Broadband and Me

Satisfy the Customer

Iunctura Daily -- Center for Strategic Relations

How employees can embrace customer satisfaction
Most organizations don't consider customer satisfaction as part of the business process. Often employees are overly focused on daily fires, rather than the desires of your customers.
Here are a few strategies to involve employees in customer satisfaction:
Invite customer feedback and opinion on specific points,
Help customers make better buying decisions with education,
Regularly practice customer service lessons from training,
Actively measure custoemr satisfaction interactively,
Listen to customers complaints without objection,
Pre-answer common questions before face-to-face interactions,
Help customers reduce their costs through your organization,
Let your best train the customer service team,
Document and share successes regularly in positive way,
Build customers satisfaction into your delivery and support functions,
Work from the money to the executive seats,
Encourage peer review of customer service implementation,
Focus on personable people before specific product knowledge,
Ask front-line employees, "How can we improve the customers experience?"
Understand the business is only as good as the last customer transaction,
Measure employee performance by customer satisfaction measures,
Train regularly to address specific customer concerns,...

I like this kind of thinking. Not because its new, or complicated but simply becuase it is simple to the point of common sense, although it is far from common.

I miss this about my current role. Although I do deliver projects effectively to the end customer I rarely get to think like a customer, despite being one. And perhaps even worse my customer (for my deliverables effectively end up being myself or a close colleague.

Mental note to me - have to get inside the heads of customers more...