Stanley Cherkasky
Managing Partner
Change Management Consulting, Inc. (CMC) is a global management consulting and training company dedicated to helping organizations of all sizes improve performance, achieve goals and advance leadership capability. |
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Greetings!
Welcome to our monthly newsletter. It delivers valuable news, best practices, and resources to enhance your organization's competitive position. Since our focus is on achieving business results, we truly become a business partner to our clients. This is accomplished through a combination of assessments, customized training, and management consulting.
Our diversified products and services are complementary, and based on best practices and innovative design. CMC's core competencies include: change management, leadership development, strategic planning, continual improvement initiatives, compliance management (ISO quality and environmental management systems) and Lean Six Sigma. |
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Listen to Your Customers - External and Internal
This article is quite fundamental - for many it will reinforce learned behavior, while for others it will be a wake up call. Sure cost, schedule and product quality are important. But if you want your customers coming back, you must provide impeccable customer service. Relationships are critical, since customers do business with individuals, not entities. If customer service is not high on your list of value propositions, then it's time to revisit that list.
Customer service slogans abound: "The Customer is King!" "Customers are First!" "100% Customer Focus!" "The Customer is Always Right!" And on and on. More often than not, these slogans are hollow rhetoric and exhortations. Delivering great customer service doesn't have to be a whitewater, white knuckle experience. All you have to do is weave customer service into the fabric of how you do business. And remember, you have external and internal customers.
There are many advantages of great customer service:
1. It builds goodwill. Consistent service goes a long-way towards creating a competitive advantage - one that cannot be easily neutralized.
2. It makes your customers an extension of your sales force. They will do a much better job selling than your staff will.
3. It builds customer loyalty, which is in a different league than customer satisfaction. Make just one mistake, and a satisfied customer will often defect.
4. It creates an impressive distinction between two organizations engaged in the same business. Great customer service can easily differentiate you from your most formidable competitor.
5. It makes it very difficult for your competitors to pirate your customers - even at a lower price.
So, if you are serious about delivering great customer service, spend five minutes to take this free Self Assessment, adopted from "Listen Up, Customer Service," by David Cottrell and Mark Layton. A healthy self-assessment is a good start, and can go a long way toward improving a company's performance - one customer at a time.
After taking the Customer Service Self Assessment, now what? Ask your staff to take it as well. You might even consider discussing it with some of your customers. Next, analyze the results to identify pressing customer service gaps. These are the questions that scored an average of three or less. Develop a plan and work the plan!
Great customer service is a powerful differentiator. It will position your company for growth and a sustainable competitive advantage. Best of all, great customer service costs very little - but it's worth millions. Indeed, some will even say it is free. So, give your customers impeccable service - every day.
Learn more about how to create a sustainable competitive advantage by delighting your customers, and how to measure "the voice of the customer."
Special Offer for Newsletter Subscribers
Contact us by November 10, 2009 to receive a one-hour free consultation, and a 15% discount on related workshops and seminars, including our proprietary assessments. Call: 973-696-7878.
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News Briefs
U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs Findings
Even though these data apply to consumers, there is a surprisingly high degree of correlation to many diversified companies-service and manufacturers alike.
- For every unsatisfied customer who complains, 26 other unhappy customers say nothing. And of those 26, 24 won't come back.
- The average customer who experienced a problem with an organization tells 9 or 10 people about it. Of the customers who register a complaint, between 54%
and 70% will do business again with the organization, if their
complaint is resolved.
- That figure goes up to a staggering 95% if the customer feels that the complaint was resolved quickly.
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