Someone recently posed the question to me, "Can we get "jerks" to give good Customer Service? I mean with the overall decline in manners, how can we expect service to be excellent?"
Whew. There is a lot of beliefs dripping around the edges of that question!
My first point would be that if you think you have "jerks" on your team - or think that "jerks" are all you can find to hire, that you are in deep you-know-what before you ever move forward. Leaders need to have a positive expectation of people first and foremost. But let me get off my soapbox there and talk about the rest of the question - which hinges on the connection between manners and Customer Service.
While there's definitely a connection between customer service and manners, good customer service is about a lot more than good manners alone. Good Customer Service requires processes and procedures and tools that will enable good Customer Service. It requires leadership that makes customer service a priority and that empowers employees who work directly with Clients and Customers to make decisions.
Often leaders have expectations about how the Customer will be treated but never share those expectations with employees. They may be thinking "this is so obvious; we don't need to focus on this with our people because they know how to treat others."
Great Customer Service is more than knowing how to treat people; it's more than being nice. It's having processes and procedures in place from the beginning. It's knowing what to do - plus knowing how and when to do it. Customer service declines within an organization when those in leadership positions decline to make customer service a priority.
Those were my initial thoughts to the question posed to me... What do you think?
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Perhaps if employees who give customer service knew that there would be customer feed-back on how they do their jobs, it would make a difference. A company can hire secret shoppers to visit their business sites and report on how they are treated and how they are serviced. If this happened regularly, customer service reps would know that the evaluations could influence their reviews, potential for raises, and chances of being fired.
ReplyDeleteCompanies will still be paying for the service they provide, but it won't be rewarding them as much.Customer service is an integral part of our job and should not be seen as an extension of it. A company's most vital asset is its customers. Without them, we would not and could not exist in business. When you satisfy our customers, they not only help us grow by continuing to do business with you, but recommend you to friends and associates.
ReplyDeleteThe standardization is need of each company and it should be realistic for each situation and should be flexible till some level if we don’t follow it then we can might run business at small level or for same times but not at big level and till long time. We need to keep customer in mind and take their suggestion before to finalize any rule.
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