Top 7 Tips to Deliver Exceptional Customer Service Instead of Growing Your Competitor's Bottom Line

With the holiday season just beginning, businesses are scrambling to get more customers and show more sales. However, retail and business to business (B2B) research continues to suggest businesses are failing to deliver adequate to exceptional customer service. Poor customer service dramatically affects the bottom line of every organization. Hence, all that scrambling may be for naught.

The 2005 American Customer Satisfaction Index, a survey conducted by the University of Michigan, is at one of its lowest levels in the past 10 years. IBM survey of 2004 Christmas shoppers revealed poor customer service was second only to long lines. Good customer service is essential in developing loyal customers who are only a click or a few steps from visiting your competitors.

1. Assess Your Organization

Customer service begins with the internal customer also known as your employees. Assess your organization from the top down. In many cases, poor customer service is a symptom of a more serious undiscovered problem. HINT: Incorporate proven criteria such as Baldrige to determine what you do well and where you need to improve.

2. Assess Your Customer Service Training

Poor customer service is not because your employees don't know how to, but probably more often than not they don't want to. If your customer service training focuses only on knowledge and skills, you are draining your K.A.S.H. Box because you are failing to address attitudes and habits.

3. Don't Assume Employees Know What Good Customer Service Is

With the world a far different place than 50, 30 or even 10 years ago, don't assume that your potential and even current employees know what good customer service is. Specifically define what good customer service is. HINT: Good customer service is when a customer comes back, spends more and doesn't visit the competitor.

4. Deliver Customer Service Training in Real Time

Customer service training should extend beyond the procedures and policies. Infuse good communication skills and professional appearance within your learning sessions. Create mentors that new employees can job shadow.

5. Ask Potential or Existing Employees If They Buy From You?

If you are a retail chain, ask employees if they have ever bought from you? What did they like about your store or business? Many businesses ask the "Why do you want to work here?" question. Why not dig a little deeper?

6. Ask Yourself If You Would Buy From You?

This question may sound ridiculous, but would you buy from you?

7. Focus on Delivering Exceptional Customer Service

Exceptional customer service is when a customer brings or directs a new customer to your business.

Customer service is the beginning and the end for any business. All businesses are in customer service because without customers there would be no business. If your customer service is not at the exceptional level, then you are missing incredible opportunities to build your business and you are wasting a lot of money and resources. And,if that isn't bad enough, your poor customer service is growing your competitor's business.

Customer loyalty is the strategic advantage. Receive your downloadable Customer Loyalty Audit at http://www.processspecialist.com/customer-loyalty.htm

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Please feel free to contact me, Leanne Hoagland-Smith, Your Chief People Officer and Business Coach, who works with individuals and organizations that are tired of not being where they want to be and truly want more for their businesses and their selves. 219.508.2859

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Since DSL is obsolete, AT&T will sell you LTE instead

AT&T’s solid second quarter results were driven by wireless, but its wireline business was nearing growth again — a success for the carrier as it nears the completion of its U-Verse fiber to the node deployment. But amid the cheering for U-verse, the backbone of AT&T’s network, copper DSL, looked like it was getting kicked to the curb with 4G wireless broadband seen as the heir apparent.

On the results call Thursday morning an analyst asked what happens to the AT&T service areas that don’t get upgraded to U-Verse and whether the business in those areas was falling off or stable? John Stephens Senior Executive Vice President and CFO, replied, “We are seeing some challenges in those markets and the long term response will be what Wayne [Watts] was talking about … “

Wayne Watts is AT&T’s general counsel and was on the call to say how great the AT&T merger with T-Mobile was, and how the deal was on track to close by the second quarter of next year. Stephens elaborated on his comment and said that once the approval on T-Mobile has been achieved and AT&T builds out LTE over 97 percent of the country it will then be able to provide LTE service to people in the areas where AT&T doesn’t have U-Verse. “That’s our longer term answer,” Stephens concluded.

This fits with what Verizon is doing for the DSL lines it sold off to other service providers, and it also fits with the idea that hard-to-reach-areas can be served by mobile broadband from a speed perspective. Except that because of net neutrality rules, caps and general constraints of wireless service, LTE isn’t as good a solution when compared with wireline broadband.

But perhaps more chilling, is that AT&T seems willing to cede between 20 percent and 40 percent of its customers to a broadband backwater. In May executive John Stankey said that AT&T would deploy ADSL (which is slightly faster) to about 20 percent of the remaining non U-verse markets and left the fate of the remaining DSL up in the air. AT&T isn’t alone. Verizon is slowing down its fiber to the home build out and won’t end up covering its entire footprint anytime soon.

This effectively will create a different levels of broadband access in the country whereby a few people won’t have access to any; another level will have access to mobile LTE or DSL; a third will have access to cable, DSL and mobile LTE, and a fourth will have real competition between faster fiber-based technologies and cable’s DOCSIS 3.0 options. And while 100 million homes may fall into the category of having a real choice between faster telco wireline broadband and faster cable wireline broadband as per the National broadband plan, it looks like millions in the country will really only have the choice between cable broadband and slow DSL or expensive LTE — which is an unattractive choice indeed.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Eddie~S

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