Delighting Customers - Three Solutions to Make the Difference

Customer service is the holy grail of most service and product organisations. Yet there are three basics that are vital to go further - to delight your customers...

It snowed quite hard on Monday evening and I got stuck on the Cotswold hills in it. A 35-minute drive ended up taking 4 hours (and I was lucky, I turned round!).

On the long leg between Swindon and Bristol on the M4, I was listening to a phone-in on Five Live.

During that I made my first ever call to a phone in!

They were debating the reasons for rude and offhand customer service. I had to share with them the three simple reasons for poor customer service (interestingly, they let the phone ring out and cut me off after a while, so not so special customer service at their end!).

You are itching for three simple reasons - none of which are the fault of the person giving the customer service!

So then...

1. Firstly - the wrong people are recruited for customer-facing roles. Retail (my background), is tough - some customers are tough and it is not as attractive a proposition to some people as an easier number in an office. So recruiters panic and take what they can get - often the wrong people to face customers.
   
   Recruit 'people' people for your customer-facing work.
   
   
2. Secondly - management quality is frequently poor. Here, often again due to poor recruiting (because there is a bog shortage of good managers in the UK), the wrong people get recruited into management - they are not 'people'people either. managers need to deliver results, sure, but they also need to use their employees in the very best way - by coming alongside them and working together, utilising their special skills and squeezing the very best from them. Yet, in a way in which the employee loves the work. It is fun, fulfilling and their environment is conducive to enjoyment.
   
   Recruit sharp managers, especially those who have the very best 'people' skills.
   
   
3. Finally - customer service is about focus. Your freshly recruited 'people' people, well supported from above, need to be freed up to look after the customers they want to give great service to. Organisations are much more demanding, to meet the requirements of shareholders profit needs, and use multi-tasking to drive productivity. Focusing on three tasks at once means they can't give their total focus to delighting customers by building great relationships with every one of them. There is a place for multitasking, but other jobs must very clearly come second to customers. Personally. I think multitasking is actually less productive, but that's me.
   
   Give your customer-facing people the complete freedom to focus on customers.

I never heard whether my comments got aired, though they did ring me back, the signal got lost. All that free advice, lost forever - except to here, of course! Focusing on my loyal 'customers' :-)