is up to you.
In...
What's The Customer Service Buzz About Your Business?
Small Business Q&A with Tim Knox If you're a regular reader of this column you know that my number one pet peeve is bad customer service. Nothing chaps my backside more than paying hard-earned money for a product or service only to have the...
When Customers Complain
You probably won't have been in business too long before you get
your first complaint. It just can't help but happen: low-end
customers pay nothing and expect the Earth, while high-end ones
pay a lot but expect an inhuman effort in return. You...
Why Communication Skills Don't Work In Customer Service
Every time my firm conducts communication skills training, we know someone is going to object.
“That doesn't work. Everybody's heard of active listening. You can't use that stuff anymore.”
And we have to admit, there's a lot of truth in...
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Blocks to Customer Focus
Despite all the proclamations, catchy advertising slogans, and
customer service publicity, service levels have improved only
marginally in the last few years. As Harvard Business School
professor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, puts it "Despite the recent
media coronation of King Customer, many customers will remain
commoners... most businesses today say that they serve
customers. In reality, they serve themselves."
The problem is that most organizations only talk about customer
service improvement. Many executives don't understand what
outstanding customer service really looks, aren't ready to turn
their organization inside out to provide it, are trying to paint
happy smiles on their frontline service providers, or are
bolting a customer service program on the side of their
organization rather than making it a part of their core
strategy.
Here are some of the biggest reasons that so few organizations
successfully turn their customer service rhetoric into reality:
* Little or no segmentation of markets and customer groups. The
organization is trying to be everything to everybody. Customers
are lumped into one indistinguishable mass and their
expectations (if they've been gathered at all) aren't weighted,
ranked, and segmented.
* Little or no customer data. When it is collected (such as an
occasional survey) positive feedback is acknowledged. But
negative data is denied (usually by challenging the survey
methodology). Budget priorities are set, cost containment
initiated, and resources allocated with little, if any,
systematic connection to customer priorities and expectations.
Improvement activities are focused on what the organization or
management considers important.
* The organization is managed from the inside out. New products
and services are pushed out to the market through sales and
marketing. Customers aren't involved as active partners in
research and development activities. A senior executive in a
leading computer company once said, "If customers don't like our
solutions, they have the wrong problems".
* Employees are treated as the source of service breakdowns.
Training and motivational campaigns (such as recognition
programs) aim to "fix the frontline". Management pays little
attention to all the research that proves "The 85/15 Rule" --
85% of service breakdowns originate in organizational systems,
processes, or
structures.
* Internal customer tyranny runs rampant. Departments who are
served by other departments use the concept of "internal
customer-supplier relationships" to get their own needs met
whether or not it improves external customer service.
* Blurry line of sight to external customers -- many
organizational members (other then those on the front serving
lines) have little interaction with external customers and often
don't understand (and have little reason to care about)
customers' expectations and how their work ultimately helps or
hinders meeting those expectations.
* One customer group dominates. For example, the focus is on
retailers, agents, or distributors with scant attention paid to
the ultimate consumer. Little effort is made to understand and
balance the needs of both groups while pulling products and
services through the distribution or service chain.
* Focus is on customer acquisition rather than retention.
Investments in sales and marketing to bring in new customers are
much higher then efforts to retain or expand business with
current customers.
* Customers aren't people. Thinking of someone as a customer
implies providing service, partnership, or some form of
equality. However, when customers become "policyholders",
"consumers", "patients", "passengers", "taxpayers", "accounts",
or "advertisers" they often become less human.
Business is a lot like tennis, those who don't serve well end up
losing. In a recent interview, Bob Green, a service/quality
coordinator with AmSouth Mortgage in Birmingham Alabama summed
up the challenge facing most organizations, "The financial
products from one mortgage company to another are basically the
same. We're out to play `quantum leapfrog' and jump out in front
of our competitors. The only way we can do that is to know our
customers overall needs more thoroughly and move more quickly to
meet them then anybody else in our business."
About the author:
Jim Clemmer is a bestselling author and internationally
acclaimed keynote speaker, workshop/retreat leader, and
management team developer on leadership, change, customer focus,
culture, teams, and personal growth. Jim's five international
bestselling books include The VIP Strategy, Firing on All
Cylinders, Pathways to Performance, Growing the Distance, and
The Leader's Digest. His web site is www.clemmer.net/articles.
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