For those of you who want to achieve Customer Service Excellence, the top 50 tips as recommended by the experts in the field. Centre for Assessment helping you work towards Excellence in Customer Service.
3. Customer Service Excellence
A well recognised
independent standard that
validates your companies
competence regarding its
business’ target market.
At its heart are well
researched concepts around
customer insight and
delivery which enable you
to develop a truly customer
focused culture.
Operating on Three distinct
Levels:
1. By allowing businesses to
self –assess themselves;
2. By allowing individuals
and teams within the
business to explore and
acquire new customer
service skills;
3. By allowing businesses to
seek formal
accreditation.
4. The FrameworkComprised of 5 Strict Criteria:
1. Customer Insight – Focusing on importance of developing an indepth
understanding of customers.
2. The Culture of the Organisation – Concerned with the support for customer
focused approaches throughout the organisation so that excellent service is delivered
to all customers.
3. Information and Access – Aimed at making sure companies are putting customers
first, providing them with accurat and detailed information at all times.
4. Delivery – Related to how companies carry out their main business, the outcomes for
the customer, and how they manage any problems that arise.
5. Timeliness and Quality of Service – Looking in more detail at the standards
organisations have in place relating to how they carry out their main business.
5. The Framework
With an unpredictable economy and the pressure organisations now face in an incredibly
competitive market, the only obvious key to success in this changing landscape and the
only real differentiator, is to start putting the customer at the core of the service
provision.
Organisations need to up the ante, by giving the customers what they want and how they
want it.
More organisations are starting to explore this simple solution that is enabling them to be
smarter with their resources and deliver a service once the right way and not waste time,
effort and money delivering a service the way they want but not always the customer
wants.
With this in mind Customer Service Excellence has asked a number of leading assessors
for some top tips to help businesses achieve Customer Service Excellence.
6. Core Values
01
When companies identify,
agree and embed clear core
values, staff start pulling
together to achieve better
delivery of all aspects of the
business, including customer
service. Staff and where
possible customers should be
involved in agreeing the
values.
02
Once in Place Appraisals and
supervision processes
structured around the core
values to help further embed
them. This should happen
regularly.
7. Broad Statements
03
Every customer would like a
personalised, customised
service, whereas the most
cost-effective service delivery
‘is on size fits all’. Excellent
customer satisfaction should
be achieved when the
provider strikes the right
balance between the two.
05
No organisation can provide
excellent customer service
unless everybody, whatever
their function and whatever
their place in the hierarchy,
recognises they have
customers. Be they external –
or internal
04
Excellent customer service
may mean a premium can be
charged for that service – but
only up to a limit. The skill is
knowing what that limit is.
07
No organisation can survive by
treating its customers as an
homogenous mass – you need
to segment your customers in
ways that make sense to you as
the service provider – and to
them as the customer. And
give your customer segments
catchy titles such as ‘income
rich – Time poor’ or ‘Asset rich
– Income poor’.
06
No organisation can count
on Excellent Service delivery
– unless frontline services get
excellent service delivery
from
internal/corporate/support
services for whom they are
an internal customer. Staff
job satisfaction. The same
applies to any organisations
you work in partnership with
to deliver your services.
8. No Organisation Really Likes
Complaints but they provide unsolicited customer feedback
08
The organisation can learn
from such feedback and
improve its service delivery. By
publishing the actions and
service improvements it has
taken as a result of complaints
and comments, it can
demonstrate it is a ‘listening
and learning’ organisation and
welcomes customer feedback
10
It’s good practice to ask a
complainant what outcome
they would like – and then
check whether they’re
satisfied with the outcome
achieved.
09
The received wisdom that
‘customers will pass good
customer service onto half-a-
dozen people, while bad
customer service gets spread
much more widely, can be
turned on its head. A swift,
effective, resolution of a
complaint can transform the
customer’s perception
12
It’s not good practice for an
organisation to set a cap on
the maximum number of
complaints that should be
received – it send the wrong
message to staff, who may feel
they’re encouraged to ignore
or not designate
dissatisfaction as a complaint.
11
Again, it’s good practice to
empower frontline staff to
deal with customer service
issues when they arise, if they
can – but, if they do, it’s
important to capture those
expressions of dissatisfaction,
or ‘informal complaints# in
order to spot any emerging
issues that could lead to
formal complaints.
9. No Organisation Really Likes
Complaints but they provide unsolicited customer feedback
13
Another good practice is to
encourage customers to
submit complaints through all
the access channels available,
while offering the support of
frontline staff to assist them.
15
Do not say – “this is the first
time anyone has mentioned
this” – wrong message! It can
be seen as casting doubt on
the validity of the feedback.
16
Ensure, if you are providing a
service with a commercial
partner, that they have a
complaints handling – and
that you are notified of all
complaints and their outcome.
14
A very good practice is to scan
incoming emails for key words
expressing some form of
dissatisfaction, and then fast-
tracking those emails.
10. No Organisation Really Likes
Complaints but they provide unsolicited customer feedback
13
Another good practice is to
encourage customers to
submit complaints through all
the access channels available,
while offering the support of
frontline staff to assist them.
15
Do not say – “this is the first
time anyone has mentioned
this” – wrong message! It can
be seen as casting doubt on
the validity of the feedback.
16
Ensure, if you are providing a
service with a commercial
partner, that they have a
complaints handling – and
that you are notified of all
complaints and their outcome.
14
A very good practice is to scan
incoming emails for key words
expressing some form of
dissatisfaction, and then fast-
tracking those emails.
11. Channel Shift
to online service provision, support, information and payment
17
Invite real customers in to check
out the relevance and
accessibility of the on-line
offering. As they say, there’s no
such thing as a free lunch!
19
Use your website to demonstrate your
transparency as an organisation by publishing
your:
a) Core business standards and your
performance against them.
b) Your standards for the timeliness and
quality of response to customer contact,
and your performance against them.
c) An explanation of any dips in performance,
together with any remedial or preventative
action you are taking.
d) Actions you are taking in response to
customer satisfaction surveys, comment
cards and complaints.
20
A good practice is to pro- actively
search incoming emails for words
expressing urgency.
18
Assuming you’ve done your
customer segmentation, then
make sure what the preferred
access channel of each segment
is – and if it includes customers
who can’t, or prefer not to, use
online services, then make sure
there’s a viable alternative for
them.
12. Survey Fatigue
the need to plan how you survey customers
21
Your analysis of customer
segments should reveal
how each segment would
be preferred to be
consulted, and how often!
23
The Net Promoter Score
(NPS) is a particularly useful
technique. This is a simple
but powerful tool that allows
you to track over time the
response to key questions: ‘to
what extent would your
customers recommend your
service on a scale of 1 to 10.
This would need to be
backed up by more detailed
analysis of customer survey
data to explore issues.
25
Be sure you know the
statistical significance of
your survey results – is a
2% year-on-year apparent
improvement, a real
improvement? BUT ALSO,
be aware the more you dig
down into the date (see
point 23), the less reliable
the trend and comparative
data becomes. 26
Extensive research by
IPSO/MORI has shown that 2/3
of the difference of the levels of
customer satisfaction with UK
public services is down to five
main drivers of customer
satisfaction and two other
subsidiary drivers. These apply
equally to the private sector.
Make sure your customer
satisfaction surveys cover these
drivers – delivery, timeliness,
access and the quality of
customer service.
22
Consultation should be a
mixture of quantative
(e.g. surveys) and
qualative (e.g. forums,
focus groups and the
response to open ended
questions in surveys).
24
Don’t treat customers as
a homogenous mass – if
you’ve identified
customer segment, and
you provide various
services to them, then the
logic is to compare and
contrast the relative
satisfaction levels of each
segment with each
service it receives.
13. Survey Fatigue cont.
the need to plan how you survey customers
27
Mystery shopping can be a
useful supplementary tool,
especially if it is carried out
by trained customers
29
The views of the 5%
dissatisfied may be worth
more than those of the 95%
satisfied!.
31
If you’re regularly getting
customer satisfaction ratings
above 90% then it may be
lulling you into a false sense
of security. Try focusing on
raising the level of ‘very
satisfieds’
30
It is not good practice for the
person providing the service
to supervise the filling out of
a customer survey. This
should be done by someone
independent.
28
If you are commissioning
external survey consultants,
ask them to strip out and
forward the text comments
before they process the raw
data and validate the results,
which may take weeks if not
months.
14. Driven By The Top Management
but embraced by all the staff
32
Everybody and I mean
everybody in the
organisation should have a
customer-focused key work
objective/competence/beha
viour in their job
description for recruitment
and induction and
subsequent performance
reviews.
34
Management need to pro-
actively recognise (and if
appropriate, reward) staff
who suggest customer
service improvements or
who go beyond the call of
customer service duty.
36
Don’t hide compliments –
they should be brought up
at annual appraisal, but also
publicised more widely to
encourage other staff to put
these forward – and
challenge the British
reticence of not blowing
our own trumpet.
33
Again all staff need to be
encouraged to put forward
their ideas for service
improvement, especially
newcomers who bring a
new perspective and
management need to show
how they've responded to
these suggestions.
35
Senior Managers also need
to demonstrate on a regular
basis their personal
commitment to excellent
customer service.
15. Experiencing the Customer Journey
37
Test out the actual customer journey – the process path may
represent the theoretical customer journey but how do you
test it in practice? It’s important to capture the customers’
experiences:
a) Ask a group of customers to record their emotional highs
and lows along the journey.
b) Alternatively, structure a customer survey to ask
customers about their experiences and emotions along
the journey.
c) As a last resort ask staff who are not involved to mystery
shop the customer journey.
d) Reducing unnecessary customer contact along their
journey should be a key objective for any customer-
focused organisation. There are various ways of doing this
– customer journey mapping (above) is one example.
Good practice for call centres is to log each call as to
whether it could have been avoided by e.g. accessing the
website.
e) Get managers to ‘work the talk’ do a frontline job for a day
or more.
16. Delivering The Service
at the office, in the customer’s home or elsewhere
38
Always acknowledge the new
customer, especially if you can’t
deal with them immediately.
40
Ensure that any private interview
facilities are well publicised.
Customer-facing staff should pro
– actively recognise when this
might be appropriate.
42
Its good practice in reception
areas to separate out different
customer streams.
39
Apologise for any un-due wait –
don’t do it automatically and
please don’t give the customer
an automatic ‘ have a nice day’.
Try and personalise it, within the
organisations acceptable
boundaries.
41
Immediately identify any other
unspoken assistance needs and
arrange for them to be provided.
17. Benchmarking
Don’t rely on your own feedback and management information
48
Benchmark your core business
performance against sector
comparators.
50
If you have service standards or a
Customer Charter or Pledge always
review on an annual basis that you
actually delivered them and
publicise the results to your
customers. This will show your
promises are genuine and
deliverable and will stop them
becoming cosmetic statements. As a
result you will deliver excellence!49
Benchmark the timeliness and
quality of response to customer
contact – but comparators need
not necessarily be in the same
sector.
18. Customer Service Excellence
Why Customer Service
Excellence
Benefits
In an increasingly tough market and changing landscape the
only obvious key to success and real differentiator is to start
putting the customer at the core of your service provision the
success of which organisations need to up the ante by giving
customers what they want and how they want it.
Customer Service Excellence is a framework offering a
practical tool that drives customer focused change within
organisations. It aims to bring professional high level customer
service concepts into common practice.
At the heart of the standard are well researched concepts around
the key aspects of customer insight and how this can be used to
deliver a truly customer focused service by providing guidance
on a whole range of tools and techniques that can be used to
deliver excellence.
Both individuals and teams can learn new skills and gain a
greater understanding of these important concepts and how they
can be used to build a truly customer focused culture.
A growing number of organisations are starting to explore this
simple solution that will enable them to be smarter with their
resources and deliver a service one the right way and not waste
time, effort and money delivering a service the way they want
but not always the way the customers want.
• Customer Service Excellence will not only
contribute to your bottom line and improve delivery
but will also develop your staff by allowing
individuals and teams to explore and acquire
stronger customer focused and customer
engagement skills and can address the following:
1. Reduce costs.
2. Improve customer satisfaction.
3. Better equip staff and make them more customer
focused when dealing with enquiries.
4. Provide a simple solution to ensure customer needs
and expectations are met accordingly.
5. Increase customer retention.
6. Improve consultation with users.
7. Engage and re-focus staff.
8. Improve complaints handling..
9. Focuses marketing activity and expenditure.
10. Help drive business strategy.
19. Becoming A Member of CSE
A well recognised independent standard that acts as a drive for
continuous improvement by assessing and identifying your business
capabilities to enable you to improve and deploy a more customer
focused delivery.
Customer Service Excellence is the only star that clearly tells a customer
what it stands for. Unlike other standards, (the average man on the
street has no idea what ISO, Lexcel or SQM is), but Customer Service
Excellence is self-explanatory.
If you want to explore details further please contact us :
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E: enquiries@centreforassessment.co.uk
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