How to Set up a Customer Service Program

When was the last time you hung up a telephone angry, grumbling to yourself that X company didn’t care about its clients? If you are a business owner, here is how you can set up an effective customer service department that will get you ahead in business and build loyalty amongst your customer base.

Instructions

1. Find five companies that make you angry and write down the reasons why. Knowing what you hate in the customer service market will serve to guide you in your decision-making process. For example, if you hate long wait times on automated service, you might set up a voicemail system, or you might move your clients towards online communications by never answering the phone. On the other hand, if you hate never being able to talk to anyone, you might choose to beef up your phone staff to eliminate long wait times and bulky automation.

2. Find five companies that you love to deal with and write down the reasons why. Emulating what others do right is a great way to go about setting up your customer service department. Not all customer service solutions fit across the board from industry to industry, but a creative entrepreneur can, with some imagination, come up with something fresh and exciting that achieves the same result. Companies that do it right are as important to you as those that have treated you wrongly.

3. Decide whether you want to save the bottom line with every customer, or whether you want to create good will amongst your clients even when it comes as a hit to the bottom line. There are benefits and drawbacks to both. Knowing what your goals are will help you to make that decision effectively. If you are looking for the latter, you might have a company policy that whoever answers the phone has complete authority to solve any problem a customer might have, including the granting of refund checks if required. On the other hand, if your goal is to protect the bottom line with every client, you might create a hierarchy, limiting the options available to those who answer the telephone. In so doing, refund checks, as an example, would be fewer and further between, but you run the risk of being considered less than wonderful to deal with.

4. Put your customer service rules in writing for all members of your customer service department to follow and test your employees, new and old, on the material regularly.

5. Set up a fake client account and call in as that client if you have doubts about how your staff is handling certain situations.

Tips & Warnings

• Customer service doesn’t happen just because someone answers a phone. It comes as the result of careful consideration given to the image your company seeks to portray. There is no right or wrong way to do it. There are simply considerations of loss and gain when setting up your service department.

• Be careful about policing your employees too much.