Most companies aspire to provide exceptional customer service. In fact as per recent survey, more than 90% of companies world over want to be counted among the best when it comes to delivering great customer service. But this aspiration is not getting converted into tangible results. One of the major reasons for this is the short-sighted outlook of these companies towards customer service. They think that exceptional customer experience can be delivered just by training employees and making them available to receive your calls.
Other prominent reasons why companies fail to deliver exceptional service include-
Loss of Vision
Most companies start out with a clear, well defined vision with regards to how they want to treat the customers. But unfortunately, this vision will be lost in the shuffle between tendering to the growing demands, keeping profits high and keeping the shareholders happy.
How to avoid it: The first thing that you have to do is have a short and crisp vision of how you want to make the customers feel. Then post this vision throughout the workplace and educate your workforce about the importance of sticking to it. Finally incorporate appropriate monitoring mechanisms that make sure that employees adhere to this vision at all times.
Hiring in haste
Firms grappling with unexpended turnover or a spike in demand, generally tend to hop on and hire candidates in haste. They just try to find a candidate with decent skills, but fail to assess whether the candidate has the right personality to abide by and promote their company culture.
How to avoid it: Put in place a well-rounded approach that meticulously screens and selects the best candidate. Once this is done, let the prospective employee shadow one of your existing employees for a brief period of time and find out whether he can deliver your flavor of service to the customers.
Soft training is thin
Companies generally tend to give utmost importance to training and updating their employees’ skills with regards to the latest software and technological changes in the industry. But they fall horribly short when it comes to giving the same level of diligence for upgrading the soft skills necessary to better serve the customers. As a result of this the quality of service that they provide takes a beating.
The way to avoid it: Those who are struggling to provide regular training on soft skills can at least encourage their front-line staff to share tips and tactics that has helped them to sail through difficult situations with customers. You can thoroughly document all these tips and successes together, and share them among your workforce.
Good service ends at the front line
Delivering outstanding customer experience is not the responsibility of a few individuals within an organization. It is the collective responsibility of each and every one, including the top tier employees of the company. But unfortunately on many instances, top level executives and managers tend to dissociate themselves from this collective responsibility and put the company in bad light with regards to the customers.
How to avoid it: The only way to completely eradicate this mistake is by making everyone accountable for customer experience. You can also try to link customer satisfaction scores with cash benefit or other perks, which will compel employees to delight customers.
The Bottom-line
Great customer service doesn’t happen by accident. It is a product of continuous planning, communication, training and benchmarking. Companies that work towards this take the first steps towards turning their service up by one more notch.
