Setting customer service expectations for employees will lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction and to employee satisfaction, as well.
Now, although I fully agree with the statement I just made, I believe there are two parts to it:
- High Levels of Customer Service—When you talk about high levels of customer service, what you’re really talking about is “how do we take customer satisfaction and turn it into customer loyalty?” Because that’s what drives long-term business success. It’s not about selling someone a service or product once.
As a company, you have to figure out how to get customers to proactively use your service and/or product. And that really relies on taking customer service and turning it into customer loyalty.
- Employee Satisfaction—There’s a great amount of employee satisfaction to be found in customer service, if the employee likes his/her position and does a good job at it.
Employee satisfaction also stems from your employees having a clear picture of what their success looks like and of what’s expected of them. When employees know exactly where they stand and know where they need to improve, they will feel more comfortable doing their jobs.
The element that ties both of the above-mentioned together is a consistent customer service experience. When customers know that you offer a service/product they can rely on and they know your customer service is good, they won’t think twice about purchasing your service/product again.
The number one mistake companies make when it comes to setting customer service expectations, however, is making the assumption that everyone knows what good customer service is.
Rule Number One: Not Everyone Knows Good Customer Service
Everyone defines good customer service differently.
For example, I once asked a group of 10 supervisors to tell me, “What does ‘works starts at 8’ mean to you?” And they all had different responses. One supervisor said, “As long as my people are in the door by 8 a.m., I’m OK with that.” But another supervisor said, “Work starts at 8 a.m. means you’ve already come in the door, chit-chatted, had your coffee and are ready to take your first customer service call right at 8.”
So that one simple statement (“Work starts at 8”) has a number of shades of gray. And customer service is no different.
A lot of times an employer will tell an employee, “Take care of the customer,” but they don’t define to the employee what that means or what it looks like. When this happens, the customer-service definition is then left up to each individual.
And that person’s definition may or may not be in line with what the employer meant by “take care of the customer.”
So if you want to provide good customer service, your goal needs to be making the customer service experience at your company consistent.
Making Customer Service Consistent
If you want to make customer service at your company more consistent, there’s a two-fold process you should take.
First, you need to define what “good customer service” means at your company:
- Document Your Definition—Documentation is key to consistency. Your definition needs to be as specific as possible.
For example, what kind of service are you looking for? Is there a specific tone of voice you want employees to use? Is there specific phrasing they should use? Is there a structure to the conversation that you want employees to follow? Is there a way you want customers to be greeted?
Setting and spelling out those specific details will help you drive a consistent customer experience.
Also, you want to make sure that part of your definition is based on feedback from clients and customers since customers will be the best measurement.
- Communicate the Definition to Employees—Once you have your “good customer service” definition documented, you need to communicate it to your employees. This is a very, very important step.
- Mirror Your Best Providers—I highly suggest you take a look at who your best customer service providers are—the ones your customers rave about; the ones that get the best results out of customer-company relationships—and base your customer service definition on them.
Determine what the best elements of your top customer-service providers are, pull them together and create your “ideal” customer service representative.
Write all the elements down so you have a documented picture of the type of service that should be driving all your service providers.
Next, you should take the “Frankenstein” approach to customer service—Set expectations and standards based on your “ideal customer service representative.”
- Determine the Necessary Skills—You need to determine what skills a good customer service representative at your company must possess. This goes back to the list of skills your “ideal” customer service employee has. What elements and competencies are you looking for?
- Spell Out Your Expectations—Employees need to know exactly what you expect of them. They need to be trained on any “ideal” skills that you require if they are lacking. They need to have this information documented and spelled out for them in detail.
- Monitor Progress—This step ties all the other steps together. After you’ve defined “good customer service;” after you’ve determined necessary skill sets; after you’ve documented and communicated your expectations; after employees have been trained; then it’s time to monitor their progress.
You can monitor progress in various ways, such as listening in on customer service calls or gathering feedback from customers.
Follow-up is extremely important. Without follow-up, all that work you did on the front-end will fall apart because there’s nothing in place to ensure proper customer service is taking place.
By taking the initiative to define what “good customer service” means at your company, you’re heading in the direction of consistent, successful customer service.