1 – Enforce accountability at all levels of your organization.
Nothing kills customer satisfaction faster than unaccountable or unwilling employees. This goes double for members of your management and executive teams – they set policy and expectations even if they don’t have direct contact with customers.
2 – Never, ever overcommit.
Failing in the eyes of a customer is bad, but failing after overcommitting – which your customer will realize is what you’ve done – is worse and even harder to recover from. Your customer would be right to be upset with you because overcommitment is a lie, plain and simple. Rather than overcommitting, use your customers for beta testing a new product or service.
3 – Give your employees the responsibility and authority to solve problems. Responsibility without authority delays resolving problems.
Example: In the checkout line at the grocery store, an item rings up at the wrong price. Your customer points this out to the checker. The checker has to call for a supervisor to come to the checkout stand to correct the price.
Question: Is making your customer wait the best way to handle this? They’re not causing the problem, after all. The problem lies elsewhere in the store. In fact, they’re doing you a favor by pointing out the problem. Your customer’s time is not yours to use. Instead, allow your employees to resolve these issues on the spot (reason codes, anyone?) then monitor the register logs to identify and fix the causes.
An aside: You could argue that requiring supervisor approval keeps your employees honest. One: If you’re concerned with the honesty of the people you employ, you shouldn’t be employing them at all, and Two: Your customers are not on your payroll. It is not their responsibility to help you enforce accountability and honesty at your company.
4 – Always look for new ideas.
Your customers and your employees are chock full of ideas. Ask them to share their ideas often. This will help make your company stronger.
5 – On the telephone, focus on one-call resolution more than hold times.
Hold times really aren’t that important. Customers want their problems fixed with a single phone call. Also, once you get them on phone, don’t transfer them unless it’s absolutely necessary. (The next step is to determine why is was necessary and, if possible, make it unnecessary in the future. See #3.)
