What Is Poor Customer Service?
Sometimes, understanding what the opposite of a concept is can be the key to grasping the knowledge you need. If you know what poor customer service looks like, then it's easier to recognize great customer service strategies when you see them. If you can avoid customer service pitfalls, you're halfway to creating a customer service experience that keeps customers coming back.
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Not Measuring Satisfaction
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If you don't know how satisfied your customers are, then it's impossible to know how to recognize poor customer service practices within your organization.
"Management must make the measurement of service quality and feedback from the customer a basic part of everyone's work experience," says inc.com's Peggy Morrow.
Neglecting to gather feedback from your customers and having the tools to measure the quality of your organization's customer service is an important ingredient in a recipe for poor customer service.
Unclear Expectations
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Employees who have no idea what kind of experience customers should be having at your organization are like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off--aimless and blameless. Poor customer service is an inevitable outcome when employees receive no instructions about what they should be doing to provide customers with great service.
"Be very clear about specifying the behavior that employees are expected to deliver, both with external customers and their coworkers," says Morrow.
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Unfriendly Policies
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No matter how friendly or helpful your employees are, if your organization's customer policies are byzantine or at cross purposes with your mission, the customer is bound to feel that your customer service is poor.
"Knock yourself out to be a company that is easy to do business with," says Morrow. "Never let your customer service representatives say, 'Those are the rules I have to follow; there's nothing I can do about it.' There is always a way to satisfy the customer. You must give your employees the power to do so."
Ignoring Mistakes
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Ignoring or repeating mistakes is an indicator of poor customer service across the board.
When your organization makes a mistake, great customer service demands that strides be taken to make sure the customer leaves secure in the knowledge that you recognize your mistake and have worked to rectify it. It also demands that you learn from your mistake and determine what you need to do to make sure it doesn't happen again.
"Pay attention to service calls, since one complaint may be indicative of a larger issue," says inc.com's Tali Yahalom. "Does the company's internal infrastructure make it easy for employees to mis-enter a code that later results in a billing problem?"
Being Evasive
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If you've ever searched a company's website for a telephone number, or received several conflicting answers to a question from company representatives, then you have experienced poor customer service at its best--or worst.
Making it difficult for customers to find the information they need, or providing employees with information sure to confuse customers is a great way to lose customers.
"Sending customers down an endless rabbit hole" of menus, FAQs or other information is a bad idea, writes Yahalom.
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References
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- Photo Credit beautiful customer service rep image by Jaimie Duplass from Fotolia.com
