Doing What's Right

The manner in which you serve your customers is the foremost way to either support, or negate, your business growth.

Effective businesses do more than survive -- they thrive -- by knowing what to say and do for their clients. But, for many business owners, it takes time to learn these things. The first step is to start listening, to try things out, ask the clients what they want, and slowly build a database of responses and actions that show you, through trial and error, how to serve your clients in a way that makes them come back time and time again.

As your business grows, it is likely that you have given more thought to how you would like your customer service experience to be. But have you informed your employees about these thoughts and decisions? Did you guide and train them on how you would like customer service to be done at your organization? If not, they will surely fail to deliver the customer service experience that you expect them to. It is your responsibility, as the leader of your organization, to train them on what you consider to be the "right" way.

Creating a Customer Satisfaction System

To lead a growing and thriving organization, you must tell your managers and staff how you want your clients to be served, and then supply them with the tools they need to deliver your product or service in that manner. If you fail to make the effort to do this company-wide, employees will surely create their own way of doing things instead, which will only lead to chaos and confusion for both staff and clients.

The most efficient way to teach your employees the "right" way is to document and detail each step in the process as you would like it to be done. And when you begin to document how you want customers to be served, don't leave anything out, and don't assume that your people already know what you are thinking, or you risk leaving out crucial pieces of your customer service system.

Your goal should be to create systems that ideally allow your people to know what to do in any eventuality. To produce such consistent and reliable systems, however, they need to be written down and available in a form that can be easily referenced by all. Systems should be as simple and accessible as possible; if they are difficult to use or hard to understand, then employees will surely not use or follow them.

The end result of your employee education efforts will be an organized, habitual environment for your people to deliver customer service the right way, your way, each and every time.

A Lesson in the "Wrong" Way

A friend of mine, Amy, subscribes to a local newspaper that is delivered daily to her front lawn. One morning she walked out of her house to get her newspaper and noticed that not only had the lawn just been freshly cut, but her newspaper had been cut to shreds as well. Amy glanced down the street and saw a crew of landscapers mowing the lawn at a neighbor's house. She noticed that they were from the same landscaping company that she employed, so she walked over and asked one of the crewmembers if they had just serviced her lawn.

The crewmember confirmed that they had indeed mowed her lawn that morning, and Amy then explained what she had thought happened to the newspaper. As she spoke, the worker backed away from her a few steps and looked upset. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone to call his boss to ask what he should do. A long conversation ensued that evidently led to a fruitless conclusion, as the worker looked up at Amy and shrugged helplessly. He looked miserable, and while Amy felt sorry for him, she mostly felt frustrated and annoyed.

She turned away and walked back to her house, with its freshly cut lawn and freshly shredded newspaper, and promptly called the landscaping company's headquarters to cancel their lawn mowing services.

No System, No Service

Clearly, the worker was not aware of what he should do in such a circumstance. He looked confused and helpless, instead of confident and reassuring. Obviously there had been no system in place whereby he would know -- for absolute certain -- what to do and how to provide excellent customer service when such a problem occurred.

How would this same scenario have turned out if there had been an effective system in place for dealing with such complaints? After all, it is not inconceivable that similar situations could occur for other customers, because the normal method of delivering newspapers to homeowners in this community is for the newspapers to be placed on front lawns. Front lawns get mowed; therefore there is always the possibility that landscapers will accidentally cut newspapers along with the lawns.

So, when this happens, what should the workers be trained to do?

One way would be for the landscaping company to have a detailed and documented list of things for the worker to do, right then and there, to ensure excellent customer service. The system could perhaps be to first immediately apologize to the customer, then pay the customer the replacement value of their newspaper, and then later the worker would be reimbursed by the company. Or, perhaps the system could be for the worker to apologize, go to the nearest store to buy a replacement newspaper and deliver it promptly to the customer, and get reimbursed the cost later by the company. Simple, right?

How do you think Amy would have felt about the landscaping company if the worker had not hesitated, but had promptly paid her back for the newspaper or had offered to immediately go buy her another one, no questions asked? Would she have cancelled her service?

A Look Ahead

Think about how customer service is delivered in your company. Do you document how employees should react in difficult situations? Do you have systems in place to empower employees to do what's right? Your customers already have a preconceived expectation as to how your company should handle customer service and complaints, and if this expectation is not met, they may walk out the door and not come back.

Train your staff and key managers in what you consider the "right" way to do things, and supply them with the tools they will need. Create systems that free your people to give the best customer service that they can, without hesitating, so that your clients will gladly choose your product or service -- time and again.