Understanding Your Role with Customers
Chapter 5: Understanding Your Role with Customers
Aside from leaving due to unacceptable treatment, customers will take their business elsewhere because
⻬They no longer need what you sell.
⻬They move to another purchasing category.They go upscale or down- scale with their buying.
⻬They’re unhappy with what you’re selling them.
⻬They pass away.This is very sad, but you can’t do much about that.
You must master the art of customer service
Customer service isn’t just the job of your customer service department and representatives, it’s the job of every employee in your company. And service starts at the highest levels of a company. To that end, creating the balanced scorecard customer leg is a great way to keep customer service in the minds of every worker in your company.
The following list presents the four key elements of good customer service:
⻬A high level of trust in your company and in the people customers deal with
⻬Knowledgeable employees who understand what customers are talking about
⻬The company and its employees not wasting customers’ time
⻬Friendly employees who will go the extra mile for customers
The question is: “How does my company get to a high level of customer serv- ice, where the key elements become second nature to my employees?” Here are four steps you must take to achieve great customer service:
⻬Make sure that everyone in your company understands and measures the customer experience.Employees must know how their jobs impact the customer, and they must become obsessed with providing satisfac- tion to the customer.
⻬Educate your people about how they should act and treat customers.
They must realize the importance of good customer service and what you expect from them.
⻬Communicate examples of good customer service to your employees.
⻬Make sure that potential and new employees have the kind of customer-service mindset that you want.
⻬Deal with employees who can’t or won’t deliver the customer service you need.You can move them to other areas of business or let them go, but you have to take action quickly.
Not dealing with the employees who don’t have a customer-service mindset can be deadly to your company. Bad apples can spoil your efforts to deliver satisfactory levels of service to your customers.
Customers watch you closely
The modern customer is a pretty savvy consumer. He or she hears what you say and promise and then watches closely to see if you deliver. You’ve prob- ably had some experiences as a customer where a company’s walk didn’t match its talk, and you probably took your business elsewhere. In your business, you have to continually find out if you’re delivering the things you promise to your customers. It’s natural to want to promise your customers the world, but you can’t do so unless you know that you can deliver the world — or at least a siz- able piece of it!
So, how can you find out how you’re doing in the promise-delivery department?
⻬Ask your customers for feedback.
⻬Keep in close contact with your employees and get their feedback, too.Ask them how they’re doing and solicit ideas about how you could help them do better.
Do right by your customer
Some wise person once said that managers are more concerned with doing things right, while leaders are more concerned with doing the right things.
We believe that you should do the right things right, no matter your position.
Although you should set out to accomplish both goals, doing the right thing should be your first goal. After you identify the right thing to do, you can then make sure that you do it right.
When setting your policies and procedures for satisfying customers in the customer leg of the balanced scorecard, make sure they’ll achieve the desired results — that they’ll “do the right things,” in other words. Then make sure that the policies are carried out correctly, by everyone, time after time. By working with the customer leg of the balanced scorecard, you’ll be
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Chapter 5: Understanding Your Role with Customers
able to identify the right things and figure out how to measure doing them correctly.
Some companies seem to fall in love with policies and procedures. Putting too many policies and procedures in place tends to restrict the ability of your people to deliver outstanding customer service. For instance, you shouldn’t set policies and procedures to take care of a rare exception; you don’t want to set a rule that’s inflexible and will end up losing you customers. When set- ting your policies, be sure to evaluate whether they’re necessary. Will they help or hinder your ability to deliver what the customer needs and wants?
What do your employees think?
When in doubt, maintain flexibility and trust your employees to know the right thing to do. If they understand the importance of customer service and how their jobs impact customers, they’ll know what to do and how to do it.
Using Customer Info to Keep Your Customers Happy
If you have a good understanding of your customers, (if not, see the section earlier in this chapter, “Five Things You Must Know about Customers”) you’re ready to acquire the information you need to create your balanced scorecard customer leg. Using info from your customers helps you create goals and measures that fall in line with your customers’ needs and desires. In the fol- lowing sections, we not only show you how to find out what you need to know about your customers, but we also show you how to use that info to create customer measures that can help you reach your goals in servicing your customers.
Gathering info about your customers’
satisfaction levels
You have many ways to gather customer information about their satisfaction.
One common way is to troll your customer service inbox for letters and e-mails.
If a customer is dissatisfied with what you’ve provided in terms of quality or service, he or she is likely to send a letter or e-mail to let you know about the issues (after chewing out some managers, of course). No doubt, you have a method for dealing with customer complaints and the issues that arise from time to time within your company. The balanced scorecard customer leg is ideal for tracking these issues.
Here are other common ways you can gather information from customers:
⻬Evaluate communication at call centers and help desks
⻬Check out product-return centers
⻬Interview field service reps and technicians
⻬Conduct surveys and send out questionnaires
⻬Hire a third party (consultants, Web sites)
⻬Hold discussions with focus groups
The problem with most of the ways of measuring customer satisfaction is that it’s too late in the game to prevent dissatisfied customers. In fact, the methods in the previous list typically measure how many customers are mad at you and how mad they are. These measures usually involve measures of quality, time, and cost.
Because the event has already happened, all you can do now is react to it.
Hopefully you didn’t make the customer too mad at you so you can salvage something from the relationship.