Customers Are Great, But Are You Positioned To Keep Them? How many times have you used a service and been left with a lasting impression (positive/negative) of a given organization? Did the host at your favorite restaurant remember your name and invite you back as you left? Does the clerk at the store hand you your change without a smile and move on to the next customer just to get them out the door as quickly as possible? Have you had someone service your furnace and they rolled out a red carpet before they entered your home, so they didn’t dirty your house? Or did your retailer of choice simply say “thank you” for your business? These same principles apply to how your company conducts business and you should never lose sight of who puts money back into the organization -“the customer.” It is easy to get caught up in profitability percentages, industry bench marks and first call completion ratios. Don’t get me wrong, these areas are crucial to long term business success. However, without the customer the business would not be around in the first place. A long time mentor of mine, Kevin McCarthy, President/CEO of Modern Office Methods, consistently instilled that “We must always remember that without our clients none of us would have a job.” This philosophy has shaped the culture of his business and has allowed that organization to create lasting relationships with their clients. The following are best practices that I have found the most successful organizations adopted in order to provide world class service. 1. Have A Process In Place To Handle Client Concerns Is there a time sensitive process in place to monitor and keep track of client concern calls? Most importantly, do your customers know your escalation procedure in order to handle their concerns? Are you marketing this escalation process to your clients? Why not? The most customer centric organizations have a method in place so that if anyone takes a client’s concern, the issue is logged into a database and funneled to a “customer champion” to get the appropriate people involved to solve the issue. From the moment the concern is logged, a timeline is set to get back to the client and let them know the game plan to address their concern. Issues will come up, but how your organization is poised to resolve these issues will set you apart from your competition. 2. Conduct Service Call Surveys Many methods can be used for such feedback, i.e. fax back surveys, phone surveys for completed service calls, or on line surveys. For best results, incentivize the customer for completing the survey by using random prize drawings of gift cards or other prizes. What is in it for them for giving your organization the gift of feedback? This gives your service management a reason for “stopping by” to say thank you, and allows your team to let the client know you care. These surveys can give you immediate input to diffuse client issues as they arise. It is important to keep these survey questions to a minimum so that they are quick and easy for your customers to answer. Some key questions to consider are: “Did our technician address your concerns?”, “Were we responsive in resolving your issue?”, and “Are you happy with how we service your organization?” 3. Conduct Quarterly Service Reviews Aside from the quarterly reviews your sales team should be conducting, your service team should identify key accounts which have the largest impact to your department’s profitability and resources. There are many clients that have a big impact on future solution sales, or MPS opportunities. Your organization should strategically keep these customers close so that your business can capitalize when they are ready to make a decision. Topics to be discussed are: response times, key applications being used and ways your organization can help with this work flow, new customer initiatives, and excessive service calls, just to name a few. These reviews should be scheduled well in advance and used to foster feedback to provide your organization with a forum to gain further insight into this customer. This quarterly contact extends your business relationship and enables the service team to grow as the customer’s needs grow. 4. Conduct Customer Satisfaction Surveys These are different then the previously mentioned surveys, in that the questions should be reflective of your whole organization’s service to its clients. Typically these are distributed via regular mail, or email, to a random sample of clients soliciting views on all aspects of your business. A few sample questions rating your organization on a 1 to 5 scale should include: “Is your account representative knowledgeable and helpful?”, “Has our service team been responsive to your organizations concerns?”, “Do you find that our staff is courteous and helpful when you call us?” and “Do you receive your orders in a timely manner?” There are a variety of questions to ask but remember to keep the survey brief because the longer it takes your customer to complete, the less likely you will get a response. The most powerful question you can ask on this type of survey is, “Would you recommend our services to someone else?” The answers to this question alone will provide a great barometer to your service performance. 5. Send “Thank You” cards I know this seems a little old fashioned, but think of the last time you raised an area of concern with an organization and that organization thanked you for allowing them to improve from your input. In today’s world of email and electronic communication, a hand written thank you card is a differentiator. This type of communication is extremely effective when you are servicing a larger account which requires you to satisfy many end users, i.e. large educational institutions or accounts with multiples locations. Believe it or not, the decision maker for these types of businesses is always receiving formal or informal feedback from its employees on your services and the card is another way to make the end user feel important. Whenever your organization resolves an escalated issue, the customer needs to be thanked for allowing you to serve them. There are dozens of ways to solicit the views and perceptions your customers have of the services you provide, but the key to world class service is what you do with the gifts of criticism. No matter the avenue of feedback, remember to track the areas of concerns in order to extinguish any further issues. Ken Staubitz is a service consultant with Strategy Development, and has over 14 years experience in all levels of service operations and MPS service structure. Ken spent the majority of his career at Modern Office Methods in various service and operational roles, most recently, was MOM’s Director of Client Services where he oversaw all service operations and managed a staff of over 60 field service personnel in multiple branches. Ken led the organization to exceeding industry benchmark of 52% service gross profit, and was key in creating and implementing the service structure to handle its explosive MPS growth. Ken served on the Lanier Dealer Advisory Council and was an E-Automate Service Committee member.