Everyone has a horror
story.
You go to a high-end
restaurant expecting the best
of everything and are completely underwhelmed by the
lack of service. You are paying for a five-star experience,
but you end up with a two-star entree and a server with
a one-star attitude. In the end,
you wonder if you wouldn’t
have been better off at a local
bar and grill.
And the issues with service aren’t limited to just the
restaurant industry. How
many times have you gone
into a retail establishment
and seen the employees
spending more time chatting with each other than
helping customers? You’re
often either ignored or you
get to watch employees
scurry away as they sense
that a customer may have a
question for them. The environment in some stores is
so poor that you feel bad
asking employees for help
even though you know it’s
their job.
Unfortunately, the lack of
customer service is a reflection of our society. Things
that should be taught at
home, like basic manners
and courtesy, aren’t. This
means companies have to
start their service training at
a much more basic level, and
you can never assume that
an employee will know that
being nice to customers is
the first rule of business.
The other challenge when
it comes to customer service
is that you really can’t fake
it. All the training in the
world can’t make someone
care about taking care of
customers. There has to be some inward desire on the
part of the employee to be
the best he or she can be,
regardless of position. If that
basic motivation is missing,
it is very difficult to get
excellent customer service
from that person because, at
some level, he or she just
doesn’t care.
Even if an employee does
have some inner motivation
toward doing a good job, a
national Smart Business survey of CEOs indicated that
only 31 percent of companies
offer formal customer service
training for front-line employees — meaning that 69 percent have no formal program
for the people who will make
the biggest impression on
your customers about your
company. Is a brief orientation
and a pat on the back a good
way to send employees out to
deal with the people who will
make or break your business?
In addition, 19 percent of
respondents indicated that
they do not measure their
customer service efforts at
all. If customers are leaving
those businesses because of
bad customer service, how
would the CEO ever find out
in time to react if it’s not
being measured?
Customer service programs
don’t have to cost a lot of
money. In fact, of those CEOs
surveyed, 43 percent indicated
they spend a minimal amount
per client annually.
In this rough economy, you
might be leaning toward cutting back in the customer
service department — 21 percent of those surveyed indicated that was the case. This
could be a costly mistake.
Customer service can be a
major differentiator between
you and the competition.
A lot of customer service
comes from the tone set by
the CEO, and that doesn’t
cost you anything other than
some effort. Terrible customer service is a poor
reflection of not just the
company but the CEO, as
well. So start by setting a
good example. Set a no-tolerance policy for poor customer service and get rid of
people who refuse to follow
your guidelines and, conversely, reward those who
take customer service to a
high level. Create a strong
service message and do
everything you can to make
sure everyone in the organization understands it.
You need to spend some
time on service. Otherwise it
won’t be employees running
from customers, but it will
be customers running from
you.
FRED KOURY is president and CEO of Smart Business Network Inc. Reach him with your
comments at (800) 988-4726 or [email protected].
