Poor Customer Service will Destroy your Business - the Problems and Solutions

The stories we hear and read about customer service these days should frighten any executive into making clandestine calls to their own office to check out what’s really going on in their organisation. It’s an old trick, but if all executives made such calls on a regular basis, we might usher in a new age of enlightenment.

The Problems...

In spite of a proliferation of tales about bad customer service, some of them amplified on Web blogs to thousands of people, customer service horror stories continue. Unfortunately, they're all too common, and can destroy your business. Here are a few sure-fire ways to drive away your customers:

• Never talk to them. Keep them on hold on the phone, and don’t answer their e-mails. Tie them up in voice mail so that they never get to talk to a real person.
• If they persist in phoning in and demand to speak to a person, make sure they get transferred several times so that they have to repeat their problem again and again.
• Make them stand in a long line each time they visit your business.
• Tell your salespeople that it isn’t important for them to know about your products, and don’t ever empower a salesperson to solve a problem.
• Handball them between four or five people as they search for a resolution.
• Reward the salesperson’s surly attitude by never correcting it.
• Don’t trust customers, for they are never right. If they tell you your product is defective, assume the problem is their fault.

There's an old adage that customers vote with their feet. And with the cost of finding a new customer at 10 times the cost of retaining one, no one can afford that kind of fancy footwork. Therefore, all of us, no matter the business or industry, must take a hard look at customer service. The problems don’t populate just one business or industry; you can find them in banking, retail, health care, insurance and airlines.

Still, some companies don’t get it. They have hired the wrong people, or gone to the self-service model of customer service, or made their customer service someone else’s problem and called it outsourcing. They have pinched cents, convinced they are saving money, when in reality they are losing customers and may eventually lose their business. Meanwhile, they hang up a sign that says, “Customers Come First” and hope that their employees get it.

The bad news is that no one ever gets anything from a sign like that; it’s not that easy. The good news is that hiring the right people and training them is not impossible either, and can make your organisation hum like a well-tuned engine.

The Solutions...

1. Set and instil standards and values. The foundation for good customer service starts with a set of standards or values that the company wants its employees to embrace when serving customers. Once set, they must be instilled throughout the organisation, at all levels.
2. Hire the right people. Once your customer service standards and values are set and well instilled, then your managers must hire people who most closely match those standards. Psychometric assessments* help identify job candidates whose attitudes and behaviours match the requirements. Ideally, we all want to hire workers with the customer service “soul,” perhaps imprinted on them by their mother when they were just babes. But it’s not as obvious as Harry Potter’s lightning bolt; you can’t see this imprint just by looking at someone or listening to them talk, which is why pre-hire assessments are crucial.
3. Ongoing monitoring, correction, and training. Once the right person is in the right position, managers can’t just walk away, believing their job is done. The organisation's customer service needs to be continually monitored against its established standards and values, and when necessary, swiftly and deliberately corrected. Furthermore, the best companies offer employees continued, focused training in customer service**.
4. People are the core of business. As we all try to remain competitive while retaining customers, we must remember that people, both the customer and the one serving the customer, are the most important ingredient in the business equation. By all means, we should use every technological advancement available to further our goals in this increasingly complicated world. But in our haste, we cannot forget that people, both our employees and our customers, are the core of business.

Footnotes:

*Profiles International, the world leader in psychometric assessments, has a number of products relating to customer service, including Customer Service Perspective, which measures how well a person fits specific customer service jobs in your organisation. It is used primarily for selecting, on-boarding, and managing customer service employees. Additionally, it also looks at what your current and future employees believe is a high level of customer service, while at the same time showing whether or not they align with your company’s perspective. For additional information click here, and/or call Peter Hosie on +613 9822 1309.

**LMA has a number of courses that provide specific development in customer service. For additional information contact your LMA representative today, or give us a call on (Aust) 1800 333 270, or (NZ) 0800 333 270.

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