twelve solutions

Its Christmas time again; my favourite time of the year. The season when we all engage in some form of shopping, gifts for friends and families, cards to send out our warm wishes and trips back home to meet our loved ones.

Its also the busiest time of the year for all customer service representatives. Demand for products and services doubles or sometimes triples for some companies. How are we coping with the traffic? Do we go through the same steps to ensure we give top service to all our customers or is there a drop in the service we offer?

Some of us may feel drained and snap off at our customers. Lets remember that we are all at some point (especially during this season) customers and treat all those whom we have the opportunity to serve as we would like to be served. Most especially, lets remember the reason for the season.

In the spirit of love this season, lets ensure we leave smiles on the faces of our customers as we attend to their needs.

2008 is gradually coming to an end. Just as we take stock and conduct reviews of our personal achievements for the year, we should do the same for our professional achievements. Have we met our set targets for the year? What new skills have we acquired to make us better customer service representatives? What trainings were we able to attend during the year? Answers to these and many other questions will help us determine if we have been successful this year.

Personal development plans help us document our personal aspirations and goals. Often times we get so involved with our jobs that we forget to set personal development plans for ourselves. While some organisations encourage staff to make and document these plans, few ever care to conduct reviews of these plans periodically. As individuals, we must take time out to document our plans yearly.

Frequent reviews are also very important as they show us gaps between where we are and where we want to be by the end of the year. Most importantly we can review what we need to do to get to where we want to be. Will we forever wait for our organisations to give us that all important training and certification which we need to further our careers?

I believe that no one knows and understands your long term goals more than YOU. So if you know that to get that dream Customer Service Manager position you’ve always wanted, you need to understand customer relations or customer intelligence better, why not enrol for a one day seminar/training. Save up for it and actually attend it (even if you have to use a day of your vacation).

Its time to audit your career and development targets for this year. What would you do differently if given a chance? Your answer will surely guide you in the right direction.

When last did you walk into a store and receive a very warm greeting that made you smile? For me its been a while and it happens so little and far between that I’m startled when it does happen.

A warm greeting when you receive a client makes a world of difference. Its sets the stage for a pleasant transaction, may even convert a window shopper into an actual buyer, and it definitely costs nothing to offer a warm greeting.

So how should we welcome our customers? If you really love your job or are making any effort at trying to enjoy it then this shouldn’t be hard to figure out. A smile, eye contact, maybe a handshake, will definitely make our customers take a second look at us and diffuse any hostility. Our culture sometimes requires our genuflecting when greeting elders in the society. If the customer is really advanced in age and tends to communicate with you in your local dialect then I guess it won’t hurt for you to genuflect while greeting him.

Is this customer a regular at your service point? Then you should know his/her name, ask about the family, initiate a bit of small talk. The customer will surely feel happy, because you’ve shown him/her that you care. Its common sight for mothers to move around with their kids to informal environments, know their names too so you can ask about them when the mother comes in alone.

Its important that we learn to enjoy our jobs as CSR’s because its only then that we can incorporate a winning attitude.

This month we’ll take a look at another customer service buzz phrase “customer retention”. Customer retention is often used to refer to strategies employed by organisations to ensure that the keep their existing customers while trying to acquire new ones.

The true measure of customer retention should come from the following key factors: are you getting repeat business from the customers, do they buy your add-on products, are they happy to recommend you to their families and friends or do they do these things because they have no better choice? When an organisation is able to place high marks beside these questions then it may consider itself being on the right part.

For an organisation to have an effective customer retention programme in place it must routinely offer training to key customer facing staff, sharpening their customer service skills along with emphasising their value proposition as an organisation.

A relevant question is how do we as individuals contribute and ensure that the organisation is indeed scoring high marks against these questions; we must focus on giving consistent and excellent customer service, utilise any up sell or cross sell opportunities that come our way during any customer interactions. Also politely ask existing customers for referrals, when the opening emerges during our interactions.

All these things are necessary on your part as CSR’s because the bottom line remains that the customer pays the bills. Any pay rise or personal development you require from the organisation will only come easily if the organisation has a healthy balance sheet.

An interruption to service often times exposes organisations without service recovery processes in place as being incompetent and inefficient. Customers don’t expect things to be perfect always but they expect that whenever a problem occurs their first point of contact with the provider should be able to effectively fix the problem.

A key point we must remember always as CSR’s is that a problem occurs when the customer says it does. Don’t try to argue it out with the customer. An incident may appear mild to you but if the customer feels that its a serious issue then by all means treat it as such.

Service recovery simply means to return service to its normal state. And good service recovery begins when you recognise and admit that the customer has a problem. It scores you lots of points.

As CSR’s we need to be remain attentive at all times to spot a service failure from afar and begin the recovery process. Some organisations do have a process in place that serves as a guide for recovery from those blips. No one process fits all customers and problems but a guide surely helps CSR’s work within the confines of what is allowed in each organisation.

Questioning is a key customer service component that people tend to pay little attention to. As CSR’s, the key to exceeding the customers expectations lies in your ability to appropriately identify the customers needs. You must however bear in mind that the needs of your customers are not for the product or service (product features)rather their needs are for what the product or service will and can do for them (product benefits).

As CSR’s you also act as sales people for the organisation even though your job description may not explicitly say so. Identifying the needs of your customers enables relationship building and good relationships bring about some element of trust and this is a main ingredient for selling successfully.

So while you’re assisting that customer fix a problem, try and understand their needs by asking intelligent questions. They’ll definitely appreciate you a whole lot more and while your at it you might be able to increase your organisation’s market share.

This month we’ll be discussing listening and how it impacts on the customer experience. Customers expect active listening from CSR’s at every service point and watch for the slightest change in body language to determine their next course of action.

Listening isn’t just about hearing the customer; it’s also about understanding what the customer is saying. Listening involves making eye contact with the customer (or in phone conversations having a pen and paper to jot down details from the call), keeping an open and positive body language and generally making the customer know that you are listening and trying to understand what he/she is saying.

How can we achieve good listening skills? To achieve good listening skills, we need to listen to what our customers are saying with an open mind, check their voice tone so that we can try to determine what emotions they would be experiencing and listen to their body language. When we listen to our customers and actually understand what they are telling us, we can never go wrong as CSR’s.

Last month we looked at measuring our First Contact Resolution rate. This month we will be reviewing the handle time of customer transactions and its effect on the customer experience. Normally as customers we like to take the time to fully express our needs or wants at every service point and would become irritated when rushed by the attending customer service rep (CSR). This feeling of being rushed is often looked on as rudeness from the CSR.

Human resource management is usually inclined to quantify the amount of work done by CSR’s by the number of customer interactions they may have handled for the review period. A huge percentage of their performance review is normally based on this factor.

While this may seem a logical measurement we must be careful not to put our customer relationships at risk with this evaluation criterion. If our major focus as an organisation is to ensure customer satisfaction then we must allow our CSR’s ample time to deal with these transactions otherwise we will be putting our customer relationships at risk. It becomes a contradiction of sorts if we request our CSR’s to minimise the amount of time spent on each customer interaction, (thereby increasing the number of transactions) and also ensure all customers needs are met and even exceeded.

Human instincts would normally drive the average person to apply a speedy courteous approach to the customer interaction to the detriment of the customer experience. This is so because no one wants to be identified as “not having met his/her targets”. And the consequence of unmet targets would normally reflect on the employee’s pay cheque.

So what do you think and what is currently implemented in your environment? Are you measuring the quality of the interactions and maintaining your customer relationships or are you measuring the quantity/ number of transactions handled by your CSR’s?