A customer typically has two responses when they have a problem with your product or service. They will either be thrilled that you solved their problem or frustrated that you didn’t. How can you ensure a successful customer experience?
As customers and service providers ourselves, we experience good and bad customer service every day. Things don’t always go right despite our best efforts. However, we consistently want to provide great customer service. At SMART Service Desk we believe the following 7 principles are key for businesses to successfully keep happy customers.
1. Commitment to Customer Success
When a business has a culture that focuses on the customer, its people, processes and technology operate to deliver a great customer experience. Quality is defined by the customer. Businesses that focus on customer experience such as Disney, Apple and Ritz-Carlton understand that everyone in the organization needs to be committed to creating the best experience possible. It means hiring, training and managing workers who are committed to providing great customer experiences. It means creating the right systems and using the right technology to deliver a “Wow!” experience. You can’t just say “we value our customers” but have to demonstrate it every time.
2. Really Listen to Customers
Always listen and observe customers — not just when things go wrong. We have to anticipate the difficulties they may experience with our products and services not react to them. It’s hard to stay calm and listen to a customer when they are screaming and frustrated. We don’t have to take such actions personally because we’ve been in their situation. Truly listening to make sure your customer feels “felt” is really key to resolving the issue to their satisfaction (not yours!). Acknowledging their emotions and focusing to make sure you understand their situation will not only calm the customer but will allow you to turn the focus to solving their problem. As John C Maxwell says “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
3. Capture and Share Knowledge
Developing, documenting and managing your processes and procedures goes a long way in ensuring a consistent customer experience. This allows employees to understand how to respond to customers and also serves to educate the customer on how your organization manages their needs. Having a service management system that builds a body of knowledge regarding different customer issues and how they were successfully resolved improves the ability to resolve similar issues with a future customer. We can make every employee a hero to our customers. Why reinvent the wheel?
4. Fast and friendly execution
Customers don’t want to wait. We need to determine as quickly as possible what course of action should be taken and how long it will take. The support personnel need to be empowered to handle most issues. This means establishing clear roles/responsibilities, procedures and escalation protocols that allow the front line employees to act quickly and effectively. This is where using the best processes and technology can significantly improve the quality and speed in resolving an issue.
5. Quality Assurance
Validating that we truly resolved the customers’ problem in a timely and effective manner can be tricky if we haven’t established success goals. Service level agreements (SLAs) with customers establishes expectations for employees to meet and triggers when management needs to get involved in resolving a customer issue. It also serves as a lagging indicator that our systems and processes are working as they should.
6. Customer Follow-up and feedback
Taking the extra effort to see if a customer is satisfied with the product and service can go a long way in creating trust. Rather than shying away from customer feedback (especially when it’s negative) businesses should actively seek it. Customers are often reluctant to talk if something isn’t quite right. Unfortunately, these type of customers will either go away quietly or never return. If a customer speaks out then there is an opportunity to fix what’s wrong and regain the customers’ trust and loyalty. If done exceedingly well, they may become a raving fan.
7. Continuous process improvement
Today, improving customer experience is what businesses must do to keep up with competitors because products have become commoditized but customer experience and service can be differentiated. Having a culture of quality means taking what we have learned, both good and bad, to continually drive improvements to meet or exceed customer expectations. While resources limit what can and can’t be done, business can plan and budget for improvements that will improve customer success and satisfaction.
Optimize the Customer Lifetime Value
To attract and retain customers for the long term, then businesses have to invest in creating great moments of truth, even when things go wrong (which they will). Rising up to meet the most difficult customer challenges when a business demonstrates that they are committed to delivering their brand promise. Failure to do so not only results in the loss of a customer but also diminishment of their reputation.
Are you looking for a solution to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk Software is that solution. We know that your satisfied customer is one that will return again and again. Let us help you increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. No matter the size of your business we have your solutions.
SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com
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