Exceptional customer service always gets noticed. Its great for customers and businesses alike. Companies often talk about wanting to give great service, but often fall short of actually providing great front line customer service. Sure you can ask for the supervisor, and often will get your issue resolved, but this can waste a lot of time. Why can we not have the front line staff trained to think outside the box, and provide exceptional customer service.
When a customer calls the customer service line with an unusual problem, they can be in for some trouble.when trying to get the issue resolved. The agent will often just say, that is not possible, and its against our procedures. There is no outside the box thinking being done here, just staff following a set of rules, that will produce customer frustration. The customer just wants the issue resolved and is willing to take the time to work with the company to get it resolved.
Customers often will know that their request is unusual, and are willing to be patient as long as the company is willing to help. Customers will not be happy about having to fight with the front line staff and then the supervisor, just to resolve their issue. Customers are the reason the company is still in business, so they should try to make problem solving as easy as possible for the customer.
Companies need to train employees to be solution oriented, so they can look for solutions to problems, instead of reasons why the request can not be done. Aside from giving staff preset power and money limits to solve issues, staff need to be fully aware of who in the company they can ask to help solve an unusual customer issue. A company contact list could be provided to the staff, so that if they need to contact someone in a different department to help out a customer, it would be possible. This way the whole company can work together and be available to assist customers.
When front line staff can solve unusual customer issues, it saves the customer from having to talk to a lot of different people to get issues resolved. This way the customer has one person they are dealing with, and do not have to keep repeating the request. Once staff know who are the company contacts that can help out with unique customer problems, they will be able to offer more solutions to those unusual requests.
The proper training will give staff the confidence to handle almost any request from the customer. One stop problem solving will be great for customers, as it will save them time and produce happy customers. Companies will strongly benefit from this exceptional customer service, by producing many word of mouth champions. In a world where there is a lack of exceptional customer service, make your company stand above the competition with one stop problem solving.
My Questions to You:
ReplyDelete1) What exactly must contain in a training course to enable these very important front line staff to exercise this empowerment like it is a company's culture?
2) How to make the exceptional service so frequent it becomes a norm?
3) Are business owners investing their time and money on this training? What do you think are their challenges?
My Thoughts:
I think most front line staff don't think outside the box because when they are first trained, they are told by their senior co-workers that some requests can't be done. A new staff might be trained to say: Just say no, it is not our policy to do that. Essentially, the quality of an OJT (on-the-job-training) could make a lot of difference.
Another possibility is that the front line staff are not given a clear budget and defined parameters to "be-outside-the-box". "Outside-the-box" must be the policy, must be the culture. It cannot be an exceptional occurrence, because, if it is, it may mean that the frequency of exceptional service is rare, out of the ordinary.
Great questions. Scenario based training would assist the staff to be able to find customer solutions. This would allow the staff to find the correct company contacts, to use to help the customers. Correct hiring and training will be key to encouraging the staff to think outside the box. The challenge will be to monitor and maintain this exceptional customer service
ReplyDelete