Strategic Customer Service
Why Think Strategically About Customer Service?
Since the 1950’s research has taken place into what makes for a successful customer interaction. Staff Customer Service Training has been a feature of commercial life for many years. Why, then, try and advertise a course in strategic customer service?
Strategic Customer Service brings together both the required business outcome and the place the customer holds in the heart of the business plan. It is obviously vital for any service providing industry to maintain good day-to-day relations with their customers. It is equally important, though, to consider the long term and bigger-picture view of how the customer sees their relationship with the organisation.
From the organisational point of view strategic customer service is the customer service training of old writ large. It is pre-empting the customer’s needs. It is establishing what the service offered by the organisation is and arranging the organisation to provide that service. It is knowing when you can’t help a customer in order to decide if you wish to broaden provision or direct them to another means of meet their need.
Part of the strategy required at this level is getting the voice of the organisation correct. Questions such as who is our customer and what language do they understand and speak are key. The voice of the organisation is also making clear what the organisation does and doesn’t do. People don’t mind if it is not part of the service you offer as long as you are clear about it.
Choice is a buzz word today – we should have choices for educating our selves and our children; supermarkets offer choices of foodstuff and packaging. Choice for the service providing organisation thinking strategically is equally important. Choice here is about deciding what exactly the service on offer is.
The key to strategic customer service must to ask the customer what they see when they approach the organisation. It is vital to assure oneself that the day-to-day relationships between customers and organisation are good. It is equally vital, though, to research the customers’ view of the organisation. This may be in terms of the customer journey or customer experience.
If the customer has a good relationship with the person they usually deal with but actually thinks the customer service offered by the organisation stinks then you have problems. You are probably keeping the customer because of their sense of relationship to an individual rather than the feeling that the organisation is there to help.
This leads me to something of a chicken and egg situation: what comes first the voice and offering of the organisation or what the customer wants. In most cases organisations begin by offering a service that fulfils a need locally or nationally. During expansion the meeting of that need may remain but the approach by the organisation may change disproportionately to the actual service it provides. This is a dangerous place to find oneself.
This course helps you to explore your organisation from the customer’s point of view. It will give you ideas to change your customer approach and plan to meet your customer’s needs by being more focused and targeted in your approach.