"The Great Customer Service Debate"

At the Custommerce India Chapter 6 meet held on January 29, 2010, we aimed to examine strategies that help organizations not only weather the economic challenge, but also pick up strategies that help differentiate them from competition.

(From Left, Dr. A. Parasuraman, Mr. Raja Gopalakrishnan, Ms. Tuhina Pandey, Mr. Gautam Mahajan, Mr. S. Ramaswamy)

The ‘Great Customer Service Debate’ witnessed eminent speakers from various facets of industry like Dr. A. Parasuraman (Vice Dean of Faculty, James W. McLamore Chair in Marketing, University of Miami), Mr. Gautam Mahajan (President, Customer Value Foundation), Mr. Raja Gopalakrishnan (Group Managing Director, Asia Pacific; (FIS)), Mr. Sundaram Ramaswamy (Entrepreneur, Director & Thought Leader), and the topics for discussion were:

• ‘Technology is an enabler for desired customer experience – Yes / No'
• ‘Which drives desired customer experience better? - Value based strategy or Metric driven strategy’

During the discussion, views were presented in favor of and against each dimension. Based on this, strategies to enhance customer experience were arrived at.

Appended below are some key takeaways from the presentations:

• Technology must aid in providing great customer service and satisfy the needs and requirements of customers. The customer must choose the time, place and manner of usage and should be provided at competitive price points. Technology has to be consistent, scalable and sustainable and it must be something that fits your business goals. While technology per se is not bad, its implementation is crucial. Implementation of technology has to be in line with the business goals, customer requirements and customer usage patterns.

• Value and metric-based strategies do not have to necessarily be in conflict. The reason that there is a perceived conflict between these two things is that most companies do not measure the right metrics. What they measure in terms of metrics is customer service and other things connected to service as perceived by customers. A lot of these metrics are easily measurable. For example, how much time the call centre took to answer, the attitude of the employees and the aspect that they show customers are the process related services that have a much bigger impact on customers. So that is where the conflict comes and not just in measuring the right metrics.

We thank all our sponsors for making Custommerce India Chapter 6 a success.

For more information, please visit http://www.custommerce.org/chapter6/index.html

Turning Customer Service Inside Out!!!

While companies focus thousands of rupees on external customer service in hopes of wooing and retaining customers, little attention is being paid to the effect poor internal customer service has on customer satisfaction.

When we think of customer service, we think of staff serving customers over a counter or over the phone. But customer service occurs within your organization as well. How well is your staff serving its internal customers: other departments, its employees, management, vendors and consultants? Good internal customer service starts with good morale within your group. It refers to your level of responsiveness, quality, communication, teamwork and morale.

How well are you providing other departments with service, products or information to help them do their jobs and to help your organization succeed? And what goes around usually comes around. Myopic thinking should be avoided and working together will achieve win-wins for the greater good of the customers.

Happy employees are productive, and customers can experience the difference. Sooner or later the ripple effect of internal customer service reaches your customers. To really walk your service talk, you should make sure that your commitment to internal customer service matches your company's external focus on customer care. Corporate values that emphasize treating employees well translate to good customer care too. Companies that care about their people can better ask their people to care about their customers.

By improving internal customer service you would just enhance the customer service your external customers receive. You're walking your talk regarding customer service.

Customer complaints – An opportunity

Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.
-Zig Ziglar

Sometimes complaints can be overwhelming. However, by taking them in stride with an open mind, we can learn much from our customers' feelings about our business. After all, a complaint is nothing more that a person telling you that his / her needs haven't been met.

Be careful not to call his complaint or situation a problem, because doing so might aggravate him to the point that he loses his ability to think and express himself clearly. The second most frequently stated reasons customers leave a company is that the company did not handle their complaints well. The cause of most customer complaints is failed expectations. As dissatisfied customers, they are giving us a second chance to correct something that should have been done properly the first time around. If you listen to them patiently and attentively, their complaints will alert you to a real or potential problem, or tell you of a better way to handle a situation. A little common sense, a lot of genuine sincerity, and some tact will go a long way in resolving the issue.

We are not used, however, to coping with complaints. We let our emotions rule our thinking usually. Consequently, we let complaints wear us out because we take on the complaint as a personal attack on us. It is not! Consider this, that every customer complaint may actually give you an opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competition. If handled effectively, complaints may actually increase customer and brand loyalty. It costs five times more to reach a new customer than to keep a current one. So it makes sense that we can increase profits by keeping customers happy with better complaint handling.

Hence, we should make it a goal for every single customer who walks through our door to have a better impression of our business when they leave than they did when they came in. We should handle the customer with care and with sincere professional courtesy. It can be a leading indicator of impending change in customer mindset at a brand or industry level.