Who is serving your customers?
I’ve come to realise lately that most organisations don’t give much thought to who works in their customer service departments. Recruitment is done based on “who knows who” and “he/she just needs a job”. Most CSR’s are not people who like to serve but they are thrust in the “limelight” and often times fall short of the required standards.
Recently I met with a friend who works with one of the top banks in our country and while we were talking she spoke with excitement on how she had been moved from sales to customer service. And when I tried to probe deeper with specifics on the interview for the switch between units, her response was, “there was no interview; it was just an internal posting”.
Alarm bells rang in my head and I was wondering “gosh, what are these people up to”. Reason being that my friend is definitely not the best of “helpers”. She can be pleasant when she feels like it but a bit sassy at times and that part will be sure to tick customers off.
Customer service should be treated as a career and not just a job. Recruiting customer service personnel is a very complicated process. Some people have the passion to serve, the patience to listen, a ready smile; they make excellent customer service personnel.
It’s not enough to have this long list of questions to use during recruitment of CSR’s; rather you need to interact informally with your candidates. This interaction process allows them be themselves and affords you a rare glimpse into their personalities.
Organisations need to run frequent health checks on their customer service personnel. Always advice your staff to make a plan to leave the service environment as soon as they find that they’ve lost their initial passion for service or can no longer just bear to listen to the whines of customers.
How do we fare as organisations with our customer service personnel? As customer service managers, do we respond to our staff with a ready smile, an open ear? Or are we grouchy and unhelpful and yet expect them to be the friendly face of the business with our customers?
In a nutshell, who is serving your customers?