twelve solutions

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?

Hello everyone,

We’ve launched our all new blog! It promises to be very exciting and informative.

Customer Service is a very special area for us and we have decided to put up various topics within the call centre and customer service area for discussion. Customer Service is very important for any business to survive. Many organisations in our environment still choose to ignore customer service or see it simply as something that gulps a lot of funds. When training sessions are held within organisations, junior level staff are mandated to attend while the company executives use work to avoid attending these sessions. This attitude from senior management staff does not help change the attitude of junior staff towards customers. For a customer service culture change to effectively occur, all staff need to be a part of the process.

A ripple effect of not involving the entire organisation is that the customers take the final punch. Customers get bad service from the front line staff and their issues are not dealt with internally because no one within the organisation’s management empathises; having not been a part of the process.

What attitude does your organisation have towards customers? Are there two “standards” in operation? Do senior staff ensure that junior staff imbibe the customer service culture but remove themselves from the process?

How about the customer? How do we feel when our issues remain unresolved by front line customer service personnel and we are told that our issues will be escalated to senior management, and many weeks down the line we’re still waiting for response?

Will be back again later.

Ati