Tomorrow in honor of
Customer Service Week, Robert Norley, will be riding with one of his garbage collection crews and
emptying the trash bins of his customers,
the good citizens of Exeter. This is perfect example of creating a
customer-centric culture from the top down, reason number three in our
series on
Five New Reasons to Celebrate Customer Service Week.
Here's hoping that while Mr. Norley collects the trash he will also take the time to talk to his customers, fulfilling
reason number two,
"Listen to your customers and take action upon their complaints and
suggestions." Here's also hoping that Mr. Norley rides with his
employees frequently, not just during Customer Service Week.
One CEO who applies come C-level muscle the other 51 weeks of the year is Steve Jobs,
who is rumored to respond directly to customer queries. And
Steve Loring cites the CEO of a credit union who
"...routinely listens in as his 200 agents take calls. He
uses a scoring system for every one of the 20 calls he listens to each
month, and then uses that information to modify the way the credit
union is delivering service to its members. So whether the CEO’s
analysis results in a change to training programs or a shift in using
different agents for different levels of customers, executive level
involvement is more than a marketing slogan with this credit union."
Apparently
this investment of the CEO's time and attention paid off with a
positive ROI in 5-6 months and the credit union increased its
membership by 22% in a year.
So "How many people are there between your customer and your CEO?"
asks InfoWorld's Bill Snyder. He believes that
"The
problem with many businesses is that they have too many customer
service firewalls in place. There is no accountability. There are no
common complaint-routing protocols, and escalation procedures for
getting things resolved are spotty at best. Many businesses think
nothing of spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on customer
acquisition, but when it comes to spending on customer retention, there
isn't any calculation on what it costs to reduce churn."
And he's right. According to
research out of the U.K.
The Ken Blanchard Companies
found that even though good customer service is an essential
competitive advantage in a downturn, only 10% of businesses reported
customer service as important challenge in 2008 and, "only 38%
recognized it as any kind of priority at all."
Moreover,
a study by Oracle
found that while 83% of the managers felt that customer satisfaction is
important, more than half of their customers, "did not judge customer
service to be effective - a quarter viewed them as ineffective with a
further 29% judging them to be neither effective nor ineffective."
So, what can fix this disconnect? A CEO who isn't afraid to roll up his or her shirtsleeves and take out the trash.
