You know the stories: There's the legendary tale of a
Nordstrom clerk who refunded the price of a customer's tires,
even though Nordstrom doesn't sell tires. And who could forget
the one about a Midwest Express employee who lent his own suit to a
passenger whose luggage had been lost?
Reserved for world-class companies, these stories tell of the
loyalty-boosting customer service most entrepreneurs would kill
for. The problem? Most entrepreneurs don't have the foggiest
idea how to provide this kind of service. In the words of Jay
Goltz, 42, founder and president of Artists Frame Service in
Chicago, and author of The Street Smart Entrepreneur (Addicus
Books), "You read books, go to seminars, hear speakers talk
about great customer service, but it doesn't always
work."
There are, however, a few things that almost always work.
Consider the following five ideas the equivalent of "Once upon
a time...," the beginning of your own tales of legendary
customer service.
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1. Hire The Right People.
"Find and retain quality people," advises Ron Zemke,
founder of Performance Research Associates, a Minneapolis
service-quality consulting firm, and co-author of Delivering
Knock Your Socks Off Service (Amacom Books). "You
can't create world-class customer care if you hire
run-of-the-mill employees."
Customer service employees who excel have the right personality
for the job, according to Peter Baron, 38, founder and principal of
Socket Public Relations in Tucker, Georgia. "The people we
hire [are] high-achievers who take charge," he says. According
to Baron, this type of person is best suited to doing whatever it
takes to make customers happy.
Ask the right questions when interviewing candidates, advises
Goltz. Artist Frame Service's interviewing protocol probes
deeply into prospective customer service employees' past job
experiences. "I ask them to tell me about how they handled
their worst customer service experience," Goltz says.
"You can catch a [candidate's] attitude that
way."
In today's tight labor market, it can be tough to find the
right people. Zemke suggests asking your best customer service
employees to identify other people like themselves. "If you
have good workers," he says, "use them to recruit
[others]."
2. Make Service A Core Value.
Even the most eager-to-please employee must know what's
expected in a variety of customer service-related situations. But
that's not easy. For instance, how could Midwest Express train
its reps to lend their clothes to stranded passengers? It
couldn't, says Leonard Berry, a Texas A&M University
marketing professor who cited the Midwest Express story in his book
Discovering The Soul of Service (Free Press).
"There's no way to write a policy manual that instructs
employees on what to do in every conceivable situation,"
argues Berry. "But by building the ethic of excellent service
into the [organization's] core values, even without the
rulebook, your employees will know what to do."
Making service a core value keeps it fresh in everyone's
mind, says Berry. The process of embedding customer service as a
core value starts at the top, he emphasizes. "The best way to
perpetuate a concern for excellence is to have excellence at the
highest levels of management," says Berry.
Just as you can't tell people what to do in every situation,
you can't tell them exactly what great service is either, Berry
says. Instead of detailing your values, inspire people by example.
Tell them stories about your company's great service--appeal to
their hearts as well as their minds.
3. Empower Front-Line Employees.
Fear may be the biggest factor blocking great service. By
providing extra-special service, employees may fear overstepping
their bounds. To counter this fear, entrepreneurs must empower
employees to do what's necessary to achieve their customer
service vision.
At Socket Public Relations, Baron's employees are empowered
to stop billing clients who are dissatisfied with a press release
or other job. "It definitely sends a message," he says.
"It gives each employee the knowledge and discretion to make
sure the actual time they deliver is high quality. If they're
engaged in an activity they don't think is valuable to the
client, they decide whether to charge or not."
Giving employees the discretion to provide free service
isn't always the best form of customer service empowerment,
however. At Sonic Innovations, a Salt Lake City hearing-aid
manufacturer, company president Andy Raguskus, 53, empowers
customer service employees to make a whole range of decisions in an
effort to make customers happy.
"They're free to offer refunds, swap one product for
another, send out free batteries or provide free consulting
services," says Raguskus. "They have a wide range of
latitude." He stresses, however, that this type of empowerment
only works if customer service reps aren't reprimanded for
making bad decisions. That means backing them up if they give away
something they shouldn't have in an effort to please a
customer. "If employees make a decision I wouldn't have
made, I won't burn them for it," explains Raguskus.
"Nine times out of 10, our reps make fabulous
choices."
4. Solicit And Use Feedback.
Before you know how much power to give employees, you have to
know what's important to customers. For instance, Sonic
Innovations has two types of customers: users, often elderly and
hearing impaired, and professional audiologists, who dispense its
products. While a user may require an explanation of the difference
between analog and digital hearing aids, an audiologist may have
technical questions about programming. Knowing what's important
to each type of customer is essential.
How do you find out what customers want? Listen and take notes,
says Fred Wiersema, co-author of The Discipline of Market
Leaders (Perseus Books) and editor of Customer Service
(HarperBusiness). "The one thing that can make up for all
deficiencies is being in touch with your customers," he says.
That means using a variety of approaches to encourage
customers' letters, calls and other feedback.
Use computer systems to record as much of this information as
possible. Customers of Lenel Systems International, a security
management systems firm in Pittsford, New York, are asked to
provide an identification number when they call. Service reps then
enter the number into computers to retrieve customer files,
including all past problems reported regarding Lenel's software
and hardware.
"[Our customer service database] has a tremendous amount of
information," says Rudy Prokupets, the company's executive
vice president of research and development, and chief technology
officer. Lenel also uses its Web site to gather service data.
Customers who access the site are prompted to enter a unique
password, identifying themselves and funneling comments or
complaints into their file. "We have a feedback area on the
site," adds Prokupets. "And we make sure we respond to
it."
Don't restrict yourself to computerized solutions, however.
Wiersema recommends that entrepreneurs regularly call a few
randomly selected customers and simply ask about the company's
service. "Make sure you get directly in touch with the
customer," advises Wiersema.
Prokupets agrees about the value of direct experience. "We
like to send service people into the field to see real
installations," he says. "Once they come back,
they're changed people."
5. Pick The Right Customers.
Nothing will work if you're trying to serve the wrong
customers. "Small businesses don't do a very good job of
segmenting," says Zemke. "If you've been serving
everybody and not thinking about who your core customers are,
you're going to be in trouble when business changes."
Some customers are too demanding, reducing your ability to serve
those who are more easily satisfied. Others are too small to make
serving them worthwhile. To differentiate, says Zemke, "Define
your core customer, the one you would live or die for. Figure out
who's going to be the customer you'll go to the mat for,
with all kinds of value-added services."
You can use data-based tools, such as projected lifetime
revenues, to identify the best clients. Or, says Zemke, you can
simply listen to your gut instincts. "Ask yourself, who would
you go out in the middle of the night to make a delivery for?"
he suggests. Then try to figure out what traits make those accounts
so valuable to you, and match new prospects to the profile.
Otherwise, warns Zemke, "You can spend an awful lot of time
romancing marginal customers."
Baron says Socket uses two traits to decide whether customers
can be successfully served. First, customers must have products or
services that are likely to be successful. "If we feel their
expectations are out of line with what they have to offer, we
decide then and there it's not a good fit," he says.
Equally important, Socket clients must be people who are easy to
work with. "If we have a customer who's hard on our
employees, we walk," Baron says. "We put our people
first."
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