
Customer service – does yours sizzle or fizzle?
High-quality service is a must for any successful organisation – and coaching could really help improve yours.
Most business managers shudder at the latest ‘customer service initiative’ (often neatly packaged in a glossy, clever format, perhaps with freebie pens and mouse mats).
The aim, of course, is to provide your employees with the guidance they need to provide a good standard of service to clients and customers. But after arriving in a blaze of glory and teaching everyone to perfectly recite a service mantra, it becomes just another manual tombstoned on the shelf – alongside countless others. What a waste of time and energy, ey?
If you REALLY want to make a difference to the quality of service your organisation delivers, you need to engage customer-facing employees through coaching.
ASK US ABOUT COACHING TO IMPROVE SERVICE >
Coaching enables employees to work with guidance material, to debate and discuss how it’s used and then to evolve it – so that they can own it. For example, imagine adding the following questions into an explanation of a new customer service initiative:
1) How are these new ideas going to impact on what we do day-to-day?
2) What’s the best way of starting to build this thinking into our everyday interactions with customers?
3) How are you going to deliver these service levels and still be able to tailor your approach to individual customers?
Without this enquiry and dialogue, principles of customer service become rules that are being done ‘to them’ rather than guidance that works ‘for them’.
Coaching conversations transform thinking and broaden possibility. By challenging people to think for themselves, we encourage ownership. For example, ask: ‘How do you want to let your team know about the new customer follow-up process?’
We also foster empowerment, by allowing people to decide and act with less frequent manager interference. Managers who coach are encouraged to support people to come forward with ideas – and step in only where it’s really required. So, over time, customer issues are resolved quickly, with fewer unnecessary delays in resolution. Wouldn’t your customers benefit from that?
In July 2014, the US Institute of Customer Service released a report following research into customer satisfaction. CEO Jo Causon said: “[Our research] identifies that effective leadership is central to creating a customer-focused culture. The research also highlights the importance of focusing on customer insight; co-creation of services with customers; simpler processes and employee engagement for progress to be made.”
She added: “[Organisations must] develop the skills and capabilities of employees in key areas such as emotional intelligence, coaching and people-management, using customer service as the focus of accountability and personal objectives.”
To talk to Starr Coaching about training managers to improve your customer service standards, please get in touch.