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Delighting customers
Delighted customers occur when what you provide is greater than what you promised or what they expected. But how far must delivery exceed promise to create delight? Answer: by any amount, however small or fleeting, that the customer will notice and value. These little extras are the "WOW" factors – the best ones are instantly noticed and valued by customers, they are quick and easy to do, and they cost you little or nothing.
A major opportunity to create customer WOWs is the "dazzling recovery" when something goes wrong for a customer. Just getting the customer back to the position they were in before the dissatisfaction occurred is not enough. The customer has to be taken way beyond the level of satisfaction they were at before. The WOW must be at least equal to the OUCH, should focus on the lifetime Relationship Value of the customer (not the single transaction value), and must be noticed and valued by the customer.
Employees are also customers If you don‘t care about your internal customers (your staff), they won’t care about your external customers. They will be incapable of providing good external customer service if they themselves are not receiving excellent internal customer service.
The motto is: "The better the people, the better the business." Only hire people who want to give excellent customer service and get rid of any that don’t. Create internal discussion groups for people to debate and agree the things about work that are important to them.
Achievement is the greatest motivator – make sure every employee has things to achieve through work. Look for their successes rather than their failures. Make sure they know you notice and appreciate their achievements. Ensure everybody is on the same side and aiming for common goals. Watch out for signs of internal conflict, identify the causes and remove them.
Give people the authority to decide and act without needing someone’s permission. Create an environment in which people feel free to express themselves and to experiment, without worrying about the odd error. Lavish training on people and do everything you can to help them develop their knowledge and skills.
Bottom-line benefits of customer care The bottom-line benefits of "high-end" customer care include: - Lower staff turnover – this reduces recruitment costs. - Longer customer retention – customers may stay up to 50% longer which increases Customer Relationship Value by 50%. - Increased repeat business – it costs five times as much to sell something to a new customer, so if more business comes from existing customers it reduces overall selling costs (perhaps by 20-30%). - More customer referrals – with existing "delighted" customers acting as unpaid salespeople and generating new business, it lowers promotional costs by 20-30%. - Higher prices – a 7-12% premium is often possible. - A business to be proud of – pride spreads to all stakeholders including suppliers and customers. List the potential benefits to your business of getting your service strategy right, do the necessary research to be sure of your facts, and broadcast them throughout the firm.
Implementing world class service So how does one get started in implementing great service? The author provides a four-phase plan of action:
1. Great Leadership. In Phase One, "great leadership" shows the way forward by demonstrating a strategic commitment to service so staff know it is not just another fad. Leadership provides a uniting vision, discusses and agrees with people the shared values that are to be the guiding principles for them, and communicates vision and values to everyone in the organisation. Alignment occurs when the leader "walks the talk" and whenever employees challenge and change things that don’t concur with the stated vision or values.
2. Service Culture. The second phase involves encouraging employees to treat colleagues like customers. Recruitment ensures that the right people, those who genuinely want to give exceptional customer service, are hired. Training shows people that the organisation has a commitment to them and ensures they are skilled for service. An enabling organisational structure with the fewest possible layers allows effective communication and working. The organisational pyramid is turned upside down so the customers and the people serving them are now at the top of the organisation. Efficient, customer-friendly systems support staff in providing great service. And front-line employees, the ones closest to the customer, are totally trusted by the leadership.
3. Customer Connection and Continuous Improvement. Phase Three aims at treating customers like colleagues. In addition to "WOW" factors and "dazzling recovery" situations, it calls for genuine partnering with customers and suppliers and for careful management of customer perceptions. Simultaneously, ongoing improvement efforts include eliminating waste, simplifying processes (using process mapping and process re-engineering), constant customer feedback, and continuous benchmarking.
4. Winning Pace. To ensure we are truly differentiated from our competitors, we need not just continual improvement, but improvement at a pace that outstrips all our competitors. One suggestion is to hold regular ideas sessions in which every employee generates "WOW" ideas to test and implement. Link employee rewards directly to service delivery.
Great service has to be made habitual. If your people do these things over and over again, they will become a natural habit and part of your culture.
Should we treat all customers the same? One question that arises is whether firms should treat every customer the same or whether some are in the long run worth more than others and deserve more attention. The author touches on this issue. He notes that the Internet makes the costs of acquiring new customers enormous for e-traders and suggests they should be thinking carefully whether they want simply "any" customers or the "right" customers.
He also tells us that we should not reward the wrong customers. Some firms, he thinks, seem to be more interested in attracting new customers than keeping the good ones they’ve already got. Others are more keen to reward small or infrequent purchasers than their large or regular customers. The author concludes it makes more sense to invest in keeping the good customers that we’ve already got rather than spending a fortune trying to attract new ones. It is doesn’t make sense to provide incentives and rewards for the small spenders and nothing for the bigger, better customers.
If you would like to read the complete article, please go either to the Virtual Learning Resource Centre (VLRC) or direct access from FCOnet |
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Once a customer, always a customer (Extracts) By Chris Daffy, Oak Tree Press (taken from VLRC) |
