The difference between good and
great customer service can mean the
difference between a good and a great company.
“Effective customer service means going
the extra mile and creating a situation
where you can see your customers as diamonds in the rough,” says Hugh Littleton,
training coordinator at Corporate College.
“If you don’t look at them closely, you’ll
only see a small portion of their potential.
But if you go the extra mile, you find out
they are really gems.”
Smart Business asked Littleton how new
customer service paradigms affect how
companies are doing business in the 21st
century.
Has emphasis on customer service
increased, even as companies ship more
such functions abroad?
It has definitely increased. Companies
are now understanding that they have to be
customer-focused in order to survive. In
the past, we might have thought that the
human touch didn’t impact the bottom line,
but it really does.
Has the bar been raised higher? Are customer service practices that were acceptable
then not acceptable now?
In business today, there are more positive
customer service initiatives than ever
before.
For instance, look at the banking industry. A customer comes in for one transaction. Today, bankers are being trained to
look at the customer as having more needs
than might be evident at first. It’s like only
seeing 15 percent of an iceberg. That 15
percent might a business need. If you look
beneath the surface, though, another 85
percent is related to personal needs. So to
find out the other needs of that customer,
he or she needs to be touched at the personal level.
What are the key elements of effective customer service?
Corporate culture, hiring and training will
all affect how efficiently and effectively
you service your customers.
The most important is corporate culture,
which all starts from the top. The CEO sets
the stage for how employees relate to both
internal and external customers. He or she
has a great responsibility for making sure
employees respect and are accountable to
each other, which helps foster the process
of customer service. If you as CEO can
focus on customer service internally,
employees begin to take the initiative to do
things more expeditiously when they interact with external customers.
You also have to hire people who want to
serve others. There are some effective
ways to do that. You need them to have the
desire to understand customer service, but
then you must provide with different skills
that potentially become competencies, like
effective communication and listening
skills. Hearing is passive, but listening is a
learned behavior that can develop to the
point where an employee can become an
excellent customer service manager just
by listening.
To that end, we want to our employees to
receive: to stop, to hear what the customer
is saying, and to get on a two-way street to clarify and better understand the customer’s needs.
How does a CEO stay one step ahead of the
competition in his company’s approach to
customer service?
Traditionally, a company may have categorized its customers by certain demographics. Now, selling and customer service is personalized in a more nontraditional way. It’s been a paradigm shift.
Today, you have to make sure to ask each
individual customer what he or she needs,
rather than saying, ‘This is what you need.’
One solution doesn’t fit all anymore.
If CEOs can look at each customer individually, not collectively, they are staying
one step ahead of their competition. That’s
how you get repeat business.
How do customers judge the companies with
which they do business?
They judge us on five key points: attention, speed, trustworthiness, accuracy and
resourcefulness. To become a great company, you must meet or exceed their
expectations in those five areas.
You will note that none of those five
points has to do with technology. We work
in a high-tech world. Technology is fine. It
will always be with us. It’s a part of our
future. But the human touch — the human
voice — is what customers really want.
Any last thoughts?
When it comes to customer service, you
have to do unto others as you would have
them do unto you — only give them more
than what you would want. Go beyond
their expectations.
HUGH LITTLETON is training coordinator at Corporate College.
Reach him at [email protected] or (216) 987-5926.