Here?s a recap: 15 of the most important places to make service improvement in your business, in order to get 2015 off to a fabulous start.
1. Are you easy to use? You won?t know until you try.? Try your own website without your auto-log in.? Is it easy?? Or a pain? Come in the front door and see if the door swings open easily, or whacks you on the shoulder.? And so forth. donotpaginate
2. Do you offer self-service options for your customers? ?Many customers want them today: unless you?re open 24/7 or at least all conceivable business hours in all time zones in which you have customers, you need such options. And even if you are open ?round the clock, many times customers today just want to handle it, or at least be able to check up on it, themselves.
3. Do your self-service options include escape hatches? For when the self-service isn?t working or the customer isn?t in the mood?there should be an easy way out, to reach a human.? Make it obvious, like hitting ?O? on the phone.
4. Do your customers have to ask you to answer questions for which the answer should be obvious?? Customers don?t like to be burdened to contact you for items that could easily be provided for them on a self service basis.? Do your FAQ?s actually include the questions that customers want the answers to?? Or were they written six years ago by your web developer?? Do they get an auto-confirmation when they order or do they need to call to ensure their order wasn?t lost in the ether?? And so on.
5. Timeliness: Are you considerate of your customer?s time?? This is a big, big, big one.? A perfect product or service delivered late is a defect.
6. Commit to continuous customer service education. Education is an investment in organizational development.
7. Define a simple service recovery process. Things will go wrong. Either objectively (whatever that means) or in the eyes of your customer.? Either way, you need a plan.? Consider my ARFFD approach, for example.
8. Fight actively?every single day, every single shift?against getting in a rut.? The principle of hedonic adaptation means that your hundredth day on the job, naturally will not be as intense?as exciting, stressful, and so forth? as the first day.? This is good to some extent, but it means that you have to actively strive to remember that this same day is the first interaction your customer has had with your company, and you need to keep your attitude fresh to match theirs.
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