When understanding that it costs far more to find a new customer than it does to keep them in-house, it pays to be mindful of the service levels delivered to them.
It’s all too easy to grow too fast and let service levels decline noticeably. Should this happen, customers will begin to notice that they’re not being tended to as well as in the past and consider jumping ship.
Here are some tips on how to improve service levels to your customers.
1. Get a Customer Service Survey Completed
You have to get a starting point. Taking the temperature of your customers with a customer service survey from Avannis is an excellent way to do so. They know how to conduct a proper survey to get accurate results from it.
Once the right questions have been asked, and the answers tallied, it’s possible to get a realistic sense of what’s really going on. Customers who have slipped through the cracks with their complaint going unheard are easier to spot and remedy before they are lost forever.
Also, teething issues that were seen as a minor concern but are causing consternation with paying customers can be given a higher priority to resolve them sooner rather than later.
2. Look for Key Takeaways from the Survey
Examine the survey for key takeaways. While there will be individual viewpoints and likely extra notes added by disgruntled customers with something more to add, there should also be commonalities too.
What are the issues that were repeatedly mentioned? What made them similar across different customers and transactions? How can they be quickly addressed to not only resolve the issue the customer had – if they identified themselves in the survey – but also how can it be prevented in the future?
Also, look for single instances of a customer service issue that breached a code of conduct or are unacceptable for other reasons. Address these quickly and decisively to avoid a repeat of them.
3. Avoid Doing Things “As They’ve Always Been Done”
Companies have a strong tendency to continue to do things the way they’ve always been done because of complacency. In fact, staff often have a strong inclination to not complicate their lives by making any changes. If it’s still working, they often would prefer it to stay the same. But that’s not always the best option.
Sometimes, staff have smart ideas about how to cut out unnecessary steps along the way. By removing unnecessary steps in the processes, it’s possible to remove bottlenecks and provide a better customer experience.
Only by looking for and making specific changes that reduce complication or waste within systems and procedures can companies improve on the back-end. It’s always better to avoid the customer contact to complain about delays or errors than to see the customer service team deal with the fallout.
By being willing to identify problem areas and look for immediate improvements to boost customer service levels, the entire company benefits. Without customer satisfaction, they’ll be lost. At this point, the other departments will be spinning their wheels needlessly wondering what happened.
