Since a big part of my career has involved being in, or managing, operational support teams I have often had cause to think about what customer service actually is. I’ve considered the impact of technical skill, effective process (ITIL and all that stuff), detailed work instructions, employee onboarding and training, trouble ticket or helpdesk systems, knowledgebases, self-service and so on.
But this week I confirmed a suspicion I’ve had for a while. It’s…..
Let me tell you a story first.
My wife and I were both ill recently, but had a party planned and didn’t want to cancel. We’d had builders and decorators in, so the house was a mess, so I thought I’d get a cleaner in for a day to help get the place ship-shape. Google is my friend of course, so a quick search brought up a cleaning company who claimed to cover our area at a reasonable price. The main claim was that they could get a cleaner to any area they covered in two hours! I didn’t need that, a couple of days later was fine, so I filled in their email response form on their web site (a pretty decent looking affair) and waited. And waited.
Nothing came back, so I called. A somewhat gruff Polish gentleman answered “‘ello?”. I asked if it was the company in question, and he confirmed it was. I asked if he’d received my enquiry, and (to cut a long story short) he said he had but as they didn’t have a free cleaner in my area he didn’t reply.
Now, it’s not a big deal in business terms – he’s lost a few quid and we (my wife actually) has had to do a lot of cleaning, which is a big deal for her as she’s not been well.
But back to my thoughts on service. It all comes down to:
Attention To Detail
That’s it. Really. Turning that into meaningful action is up to you, but for me it means:
- Answering the phone clearly, recognising that many people are calling from busy office environments, cars, supermarkets, coffee shops and so on
- Understanding the nature of your business promise; a web response form means you better damn well respond! And fast – this IS the internet!
- Only commit to what you are SURE you can deliver – don’t promise a cleaner in 2 hours if that’s unachievable. Caveats like “we aim to” don’t count, sorry.
- If you promise a call back, call back! How hard can it be?
Follow this path and you’ll keep your customers coming back for more.
Mind how you go…