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What's the customer service culture in your workplace like?- Do you and your staff genuinely want to help customers, or are customers seen as an obstacle for getting your work done?
- Are customers' problems viewed as genuine challenges to overcome, or annoyances that require a quick-fix solution to stop the gripes?
- Do customers' quirks become a source of humor for staff, or is each customer treated with respect?
- Is discussing the weekend's social activities more important than serving a customer?
Here's a big tip: If customers aren't genuinely valued, they know it.
This is something you can't fake.
Most people have a very good sense of when someone is giving them lip service or would rather be doing something else.
In fact, when customers have a poor experience, they commonly refer to the attitude of person serving them (in their reviews on WOMO). So if you and your staff don't truly relish in customers having a great experience with your business, it's not very likely that your customers will have a great experience with you.
Things you can do to improve your business' customer service culture;
- Celebrate customer service successes! (Print out or email around reviews and other feedback)
- Personally congratulate staff involved in providing good service – that way they know it's important to you – what you notice and focus on sets the tone for the business culture
- Monitor customer service and/or customer satisfaction.
- Make customer service part of every employee's KPI's (even if their customers are internal)
- Talk about business problems from your customers' perspective
- Encourage ideas that improve customer service or solve customer problems
- Make customer service – including wins and issues – an agenda item at every meeting
- Allow fun while working but address staff that show disrespect for customers (remind them it's those customers that pay their wages)
- Escalate problems with customers and use them as an opportunity to demonstrate how these types of situations should be handled and avoided in the future
- Give staff authority to make decisions which would increase customer satisfaction (eg to authorise returns, provide a small gift, or spend time solving a problem)
- Make happy customers the end-goal for your staff and your business (not hours worked or time in the office)
Businesses that put customers on the top of their priorities today, are the ones that will be succeeding tomorrow. You don't (necessarily) need airs and graces, but you do need to be authentic and genuinely care about customers.
WOMO's Happy Customers Program helps business collect customer feedback and showcases them as a business that cares about customers.
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> Join the Happy Customers Program <
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