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Quality Customer Service
by Enrique Mora |
In today's competitive
marketplace, we do have to take care of our customers or else some
competitor will. When I wrote the article "Customer
Service Is The Question!" a few months ago, one of our readers in
Spain, emailed me his frustration because his employees could not understand
the real importance of the subject. After some questions of my own, I could
give him the guidelines for a very good process that I will share with you
here.
OK, you understand that
Customer service is important. But how can we get all of our employees to
make our customers feel well treated?
As a mater of fact,
nobody can give others what he or she does not have. Quality customer care
is the result of employee happiness. If our employees do not take the
business as if it was theirs, very little will their interest be in paying
attention to what the customer expects from the business. Developing this
required attitude is not just a training task. We do have to create the
right environment. Our company has to move to the new culture.
We can't expect a
distressed employee to behave in a very positive way, right? So, let us
focus first on the series of factors that can produce the appropriate
environment.
Leadership and
Ownership: As we have seen in several articles here, it is very important to
create this environment where everybody feels relaxed, respected, valuable,
listened to, and over all that he or she is the responsible owner of his or
her operation.
Security: In the past,
it was a common place in many companies to keep people working hard
subjugated to the fear of being fired or punished. Such supervisors or
managers are not needed any more. Today we need happy employees, who feel
secure and who know what has to be done and are allowed to do it their way
as long as they accomplish the right results, in the right time. They
participate actively in the design or adjustment of the process and feel
proud of contributing with their creativity and good will to continual,
unlimited improvements. Hence, the job is done in a natural, humorous
way.
Cleanliness and
Orderliness: Following the simple principles of the 5S
philosophy, people learn the joy, satisfaction and pride of a clean and
orderly workplace.
Follow Up!: All of these
minor conditions, once accomplished, have to receive a follow up from the
supervision and management levels in order to keep the improvements in place
and also learn if there are more new ideas to improve even more. With this
step, the new culture becomes an standard and everyone is comfortable with
it.
Under such conditions,
all your employees will have a clear image of their role in the operation of
your business, you will practically not have to tell them how important it
is to deliver their best service and to listen to the customers and learn
what they are expecting. Now, the employees know first hand, what it
is like to be respected, understood and listened to.
Here is a
link to our Suggestions
and Feedback page. Please let us know how can we improve our service to
you. Thanks for visiting TPMonLine.
Article
on Basic Customer Service
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