Could this be true? Your company’s customer service is bad on purpose? The majority of responses would likely be, “Of course not!” But, before answering the question, consider things from another perspective…
What is your company’s goal for the customer experience? To give customers a quick, efficient buying process? A warm, family feel to their interactions with your business? Fully meeting your customers’ needs in the fastest way possible, with any issues addressed quickly so as to maintain satisfaction?
If any (or all) of these apply, what steps are you taking to ensure this happens? The decisions you may ultimately affect the customer and their perception of doing business with you. Making sure you have all of the decisions that affect customers solid, with a consistent, regular plan of maintenance, can ensure you’re not providing “bad” service on purpose. Consider the following:
1. Do you hire the right people and provide the right training? Hiring a person who meets all of the criteria that fall in line with your vision and customer service expectations falls outside of simply meeting the requirements for the position. If you want a warm, friendly environment, are you hiring managers keeping this in mind when interviewing? Once hired, is the training program one that leads to a successful employee? Is continual training offered? What measurements do you have in place to monitor performance past the training period?
2. Are all of your sales channels as complete as possible? If online shopping is a customer touch point, does the site load quickly and offer enough information for customers to make purchasing decisions easily? Is the checkout process streamlined and efficient? Do you review website performance to gauge the number of cart abandonment and look for reasons that this may be happening?
3. Do you monitor and evaluate the customer resolution process? When issue arise, do you have staff in place to respond and assist in a timely manner? Are employees trained with the ability to make decisions to expedite the resolution process, or is there a lot of follow up and permission asking that can slow this down? Do you monitor the resolution process, either through a double loop process or monitoring with satisfaction surveys or even a mystery shopping program?
If you can respond with a resounding “yes” to the above, then you are likely not providing bad service, or at least not bad service on purpose. If you are not creating the right foundation to work from, you may be providing bad customer service without even realizing it.
