Recently we reported on the president of Brazil’s decree that companies operating in his country will meet certain standards in how they deal with customers. While I’m not a fan of increasing government regulation I like the idea of making customer service standards a big deal. That’s what Tata Indicom has done. Even better, they’re telling their customers about it. They have made five specific promises to their customers in these areas of service: 1. Call drops (More than 1.5% and you get cash back) 2. Billing disputes (72 hour resolution) 3. Call backs (No waiting on hold more than [...]
customer service standards
A while ago I was engaged to do a customer service seminar for a city. One of the things they wanted to talk about was establishing customer service standards. So I began a search for other cities that had already established customer service standards to see what their experience had been. My first search in Google was: “customer service standards”. The results surprised me. In the first three pages (98% of users rarely look beyond page 3 of their search results ) there were no for-profit companies listed in Google’s search results. The majority were government. Federal, state and local [...]
One of the foundations of Amazing Service is to create and publish customer service standards (or promises). When you do this we call it your Customer Experience Promise. It tells people what to expect when they do business with you. It tells them how you’ll be treated, among other things. This list of promises should be based on two things: 1. What your customers want from you. 2. What you are good at doing. Once you create your Customer Experience Promise, you should publish it. This means tell the world about it. When you publish it, you are giving people [...]
Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service: Plant your flag And here are some additional thoughts on this topic… Planting your flag means to take a position and defend it. In the world of Amazing Customer Service it means you create your vision of customer service and make it happen. Do this by making a list of what your customers get when they do business with you. Think of these as your
Last week Bruce Buschel wrote an amusingly useful piece in the New York Times on what restaurant employees should and should not do. It has been popular. A search on Google now shows 124,000 links for the title of this article. This thrills me because the Buschel made some fine points. He offers excellent advice for anyone who manages or works in a restaurant. As a frequent restaurant customer, I applaud his list. If I found a restaurant that met every one of these standards I’d probably be speechless. But I’d also be a loyal customer because these tips make [...]
“If you make customers unhappy in the real world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”
-Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com
The days of ducking down and hoping nobody will notice when things go awry are over. These days, if customers get a bad
Very soon (46 days to be exact) we will begin Customer Service Week. This is an opportune time for you to show your customers and employees how important customer service is to you and your organization. And to make the most of it, you should get started now. My first suggestion is to go to this website for Customer Service Week: CSWeek.com. They have
We hear a lot about customer experience and going the extra mile for our customers. And these are good things. Every employee in every business should pay attention to these. But it’s not just the employees who are responsible for this. Management has to lead the charge. If you want more loyal customers, the kind who come back again and again, the wonderful people who tell their friends, neighbors and everyone else about you, then you need to make service a priority across your organization. Front line employees can’t make this happen alone. And when you make this commitment, you [...]
