The Sunday Mail
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” – Bill Gates
The pandemic has caused so much turbulence in the way businesses have traditionally interacted with their customers.
There has been a significant drop in the level of service delivery standards, as both parties try to adjust to the new normal of doing business.
However, along the way, there has been trouble in paradise as some companies have lost a significant chunk of their customers.
As customers seek companies that offer them great assistance and an exceptional customer journey experience, companies have been trying to keep them by investing in staff training and development, especially customer service training.
However, I have noticed that many organisations rush to send their staff for training when in fact they should start by investing in customer service audit.
Why should organisation carry out a customer service audit?
My answer is simple: The audit will help them to identify the areas that they are lacking when serving their customers.
After all, a customer service audit is a process by which an organisation gathers data in order to identify service gaps within its operations.
The gaps found during a customer service audit will determine the right training that is necessary to solve the problem at hand. For instance, lack of proper product knowledge by the organisation’s representatives may be one of the gaps, hence when training your staff focus should be on product knowledge.
On the other hand, the strategy used by the organisation on customer service may not apply in the current operating environment, hence, there will be need to re-strategise.
Gap identification, through customer service audits, will reveal the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organisation. Once these gaps are exposed, the right call to action can be utilised.
The first audit by organisations before investing in training is an audit of the business structure and its strategy.
This is because the structure and strategy are what the organisation is currently using to deliver the customer service experience (or whatever they so wish to deliver) to their customers.
A variation to this type of audit is that the organisation goes a step further and studies its customer journey and experience at each touch point or channel used by its customers to interact with the brand.
Always remember, free marketing and repeat business are guaranteed, whenever customers are happy with consistent positive customer experience, each time they interact with a brand.
This means before initiating any type of customer service audit, it is the organisation that must be checked if it has the correct basic systems in place that will allow its customer service personnel to deliver an unforgettable customer service experience.
The following are the basic items that will help an organisation to execute a positive customer service experience:
1). Mission and Vision – Brands must have a unique identity and organisation’s mission, and visions must ably describe the type of service and experience they want their customers to have.
2). Management Promise and Commitment -The promise to provide top class customer service experience begins with the top executives’ commitment, which should be backed by resources to execute the service. The resources include financial, human, time and capital injection. Their moral and social support is also an important promise.
3). Organisational Culture, Adoption and Alignment – Every organisation has its own important values, which it believes in and uses as a standard. Thus, these values and the behaviours by its staff end up forming what is called organisational culture, which they should be able to adopt and align with the objective of delivering par excellence customer service experience.
4). Employee Experience – Good or bad customer service experience is determined by the employees’ experience. It is, therefore, the duty of the organisation to make sure that its staff are well resourced and trained to be able to serve their customers. Happy employees exude the same happiness to the people they serve.
5). Customer Knowledge – Smart organisations take notice of their customers’ feedback by capturing and analysing it. They also get to know them intimately by doing research on them, persona product development and by embracing their journey mapping process. The right action is utilised after data gathering.
6). Leadership and Organisational Alignment – In spite of their personal differences, leaders within an organisation must always align and support one another in achieving superior customer service experience objectives. On the other hand, the employees – as representatives of the organisation – must be able to understand why it is important to work on giving the customers a positive experience. Thus, they must be able to answer the who?, what?, when?, where?, how? and why?
7). Brand Promise – When customers interact and transact with certain brands, they have expectations. This is because organisations make promises to customers on the value and benefits that they are likely to get when they experience their brands. For instance, a certain local company always emphasise on “great value and great savings”. Therefore, the brand promise must be kept, to build good brand reputation.
***Cresencia Marjorie Chiremba is a marketing enthusiast with a strong passion for customer service. For comments, suggestions and training, she can be reached on [email protected] or on 0712 979 461
