In these days of competitive markets, the business that excels at customer service is the one that will not only maintain their position, but grow. You could answer the question "What is Customer service" by saying that it is about "exceeding" the expectations of the client, not just "satisfying" them. This is not just about the product or service that you are selling; it's about looking after the people buying them from you too.
Having a great product must be the first step. Everybody likes quality, even more if it is competitively priced with other similar products. If you make the product yourself, see what you can do to enhance how it performs, what it's made from, how it compares with others. If you can make the product the best there is within the price range, customers will not only buy from you, but they will recommend others to buy from you too.
So, you have a great product and your client base is growing - how is your pre and after sales service doing? Not many people think about how they sell the product, but it is still literally serving the customer. How many of us have put the phone down on someone who has been given the unenviable task of cold calling clients to try and sell goods?
Cold calling and pressure sales are two areas that have managed to give selling a bad name, particularly if they are persistent, repetitive and quite obviously so desperate to make a sale that they become aggressive. This is most definitely not what is customer service. Most of us would prefer to do our own market research when looking to buy something and the Internet has made it all so much easier. If you want to build your client base, having a website is now essential rather than an optional extra. Customers can look at the product, find out more about it and then contact you if they are interested. If they register with your site, you are able to build a list of potential customers too, to contact them again at a later date.
It might seem, from what is written above, that there is no place for person to person selling any more. Quite the opposite is the case, from the research I have done, it would appear that most customers would welcome speaking to someone who is knowledgeable about the product (that's the important bit!) and is able to resolve any problems quickly. Call centres in India might be cheaper to run than local ones, but do the operators understand what the product is, do they even want to?
With the best will in the world, things can go wrong. For example, there could be a faulty batch manufactured, or if you are offering a service someone fails to turn up to an appointment. Complaints start coming in and you can either stick your head in the sand and ignore it or you can admit the mistake and try and rectify the situation to everyone's satisfaction. Good customer service will always take the second route. Why? Because by dealing with a problem quickly and efficiently, that customer goes away happy and will tell his friends what a good organisation you are. Ignoring problems or just not resolving them quickly and satisfactorily really annoys customers and they won't recommend you to others. According to one survey, 68% of customers will leave a supplier if they encounter an attitude of indifference.
A personal example now. My car broke down not too far from a local garage. I rang them up and, without hesitation, they stated that they would go and collect my car and repair it. They called me later in the day to tell me how much it would cost and did I want them to repair it (Gold star no. 1). They said they would waive the cost of collecting the car as it was not too far from the garage (Gold star no. 2). They repaired the car and made sure that everything else was okay too - at no extra expense (Gold star no. 3). A week after the repair, they phoned me to ask whether everything was still okay and was there anything else they could do for me (Gold star no. 4, 5, 6 and 7!). I was extremely satisfied with the service and have bought cars from them since and recommended the garage to friends too. To me this is the answer to "what is customer service?". There is no better advertisement for a supplier of either goods or services than great customer service.
What Is Customer Service
Sometimes you want to contact a manager and let him or her know what the offending employee is up to, but more often than not, if you are like most people, you finish your business and vow to yourself never to patronize the establishment again.
What if it is a service company such as a TV programming provider and you are committed to an extended service contract and the rude employee is on the phone and miles away out of your reach and you dont even know their name. This is a common dilemma suffered by cable customers each and every day.
The management at Dish Network has studied customer service and all its ramifications extensively and they came up with some enlightening conclusions on the subject. One thing that was found is that there is a direct correlation between customer service and employee moral and that happy and content employees give better service.
Another thing that was found was that employees that feel that they have a vested interest, rather than just a job at a company tend to also give better customer service. One startling conclusion that was made was that threatening, or punishing employees for giving poor customer service actually only made the problem worse.
So the management at Dish network focused their strategy for excellent customer service at the grass roots and set out to do what it takes to keep their customer service representatives happy and content in their employment positions.
Dish network has one of the best and most generous employee benefit packages in the industry, that is effective in bringing their workers together as one cohesive unit and gives each Dish Network team member a vested interest in the company. The result is that Dish Network has set new standards in the area of over all customer satisfaction and customer complaints are at an all time low when compared with industry competitors.
In fact J.D. Power and associates has recognized Dish Network for their achievements in over all customer satisfaction for the last five years in a row, with consistently high ratings. For years cable service providers had no competition, they literally had the market cornered in TV programming and they logged up a dismal record on customer service.
With the advent of satellite TV programming service and the competition it brings to the table, cable companies have tried to clean up their acts, with varying degrees of success. What cable service providers have encountered is an entrenched mentality and an institutionalized form of negativity as it pertains to employee moral that might take decades to root out.
The visionaries who developed and launched satellite service have all a one time in their lives been cable service customers themselves, prior to satellite service and they took inspiration form the negative experiences they encountered when dealing with their cable service providers. They all brought this inspiration with them, when they launched Dish Network and vowed that Dish Network would set new standards in customer service.
Both Steve Gee & Kaptain Dave are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Steve Gee has sinced written about articles on various topics from Legal Matters, Legal Matters and Bathroom Remodeling Ideas. Steve is a software engineer and webmaster of What Is Customer Service www.what-is-customer-service.magicblur.com. Steve Gee's top article generates over 40500 views. Bookmark Steve Gee to your Favourites.
Kaptain Dave has sinced written about articles on various topics from Movie Reviews, Football and Nokia Phones. Written by David Johnson. Find the latest information about Dish Network Offers. Kaptain Dave's top article generates over 1000000 views. Bookmark Kaptain Dave to your Favourites.
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