Whether you register it as reality or not, if we’re working at a job, your serving customers—some may be internal and others external.
It’s time for a quick check-in to see if you and your company are MISSING BIG OPPORTUNITIES to improve products/or services by growing the balance sheet’s income side through proactive Customer-Centric Service.
So, let’s pull out the scorecard…and check any attitude you believe would add value to the customer experience.
Do I have to tell you all of them—and many more—are an essential determinate to exceptional Customer-Centric Service?
The active ingredient for excellence in products/or services is human-to-human encounters. No surprise when 83 percent of US consumers prefer dealing with a human being.[i] This factor alone means there is no such thing as simple interactions—all of them are complex.
Although humans have much in common, when it comes to expectations, we all are enormously diverse.
How secure are you that your company reflects the attitudes and executes in these areas? And more importantly, how confident are you in your skills to provide Customer-Centric Service?
Here are four ideas that will help you along the pathway of success.
Everyone is Customer-Centric: Good customer service is the lifeblood of every business. As the CEO of Zappos, shares: Customer service shouldn’t just be a department. It should be the entire company. That means all employees are in the customer service business even though it may not be part of their written job description.
Small Things: Lauren Freedman, President of E-tailin Group, has it right when she says: Always keep in mind the old adage: Customers remember the service a lot longer than they remember the price.”
Did you know that 91 percent of unhappy customers will not willingly do business with you again, but when you resolve the issue in the customer’s favor, they will do business with you again 70 percent of the time?[ii] Remember, it’s the small things you do that make all the difference for customers and turns them into fans.
Quick-Hits: Your company and employees may have completed customer service training, but that should only be the minimum requirement. To develop a proactive, growing Customer-Centric Service culture, challenge your group to greater heights with Quick Hit Training Scenarios. How? During a pause in the action or regularly schedule time during the day, share a challenging customer service problem, and ask everyone to offer Quick Hit Solutions. This specific focus has you building service muscle every day in every way!
Engaged Employees Translates Into Engaged Customers: If you and your company are searching for ways to delight customers, square one has to be your employees. The correlation between engaged employees and engaged customers is a compelling and proven fact! In actuality, companies in the top quartile for employee engagement have 10 percent higher customer ratings.[iii]
We’re not talking about something as simple as employee satisfaction. An employee can be satisfied with their work hours or the donuts in the coffee room and still not be engaged or productive for the organization. Research discloses that of the 80 percent of employees who say they are generally satisfied with their company; in fact, their sense of satisfaction didn’t translate into improved employee engagement.[iv] So, dig deeper if you intend to achieve employee engagement because mere satisfaction won’t generate a commitment to the organization.
With the above concepts, you’ve addressed Customer-Centric Service improvements directly. Do you know, when organizations successfully engage their customers and their employees, they experience a 240 percent boost in performance-related business outcomes compared with an organization with neither engaged employees nor engaged customers?[v]
Are you ready to take it on?
[i] https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/us-companies-losing-customers-as-consumers-demand-more-human-interaction-accenture-strategy-study-finds.htm
[ii] Lee Resources
[iii] Pay.com, Discovery What Employees Want, Overlooked Insights in Employee Engagement, page 3.
[iv] Gallup Webinar, Why Isn’t Employee Engagement Getting Better, January 28, 2016.
[v] Gallup, State of the American Workplace, page 55.
