This article builds on ideas developed by the Gallup organisation about ways to engage your customers, so they keep coming back.

In last month’s newsletter article, we outlined why some customer service problems arise and how, by defining your standards, your staff and customers will reward you. So have you documented your standards and rigorously enforced them yet?

This month we highlight the importance of educating each staff member about how to meet your customers’ expectations at every customer touch point.

It’s not always their fault...

It’s not always right to blame your employees for the delivery of poor service. There are many external factors which contribute to the way your employees behave. For example, they might have just dealt with a highly obnoxious customer beforehand.

It is up to you to realise that events can happen which may impact on your employees’ overall performance. An off day displayed by the member of staff might be forgiven.

But that's no excuse...

Whilst we might understand any employee can have an off-day, striving for great customer service means you must aim to eliminate variations in service delivery.

Are you recruiting the right people for customer-facing roles? If so, have they been armed with the tools they need to deliver great service, or deal with service problems in a way that minimises client disruption? Maybe even turn them into opportunities to make a lasting positive impression?

Whilst many companies see customer service as a vague concept, truly great service providers analyse it, define it, and plan for it.

Educating your team members

If you want your team members to deliver a quality service to satisfy and engage your customers, it is your responsibility to show them how to meet your customers’ expectations at every customer touch point. Most organisations will have multiple points of contact with customers. You will want to ensure you have knowledgeable staff at each contact point.

One suggestion is to run employee focus / discussion groups to allow all members of staff to voice their opinions on how the quality of service could be improved and then remain at that higher standard. During these discussions, you may be able to uncover blockages to great customer service that you can help them resolve.

Mystery Customer can help

A customer service program like Mystery Customer will help you find out what your business is doing well, and what areas of business you may need improvement on. We are able to eliminate the bias that an internal review may have.

The Law of Averages says that the distribution of seemingly random events which are really part of a systematic problem, will even out with a larger sample. You might accept as bad luck that one-off bad customer experience or mystery shop score – but over time, you will get a realistic view of your organisation with a bigger sample.

Rather than waiting a long time to get a realistic view, our clients might consider doing a concentrated round of high frequency visits to establish what is ‘normal’ for their business.

Not only can we send out our own ‘mystery customers’ to visit your organisation but we can create more opportunities for your own customers to provide your organisation with feedback through tools such as our IWR (Interactive Web Response) surveys.

Through our consulting partners, we can help you identify all steps in your value chain leading to the interaction between your people and your customer to help you identify weaknesses and improve all customer service touch-points.

Contact us

If you’d like to talk to Mystery Customer about reporting on your customer service to see how you fare over a valid sample of data, or to help you improve your customer service, contact us...