Do You Really Want To Provide Excellent Customer Service?

Ask any business owner what their advantage is over their competitors and the most likely answer you get is "better customer service." Sounds like everybody understands the concept that excellent service brings back customers and that it is an especially key strategy in competing with larger competitors. There is only one problem - every survey I have seen shows that customers are not happy with the service they receive regardless of the size of the business or the industry. Maybe we have a problem with understanding what "Excellent Customer Service" really is.

Here is an easy test to determine if your business has even a chance of providing excellent customer service. I believe that it is impossible to achieve this level of service without having employees who sincerely respect the customer. This level of respect and consideration flows down from the owner and other managers who must demonstrate daily that respect, not only the customer, but for the employees exists. You can test whether the employees see this respect by doing the following:

Look at your employee list and pick a sample out of the ones that you know best and ask yourself the following questions:

  1. What are their career goals and have I helped them achieve them?
  2. When is their birthday?
  3. What is their spouse's name and when is their anniversary?
  4. What is their children's names?
  5. What is their hobby?

Most likely you were not able to answer most of these questions. Don't feel too bad about it, this is the norm. It also would explain why, in spite of our lip service to making the customer number one, excellent customer service is not happening. Your associates are following your examples in dealing with the customers the way you deal with them.

How do you fix this? I maintain that actions that are not made into a system will stop happening as soon as you get busy. Therefore, when you evaluate your business systems a high priority needs to be placed on functions that result in employees seeing from you and all the other managers an interest in their lives and aspirations.

11/7/00

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