Three critical components of world-class customer service
It's ironic. Against one of the most challenging economies we've ever seen, innovation has finally reached the point of supporting customer centricity well. The ideals surrounding exceptional service are within reach. It's no longer a question of when innovation will be in place...it's a question of how to align technologies, training and "the organizational mindset" with the best practices collectively referred to as world-class service.
Three critical customer centricity components must align to transcend the challenges of the marketplace:
- Organization-wide buy-in on the value of customer centricity. This is obvious, but critical.
- Technology that facilitates and enhances customer-centric processes - While cost and efficiency are important, technology for supporting customer interactions and customer-related processes shouldn't be selected on those factors alone. They should also be evaluated for: improving the speed and accuracy of service across all channels; making the most out of voice of the customer data; streamlining administrative processes to focus leadership on coaching and the customer experience; examining multi-channel interactions in their entirety for continuous improvement on all levels; and helping to deliver compelling sales and marketing messages/promotions in support of the brand and in line with customer wants and needs, among other factors.
- Emotional intelligence - Understanding the true emotive component that is part of every interaction is what helps to separate world-class interactions from the rest. Emotions - good and bad - are what drive customers to contact a company to begin with. World-class service organizations strive to understand the Web 2.0 world and the emotional components that underscore everything about it and focus their staff on building greater empathy for the customer, stepping into his/her shoes to anticipate their needs and proactively deliver service. They also understand that their agents agents are a crucial component of the customer experience, and that different agents need different types of coaching and encouragement to reach their full potential. These companies are prepared to leverage the appropriate "tools" to best serve the individual agent and customer.
When one of the above components is out of alignment, the entire organization falls short of achieving its goals.