Learn To Make Customer Service Improvements

The best way to ensure lasting results from a customer service initiative is with a comprehensive, organized approach, if you have the option. Which is why, in customer service consulting and among customer experience consultants, they always recommend you first work on getting your framework right, before going forward and working on the procedures.

Overhaul Your Hiring Practices: This is also one you’re not going to overhaul today, literally speaking.  But you can push toward overhauling them today.  And there’s no other place you can start that will make more of a difference.  Do you hire scientifically, or do you hire like you spice your food–a bit of salt, a bit of pepper, a bit of whimsy and gut feeling here and there… if you hire haphazardly, the results you’ll get are haphazard. 

Tattoos, Hair Restrictions and Piercings: ease up on these or get rid of them today.  Employees with great customer-facing potential do not apply for work looking a particular way.  They have something particular in their heart, their minds, their aptitudes, and potential. Don’t limit yourself to people who look a particular way.  The other reason such restrictions are a problem is this:  If an employee can’t, even a little bit, be themselves on the job, you can’t expect them to deliver genuine customer service.  Which is what customers today, more than ever, are looking for.

Phone Manners:  Do you have customer interaction standards for telephone communications?  You don’t?  Then that’s where you should start.  Great companies have very specific telephone and customer interaction standards (although they allow great latitude in how they are interpreted).  If you’re just winging it on the phone, it’s time to work on that.

Listen to the stories that managers and employees tell around your company: are they sabotaging your attempts at a customer-centered culture? Are the stories you hear around the office often centered on how customers tried to take advantage, and how you stopped those customers dead in their tracks?  They shouldn’t be. They should be stories that go in the opposite direction:  about how you went the extra mile, or a coworker went the extra mile, to help a customer in a creative way. Otherwise, you can do all the mission-statement preaching you want, but employees will know where you really stand: in opposition to your customers. 

Start having a daily customer service meeting, just 5 or 10 minutes long.  Start this tradition today. Don’t start it today, start it as soon as you can get buy-in from the people in your company who will have to support this process over the weeks and years.  But it’s a crucial part of getting your team on the same page and keeping them there.   Have a different employee each day discuss a different tenet of your customer service philosophy and customer service issues that come up.  In the course of a year, the amount of training you’ll get in is extraordinary, as well as greatly enhancing your team spirit.  

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers 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 customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Tricks To Develop Better Customer Service

It is that time of year when we begin to think about tricks and treats. Well how about tricks for customer service that will improve your business.

Fill Your Customer’s Needs and Wants

Listen to the “voice of the customer” and take action accordingly. Listening to customers can be done in many ways. For example, using feedback forms and satisfaction surveys. Listen to ensure decisions benefit the customer as much as your company.

Listen Carefully

Do you clearly understand the needs of your customer? Listening intensely to what they have to say creates a great rapport.

Open Many Communication Channels

The customer wants to contact you in many ways – face to face, by mail, phone, fax, and email – and will expect all of these communication channels to be open and easily accessible. Therefore, put in place adequate measures to be reached when you are needed.

Respond to Clients as Soon as Possible

Speed is everything, especially when a client is requesting something that’s time sensitive. When you respond to your clients swiftly, they are satisfied and will hold nothing back at recommending your brand.

Stay Top of Mind

Encourage customers by staying in touch with them through a blog, newsletter, or some other means that affords ongoing communication. Just ensure that you keep the conversation going.

Be Helpful – Without Tying That To Sales

Be open to being helpful at all times. Do not be nice only when there’s a reward in it for you. Helping your clients, even when they least expect it, will impress them and build their trust in you.

Stay Loyal

Loyalty is key to attracting new customers. When your existing customers know that you are loyal, they hold nothing back when it comes to introducing new customers to you and your business. This is marketing that is done passively for you.

Introduce Promotions

In a bid to get your customers glued to your brand, introducing mouth watering promotions can act like magic. Promotions that provide true savings and value causes current customers to introduce others to you and your business in an effort to pass those savings along.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers 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 customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk

600 West Ray Road

Suite D-3

Chandler Arizona 85225

602-235-0975

info@smartservicedesk.com

http://smartservicedesk.com

Customer Service Can Make Or Break Your Business

In nearly all business categories your customers have a choice of who to purchase from. Companies spend many dollars per person to acquire new customers, Yet when a problem arises your customer service can either keep that customer or lose them forever.

One very visible battle we are all familiar with is that between the two satellite providers Dish and DirecTV.  Both offer very similar services and at similar price structures. So what do they have to truly set them apart? Is it there customer service?  What else can it be?

Currently all providers of TV services are finding that their customer base is being pulled in so many directions that the old paradigm of the family watching TV in the evenings is rapidly disappearing. In fact the younger audiences have little use for the services offered. 

Facing these pressures you would think that keeping customers would be the very top priority. But at least at Dish, and can add that personally, their training and response needs improvement. 

Times change and so do the needs and wants of the customer base. We have to think no farther than the payphones that used to be everywhere. Technology moved on and they were no longer needed. Many companies struggle to remain relevant to their customer base. Cellular phone services have improved because the companies continue to try and one-up each other on a monthly basis. This keeps customers happy and buying and buying and buying. Smart phones have fundamentally changed how we go about our daily lives. They have changed our educations, they have changed our shopping, our banking and the customer service they have come to expect. It is no longer fair to ask if your business is ready. That boat has sailed.

They question now becomes is your business moving fast enough to not be over-run by both your customers and your competitors?

What is your companies’ next move? Is it to call about SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software solutions?

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers 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 customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Find The Right Software For Your Business Solutions

There is no question that there are many choices of customer service software for you to choose from. But, like all categories of products they all aren’t created equally. One thing is for sure they have many different price points.

Another area that you have to consider is how much it costs to implement the solution. There are two other related factors.  How long it takes to implement the different products and how long it takes to train your staff (or new staff) to be able to successfully use the product.

There is a solution that is both robust and easy to implement and use. SMART Service Desk is that solution. It is scalable in cost so that no company is too small to benefit from our solutions.

Increase productivity, reduce operations cost and improve customer experience with our ITIL compliant solutions. Our SMART Service Desk solutions can be adapted very quickly, easily and economically to meet your exact business needs. Achieve faster implementation, successful change management, and lower total cost of ownership with our 100% configurable, intuitive and affordable solutions.

Here is what one of our customers said about SMART Service Desk; "We needed a tool with automated workflow and easy to use interface. SMART Service Desk’s built-in workflow has made big improvements in our Service Operations - especially having online approval."

Your company can benefit from improved customer satisfaction and life time value from initial contact to post-sales support. SMART Service Desk provides a detailed 360 degree view of your customer interactions. You can improve customer service and delivery operations, maximize revenue opportunities and delight your customers with our affordable and mobile solution.

SMART Customer relationship management (CRM) software, offered both on-premise and cloud-based CRM, help businesses reduce costs and increase profitability by organizing and automating business processes to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty in the sales, marketing, and customer service fields.

Through SMART CRM solutions we deliver outstanding ROI through automation in customer service, and sales force automation. We also offer mobile apps that allow you to manage your customer relationships on your mobile devices, and software integration adaptors that integrate data and reporting from social media directly into your CRM application.

With our solutions your business can foster employee engagement, retention and productivity. Your satisfied employees can help create more satisfied customers and Improve processes, products, and services, and ultimately your organizational profitability.

SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is a great start to creating your very own customer service legends. We know that your satisfied customers 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 customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Should Halloween Mean Spooky Customer Service

Should there be a difference in how customer service is delivered throughout the year? A consistent quality of service should be your goal no matter of busy the CSR is. The number of calls vary by day of the week, time of day and time of the year. Staffing must be flexible so time of increased demand can be meet and the customer should not have a spooky experience.

A quick check of online and social media posts does show a number of “customers” who are happy to share their horror stories as they relate to spooky customer service experiences. How is your company represented in those online comments?

To be fair people are more likely to spread negative stories rather than positive ones. Just the nature of the monster. Not to be clowning around with a very serious business service… but can we ask again how “spooky” is your businesses’ customer service?

A summary of much of the research on the subject of complaints, show that bad emotions, bad parents and bad feedback have more impact than good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to change than the good ones.

The negativity bias, also known as the negativity effect, refers to the notion that, even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature (e.g. unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or social interactions; harmful/traumatic events) have a greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than do neutral or positive things. In other words, something very positive will generally have less of an impact on a person's behavior and cognition than something equally emotional but negative. The negativity bias has been investigated within many different domains, including the formation of impressions and general evaluations; attention, learning, and memory; and decision-making and risk considerations.

What impression is your customer service having on your customers? Is that question spooky enough for you? 

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers 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 customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Scary Customer Service Still Exists

What is your problem with customer service? I’m sure you have many examples to give. Promised call backs that never happen. Accent problems when trying to understand a CRM. Replacement parts that never arrive. List can go on and on.

It is hard to decide where or who is most affected by bad customer service.  While you are traveling there are many incidents that can have you reaching out to customer service and need a “good” response right away. But even a casual shopper can get very frustrated when trying to resolve a shipment plagued with many SNAFUs.

When thinking about critical business priorities, you are in good company if you place the customer experience atop the list. When thinking about models for customer experience strategy and philosophy, you are in good company if you identify organizations like Disney.

Your software that interfaces your CSRs to your customers can help take the scary out of customer service.

Within a few years, social customer service is likely to become part of a single customer-facing team headed by Marketing. Why does that sound so scary?

Alongside the use of customer listening to improve marketing messaging and close the ‘expectation gap’ between what Marketing says about a product/service and the day-to-day experience of customers, this is part of a triumvirate of measures that forward-thinking organizations are implementing to bring Marketing and Service into step.

Be very afraid: when Marketing tries to run Customer Service!

If you are part of a large business the following survey maybe be, or should be very scary… More than 70% of customers surveyed believe small businesses understand their customer better than large companies, know their business/product better than large companies, provide a more personal customer service experience than large companies, and are more concerned about my needs than larger companies.

How are you planning on making your customer service friendly rather than scary?

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers 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 customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com

Halloween and Scary Good Customer Service

Is your customer service scary good? Customer service should never just be part of after the sale service. Do you know how the mind of your customers work? Looking in to customer’s mindsets are a very scary part of business. Would you like to better understand how your customer think? Perhaps more important is how and what they are likely to remember.

 There is an experiment that will show you how your customer’s memory works, and how to turn the quirks of consumer memory to your businesses’ advantage.

You need to be blindfolded to stop you from cheating, from being able to write anything down until you are told to.

Your blindfold secured, you are read a list of cooking items: Tarragon. Lavender. Cardamom. Chicory. Safflower. Cinnamon. Turmeric. Marjoram. Don’t write them down yet! Let them settle into your memory.

Now: Take off the blindfold, and write down all the words you remember from the list. You were just walked through a traditional experimental demo, used hundreds of times each semester in introductory lectures by cognitive psychology professors all around the world. 

The point:  Imagine that each of a hundred people took this test without peeking. Which spices would they remember best? There’s a very particular pattern that researchers always see.

The result is known in psychology as the Serial Position Effect: People most clearly remember the first thing that they heard to them (Tarragon) and the last thing (Marjoram). The stuff that happened in between? Not so much. It is always a bit of a blur.

You might say, firsts and lasts are the real spice of life! Is that scary enough for you? 

This insight provides us with a valuable shortcut in providing great, i.e., perceived to be a great customer experience. Here’s the takeaway from this simple experiment.

The way you greet and say good-bye to your customers are your “firsts” and “lasts”, their high points on the serial position effect. Handle them superbly, and your customer will recall, and perhaps even more important will describe to others, their overall scary good shopping experience. And they’ll be able to immediately call to mind specific examples of how your company was superb. Conversely, if you only excel in the middle of your interaction, you won’t get the credit for all your hard efforts.

Is your company looking for customer service solutions to help you deal with customer interaction? SMART Service Desk IT Service Management Software is your answer. We know that your satisfied customers 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 customer retention solutions.

SMART Service Desk
600 West Ray Road
Suite D-3
Chandler Arizona 85225
602-235-0975
info@smartservicedesk.com
http://smartservicedesk.com