I’ve recently put together a white paper titled, “The Top Five Customer Service Mistakes Companies Make, and How Your Organization Can Avoid Them.” The mistakes addressed in the white paper come from working with and observing hundreds of organizations, large and small, and noting the issues that seem to come up again and again.
My purpose in writing the paper, however, was not to simply point out the mistakes. For each of the five issues addressed, I’ve offered approaches for avoiding the mistake or for making course corrections if things have gotten off track.
The five customers service mistakes addressed in the white paper are:
- Not clearly defining what the customer experience is supposed to be.
- Designing processes for the company’s convenience, not the customer’s.
- Hiring the wrong people.
- Not making customer service a significant part of new-hire orientation as well as ongoing training.
- Tolerating poor service performance from employees at any level within the organization.
To download the white paper, simply click on this link – Top Five Customer Service Mistakes – fill in the requested information, and click the download button. Be sure and let me know if you have any problems with the download.
Please forward this post to anyone you feel might benefit from the information provided in the white paper. And I would welcome any feedback, pro or con, you might have based on what you read.
Most of all, I hope the information helps you and your organization in delivering the best possible customer service
Dennis
Great whitepaper – spot on with the 5 points.
Regarding #1 and #2, measurement seems to be a key (and lacking) prerequisite – research seems to consistently suggest that organizations don’t know where they stand in their customers’ eyes with respect to customer experience. They’re not effectively gathering the customer voice across all the customer interaction channels. It’s hard to figure out where you need to get to if you dont know where you are.
I think another “mistake” related to customer service personnel is not empowering them enough. Customer service is the front line of the customer experience. Yet a lot of organizations still confine customer service personnel to narrowly banded scripts of what they can and cant do, and narrow ‘handle times’, instead of doing “the right thing for the customer”. I think companies like Zappos are moving in this latter direction but most service centers are still stuck focusing on operational efficiency versus empowering agents to deliver a superior customer experience that creates brand loyalty and competitive differentiation.