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THIS WEEK
Customer Service Consistency: The Holy Grail of Customer Service
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
Customer Service Consistency: The Holy Grail of Customer Service |
Have you heard of the quest for the Holy Grail? Not the Monty Python version or the Indiana Jones version, but the real Holy Grail?
According to legend, if a person finds the Holy Grail it will grant miraculous powers to the finder – in some version of the tales everlasting life. But searching for the grail is challenging as its origins are shrouded in mystery and everyone has a different version of what it really is and how to find it.
 This is remarkably like the quest for customer service. Businesses quest after customer service and like the grail find that it is not as easy to grasp as they thought. Many businesses questing after the customer service grail find they may create some great customer service systems, but they fail in practical implementation. They may give great service once or twice – but keeping it up is a greater challenge than finding the Grail in the first place.
Unfortunately, inconsistent customer service can be more damaging to a business than a history of average service. Think about it. You go to a restaurant and are blown away by the amazing service you receive. The chef comes out and shakes your hand and compliments you on your choices. The waiters become your best friends and everyone knows your name.
You tell everyone how great it is, and then bring a huge group of your friends to the restaurant proud and anticipatory. That night the chef is having disasters in the kitchen, so all you hear is a lot of swearing and certainly no visit to the table. They have hired a new waiter, who treats you efficiently – but at a distance. No one can remember your name.
Now if you have really boasted about this restaurant you would naturally feel a bit embarrassed in front of your friends. Will you dine there again? No. Would your friends dine there again? No.
Inconsistent customer service can be a real challenge to business – so how do you get around it? What you need to do is to make customer service integrated into every action of your employees and your service.
How you can do that is to:
Create checklists to be completed on every task. 
One hotel chain in the US does this to a great extent requiring everything to be checked off for each room including favourite spirits in the fridge, favourite newspaper on the table, favourite music playing on the CD player. They have worked out what is important and for each of those points there is a checklist that must be completed by room staff to make sure nothing is missed.
In a service business you can create checklists of everything that needs to happen when you have a new client sign up to the company, to ensure no steps are missed.
Create reminders at Point of Sale
Most POS systems allow you to enter in reminders which range from the ubiquitous "would you like fries with that" up-sell recommendations to reminders to thank the client by name once the frequent shopper card has been swiped so the name appears in the POS. How can you maximise your POS to create consistent customer service?
Introduce one thing at a time and get it embedded as a habit Many businesses go hell for leather and introduce lots of customer service strategies at the one time. This is like deciding to go on a fitness kick and deciding to radically change your diet and exercise for 1 hour per day every day if you have been a couch potato living on junk food. You are setting yourself up for failure!
Introduce one initiative at a time and get it embedded into the culture of the organisation so that it is reliably and consistently performed before you add in another one. This will maximise your long term success. Yes, it may be slower, but the system will be sustainable.
Outsource it
In small business it is really hard to remember (or find time) to do all of the stages of a regular customer care program. This is where a great virtual assistant can help you. You create the system and let them take care of implementing it.
Measure and reward success In life what is measured gets done and what is rewarded gets repeated. Using this knowledge you need to measure the most important parts of the customer service cycle and reward the employees who consistently perform well at these key areas.
Consistency of customer service is the key for business. If they do achieve the Holy Grail of consistent customer service – they won't achieve everlasting life, but they will get business sustainability and success.
If you want help creating customer care programs including welcome letters, thank you letters, repeat business incentives - then contact Heart Harmony on 07 3351 8844.
| HR Tip of the Week - Hiring employees that give great customer service |
 One HR truth I regularly repeat is to hire for attitude not skill. If the person you are hiring does not present at interview or through reference checks as being customer focussed - under no circumstances hire them! You can always teach skills, but unless the foundational attitudes are in place, no amount of teaching will create them.
One way to test for customer focus is through scenario questions such as:
- "You are at the front counter - the phone is ringing, there is a person waiting for an appointment with the CEO, an employee wants you to organise a courier for them, and a person enters with a complaint. What do you do?"
- "A customer asks for something that is against customer policy. What do you do?"
- "Can you tell me about a time when you received exceptional customer service. What made it great?"
- "How do you deal with angry or upset customers?"
Ask the person's referees about the applicant's customer focus. Not all previous employers or referees will answer more probing questions about candidates - but unless you ask you will never know!
In a busy blogging week it was hard to select the post of the week. But although this one was personal, it summed up what great customer service means to me.
Last Friday I had Bettina from Kahootz Clothing go through my wardrobe. So what? ... well the education was amazing! Read what happened when I let someone into my closet.
How to Write Nominations for the Telstra Business Awards.
(Special guest post by Melinda Hutchings)
exuberantly yours
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
PS: This week's Small Business Tips blog also included What is the Vision of Your Business?; the Impact of "Moving Forward with Fairness" on HR Manuals; Everyone needs a little Validation at times (a brilliant short video!); SEO copywriting secrets; What is Viral Marketing?
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