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Motivating Your Employees To Give Better Customer Service
By Jim Berkowitz
Expert Author
Article Date: 2010-03-29
Here are several excerpts from a post by Michael Sansolo, author of The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons From The Movies, in the Customers Rock blog, The Ultimate Customer Compliment:
There is one simple line of praise that every business should seek when it comes to gauging the customer experience. It happens when one customer gladly recommends a store, product or service to someone else.
Great customer service makes other shoppers want to get involved. Great customer service generates word of mouth, new clients, and a reputation that can't be beat. Great customer service makes others say, "I'll have what she's having."
Every business should seek to build that moment. They should seek to provide an explosion of customer delight that draw attention and raves. In fact, we should crave the "I'll have what she's having" (from the movie "When Harry Met Sally") compliment from trading partners, employees, and more. We all want our business to be the admired business and the one that others want to work with or for…
On screen it's an easy moment. Inside a business it is anything but. One premise of The Big Picture is that businesspeople can use film moments to build success stories. Consider showing the restaurant scene to your employees and ask them what it would take to win that moment of envy.
The simple truth is that great customer service is so easily achieved, but also easily ignored because being average is usually good enough. However, an extra smile, courtesy or show of personality can go a long way.
But let's be real. Consistently great customer service doesn't just happen. It comes from smart, happy, caring, motivated employees.
Your employees are your business to your customers. So for your business to be able to consistently deliver excellent customer service you've got to ensure that you're...
- exceeding your employee's (employment) expectations
- creating positive attitudes and motivating employees towards achieving success
- and ultimately creating happy, caring loyal employees
Why? Because satisfied employees create satisfied customers. Whether on the phone, via email or on the web, the interactions between your employees and your customers will define your customers' loyalty to your business.
I'm sure I don't have to spend time giving you examples of terrible customer service within the airline, telephone, cable and many other consumer-focused businesses. Why? Because each and every one of us have experienced this for ourselves.
There are so many businesses, both large and small, that are claiming that superior customer service is their goal while at the same time they offer their customer service personnel a less then satisfactory working environment.
Customer service people need to be made to feel that they are a critical component to the business's success. By this I don't mean that they all need to be given pay raises; but they do need to be provided with the training, tools/technology and decision making power needed to create memorably outstanding customer experiences. They also need to be motivated to provide these outstanding customer experiences on a consistent basis.
When was the last time you surveyed your customer service personnel in order to better understand how your employee polices and benefit plans are affecting their satisfaction and behavior or to uncover specific opportunities to instill a more positive attitude and to better motivate these employees?
CRM Mastery conducted a survey for a large customer service call center that initially assumed that everyone would just complain about their pay. They were shocked to learn that the #1 complaint from the customer service people was that they were frustrated that their supervisors didn't listen to, or care about, any of their suggestions for improvement. This was something that the company could (and did) quickly improve on with a minimal investment.
The bottom line is simple. Well trained, motivated and tenured employees deliver better customer service. CRM can't succeed without ERM (employee relationship management).
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About the Author:
Jim Berkowitz is a seasoned executive with more than 30 years of professional services and project management experience related to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Financial Management (Accounting & ERP) software solutions for small, mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies. As a Sales Force Automation and CRM Consultant, Jim has assisted more then 100 companies with the design and implementation of custom CRM solutions.
Mr. Berkowitz is the founder and President of CRM Mastery, Inc.; a company dedicated to serving small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) by offering affordable tools and guidance to help them plan for and succeed with their CRM initiatives.
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