Today I will write about basic principles of Customer Service. The reason for writing this post is these days lots of companies are facing problem when it comes to customer service be it National or International company. I would say National companies are facing more problem compare to International after having great knowledge about local customers. Before starting kindly make your mind that Customer Service is not a Rocket Science, still companies are unable to cop up with situation. In this post basically I will focus on a specific Gurgaon based Real Estate company. This company is suffering from great customer dissatisfaction. I must say that top management is doing their best but the main problem is not at the right time or right place. The quote of management guru Prahalad applies here and is like this “Put your strategy at right time on right place. First of all I will write about few basic principles of customer service. 1. Indentify the origin of Problem- The main reason is companies are doing their best but they are unable to identify the origin of problem. According to me Top Management should identity the problem while keeping long term goal in mind. Here I will give a nice example- Companies can solve problem by providing full support (Investing in establishing separate department, heavily investing on technology) but my question is have you found the origin of problem ?, Have you ever noticed that why the same problem is being raised from different customer throughout the years. If this is correct it means there is Big Loopholes in your system which you are unable to identify. For instance, if you are receiving same query from different customers, than question arises that have you found permanent solution or designed any system to mitigate that problem? Most of the answers will be NO! What most of the companies are doing is that they will start solving the problem once they receive for years and years. But I would suggest please indentify the origin of problem and try to mitigate the root of that special problem instead of working like ass.
2. Vision/Goal should be clear- This is very basis point that before you go to find better solution for state of the art customer service. First make it clear that what is the vision of your company? The goal of company should be understood by all the departments in same way. In most of the places what I have seen is that Goal of various departments varies from each other. For instance accounts departments will demand money on time without any compromise where as CRM department will try to give few preferences to customer. Moral of this point is goals of all the department should contribute towards Vision of company instead making contradiction statement.
3. Investment in Resources- When it comes to best customer services, companies needs to invest towards well skilled Human Resources. The reason being when your customer is dissatisfied it means they will heavily blast on your employee with their concern. Than what happen your employee will start feeling stressed and at that point of time either they will leave the organization or they will pass wrong/confidential message to customers and that will again lead huge customer dissatisfaction.
4. Online marketing- When I say online marketing it does not mean only promoting your company/products via internet. In my word it means doing your most of the work using technology and internet. Even in this era you will get huge amount of feedback from customers and competitors.
There is lots of thing to improve in customer service but it depends upon on vision of your company and the most important where do you want to see your company in long run.
For more details on customer service kindly email me your concern at lalit.isme10@gmail.com
