How crucial it is to ‘delight a customer’. Raising customer satisfaction
is such an obvious point. Management tends to forget the importance of
delighting a customer. Customer satisfaction is talked about in creative
copy writing. What is neglected is the need to constantly and seriously
think whether customers are really being delighted and to continually
put efforts into raising customer satisfaction.
When price wars are ignited by companies, management by its very nature
assumes that it is for the good of their company and customers.
Sometimes it happens that when a company strives to bring its prices
down than those of its competitors, usually the quality of service
deteriorates and the customer satisfaction goes down. The end result
will be a cheap and nasty business. This happens, when the company
forgets to make the effort to think seriously about delighting
customers.
Essence of business
The true essence of business lies in the ability to satisfy opposing
interests. Obviously the seller wants to sell their products at a price
as high as possible. The buyer wants to buy products at a price as low
as possible. There is always a conflict of interests. They are as far
apart as the two opposing banks of a river. Delighting the customer
creates a bridge between the two sides.
If customers are delighted with service, customers will pay a price to
commensurate with their satisfaction. Delighting and satisfying are what
make the customer’s and the service provider’s benefits go in the same
direction. A delighted and satisfied customer will always be loyal to
the brand as well as the service provider.
No company wants the service culture to decline while other
organisations are improving. If your company is only focused on making
profits and launching new products, lack of attention to building or
sustaining the service culture can be costly. If this decline in not
arrested, customers will leave and your best employees will join
competitors in frustration. This slide can be stopped by becoming a
better place to work as a service provider and a better place to be
served as a customer. Study the architecture and implementation of
roadmaps for building service culture. All over the world, companies are
following these guidelines to become distinguished by uplifting
service. Best customer services are provided in Japan and the US.
Building a service culture takes time, energy and commitment but this
will pay off. Companies with strong service cultures are consistently
more profitable and productive. They keep more loyal customers and
retain more passionate employees.
Customers react to your poor service disappointment with others,
especially with fiends, relations, colleagues and competitors. Very few
will complain to the management. These complaints damage your
reputation, resulting in loss of sales and profitability.
Customer expectations keep rising as competition increases and the
service keeps improving. Trainers will give scripts to use and tell
staff what standards to achieve. All this customer service training
doesn’t make a lasting difference. Solving this requires a different
approach. First, stop telling staff what to say and do. Instead, educate
staff to understand service situations and design more effective
service actions. Service can be defined as taking action to create value
for someone else. The anchor of this definition is not the action
taken, or the value created. Service and customer expectations go hand
in hand. What do the service providers and customers want to accomplish
or achieve? What do they want to avoid? What are their top priorities?
What are their real concerns?
Build leadership alignments
Schools teach math, science, language, etc. but never the fundamental
principles for creating value through service to others. All of us will
spend our lives giving service and obtaining service. Management schools
need to provide actionable service education to students and equip them
with tools and skills that are needed to provide better service, earn
more compliments and quickly resolve expectations.
If the management does not agree on the priority of improving service,
the intended focus on service gets fractured and lost in a deluge of
comments on pricing, competition, recent problems and defective
products. Staff will be confused about how service really matters and
they cannot be blamed. This lack of leadership alignment weakens an
organisation as your top team argues over projects and budgets, the
primacy of service improvement fades away and the likelihood of
differentiating on service or building a superior service culture is
neglected.
Companies have to build strong alignment among the members of the
leadership team and alignment at the top is essential to build momentum
within the entire company. Best options would be to study global best
practices and successful case studies. With these insights leadership
alignments can be built and all have to agree on a common service vision
and secure commitment for implementation.
Poor internal service harms external service to customers. If staff is
stuck in rigid boxes with poor communication and little cooperation
across departments or the reporting structure produces more uncertainty
and confusion than urgently needed collaboration or internal departments
are more concerned about looking good than they are about looking after
the customer expectations.
When things go wrong, staff are faster at pointing fingers than they are
at pointing out what can be done. Unwilling attitude towards internal
service consumes time, costs money and damages employee morale and
worse, it prevents staff from giving external customers the quality of
service they deserve. Some organisations suffer with this condition but
some thrive by making excellent internal service to colleagues a focus
of their culture and benchmark their service to customers. To build a
culture of excellent service between functions, divisions and
departments, the management must provide teams with consistent support.
Improve activities that influence your staff service culture every day.
Have a service vision, common service language and communication method,
benchmark service, staff service measures, service improvement process,
rewards and recognitions, orientation and service role modelling, train
service staff on service
recovery/guarantees and to listen to voice of customers.
Deadly service sin
Budget is management responsibility. Service staff will have blue sky
ideas, great ideas but despite this high volume of new ideas, there is
painfully little new action at the end, all the happy talk about
excellent service seems to be just talk. A pile of ideas can be
transformed into a mountain of results with a process that moves ideas
into action.
How could this be done? Select a team of change leaders who get
certified to conduct service improvement workshops. Then deploy this
powerful resource to teach service principles to all internal and
external service providers. Next, apply the tools and frameworks. Learn
to review service problems and generate new ideas. Choose ideas that
offer quick wins and others that hold the possibility for big and
positive changes. Now put these ideas into action. As results are
achieved, trumpet the service solutions and praise the people involved.
Repeat this cycle until everyone appreciates how service issues lead to
new ideas, new ideas lead to new actions and new action produces
results.
As time goes on customer complaints may increase and internal problems
may keep building up and they wear your people down. Enthusiasm dims
like a slowly dying ember. Fortunately, you can fan a glowing ember back
to life. Reignite the interest and motivation of your team with
contests, workshops, keynote presentations, customer visits, panel
discussions, cross-functional teams and more. Be proactive. Make sure
everyone is engaged weekly, monthly and quarterly in creative programmes
that keep the flame for service burning brightly.
Sustaining focus and enthusiasm for service is an essential leadership
skill. Not sustaining focus and enthusiasm is a deadly service sin.
Second rate service culture can be found in many business, government
and community organisations. When you see these signs at work, take
action to turn the tide. You can lift your culture out of the darkness
and into the ‘light of delight’.
www.dailymirror.lk
No comments:
Post a Comment