Thursday, October 07, 2010

HR Talk: Excellent

by Bruce Johanson   Edited Thursday, December 02, 2010

Originally Published in Biz to Biz NW Arkansas

Could you say, without a doubt, that your organization or department consistently provides excellent customer service? Excellent service sets you apart and creates opportunity. Even better, faithful customers typically tell five to eight potential customers about your level of customer service. This is key to profitable growth.

Consider this framework for customer service:

  1. Gain a commitment by top management to implement an “Excellent Every Time” customer service program.
  2. Make a list of all products and/or services your organization provides. Determine what it will take to provide excellent service for each product and/or service.
  3. Create a service commitment statement around your offerings. Determine all possible situations or issues that would cause the commitment statement to not be fulfilled.
  4. Establish and implement policies, procedures, and training that will address any situation that may derail your commitment to excellent customer service.
  5. Develop proven recovery steps that quickly address common situations that may compromise customer service.
  6. Provide something of value to the customer when they don’t get what they were expecting in the first place.
  7. Create a means by which point of service employees can provide feedback to decision-makers about the quality of service provided to customers.
  8. Implement changes in policies, procedures, and training based on the data collected.
  9. Train all employees on each aspect of the customer service program, including how to recognize when a customer service failure has occurred, how to recover quickly, and how to provide meaningful feedback to decision-makers.
  10. Reward employees who consistently provide superior customer service.

Bruce Johanson is President of Johanson Group, an HR/Management Consulting firm based in Fayetteville. Johnson and his team are active members of NOARK. Visit the organization website at www.NOARK.org or email comments at info@nowark.org.