3 Key Reasons You Need To Be Managing Complaints With Customer Feedback Software

Oct 262012
 

Here on the Charter UK blog, we talk about all aspects of complaint management and the wider customer experience. In recent months we have discussed everything from the importance of showing your customers that their comments and feedback are valued through to how crucial it is to not disregard your satisfied customers over those who are complaining.

The aim of all the content we publish is to help you understand the importance of delivering a customer experience that focuses on customer feedback and how you should be effectively managing complaints and growing from the comments that your customers provide you with.

What we would like to do today is strip all of the information back and tell you exactly why you need to be utilising customer feedback software, rather than internally created systems (which often provide only basic functionality) to truly understand what your customers are telling you.

1. Gives you an enterprise view of your business

Our customer feedback software is Charter Continuum. Utilised by a range of global brands, from Lloyds Banking Group right through to the McDonald’s fast-food chain, one of the most notable benefits of our software is the fact that it can be integrated within your organisation to suit existing business systems.

From implementing the software into an individual department through to a full company-wide integration, Charter Continuum’s core applications have been purposely designed to support multi-channel data capture and development. As this is apparent, implementation of our customer feedback software is very often seamless, meaning changes for your staff can be subtle, but the benefits for your senior executives and organisation as a whole are tremendous.

2. Offers in-depth root cause analysis

In its most basic form, complaint management has two key aspects – data recording and analysis of said data. Two separate aspects, they are both crucial to effectively managing complaints, yet without the right software, you can struggle to carry out any effective type of analysis.

And if this proves to be the case, you have nothing other than a large quantity of data that you are unable to produce management information from so to develop and move forward in the most informed way.

With Charter Continuum, the reporting feature has been designed to offer the utmost in functionality, giving you the ability to carry out everything from custom querying to regular report scheduling, so you are able to take out as much information as you possibly can from the data inputted.

Placed into the hands of a data analyst, the information allows you to understand, for example. where certain parts of your business processes are failing, which are resulting in regular complaints. With such valuable information, you can essentially shape the development prospects of your organisation, understanding what it is that needs to be changed, how you need to change it and what the final outcome is very likely to be.

3. Helps to turn complaining customers into brand advocates

Charter Continuum is not setup to be purely a data management and reporting tool. It was built further to extensive research and provides a platform that can enhance your complaint management procedures considerably.

Of benefit in a variety of ways, such as by increasing the efficiency of your customer service teams as they are able to gather the required information from a complaining customer in the quickest way possible, by having a more efficient complaint management process in place, you are able to better satisfy customers.

One of the most common misconceptions about complaint management is that once a customer has complained, they can no longer have a positive impact on your organisation. However, if their complaint is dealt with in the most effective way possible, there is little reason why satisfaction levels cannot remain high and the customer cannot be turned back into a brand advocate.

Charter Continuum is our customer feedback software. Used by clients all around the world, it has proven to be a fantastic success when it comes managing complaints effectively, giving you a better understanding of exactly what it is your customers are telling you.

To find out more information, contact us today.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • RSS
  • Print

How To Start Integrating Digital Technologies Into Your Customer Experience Strategy – Part 2

Oct 232012
 

Following on from the first blog post in this series, today we want to provide an insight into two further key points that need to be understood when looking at integrating digital technologies into your customer experience.

It needs to be a continually developing process

As organisations, we are still learning just what is possible with digital technologies in every sense, not just within the customer experience. Yes, some have seen great success by working with certain tools and resources, but it is almost always after considerable trial and error.

What has to be understood before any technologies even start to be integrated is that because they are always changing, developing and being enhanced, a technology should never be integrated and simply left.

There is little doubt it is a prospect many will consider, but if you define today how Facebook could be integrated within your customer experience, for example, the developments with both the platform and our knowledge of it could change so much in even just six months that a complete overhaul of how it works may be needed.

On the most basic of levels, it is almost always going to be the safest option if you follow the ‘little and often’ principle. Carry out all of your research, be confident that the technology you are choosing to implement is right for your needs and create the basic structure to allow you to begin working with it – then listen to what your customers are telling you.

Take the time to conduct surveys around the new technology. Monitor activity on a daily basis and investigate potential development opportunities. Look at how your customers are engaging with you on the platform and gauge the successes, or failings, frequently.

Although your initial research should stop this from happening, there is even the possibility that you will have to look at the technology and redevelop its entire use or approach – or even stop using it altogether if it is not proving as beneficial as first anticipated.

Your customers are the people who will give you the most useful feedback you can ever receive and it is therefore crucial that you listen to them through the development of your customer experience. Fail to do this and you risk doing too much, too soon, which could not only see you waste valuable resources, but also impact in a considerably negative way on your customer experience budget.

Never forget the basic customer experience principles

No matter which digital technologies you choose to integrate within your customer experience or how much development takes place to ensure they are as successful as they can possibly be, the basic principles of customer experience should always be followed.

Customers want to go through a journey with a company that is as simple as it can possibly be. They want to have easy access to the products or services on offer and enough information to go with it that they can make informed choices. They want to be able to contact the company in ways that suit them, both in terms of channels and times.

No consumer wants to be spending more than a few minutes looking for the right product on a website or where they can find out further details. In an ideal world, everything should be as accessible as it can possibly be. If this approach is followed within the customer experience, you will have a considerable number of happy customers – and when you have happy customers, you have customers who want to spend money with you.

One of the ways this approach is often neglected in regard to digital technologies is the availability of advice or support because of too much focus on one channel.

As we mentioned in the first part of this series, live chat can be a fantastic addition to your customer experience. Sky have integrated it effectively within theirs (as discussed in the first blog post), but the most important point to note here is that it has not been to the detriment of other customer service channels, instead being supplementary to it.

Customers can speak to a customer service advisor at Sky via live chat, but they can also easily speak to them via telephone or e-mail. The eventual aim for Sky is to reduce the amount of activity within the call centre by developing their live chat channel, but this will only be when people start to acknowledge it – and use it – as a regular way to get in touch with the company.

Should Sky have invested heavily in live chat at the very start by reducing their call centre budget, they would have failed to follow one of the basic principles of the customer experience – giving as many of your customers as possible what it is they want and need.

Digital technologies are fast becoming a necessity within the customer experience. From complaint management through to general customer service, organisations need to start looking at what technologies are available, how they could benefit from them and what the best way to utilise them is.

As with all other business processes and strategies, this is in no way a quick feat, but the results of effectively integrating the digital technology – or technologies – into your customer experience could enhance its success tremendously, both initially and well into the future.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • RSS
  • Print

How To Start Integrating Digital Technologies Into Your Customer Experience Strategy – Part 1

Oct 192012
 

Over the last decade, almost every industry has been on a constant journey to a more digital way of working. Still continuing today, the sharp incline is likely to continue for several more years, as organisations become aware of what technologies are being developed and how they can be of use to both them and their customers.

Wherever you turn online, you will see information advising you to look at the different digital technologies available, particularly to improve the customer experience. They will tell you why social media is a must or that live chat seriously needs to be considered – and this information is great. We provide it ourselves and we believe it is a fantastic way for organisations to become aware of exactly what is available.

But what it does not do is offer advice on the wider topic of digital technologies and how you should go about integrating them into your organisation’s customer experience.

With this two-part series, that is exactly what we want to do, if not purely to give you a basic understanding of what is required when looking to make your customer experience as digital as it needs to be.

Understand what your audience actually wants

One of the problems seen with integrating digital technologies into the customer experience is that because of the choice available (and often the sense of urgency to move forward immediately), organisations often base their decisions on what others are doing or what they believe their customers want.

Just like any other new business process, however, a full and in-depth analysis of your target audience needs to be carried out to ensure you fully understand exactly what digital technologies they want to be able to utilise. The truth is you might just be surprised at your findings.

For example, social media is without doubt the resource of the moment and many organisations are being praised for their use of it within the customer experience. It can therefore be an obvious choice for others who have yet to implement it.

But what if your audience research discovered that your customers simply wanted a quicker way to interact and engage with you throughout the day? Again, social media can seem like the perfect solution – but what about live chat?

A much more structured tool, it allows for customers to speak to you directly when they are actually on your website. Whether they have a problem, a query or a complaint, they can talk to a customer service advisor instantly.

This is not to say that social media could not be useful – or should not be integrated within the customer experience at all – but that you have to understand your audience’s needs before you move forward integrating technologies.

Look at what resources you have available

Integrating digital technologies within your customer experience should have the overall aim of making the customer journey as simple and enjoyable as it can be. By doing so, to your target audience you will be seen as an efficient organisation who can deliver an experience on a variety of channels.

Without sufficient resources in place, however, this could be a perfect example of the swimming swan scenario – graceful above the water where everyone can see, but paddling furiously beneath the surface.

Although every piece of technology differs in its requirements, one of the most common reasons why they can be problematic for the organisation is that the difference between using them on a personal and a commercial level is not fully understood.

Take Twitter as an example. On a personal basis, you may update it half a dozen times throughout the day, talking to your few hundred followers and perhaps tweeting about a research study or news article you have come across. You are fully responsible for the content included within each tweet and because it is a personal account, there are no real expectations for you to respond to other tweets immediately (or even at all).

When you are using Twitter commercially, your approach needs to change drastically. Customers expect to see certain information from you. They have expectations on response times and the quality of the response. For example, if they have a complaint, you might think redirecting them to your customer service’s complaint management team is a sufficient response, but this defeats the object of using social media in the first place. You do not have to necessarily deal with the complaint on the platform, but you need to do as much as you can to help satisfy the frustrated customer.

The activity on the account also needs to be taken into consideration. On a personal level, you are unlikely to be receiving hundreds of tweets every day – but this could be exactly what you receive when using Twitter on a commercial basis.

And if it was the case, do you have the staff to be able to handle the workload? For smaller organisations, a small team may be able to integrate the work within their existing duties at the start, but even if it only requires the equivalent of one hour of work throughout the day per employee, this could mean relieving them of some other duties to be able to carry it out (subsequently increasing the amount of resources you need to have available).

Be aware of the financial implication / ROI

Linked in to the above point is the financial implication of utilising digital technologies and the return on investment you are likely to see.

Simply put, digital technologies within the customer experience should not be thought of as sales channels. Yes, they can enhance your sales process and improve figures, but their focus needs to be on improving the customer’s experience with your company. It is for this reason why defining the ROI can be difficult if you are trying to justify it financially.

Although a ROI can be defined, it has to consider a variety of aspects and enough research must be carried out to understand the initial and future benefits of the technologies.

Take live chat as an example. EConsultancy recently produced a blog post that looked at the success Sky have seen by integrating live chat within their website. Discussing various aspects, one of the most notable points was that they suggested live chat was not any more efficient than a traditional telephone call, as the online conversations often lasted longer.

However, what they did say was that not only could staff deal with more than one customer at once using live chat, but because they could provide more information (images, links to certain website pages, etc), they could ensure the customer better understood the answer to their question, meaning they were less likely to contact customer service in the future.

Therefore, although Sky have not saved any money initially by implementing live chat, it is expected that the number of calls to their customer service centre (which currently stands at just under one million every week) will reduce significantly as customers are better educated around the products and services available to them.

The satisfaction of customers should always come first when developing the customer experience, but it is understandable that an awareness of the financial implications and the return on any investment needs to be had.

Every organisation’s needs will differ, but the most important point to note is that you are unlikely to be able to produce an accurate potential ROI with digital technologies in terms of finances. Instead, you need to look at the benefits of improved customer satisfaction and how you can measure the success of the customer experience based on factors such as this.

It might not be a particularly traditional way of working, but the benefits could be just as clear – if your customer experience means customer satisfaction levels increase considerably, it is highly likely that your customers become brand advocates and positively recommend your company, which in turn could have a significant impact on sales.

The second part of this series will be published next Tuesday, 23rd October . Subscribe to the blog by entering your e-mail address into the box in the sidebar to receive the next post straight to your inbox.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • RSS
  • Print

Is There Any Department That Should Not Be Involved In The Customer Experience?

Oct 162012
 

All customer experiences should be developed to meet the needs of the audience. It is unlikely that every single customer is going to be satisfied, even with the most in-depth customer experience, but the focus should always be on attempting to please as many customers as you possibly can.

Taking into account all aspects of a customer’s interaction with the company, the experience is likely to cover everything from the moment the brand is first heard of right through to the after sales support that is offered.

Ideally drawing on knowledge and experience from all aspects of the business, one of the most notable reasons why customer experiences are not as successful as they could potentially be is that when they are being developed, it is often by a small team of experienced customer service individuals within the company.

And to a certain extent, this makes sense. They know what they are talking about when it comes to pleasing customers and meeting their expectations, so utilising their knowledge can seem like the best option.

The problem is that these individuals usually only have an in-depth knowledge of customer service and not of the factors that the wider customer experience covers. On occasion they are likely to draw upon the knowledge and experience of others, such as your marketing staff, but this is often not enough and the most effective customer experiences are those that involve all departments and individuals throughout the development stage.

It is understandable that it might not seem entirely appropriate to include certain departments at first, but it is almost guaranteed that every department will be able to play a role and have some level of positive input.

Take Human Resources as an example. In one sense, they may not seem like a department who needs to have a substantial amount of involvement in the customer experience. However, the Temkin group recently discovered that only 15% of the HR employees they surveyed were involved in the development of their organisation’s customer experience – yet they suggested that they could in fact be one of the most important departments to involve.

And this all makes clear sense when you stop and think about it.

For instance, if there is one department that understands the benefits of both regular engagement and satisfaction within an organisation, it is going to be HR. Of course, their focus is likely to be more on internal employees rather than customers, but the basic understanding, knowledge and practices are largely the same.

They are also the department who are going to know the most about what you can and cannot do or say as an organisation, something that could prove vital to the successful delivery of a customer experience (for example, on Twitter you have only 140 characters to get your message across and using the wrong word to shorten a reply could prove to completely change the message that is trying to be provided).

Another key example is your sales team. The customer experience is very often thought of as one that needs to continually satisfy your customers to ensure they are having the best experience possible, but this does not mean a certain amount of sales techniques cannot be utilised.

Imagine your customer service staff on Twitter were continually replying to tweets that gave praise to a certain product. Without sales being involved in the customer experience, the staff are likely to simply respond saying that they are happy the customer is pleased with the product. With some sales involvement, however, the happy customers could be directed to associated products and not only could turnover increase through an active upselling strategy, but customer satisfaction levels could rise as customers are even more impressed with the service being offered.

There is little doubt that a customer experience strategy needs to be led by those individuals who truly understand customer service and what customers want, but that does not mean they are able to develop a perfect experience for your entire audience.

Your departments may work individually from one another on a daily basis, but it must be remembered that every individual is employed to meet the organisation’s goal of providing products or services to customers in the most effective way possible – and by harnessing their knowledge in the customer experience, you can be certain you are developing the best experience possible.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • RSS
  • Print

How To Show Your Customers That Their Thoughts Really Do Count

Oct 122012
 

Listening to your customers is imperative to your business’s success. It does not matter whether they are heaping praise upon you or bombarding you with complaints, you should have effective customer feedback software in place to help you record and analyse all comments you receive.

You should also be taking the time to encourage your customers to pass on their comments. Every customer will have a comment to make about your products, services or organisation as a whole, but not everyone will want to – or know how to – pass them on to you.

However, as great as listening to your customers and recording what they are saying is, it is of little use if you are not showing them that you value their feedback. Fail to do this and you are simply making a continually expanding list of comments for no real benefit.

And the simplest and most effective way to do this is to act upon what they are saying.

It might seem obvious to some, but there are too many organisations who fail to understand that managing complaints and feedback is a three step process – record, analyse and respond. The first two are without doubt important, but the third is just as crucial to ensuring your customers are as satisfied as possible.

What is often misunderstood here is that acting upon your customers’ comments does not mean you have to give in to their every whim, but what you need to understand is that the information they provide is the best business intelligence you can receive. By acting upon it, you will not only see benefits in your business as a whole, but your customers will be satisfied knowing their comments are not simply being ignored.

There are numerous instances of when this regularly happens. Some are seemingly small changes that have developed the brand for the better, whilst others have proven to ensure the company does not suffer from any major negative repercussions.

A prime example of both is with Coca Cola. In 1985, they changed the recipe of their immensely popular Coke. Extensive market research showed that the new recipe they were suggesting was not only favoured over the existing recipe, but that it was preferred over the company’s key competitors’ offerings.

However, almost immediately upon changing the recipe, Coca Cola were flooded with complaints. It was not that the public did not like the new recipe, but it was more that they missed the old taste. They missed the association and the entire brand, something many customers had grown up with.

From a company point of view, the move should have been a success, as the market research was conclusive and Coca Cola could have attempted to run solely with the new recipe. But understanding the importance of listening to their customers, they brought the old recipe back within a few weeks and ran it alongside the new recipe successfully for many years.

Pleasing customers on both sides of the fence, the most important point is that Coca Cola publicly acted upon the feedback they received. They could have ignored it or they could have considered it and analysed it for months upon months. Instead, they took the negative feedback their customers were giving them and turned it into a positive.

Looking at the importance on a broader level, many famous bands and comedians are often only booked for one or two nights at the same venue – but how many times have you seen ‘new dates added’ on the tour posters or website?

The management companies realised that there is considerably more interest in the act than they first anticipated. Customers will have complained when they could not purchase tickets because it was sold out. They may not have been able to attend on the date that the act was performing and found it frustrating that such a famous act was only visiting once. Some may simply have wanted the opportunity to see them two or three times.

Take That’s 2011 tour is a key example of this. Originally planning to play 17 shows around the UK, they had to almost immediately add a further seven dates when tickets went on sale because of the demand and the comments they were receiving from fans who were desperate to see them.

Your customers are the people who you are aiming to satisfy, as the happier a customer is, the easier it is to sell to them, both initially and on a repeat basis. You can carry out as much market research as possible and attempt to understand your audience in the best way you can, but the only guaranteed way to show you truly value them is by first listening to their comments and then acting upon exactly what it is that they have told you.

It is simple, but by doing so, you will please your audience, develop your organisation and generally continue to see considerable success.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • RSS
  • Print

3 Reasons A High Level Of Complaints Does Not Necessarily Indicate A Failing Company

Oct 092012
 

If you are waiting for treatment on the NHS, you typically know that it could be months or even years until you are treated. However, that is always going to be the case as long as we live in a country where 62 million people are all entitled to free healthcare. It is a case of like it and lump it or pay for private healthcare and queue jump.

But in recent times, the NHS seems to be receiving more complaints than ever, with GPs in particular under fire. Last month, the Daily Mail ran a piece about how GP complaints have risen by 24% in the past 12 months and a staggering 69% in the last three years.

Examine the statistics in isolation and it paints a grim picture of a healthcare system that is utterly failing.  However, delve a little deeper and aside from the overall fact that complaints are seeing a sharp incline, the figures are not as alarming as they first seem.

A lot of the complaints were not because of an incorrect or missed diagnosis, but because of poor basic manners and customer service skills. This was particularly apparent in the older doctors and those who had gained their qualifications outside of the country.

High volumes of complaints do not necessarily indicate poor service or major failings. Sometimes they can be the result of process or system errors that a simple fix could quickly remedy and therefore reverse the spike in complaints.

There are three key reasons why a high level of complaints does not always highlight a poorly performing company.

1. The root cause might be something you can easily put right, once identified

Unless you understand why your customers are complaining using effective complaint management systems, it will be virtually impossible to reduce the number of complaints your organisation receives.

For instance, the NHS may have received more complaints about GPs than any other part of their service, but being able to drill down into exactly what those complaints were about, using effective customer feedback software, gives the NHS true representation of what has been causing patients concern and better understand where certain improvements need to be made.

2. The complaints could all be around one individual or department

The Daily Mail article explains that 8,781 complaints were made against all types of doctors, whilst GPs (along with psychiatrists and surgeons) accounted for the highest number.

But what the piece does not tell you is which parts of the country – or even which practices – the complaints were received from. Being able to get an enterprise view of complaints and produce management information that show exactly where the problem and therein the blame lies, is a key part of improving the customer experience.

Sometimes it is not even a human error. A major bank was getting 1,000 complaints from customers who were having an issue with telephone banking. The bank spotted this problem via its management information reports, implemented a quick fix to the systems and instantly the problem went away and so did the gripes and grumbles of those 1,000 unhappy customers every four weeks.

3. The complaints could be about something outside of the company’s control

A lot of the complaints about GPs were around their rudeness and manners. In some instances, patients were unable to understand them properly.

Although good manners do not cost anything and individuals need to be held responsible for what they say, the question does have to be raised whether too much pressure is being put on GPs to essentially ‘work through’ as many patients as possible, meaning they cannot give each patient as much time as is required.

For example, if a GP has to see 20 patients in an hour, that is three minutes per patient. As soon as one patient requires more time, however, it puts everything else out of schedule, meaning the GP needs to do their utmost to ‘catch up’. And if this is the case, it would not be surprising if their communication and engagement skills were affected as they tried to say as little as possible and work as quickly as they could to get back on track.

When a company is receiving a substantial number of complaints, it can suggest that they are failing and something drastic needs to be done.

But this is not always the case and as long as you are recording, analysing and managing complaints in the most effective way possible, you should be able to determine exactly what needs to be done and you might be surprised to see that minor issues that are easy to remedy are the reason for major numbers.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • RSS
  • Print

Can The Customer Experience Guarantee Success?

Oct 052012
 

The launch of the iPhone 5 last month was one of the worst kept secrets of the year. We had all seen ‘leaked’ images of the latest generation iPhone months ago and although it was never officially announced that 12th September was the unveiling date, most in the technology industry would have bet their house on it.

But although there was no surprise around the launch and the actual iPhone itself was anything but revolutionary (there has been much debate online as to what Apple are actually doing, as the iPhone 5, whilst offering new features for Apple, does not offer anything new to the market), Carphone Warehouse recently reported that it was their most pre-ordered device ever – exceeding last year’s Apple smartphone, the iPhone 4S, by 500%.

In theory, this should not be the case. Any company bringing out a new release or version of a product that has barely any new features is likely to just have a poor launch that no one cares about and meagre sales.

So how does Apple do it? A big part of Apple’s success is quite simply brand popularity. People love Apple. Their products are without doubt feature-packed, but it is the brand people have fallen for. It has become a status symbol and people now associate having an iPhone, iPod or iPad with being modern, fashionable and in vogue.

But how much of a role does the entire customer experience play in Apple’s success?

When you walk into an Apple store, no matter where you are in the world, you are greeted with one of the most spectacular in-store experiences ever. You have instant access to an array of Apple products. You have experts at hand to answer your questions, whether you are a potential customer and they are sales-based or you are an existing customer and have a technical query.

The whole store is open and roomy. It is typically frequented by Apple enthusiasts (and people who just want to see what all the fuss is about), but there is always something to see, even if you do not get chance to have a play with the latest products.

What also makes the in-store experience so memorable is that Apple have integrated their own technology within the experience – for example, by downloading their own app, you can not only find where the closest store is, but you can discover how many people are in line at customer service or book in a time to get one-to-one training or support on your device.

The Apple Specialists have also been pivotal to the company’s success to date. Whether you see them in their blue shirts in-store or speak to one of them via the phone or online, there are two key reasons why they are so beneficial – they are already Apple converts and they do not work on commission.

A perfect example of how effective they are is when you look at Apple’s Mac computer. Windows dominated the PC industry for years, so moving to a Mac is a big change. When you speak to an Apple Specialist, however, you do not feel pressured into buying a Mac and they are trying to ensure you get the right product for your needs.

Even if you do decide to buy one, they will not push for the higher priced versions – as they are not working on commission, it makes no difference to them whether you buy the £999 or £1,999 Mac. The most important point to them is you get the opportunity to own an Apple product that they honestly believe will be of the most benefit to you.

And this is just a tiny sample of how good the customer experience at Apple is. But what would happen if you took it all away?

Retain a certain degree of customer service, but remove all of the specialities that make the Apple customer experience what it is and it really does have to be questioned just how successful the brand would be.

People are drawn to Apple time and time again because of the brand, but the entire experience has to play a huge part in the company’s success. If you were not made to feel special every time you entered an Apple store, would people camp outside on the day of a new product launch?

If you were unable to quickly and easily get advice on your product on various different channels, each and every time made to feel like the most respected and valued customer in the world, how often would Apple win customer service awards ahead of companies such as Amazon?

If you walked into an Apple store and felt like you were in a car sales room, being pushed into buying the most expensive product possible, would Apple still have nearly a fifth of the global smartphone market?

Many organisations realise just how beneficial great branding can be to their success. However, they fail to understand that no matter how fantastic your brand image is and irrelevant of how in demand your products or services are, without an all-round great customer experience, your success is always going to be limited.

The customer experience alone is never going to guarantee your success, but when it is combined with several other well-developed, crucial business processes, that is when you will really be on the path to gold – and Apple are a prime example of just how true this is.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • RSS
  • Print

It Is National Customer Service Week – Are You Showcasing Just How Good You Are?

Oct 012012
 

Today marks the start of National Customer Service Week (NCSW), a time of the year where organisations are advised to focus on actively promoting and developing their customer service strategy, skills and teams.

Whether you are a multi-national brand or a local SME is irrelevant. NCSW is all about shining the spotlight on exactly what it is you do best when it comes to pleasing your customers and as a result of it, what you can do to make your service even better.

An annual event, the problem we have seen in the past is that there are too many organisations out there who overlook the importance of the week. It is one week out of the entire year where you are advised to focus on customer service in every respect more than ever, so why not take the opportunity to showcase just how great you are? Or alternatively, cement your beliefs that your customer service really is as good as you think it is?

Although there is no set structure for the week, the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) have provided some fantastic guidelines on what you can do to truly benefit from it, both in the sense of showing just what you can do for your customers and how you can grow and develop your strategy even further.

For example, today, the ICS recommend a ‘Customer Service In The UK’ focus, whereby you aim to find out how you measure up against your competitors. Actively asking for customer feedback, this could be by utilising social media in a different way through to running surgeries whereby your customers can sit down and have a chat with a senior member of staff.

Not only is this beneficial in the sense that it shows your customers that you are truly listening, but it allows you to feed back the intelligence direct into your business (consequently, the ICS’s focus tomorrow is on ‘Bringing Your Strategy To Life’, whereby you are advised to speak to your staff internally, finding out what they think about customer service and take the findings back to the board).

One of the points we really think is fantastic about NCSW is on Thursday, the ICS is advising senior members of staff to get back on the frontline and conversely, allowing your frontline staff to, for example, see what happens at board meetings.

A great way to allow all employees to sample the various parts of the organisation they impact upon, but which they would not normally see, it is a fantastic opportunity to get insight from employees at different levels.

Remember, your frontline staff are the ones who are dealing directly with your customers and they may be facing regular difficulties that simply get lost when raised – if they can speak to the board directly, the problem could not only be resolved quickly, but it could be something that has a major positive impact upon the organisation as a whole.

National Customer Service Week is taking place all this week and it is a fantastic way to truly embrace customer service. Show off to your customers how good you are. Take the opportunity to find out more about what your teams are experiencing. Simply enjoy the focus the whole country is having on great service.

Whatever you do, do not let it pass – you should always have a strong focus on customer service, but this week should be the time when you really push it, learn from it and develop it as much as you possibly can.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • RSS
  • Print

Are You Focusing Enough On Keeping Your Happy Customers Happy?

Sep 282012
 

Speak to most organisations and if they had to make a clear choice between focusing on pleasing their dissatisfied customers or ensuring their happy customers remain that way, few would choose the latter option because in all fairness if it isn’t broken, why try to fix it?

Even just speaking to members of the public, it would not be surprising if the vast majority chose to focus on increasing the satisfaction levels of their unhappy customers, should they be put in charge of their own business.

And generally speaking, this would be the right choice. Your unhappy customers are the customers who are potentially most damaging to your brand. They are the individuals who will spread negative comments about the experience they have had with your organisation, whether that is on social media or just amongst their friends and family.

Simply put, they are the customers who are going to have the greatest negative impact on your entire company.

But that does not mean you should focus entirely on them, almost completely ignoring your happy customers. Yes, your happy customers may be content at the present moment in time, but that does not mean they are always going to feel that way. They are effectively your brand advocates, but they are not going to continue promoting your brand without any involvement from yourself.

And it is for this reason why you need to do your utmost to keep your happy customers happy.

Fortunately, it is often considered a much easier process to keep a customer happy than it is to increase the satisfaction levels of an unhappy customer. It is the same as attracting new customers against retaining existing ones – the latter already know what to expect, whereas the former do not and it takes more resources to ensure they are educated enough to become a loyal customer.

How you ensure your customer’s high satisfaction levels remain will vary in terms of specifics, but of all the resources and processes you can utilise, they almost all come back to regular engagement.

Think about newsletters delivered via e-mail or blog posts providing updates on the company. They are used to communicate with all customers and ensure that previous – and happy – customers are constantly engaged with.

All consider your social media activity. You might be speaking to a wide audience of what could be tens of thousands of people, including unhappy customers, but if carried out in the most effective way possible, your happy customers will feel individually spoken to. They will feel as though you are interacting personally with them – and in many ways, you actually can, increasing satisfaction levels considerably.

More specific types of engagement can also be beneficial. Look at loyalty schemes where regular customers are given certain rewards for making frequent purchases. The Body Shop is a great example.

Providing holders of their loyalty card with an array of benefits, some of the most notable are 10% off all purchases for one year, a free gift – which you can choose – on your birthday and free products when you collect four and then eight stamps (stamps are issued on purchases over £10).

Seen as one of the leading loyalty schemes, not only does The Body Shop’s scheme constantly encourage engagement from the customer with the company, but it rewards them for doing so – and the more rewards the company has to distribute, the more money it means is being spent by their satisfied customers. It is very much a positive circle of customer satisfaction and engagement.

With a lot of organisations running loyalty schemes to encourage continual interaction, they are often developed after listening to business intelligence provided by consumers, itself something that can be useful in general.

The value of a happy customer is in many ways immeasurable. Positively representing your brand online and off, they deliver recommendations and reviews of your products and services and will return themselves to make repeat purchases, often without any major prompts or marketing lures.

It therefore might seem overly obvious that happy customers need to be kept this way, but there are far too many organisations out there who fail to recognise this need. It is of course imperative that dissatisfied customers are focused on, but you could very easily find yourself doing nothing but keeping the growing fire under control if you fail to ensure your happy customers remain satisfied.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • RSS
  • Print

How To Change Your Employees’ Views Of Customer Service In One Simple Step

Sep 252012
 

Every aspect of your customer service is likely to be something you continue to invest heavily in, both in terms of finances and resources.

Seen as being more important than ever before, a full, extensive and in-depth customer service strategy is now something that is a necessity for businesses, rather than something that is advisable.

Although this view is one that is being echoed more and more by businesses, one of the key problems that often has to be overcome is ensuring staff know that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to engaging with customers.

Customer service has been increasing in importance for several years now, but even just a few years ago, most organisations were working in a way where a good customer service team was one who could process the most customer queries within a certain time frame.

There was obviously a focus on ensuring the query was resolved, but the satisfaction of the customer was not seen as being of more importance than the call time – and this is where many of today’s customer service problems stem from.

You may develop the best customer service strategy in the industry, but it could very easily fall flat on its face if it is either stipulated that your staff needed to process x amount of calls within an hour or it makes no move to change this approach, which for many is ingrained in their way of working.

There obviously needs to be some structure within teams, else you risk having employees talking to customers for what could be hours. However, you need to ensure your strategy focuses more on customer satisfaction than it does call duration or number of calls answered.

For example, you may have originally stated that all calls should be aimed to be dealt with within two minutes. This would no doubt run over occasionally, but the customer service representative would do their utmost to finish their engagement with the customer within the two minute period.

The problem here is this could very easily mean the customer does not get the response they need. They may get some type of response, but if the employee does not feel they have the time to fully listen to the customer’s issue and work out exactly what can be done to resolve it, how can they ensure they are not only providing the most suitable response for the customer, but for the company, too?

Your staff need to be given the time to talk to your customers. They need to feel they have the flexibility to treat each customer as an individual, truly understanding what it is that is causing them to get in touch in the first place – and they need to do this without feeling pressured into finishing the engagement within a minute or two.

But your employees cannot be expected to change themselves. In all likelihood this ‘wrong’ approach to customer service was taught to them by previous managers so they need to be re-educated on how to approach customer service in the right way.

Fortunately, the techniques that you need to help your customer service staff forget very often go against the grain of what we naturally want to do as humans, which is to help people – and this generally makes their views easy to change, allowing you to develop the most effective customer service staff possible.

No customer service strategy should be completely open and guidance is a must, but to see the most benefits, it has to be made clear to your staff that customer satisfaction comes before all else.

Efficiency is without doubt important, but if customers feel as though they are simply going through the motions when speaking to your customer service team, can you really say this is the right way to satisfy them and meet their needs?

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • RSS
  • Print
 Older Entries