Are you being served?
At some point in most of our private or professional lives we all deal
with some aspect of Customer Service.
As Customers, do we really look forward to the electronic call
filtering procedures, which require us to "..Press one for a
lobotomy..." or "...Press two for irritating music.."?
How many of us have stories of either disinterested staff or of staff
who seem to do no more than take a message with little evidence that
our problem has been understood or valued?
Come on, own up!
As providers of services in an extremely competitive marketplace, we
cannot afford to be associated with poor service. Managing complex
packages of services has never been easy, but our customers evaluation
of that service and particularly how we respond to his off-the-cuff
demands, is vital to our getting repeat business.
How does your service measure up? " Our business has grown
year-on-year and we meet our clients targets. Our staff have all the
tools at their disposal to ensure that our links with the Customer are
cared for!"
Is your Customer Service operative a decision-maker or an answering
service? Does your contact system give the operative feedback on
service provided? How many layers stand between the customer and real
service? Are you streets ahead of your competitors or only marginally
better? Is yours a really quality system?
Heard the one about the customer prepared for the morning visit of a
technician, when nobody arrived? The technician had done his work at a
remote electronic access point, but failed to tell the customer, who
had had his own staff waiting at their place of business to assist in
getting the Building Management System fault identified.
Result? Service restored - Contract lost.
Or the one about the major telecommunications faults service that
thought it clever to ignore a customer's advice of possible problems
on the system in his area? The Customer Service operative had no way
of processing that sort of data. " No known problems in your area,
Sir."
Result? System failure - lost revenue - lost customers.
Or the one about the customer whose Software, hardware, and Telecom
suppliers, had no structure for resolving a customer complaint, where
they all had some degree of responsibility in solving the problem?
" It's not our fault" was the defensive response from all three. The
weeks of intermittent service was disastrous and did nothing for the
reputations of the three suspects.
Result? Cost to the Customer - and three contracts not renewed.
Before anybody starts to think that I am simply having a good moan,
just consider that when somebody out there gets the customer service
response right - and keeps it that way, they will gain a very powerful
position in the market. There is evidence of an awareness of the issue
among leading providers, but not universally.
In related sectors such as Relocation and Inward Investment, where
Facilities Management practitioners are being increasingly involved,
it has long been the case that the most successful locations are
singled out by the quality of their offer, initial
response, commitment and significantly their follow through. They may
not have discovered a service Holy Grail, but what is clear is the
intelligent way in which the
best locations have given their Sales teams not only the best tools,
but also the authority to use them creatively to meet the
customer/investor's requirements.
For those of us who have experienced such a high quality delivery in
that sector, should we not take that seriously?
Can we afford to be complacent about who is being served?
|
|
