Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

What is an organization’s “culture?” It is simply a critical mass of the attitudes and behaviors of its people and groups. The fifteen statements below each reflect an important “cultural” reality impacting customer satisfaction and loyalty. They have shaped our customer service program's success. Do they shape yours? How is your customer culture?1. T / F: In our organization we operate under the assumption that customers view customer contact persons as “the organization” and representatives of what the organization means to them personally. 2. T / F: We communicate regularly the importance of realizing everyone in our organization has customers: external (“paying”) customers and internal (work group/ inter-work group) “customers.” 3. T / F: We design our processes and train our people around 2 things customers want to know: (1) Do you do what you say you will? (2) How do you handle problems? 4. T / F: Realizing that organizations choose, consciously or unconsciously, to be financially driven and/or customer-driven, we make decisions remembering that organizations working from a short-term, financially driven philosophy are not as effective in service situations.5. T / F: Since front line persons make most customer service decisions on a daily basis, our top management understands their key role and allows them to inform the organization about customer needs.6. T / F: We promote the status ...
Tags: Line Customer, People, Top Management
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Thursday, August 13th, 2009

What is customer service? Have you ever stopped to really think about this question? We have trained literally thousands of people and hundreds of organisations in customer service. No matter who the person or what the organisation, the answer to this question is always generic. They will say: “Customer service is about giving customers what they want” or perhaps “it’s about satisfying customers” some times they will say that it is about “making customers happy.”While at first glance these answers may sound correct, nothing could be further from the truth. Say for example that you ran a restaurant. If a customer were to enter your restaurant and ask for some office supplies would you be able to give the customer what they want? Would you be able to satisfy a customer who was looking for some jewellery if you worked in a hardware store? No, it would be impossible. The best that you could do would be to politely tell the customer where they can go and get Jewry. Obviously, customer service is not about giving customers what they want, or even satisfying customers.The same is true for the way we give customer service. When we ask the question: what is the most important thing for good customer service, almost everyone we ...
Tags: Hardware Store, Jewellery, People
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