7 Reasons Why Your Customer Service Is Not As Good As You Want It To Be
1. Lack of Executive Sponsorship – Just because you say you’re committed to your company’s customer service; your actions don’t lie. Annual customer service training is like deodorant, it wears off and the odor comes back. It is a proven fact that any big initiative, project, or revolution has to have the support of the senior leadership team. Otherwise it will be considered flavor-of-the-month or management-by-bestseller. The senior executive team has to provide the necessary resources to create long-lasting change. Customer service has to be as important as finance, sales, operations, and technology. It needs to be talked about at board meetings and strategic planning sessions, with leaders and everyone else in the company including front-line employees. See past eService Executive Sponsorship & watch this video.
2. Low Morale and High Turnover – Your customers will never be any happier than your employees are. It has to start inside before it will ever be experienced on the outside. I have never studied a world-class customer service organization that wasn’t world-class to work for and with. You need to create a world-class internal culture that only attracts, hires, and retains the people who are capable of upholding the service vision of the organization. Check out past eServices Culture Reflects Leadership & How Much Harm Can A Bad Culture Actually Cause?
3. No One Losing Sleep at Night over your Customer Experience – Regardless of your company’s size, someone in your organization has to be the Customer Xperience Leader; the person in charge of the Customer Experience for the entire company. I am not talking about the Customer service reps or call center. That person should not be the President, CEO or owner, but someone who reports directly to him/her. Check out past eService Who Is In Charge Of Your Company’s Customer Experience?
*Related 5 Spots Left For The 2020 Customer Xperience Executive Program
4. Lack Of Purpose Motive – The currency for millennials is purpose. The currency for anyone is the purpose. Too many companies underestimate the power a purpose provides to customer facing employees, which is critical for having high morale and employee engagement in the workplace. See past eService Customer Service Vision Statement & Creating The Starbucks Customer Service Vision Statement.
5. Low Service Aptitude – It is not the employees’ responsibility to have high Service Aptitude, it is the company’s job to teach it to them. Understand this: the vast majority of your employees you hire will have low service aptitude. The quality of your Customer service comes down to the Service Aptitude of every employee you have. From the CEO to the account executive, sales clerk, call center, receptionist, corporate office support team, to every front-line employee — it’s all about Service Aptitude!!! No one is born with it; it is not innate. The vast majority of the workforce has extremely low Service Aptitude. See past eService Service Aptitude, The Game Changer.
6. Lack Of Soft Skill Training – On average, a company devotes more than 90 percent of its training to hard skills (such as technical, operational skills, processes, and product knowledge) and less than 10 percent to soft skills (such as hospitality, relationship building, service recovery, empathy and compassion). See past eService The Top Soft Skills To Train Your Employees & Your Service Training Needs To Be Certifiable Just Like Technical Training.
7. No CX KPI’s – Companies need to see the impact that Customer satisfaction has on their key metric drivers (i.e., Customer retention, average ticket, re-sign rates, referrals, average contracts, frequency of visits). This demonstrates the ROI, as well as allows management teams to hold employees accountable for providing a great Customer experience at every level of the organization. Measurement tools can be anything from Customer surveys, third-party companies that measure Customer satisfaction, secret shoppers, to statistical benchmarks (such as the average ticket or the number of referrals. These provide a benchmark to measure the impact of the new systems and to determine whether they are being consistently executed. Check out past eServices Make The One Thing The ONE Thing & You Need To Fire One Third Of Your Employees
Recommended Article
I found this article fascinating; Social Support Can Save Your Life. Here are some of my favorite takeaways; “I am not aware of any other factor in medicine that has a greater impact on our survival than the healing power of love and intimacy. Not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery,” says New York Times world-renowned physician Dean Ornish, M.D. In his research Ornish reveals that the real epidemic in modern culture is not only physical heart disease but also what he calls spiritual heart disease: loneliness, isolation, alienation, and depression.
Recommended Video
Watch this one-minute video on how you can outlove your competition
Recommended Book
From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America by Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks. Disclaimer, I love anything that Schultz writes or says. However, this book is how Schultz overcame growing up the projects of Brooklyn NY to running the most successful companies in the world. Even more importantly it is how he built one of the most socially conscious businesses in the world.
Quote of the Week
“Hell is defined as being visited, on your deathbed, by the person you could have become
and seeing the impact you could have had on so many other people’s lives.”
—Unknown
Exclusive End of The Decade Offer
- Enrollment for two in e-course: The Customer eXperience Executive Academy online, one year access
- Access to CXE private FB group and quarterly CXE mastermind calls
- One hour call with one of our Customer Experience Consultants, ask us anything!
- Two signed copies of The Relationship Economy
Register Today
