Customer Service – The Golden Rule

 

Mitzi Taylor 

 “Our customers are too demanding! They want more for less. All day long they have dumb questions, out of line complaints, excuses and problems. It’s like a battle field everyday where no one wins!”   LMNOP Business Owner 

Sound familiar? This is a complaint of someone who has been allowed to forget the golden rule of business: next to your product, the most important factor in the success of your business is your level of customer service. Let me add to that: IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT YOU PROVIDE, as long as you have to sell it to someone, you need excellent customer service to survive. It is so easy to get away from the philosophy that we are IN business for the customer. We would not HAVE a business without the customer. Everyday we can site examples of situations where a business has forgotten this important theory. There are too many owner/managers who think that by just telling everyone they have to provide excellent customer service, having customers surveyed once a year and having a front desk person who smiles, covers his/her responsibility in providing excellent service to the customer. I am here to tell you, customer service is not that easy.  On average for every 1 customer request your organization receives, 5-7 employees must touch it in some way shape or form. That is a huge potential for something to go wrong and for your customer to not be satisfied. You need to look at the big picture by identifying every single customer touch point within your organization (see if you can honestly find one aspect of your business that is not a direct or indirect customer touch point).   

• Look at your marketing efforts. Are you doing what you said you would do? Are you focusing on your tag line? (“We care for & about our patients.” Do you think THEY believe that?)
• Have you hired the right person to be responsible for greeting, smiling and making your customers feel important? Take a look at your staff and your hiring practices. Should you hire for attitude and train the skill or hire for skill and train the attitude (hopefully you laughed at the second option, do you really think you can train attitude)?
• How are customer returns or issues being handled? I heard a radio commercial the other day that blew me away. It was a national bank chain stating that meeting the customers need is more important than following their policy manual. They stated that each one of their tellers is empowered to solve your problems and make your day. WOW. Now, if only, I hadn’t just moved my account out of that bank for lousy customer service?! Keep in mind – TRUST is a biggie in customer service.

 Those are just a few tips to help you look at the big picture when thinking about serving your customers. Here are a few more easy ones: make sure anyone in an influential position is leading by example, you have and uphold Standards of Excellence, have great easy to use systems in place, and always have reminders in front of people about great customer service. You have to work at meeting and hopefully exceeding the customer’s expectations. What are you waiting for?!