The 10 strategy tenets for developing a customer-driven workforce

The 10 strategy tenets for developing a customer-driven workforce by Stephanie Edwards

Developing a customer-driven workforce is one of the key roles of customer service leaders and managers - but how can they successfully achieve this? In the first article in a new series exploring best practice customer service, Stephanie Edwards starts with a strategic look at the topic, outlining the 10 components of customer-centricity.

Turning a customer service strategy into reality is a key challenge for organisations. Today, most senior managers realise that customer service is the competitive strategic weapon but achieving this is sometimes a major challenge. Organisations are their people, and developing a customer-driven workforce has to be the key role of customer service leaders and managers… so how can they do this?

Peter Drucker famously said: “The purpose of business is to create and keep customers,” so every business needs to organise its service delivery system around the needs of its customers. This means firstly designing a customer service strategy that will put customers at the heart of your business. Senior managers need to ask themselves, “Are we doing everything we can to create the best possible experience for our customers?” Perhaps some senior managers assume that because their marketing departments communicate that the organisation’s service delivery “exceeds customer expectations,” that they actually do. I call this corporate arrogance! It is suicidal for businesses.

Your people are the ones to leave a first impression - and a lasting impression - on your customers. They also intimately understand customers’ frustrations and they often know how issues can be resolved, but are not empowered to make the necessary changes.

In the UK we are now predominantly a service economy, so we increasingly need high performance people to keep our customers loyal. Poor customer service is costing UK business’s £15.3bn per year as customers defect! Companies that increase customer interaction investments during a recession can improve profit margins, sales and market share over complacent competitors. It is critical for organisations to retain every customer and maximise their lifetime value.

Institute of Customer Service research shows that organisations with a reputation for service excellence have on average a 24% higher net profit margin than same-sector rivals who do not have the same standing – and they can achieve up to 71% more profit per employee. Are businesses listening?

Let’s assume there are still many organisations out there that still do not know how to establish a strong customer base, so what do they have to do? Lets get customer-centric and here are my ten key components, tried and tested, which will help organisations get started.

Components of customer-centricity
1. Customer insight – Get to know your customers and understand what they expect from you. How many organisations conduct mystery shopper activities for themselves? Where they do it can be scary but enlightening. Get to know your internal customers too - your workforce. Customer service managers need to focus on all their customers consistently and there are many ways of gathering customer intelligence. This does not mean the odd customer satisfaction survey, which I am personally not in favour of; not because most organisations disregard the feedback or do not interpret them properly, but because many organisations create them with a primary intention of achieving good results! They sometimes only ask the questions that will highlight their good practices.

Also, where satisfaction surveys are concerned doesn’t the customer experience depend a lot on customer expectations in the first place? Easyjet might score highly because we have low expectations, but we might score British Airways lower because we have high expectations. Organisations need more reliable methods of evaluating the customer experience and they need their people to make this happen. I really believe that before you decide what your customer service strategy should be you need to talk to your customers and your people, your internal customers, before you put pen to paper.

I remember one such company that impressed me which has now been taken over. Portman Building Society’s top executives travelled the length and breadth of the country to speak to their customers and their staff to identify what was important to them and what needed to be in place to satisfy all their requirements. When they analysed all the information they developed their customer service strategy, created new service standards and then went back on the road to communicate their new vision to employees and customers alike. Absolutely the right way to go which is why they proved to be a great acquisition.

2. Create the service vision or service personality – This is an identifiable set of service characteristics that define how an organisation service proposition is different from that of its competitors. Some organisations have their own credo, others have a service promise or a customer charter but whatever method you have of communicating your service standards to your customers it is important to make sure those promises are achievable and shared by all teams in the organisation.

3. Develop a customer service strategy - This determines the overall direction of the organisation, and, in particular, how the organisation will go about delivering customer service excellence.This is a high level plan that communicates to everyone involved with the organisation how it will develop relationships with its customers, in order to maximise customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and achieve business success. It is commonly used to prevent non-aligned and disjointed activities between departments and drives everyone towards the same service goals. It includes a service/operational plan to ensure the strategic objectives are met and this should be shared with employees as everyone is going on the same journey. Communication is key; if you do not keep your people informed, rumours and gossip spread fast which can lead to negativity and once embedded it is hard to eliminate.

4. Build an appropriate customer service framework - A learning and development framework will help identify how the organisation is going to go about delivering service excellence. Reward and recognition, celebrating success are key motivators for employees so use them to deliver your service strategy. Customer service performance will improve when organisations provide support through valued reward and recognition systems. This level of recognition results in higher levels of employee satisfaction which translates into better customer service for your customers.

5. Deploy executive service leaders and managers who will become the organisation’s service champions - Service leaders and managers can make or break an organisation’s values; a leader who successfully creates a customer-focused culture will have a huge impact on business success through employee retention and customer loyalty. Ensure that your leaders and managers have the right skills, dedication and passionate about service excellence, customer focused and are results-driven. Leaders should posses a strong business acumen, be strategic, but lead by example, inspiring trust and embedding a no-blame culture within the organisation. Critically, they must encourage positive teamwork.

6. Recruit high-performance, intelligent and well-motivated people with a 'can-do attitude' - You want people with a customer-focused mindset. Once in place, develop their knowledge and skills for delivering service excellence against competencies that are customer focused – good communication skills, tolerance, empathy, good judgement and the ability to interpret service issues and respond appropriately according to the organisations rules.

7. Create innovative products and services with the support of all your people - Inspire your organisation to develop a culture of continuous improvement and innovation for the benefit of your customers. Employee suggestion schemes have helped many organisations implement change which has improved service delivery for customers but even those organisations that have the answers today cannot assume they know what their customers will want tomorrow. Customer’s expectations have become demands and successful organisations will already be anticipating customer’s demands tomorrow to stay ahead of the competition.

8. Design and implement customer-centric processes that make purchasing easy for customers - Processes should be seamless, designed from the customers viewpoint and be consistently reviewed to make transactions simple and stress free. This includes making it easy for customers to complain, remember complainants are your most loyal ambassadors if their complaints are handled professionally. Organisations seldom achieve competitive advantage through their technology and processes alone; it may add value but only if there is a parallel investment in their people who have to work with the technology to assist customers.

9. Create performance metrics so that the organisation can routinely and accurately assess its effectiveness for customers - Use appropriate tools, proven methods, for measuring your customer satisfaction, remember that customer service as a whole includes a wide range of specific service characteristics and there are many touch points where customer transactions take place. It is important to check on customers` perceptions of your service levels at each of these touch points and compare the results with what actually takes place. In other words, identifying your gaps!

10. Manage customer relationships - Products and service alone will not develop relationships with customers. The organisation must deliver something of value to ensure loyalty. Loyalty is created when you provide a level of service that exceeds expectations and which delights your customers. Managing customer relationships is about establishing, maintaining and enhancing relationships with customers for mutual benefit. This takes us back to the beginning, to learning more and more about our customers in order to deliver what they expect. If your people can be encouraged, not only to deliver the promise, but also to go the extra mile, this goes a long way towards sustaining a fantastic relationship with your customers. You will reap the rewards in loyalty, increased reputation and business success. I must emphasise at this point that although CRM is a term given to the management of customer relationships in high volume consumer services its prime objective is to collect data from different departments to enable the tracking and analysis of customer’s transactions and trends. Although particularly valuable it does not replace the personal touch.

By successfully implementing all these components you will begin to create a customer-focused culture. There is no quick fix, but eventually you will influence the behaviours of all your people so that when new recruits join the organisation the service culture dictates: “This is the way we do things around here”. The customer determines what Best Practice is and they expect the highest possible service, the most innovative products at the right price and they want them now.

To achieve service excellence organisations must make excellent service a priority and ensure that their service leaders and customer service managers posses the necessary skills to support all customer facing teams, whether front-of-house or back office; they should all interact in a carefully designed way to ensure that the customer has a fantastic experience with your organisation.

It is no longer appropriate to simply focus on product and/or services. Instead, organisations must truly understand the emotional interactions between their team leaders and mangers, employees and customers, because this is what determines whether an organisation achieves business success or not.

In the second part of this series, Stephanie will discuss the first step in realising this customer strategy - developing a customer-centric leader. Look out for this feature next month.

Stephanie Edwards is managing director of Customer 1st International, and Customer 1st Learning. You can buy her excellent customer services books from The Complete Trainer:

Best Practice Guide for Customer Service Managers
Best Practice Guide for Customer Service

Newsletters - do they work?

The art of clear and interesting communication is important and it's wonderful to receive good, concise and relevant newsletters that provide a real benefit, even if it's just a smile or a useful web link.

I find writing newsletters hard - I need to announce products, direct people to links on my site or the blog and share information. Making it relevant to my audience is sometimes difficult when I have such a fantastic wide range of people that I connect with. But before you go down the 'segment the market' route, don't worry, I do.

Something I liked

Back to newsletters - today I received a newsletter that started with:

You are a 100% Verified Member of this mailing list. To stop receiving this newsletter, Ordinary Brilliance, please visit the end of this email.

Hello Carolyn,

Your one-minute-to-read issue of Ordinary Brilliance is here. Take just one minute to read it now.

And then the main body of the newsletter focused on just one key customer service issue. It did take a couple of minutes to read (not one, maybe I'm a slow reader) - but it was relevant, carried a good business message and had an interesting and tempting offer at the end. The message hit the right spot for me. It also helped that I knew who the newsletter was from.

How do you do it?

Clear communication - stating what you mean right up front, asking for engagement and being clear about why you are contacting someone - is crucial. I think I've a lot to learn from Anne Alexander's approach (check out her guest blog entry on Dealing with Problem Employees).

I also receive some really fancy emails with lots of graphics and some in simple plain text. The key to getting me to read them is content - and sometimes I completely miss it.

There's a lot to having really gripping opening copy (and not just for newsletters) but stating who you are and what you expect right up front is not a bad tactic. I wonder how many golden nuggets I've missed just because the complex graphics that take too long to download or some fussy intro turns me off before I get to the really good content?

But do newsletters actually work? If you do them properly, then yes. There's lots of guides out there on the web to writing a good newsletter - I quite liked this one: http://www.webmarketcentral.com/effective_email_newsletters.htm.

Unsubscribe
The most important thing to remember (and Anne puts it right at the top of her newsletters) is the Unsubscribe option. Not only is it a legal requirement in many countries, but you are empowering your audience. Every unsubscribe I get I always acknowledge politely and expedite as quickly as I can - just because they don't want my newsletter doesn't mean they won't ever visit my site again. A useful feedback tool is to have a 'please tell us why you unsubscribed' if your system can manage it, but only if it doesn't mean too many hoops for your audience to jump through.

Hopefully people who register for my newsletter (easy to do, visit the site and fill in the box on the right or drop me a note via the contact page) are familiar with the style and content of my newsletters. Yes, they include product announcements but I do make sure I have some interesting articles and don't just 'sell sell sell'.

(C) Carolyn Sheppard 2009

This article may be reproduced with permission.

Keep your customers happy

“Companies that are struggling to survive the credit crunch should embrace the service culture to ensure their customers stay loyal,” says Stephanie Edwards, author of “The Best Practice Guides for Customer Service Professionals & Customer Service Managers” and Director of Customer 1st International UK

Customer service is hot news. In addition to well-established consumer organisations such as Which?, there are now a myriad of online opportunities and offline mediums which allow consumers to give their opinions on good and poor customer service. These range from social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, to direct communication with national newspapers and TV stations and even websites set up specifically to allow customers to tell of their good and bad customer service experiences.
Customer satisfaction in the UK is at 74% UK Customer Satisfaction Index 2009(published by the Institute of Customer Service) shows that many customers' needs are still not being met. We may mull over customer satisfaction indices, listen to tales of horrendous service, or just rely on our own experiences of the wide-ranging levels of service that exist. But things just don’t seem to get significantly better for customers. And that is in spite of the rising mountain of evidence showing that the customer experience is the prime determinant of business success, and that customers’ expectations are not only increasing, but that those expectations are actually turning into demands.

In the current economic climate customer service is a key differentiator between those companies gaining and retaining customers and those who don’t and become unprofitable or even go out of business. Both poor and outstanding service have a strong emotional impact upon us, creating intense feelings about organisations. Many businesses find service excellence elusive, hard to grasp and difficult to deliver. But companies must face up to how service - good or bad - impacts dramatically on their reputation and business success. Everyone in business has a customer, and it is time to look after them!

Create a Customer Service Culture
The challenge for many businesses is inconsistent customer service delivery which can create real challenges in maintaining a reputation for service excellence. Customer expectations are rising daily and complainants can do irretrievable damage to organisations. Organisations must not be complacent, but instead develop a customer-focused culture and can-do attitude, keeping the customer at the heart of their business, offering a seamless but effective service. Feedback is essential from both your teams and your customers before implementing any major changes in the way you deliver service to your customers.

Typical causes of customer defection:

• Lack of personal contact – commitment, trust, confidentiality
• Broken promises, always letting customers down
• Corporate arrogance, a failure to listen to internal/external customers – a failure to listen to their own staff who recognise where things are going wrong but senior managers do not listen to them
• Failure to handle complaints successfully

Develop Customer Service Standards
World class leaders develop customer service standards for both internal and external customers, promoting the “Promises to Customers”. These standards inform customers what to expect from your organisation and it is vital that you identify what is important to customers. The Institute of Customer Service (UK) commissioned a research project led by Professor Robert Johnston of Warwick Business School, and he discovered the gold nuggets that can keep customers happy:

• Deliver the promise.. Do what you say you will do.
• Keep transactions personal.. People are individuals, so treat them how you would like to be treated.
• Go the extra mile.. Give your customers something extra to keep them loyal.
• Handle complaints professionally.. This is paramount, because research tells us that 91% of complainants will stay loyal to an organisation if their complaint is handled professionally. They will also become your most loyal ambassadors and tell others about your brilliant service recovery.

Increased levels of service effectiveness results in staff and customer retention; loyal customers spend more and become ambassadors for the organisation, enabling a company to devote fewer resources to the search for new customers. Organisations that embrace service excellence will weather the storm, there IS no other way to survive.

Companies must remember that their customers decide whether they survive or die.

Customer 1st International’s Best Practice Guide for Customer Service Managers is available in hard copy, as an e-book, e-workbook and accredited tutor-led online award.

Customer Service

This week I interviewed Stephanie Edwards who wrote our best-selling Best Practice Customer Service books:

Carolyn Sheppard (The Complete Trainer): What do you think are the main issues for staff in delivering a good customer experience?

Stephanie Edwards (Director/Author Customer 1st International Ltd): Ask yourself this question the next time you receive service, did you feel the company really understood what you were trying to achieve or did it feel like ‘I am simply being processed’?

The biggest business challenge facing most large organisations is creating an individual customer conversation that is relational and not transactional, that can only happen if staff work in an environment where they are trained and encouraged to see beyond the immediate request for a product or service. Understanding what the customer is trying to achieve not only creates openings to go further and provide proactive advice, it also reveals opportunities for additional sales while creating a foundation for an ongoing relationship.

Carolyn: What are the hardest issues for companies to crack when asking staff to deliver a good customer experience?

Stephanie: The hardest thing most companies have problems with is trying to reconcile productivity / efficiency targets with allowing time for customer facing staff to deeply sense, understand and then respond to their customer needs. The reality is this; if you have already devolved management targets for efficiency down to your customer facing staff then the efficiency trap has already been set. Because the targets will always win and your customers will always lose and staff are caught in the cross-fire. Efficiency should and must be measured but only mangers need to be targeted as this is a resourcing issue which customer facing staff have little or no influence over. Customer facing staff should be targeted on satisfying customers and optimising processes using the simple and effective methods found in lean service.

Carolyn: How does lean service help improve the customer experience through staff?

Stephanie: Lean Service starts with involving customer facing staff in the discovery of customer value, then understanding how well the organisation responds to their customer needs and set about eliminating non value added activities and creating new value. This completely changes the relationship with the customer and their experience of doing business with you.

For managers running a traditional efficiency driven organisation this will seem like an impossible dream, but what they don’t realise is that service staff are already spending between 40%-90% of their available time performing non value tasks i.e. waste. If it were removed then companies could spend time providing a great customer experience, reducing costs and maximising revenues, to put simply…. sensing and responding to customer needs.

Many Leading brands have woken up to the problem of waste and are using the efforts of all their staff to eliminate it, effectively turning their own staff into small management consultants becoming highly effective and efficient as a result. Most importantly, it creates differentiation. And remember, all businesses have costs but waste is optional.

The training and development of all your staff to become Customer Service Professionals is vital for business success in today`s economic climate. Service is the differentiator and organisations need to upskill their workforce.

Stephanie is author of:

Best Practice for Customer Services Managers

Best Practice for Customer Service


Please contact us if you would like to participate in future interviews.

Reasons to Maintain and Improve Customer Service in Recessionary Times

This article is from key points that emerged at a recent meeting of the Customer Service Training Association chaired by Don Hales:

1. Recession creates opportunities as well as threats – an organisation with poor customer service stands less chance of benefitting from the opportunities

2. During a recession there are likely to be more floating customers around, looking for a better deal and better service for their money

3. Staff motivation will be improved and attrition reduced if they can see that the organisation still cares for customers

4. It is a good opportunity to prove wrong those who doubt the value of customer service. If an organisation can keep their customers during a recession, they will outshine their rivals

5. During recession, your training pounds go further (try it) so you can invest in customer service training. Better service now = more happy and retained customers now and better placed for future

6. This is a good time to improve processes and efficiencies. There may be more time and staff accept the need to change more readily

7. With unemployment likely to rise, it is an opportunity to raise the recruitment bar. Invest in the best!

8. Now is the time to develop your best people. They will appreciate the attention and improved skills and remain loyal. They will be even more energised in difficult times and unstoppable when the recovery comes

9. Invest where it makes a difference – this applies to customers as well as your staff. A concession or a joint investment (training, marketing promotions etc.) will be far more meaningful now that a “jolly” in times of plenty.

10. Staff, at all levels, are less likely to leave in times of recession. This is a good time to train them (not necessarily expensively – teaching each other to widen skill sets costs nothing).

11. Better skilled staff reflect confidence in the organisation and this shines through to customers and potential customers

12. During a recession, sometimes everyone is not so busy with “must do now” jobs. This creates time to spend with staff and customers and to listen to their ideas.

13. Improving service sends a strong message to everyone about the organisations beliefs and prospects.14. The stronger your customer service now, the better you will benefit from the eventual recovery (and it always comes – these things are cyclical, if not predictable as regards timing.

If you want to comment on the above – please contact Don Hales on don.hales@worldofcustomerservice.com

Don is the co-author of Wow thats what I call Service

New book, new times?

I've just got hold of the pre-published version of the 'Best Practice Guide for Customer Service Managers', written by a highly regarded expert in customer services in the UK. What is interesting is how much more advanced customer services is now than, even say, two years ago.

Customer services is going to be a crucial differentiator in these challenging economic times, so for businesses to survive they really can't ignore the need not only to train their people, but to understand the theory and real application of customer services today. The times are a-changing, and we must, in all aspects, change with them.

Although many people assume that good customer service is a 'no brainer', it still astonishes me how many people just have no sense of customer service at all. The checkout lad who is soooo bored you can just see his disinterest oozing from every pore, the telesales person who sounds cross when you say you don't actually want to take their call right now thank you and perhaps even the traffic warden who swaggers up to you just as you reach your car and the ticket is about to expire...

Are people so secure in their jobs that they think they do not need to treat their customers with respect, and with at least a little dignity? No, of course not, but in these three examples (all real), there is a motivator behind them.

The checkout boy is doing this job just to earn money before he goes to Uni, he has no vested interest in the company's success or desire for a career in this organisation. The telesales girl is on a target! My 'no thank you' is a dent in her performance record, and targets are getting tighter and harder and... The traffic warden sees himself as an enforcer. I am a wrong-doer, not a customer!

Now the book I am reading (I've only just started so no in depth review here) focuses far more on the higher principles of customer service, but you have to take it back to grass roots.
Perhaps, even, it goes deeper than that. Is there a dysfunction in how we interact as people throughout society, not just in the customer/provider situation? There are many who would scream 'yes!' and cite examples of rude behaviour, lack of manners, simple disregard. Oh, and I'm not guiltless, I let a customer wait for a product without contacting them and didn't check that it had (in fact had not) been dispatched. Result: one unhappy customer, one cancelled order. Yes, I have learned from this experience! Personal circumstances are irrelevant, whatever my excuses, I should have got on the phone or emailed and let the client know what was happening, even if it was 'nothing'. People are usually fine if they are kept in the know.

'Fixing' society is a massive challenge and one which will need addressing before we all disappear into our own virtual 'hubs' of existence, and only connect through electronic means. But we can certainly address behaviour issues at work and give that lad who is studying to be an architect a sense of worth, in the value of a job well done whatever he is doing, even if it is just checkout! Who knows, that guy he helped with the cracked eggs may be someone important in his intended industry...

All speculation, true, but by taking control of customer service in our organisations, by applying the premise of respect and understanding (and, of course, training and following the right Best Practice guidelines), it will have a knock-on effect in our whole society. Yes, customer service takes effort, but the rewards are very possibly survival against closure in this harsh economic climate.

Customer Services & Training Standards

I was asked a very simple question by a contact (Susan Robinson of http://www.fundraisingcpd.com/):

"Just wondered if you know what the 'best practice' guidelines are on training? For example, is there anything published on how many learners to each tutor? maximum numbers of days that one tutor should work with a group?

I have been involved in developing a NVQ Level 4/HND Level Management Course, which is currently run in a five-day block with a maximum of 14 learners. Up until now, we have used two trainers throughout but it is being suggested that the course run with one tutor. I'm not sure that this is in the best interests of the learners or the tutor. Any advice would be gratefully received."

Thank you The training company I used to work for were very strict on delegate number, maximum 14 at a push, preferably 12 maximum. But I asked the question of a Customer Services expert (Trevor Arden of http://www.pdmtc.co.uk/) who said:

"As far as I know there is no published guidance on the maximum number of students per tutor on any particular type or level of programme.
However, there should be a small enough ratio to enable:

a) the learning content to be effectively delivered and understood
b) individual students' needs, questions and requirements to be efficiently dealt with quickly
c) any whole-group or small-group activities and tasks to be achieved
d) assessment of individuals (where it is required in a classroom situation) to be achieved effectively (could be both formal and informal assessment)

Conversely, the ratio should not be too small, especially on a management type of programme, as this could detract from some of the types of discussions and group activities that would be expected.

Students should also have access to some form of support or personal tutoring outside of the classroom situation."

In this world of guidelines, compliance and recommended daily dose, is there a definitive answer? I am sure that the ratio of trainer:delegate will vary according to what you are training in (for example some technical or equipment based training may only be possible on a one-to-one basis), but this is a great subject for a great subject for debate, and one that Susan and I will pursue.

I'd love to have your comments on this. Please contact us, or comment below if you are a blogspot member.