As a business coach for companies, both large and small, that want to deliver a customer service experience to bring in more money from their customers, I’m often asked “Where do I begin?”
It’s just like eating an elephant… One step at a time.
Successful companies follow seven systematic steps when
1. Developing a complete training game plan – Before you start on a cross country road trip from New York to Los Angeles, you would make sure that you have a sound stable vehicle to get you there, you’d map out a route, plan how long you’d like to travel each day, approximately where you will lodge for the night along the way, etc. The same thing applies here. There must be a guideline mapped out detailing when the training process will start, who will be involved, what will be covered, approximately when it will be complete, etc.
2. Onboard for successful fit and service assimilation – The way you bring new hires into your company sets the tone for their training experience and subsequent service. You must think start to finish in this process. Welcome them into your organization as a valued member of the team. Show them how important they and their role is in the overall vision of the customer experience.
3. Set clear and specific service expectations – This is one of the areas that many business leaders complain about the most, yet this is the one area I feel is most neglected. When you are training someone as to how you’d like them to treat your customers, you MUST be specifically clear. “Be Nice” is too general Nice means different things to different people and is never consistent. You need to spell out how you’d like your team to engage with your customers at each and every touchpoint and exactly how they can best serve the customer.
4. Have an accountability system for service expectations – Once you’ve set and trained for your customer service expectations, you need to have an accountability system in place. By not following through on this one step, it sends the message to your team that either your leadership skills aren’t honed enough to follow through on expectations or that the service you deliver to your customers is not really that important.
5. Assess customer service levels from the customer perspective – Feedback from customers and the rest of the team regarding service levels is invaluable. You can work this into other feedback or survey methods to gain insight as to how your team is treating customers when leadership isn’t around. The goal is to have customers come to rely on consistent service levels for them to build a sense of trust and relationship with your company.
6. Last impression counts just as much as the first – While you’ve heard the saying “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” you can actually make as much of an impact, if not more, by focusing on how you bid your customers farewell. You can say “goodbye” while making sure that you thank them, invite them to come back soon, and by telling them you truly value their business. Train your teams on how to do this well and you’ll soon be cultivating an extremely loyal customer base.
7. Implement systematic continual customer focus processes into your design – Again, the “shot in the arm” solution rarely works in any business aspect, especially in service. You know how it goes… everyone gets all exited after a fantastic customer service or experience presentation, but then after a while, it becomes business as usual. To make sure this doesn’t happen in your group, place the customer focus as a top priority at the beginning of every meeting, every decision, every new idea. Do this long enough and your customers will soon learn and sense that you truly value their business.
To discover how all of these steps truly fit together to benefit your customers, I’m making my last webinar available here for your review. This webinar received fantastic reviews from the attendees and I gave so much valuable information that I wanted to make sure it’s available to everyone.
Please comment below on which of these steps you struggle with the most and let me know how I may help.
Thanks for reading!