Customer Service Strategy Development

In any business climate, let alone a downturn, a business must maintain great customer service in order to keep all its customers and keep its customers happy. Are all customers the same? The simple answer is no and that it is now imperative for smart companies to decide objective criteria to judge a customer's worth to their operation as a whole.

The Best Customer

If someone were to ask your firm who its best customer, what would be the result? Each department in the company would have a different "best" customer as they relate to their department. But a strategy must be created to ensure that important company resources, time and money be expended for only those customers who are worthy.

Total Company Focus

What is needed is a "total company focus" to review current customers in the design of the new customer service model. Ask each department to rank customers from A for the best to C for least best. Include the option for D for those customers that everyone might agree would be best to discard.

An A customer is a customer that each department agrees is the best. This will be a customer who purchases often, pays without much effort on the company's part and does not complain about the work.

The B customers exhibit two out of the three traits above.

The C customers exhibit just one of the above traits.

Maximize Service, Maximize Sales

Once the customers have been ranked, a customer service strategy can be developed to maximize the service to the customers who maximize profitable sales.

Your A customers will get the best pricing, service and scheduling or service. They are the easiest customers to deal with, anyway. They are also, probably, neglected. After all, they may have been buying from your firm for some time almost without recognition because they have not been complaining or making you chase them for payment or calling your sales people for special deals. You can maximize sales with these customers and maximize your profits.

Your B customers will be the ones you can train to become A customers through a plan to improve the areas in which they are deficient.

The C customers can be trained to be B customers in the hopes that they may some day be A customers as well. They also are at risk of turning into D customers, however, and subjective factors like length of service should not be used to allow them to remain customers once they have passed into this state.

Service With a Purpose

Customer service with a purpose means that the ultimate purpose of customer service is to bind good customers to your firm while dissuading bad customers from frequenting your business unless you can make a profit. To achieve this, the program is designed to make doing business with your firm incredibly easy for A customers, easy for B customers, and less easy for C customers. Similarly, when a customer calls in about service or production-related issues, how they are serviced depends on how they have been ranked.

Maximize profitability

The smart companies of the future will manage their customers to maximize profitability. Those who do not will continue to waste time, money and personnel on individuals and companies that cost them time with their best customers. "Total company focus" can eliminate the confusion.

References

• The ABCs of Smart Customer Service, James C. Rawley