Transcript Using Quality to Improve Customer Service

www.mubeena.net
Foundations of Customer
Service
Using Quality Control to Build and
Improve Customer Service
..with practical tips and findings from the latest
research on quality customer service issues..
www.mubeena.net
Program Overview
By the end of this presentation, you will acquire knowledge of
THE FOUNDATIONS OF CUSTOMER SERVICE
1. Creating a Company Customers Love doing
Business With
2. 6 Steps to Improving Customer Service Using
Principles of Total Quality Management
3. Issues Surrounding Self-Service
www.mubeena.net
Creating a Company
Customers Love Doing
Business With
Maintain Internal Harmony within
the Organization to Provide
Quality Service to Customers
www.mubeena.net
Customer Service Philosophy
The core of customer satisfaction is COMPANY CULTURE
• Company Culture cascades from top Management
• Customers sense that your company is unique and different
• Customers know that you have their best interest at heart
• Company does not overlook ‘Team Spirit’ in business
A Golden Rule of Company Culture: Companies must take
care of their own people first. When that is done, the customers
they service are naturally happier.
The Customer comes Second
www.mubeena.net
Build a Customer-Oriented Culture
• Employees will treat customers the way they are
treated by Management.
Those who are not served
well will not serve well.
Employee belief system
Business
Culture
Employee Relations
Customers and Suppliers
www.mubeena.net
Who Companies need to Hire
Hire people who are good with people, rather than just their
technical abilities and/or product knowledge.
Hire those who possess attributes that cannot be easily taught.
•
Attitude: A fundamentally positive attitude toward work
•
Co-operation: Appreciative of work interdependency
•
Energy: Have a “fire” to accomplish
•
Service Ethic: Doing what is right without regard for profit (If
you do the right thing, you will ultimately profit)
www.mubeena.net
Employee Relations
Provide an environment where employees are happy to serve your
Company and hence, serve your customers.
• Encourage employees to look at work as a fun and personal
experience and to enjoy coming to work every morning.
• Instill ‘Company Family’ values to enhance employees’ sense of
belonging and pride. Invite family members of employees to join
corporate social activities.
• Employees must feel unafraid to make decisions impacting their
self-esteem
www.mubeena.net
What’s in it for the Employee
BOSS
CUSTOMER
SALES EMPLOYEE
“The boss is getting
business, the customer is
getting what he/she wants,
so what’s in it for me?”
Managers should take an active responsibility to diversify job
descriptions with sales employees’ career goals.
www.mubeena.net
Caring in Business
If you expect 100% from employees, then give them 100%.
“Without caring, there can be no quality.Caring for
customers leads to productivity, innovativeness, comfort
and initiation from the customer.”
When employees get 100%, customers get 100%.
www.mubeena.net
Vision and Mission
• Make employees aware of and involve them in setting the
company’s ongoing vision and mission of business.
• When employees can’t decide what course of action to take, train
them to go back to the company’s mission statement to help them.
• Post the company customer service philosophy over your offices
so that employees are continually reminded of their job goals.
Every employee is part of a company’s vision for itself
www.mubeena.net
Communicate for Internal Harmony
For Managers: Share company information without reservation..
•
Let employees know where the company is headed and that they
are a critical contribution to the company’s growth.
•
Encourage and regularly arrange for open dialogue between
employees and Management to find out perceptions that may
affect employee attitude and motivation.
To get desired behavior from employees, Management must know
what employees are thinking about the company they work for.
www.mubeena.net
Instilling Sales Philosophy
• Do not react negatively to negative customer behavior.
• Never say NO to a customer. Find a way to maintain contact.
• Employees must believe that the customer is the center of the
company’s universe.
• Encourage employees at every organizational level to reveal
information that could benefit the company’s growth.
Correct communication is the key to positive customers
www.mubeena.net
Service in Action
Customer Service means taking someone else’s problem upon
yourself and fixing it for them. Being liked is not the only goal.
How to handle BAD CUSTOMERS (S-A-V-E):
1. Sympathize: Agree with the customer’s complaint.
2. Act: Take action so that the customer believes that he/she is
getting immediate attention.
3. Vindicate: Let them know how rare the problem is. “This is not
a normal occurrence in our company.”
4. Eat Something: Give the customer an unexpected ‘goodie’
before they leave.
www.mubeena.net
Bottom-Line Thinking
• Making service possible requires being realistic. Do not expect
ideal performance, and do not create the hope of unusual
possibility.
Today, the monetary unit is not the Dollar. It is the MINUTE
• Customers make a decision based not only on price, but also on
how much time they have to invest to get benefit out of a product.
Time is a VALUE UNIT.
www.mubeena.net
Customer Focus
Saturate the company with the voice of the customer
• Work as if there is a customer watches your actions all the time.
• Identify specific ways to measure customer service success.
• Conduct customer focus groups to get consumer reactions.
• Constantly rethink customer service policies to fit Company goals.
• Always express gratitude to the customers that bring business.
www.mubeena.net
Re-Engineering
Better customer service is a result of enforcing quality
• Re-Engineering is complex, costly, and time-consuming.
- It is an option if the organization has a goal of long-term
change and profitability.
• This process is connected to Total Quality Management (TQM)
where procedures and protocols are revised and updated to reduce
time and cost
www.mubeena.net
Applying Principles of Total
Quality Management for
Improving Customer Service
Steps to Ensure Quality in
Customer Service Processes and
Policies
www.mubeena.net
Origin of the Quality Concept
Edward Deming, 1950: Introduced QUALITY CONTROL in
Japan
Quality Control focuses on:
• Worker Involvement
• Communication
• Training
Quality Control helped Japan to transform itself from a country
with a reputation for poor goods into an economic superpower.
www.mubeena.net
Basis of Total Quality
The TOTAL QUALITY Movement is a reaction to
these basic organizational questions:
•
What do we do to make customers come back?
•
How do we make my employees happy?
•
How can we continue to bring money in?
www.mubeena.net
Defining Total Quality
Management
“Systematically figuring out where the real problem is
with employees, customers, or processes in order to
prevent them from occurring time and again.”
• Results of TQM include 25-40% bottom-line savings, increased
customer service quality, and faster procedures.
TQM requires Management to step back and look at the big
picture of the organization’s current state.
www.mubeena.net
Why TQM Could Fail
1. Top Management does not stay focused on the process, only
dedicating themselves to business.
2. No focus on what really matters. Focus is only on little
things of the process which are not high on the priority list.
3. No customers are involved in developing critical
organization-specific TQM principles.
In TQM, involve everyone and account for everything that
could be affected by the organization’s procedures.
www.mubeena.net
Beat the Fear Factor
 Managers must be able to get the truth out of their
employees in a non-threatening environment.
 Management must have the self-confidence to admit
and realize glitches in their administration.
 Once managers are open about what really goes on
in processes, lower level employees will not have fear
of retribution.
www.mubeena.net
Keys to TQM Implementation
Managers and employees who are open to new
methods of redefining business will be the primary
catalysts of change implementation.
1. Empower employees to make their own business
decisions. Management should be relieved of
extraneous pressures.
2. Identify and invest in those few who are vocal about
issues in the company. They could potentially win
over old-timers who have looked at work the same
way for many years.
www.mubeena.net
The 6 Steps to Customer
Quality
1. Research Customer Service trends and philosophy.
2. Get data on problems faced by customers.
3. Define BURNING ISSUES from the data.
4. Identify root processes of burning issues.
5. Modify existing processes/create new ones.
6. Indulge in Continuous Improvement.
www.mubeena.net
Step 1: Education
 Get journal articles on TQM, research guiding
principles, and case-studies.
 Attend seminars on the subject and talk with
prospective consultants.
 Be committed to learning and getting TQM training.
Organize your time to accommodate this important step because
only then can subsequent steps be followed
www.mubeena.net
Step 2: Assessment
Ask employees and customers:
1. What do you think should be stopped here?
2. What should we start doing here?
3. What are the things we ought to keep
doing?
Give them an open ended survey and ask them
to track their observations for 3 weeks by
completing sentences like ‘I wish we
would stop…’, ‘I hope we continue to…’,
and ‘I wish we could start…’.
www.mubeena.net
Step 3. Determine Burning Issues
The WHY Technique: When faced with
a problem, don’t ask WHY just once.
Why are we getting customer complaints about our product?
Burning Issue
Because we are shipping
out the wrong product!
Why are we shipping out the wrong product?
Because it is difficult to read
the 4th copy of the order form!
Why can’t the warehouse manager read the 4th copy?
Because we are using a 150year old print wheel!
Core of the
Burning Issue
www.mubeena.net
Step 4. Critical Process
Management
•
Determine CRITICAL PROCESSES related to
customer service in your organization.
• How long do these processes take?
(Are there any unnecessary steps that can be eliminated?)
•
Decide what is to be measured like response time,
aspects of service, and relevance to customers.
Know your business in terms of steps that
impact customers
www.mubeena.net
Step 5. Reorganizing
Customer Service Policies
and Principles
Get representatives that are affected by customer policies and a
consensus on the steps required to perform them.
Discuss whether steps are laid out in proper sequence, what takes
too long, what needs to be simplified, and what needs to be
measured to know how effective it is in terms of cost and time.
Benchmark processes in other companies to innovate within.
Get steps of critical processes down on paper
www.mubeena.net
Step 6. Continuous
Improvement
• Vigilant watching on maintaining the principles of quality
service.
• Making sure that new customer policies become part of every
employee’s everyday thinking, applying it to the work setting.
• Celebrating the implementation of successful customer
service with all employees.
Customer Satisfaction is directly proportional to an
organization’s internal quality.
www.mubeena.net
Customer Service Research
Source: Journal of Business Research,
Vol 56(4), Apr 2003. Special issue:
Buyer-seller relationships. pp. 323-340.
 A firm's market orientation positively influences
salespersons’ work attitudes
 Sales managers influence salesperson customer
orientation with their organizational commitment
 Salesperson orientation influences industrial
customers' intentions to switch service providers
www.mubeena.net
Customer Service Research
Source: Journal of Applied Psychology,
Vol 88(1), Feb 2003. pp. 179-187
 The perception of standards for service is
strongly related to employees' perceptions of
support from coworkers and supervisors
 Perceived support from coworker was
significantly related to service providers'
customer orientation
www.mubeena.net
Customer Service Research
Source: Journal of Management, Vol
30(1), 2004. pp. 149-160
 High Conscientiousness + Low Emotional
Exhaustion = High Call Volume
 High Conscientiousness + High Emotional
Exhaustion = Low Call Volume
 Call volume is not related to service
QUALITY
www.mubeena.net
Customer Service Research
Source: International Journal of
Human-Computer Interaction, Vol
16(2), 2003. pp. 211-234
 Website links to customer service and a site
privacy policy significantly increase
expectations of customer service
 The presence of product ratings on websites
increase perceptions of product quality
 Product ratings, customer testimonials, and
information privacy increase the likelihood of
purchase on a website
www.mubeena.net
Issues Surrounding SelfService Options for
Customers
The Concept of Self-Service
without Human Interaction
www.mubeena.net
Customer “Self” Service
SELF-SERVICE attempts to offer a win-win situation
with faster and easier access to service at a reduced cost
due to the elimination of human contact.
The biggest advantage of self-service is the reduction in
time. The biggest disadvantage is the lack of human
interface.
Self-Service is a contradiction in terms as the idea is for the
customer to help himself/herself
www.mubeena.net
Self-Service Issues
• The question of service as a concept that excludes
human involvement. Is there service without people?
• Self-Service only fits the technology-savvy and the gogetter type. Is Self-Service relevant to everyone?
The customer service landscape is continuously evolving and
perceptions of it change over time.
www.mubeena.net
Implications for Organizations
• Self-Service options must be accompanied
by active and positive user benefits
• Organizations must not assume that
customers know the benefits
• To be generally acceptable to customers,
self-service options must genuinely be timesaving
Organizations must engage in consumer research to know
consumers’ perceptions of service over time
www.mubeena.net
Why Self-Service
1. Time of Day
A large proportion of transactions occur after working hours which
are only possible through self-service channels
2. Type of Interaction
Making purchases is the most utilized aspect of self-service rather
than customer complaints and after-sales activities
3. Preference to use Self-Service
The internet is the fastest growing self-service purchasing outlet.
Customers usually say, “You can buy things over the net that
you can’t get anywhere else.”
www.mubeena.net
Activity for Organizations
 Have cost-effective human backup
for online and automated services
 Offer a choice of self-service or
dealing with a person at every stage
 Adapt systems to customers’
personal preferences and nuances
 Plan to deal with higher volumes of
customer contact through self-service
www.mubeena.net
Tools in Self-Service
The Telephone
 For a lot of customers the telephone keypad is a more
familiar and easy-to-use interface than a computer or
digital remote
 If well designed, the telephone is the easiest and most
efficient route to getting service from organizations
 Criticized for the lack of a written confirmation and for
being a non-visual medium
www.mubeena.net
Tools in Self-Service
The Internet
 Experienced users hail the internet as a selfsufficient tool where everything can be achieved
 Those who use the internet will continue using it
more frequently, thus increasing customer contact
 Regular users of the internet will not stop using
other channels of communication to get services
www.mubeena.net
Designing New Systems
 Get call-centre settings right. The telephone
is still a major communication channel
 Customers should get what they want with
the channel of their choice
 Solicit customer views when designing new
self-service systems as they know what works
 Customers should not have to repeat their
preferences when using different systems
www.mubeena.net
Behaviors of Self-Service
Users
AGE
 Younger people tend to be more enthusiastic about
self-service
 Confidence and experience among older people
make them better able to use self-service for aftersales and lodging complaints
www.mubeena.net
Behaviors of Self-Service
Users
LOYALTY
 Self-servers may be less loyal to a company’s
products
 If they are highly sophisticated, experienced, and
not concerned by personal touch, these
customers are less likely to be attached to a
particular supplier
www.mubeena.net
Target Audience for SelfService
1. SPEED Group
More male, younger, likely to choose the internet
2. HUMAN CONTACT Group
More middle-aged, prefer to use the telephone or
have face-to-face interaction
3. CONTROL Group
More female, older, more positive than other groups
about using kiosks, although primarily use the
telephone
www.mubeena.net
Analysis of Self-Service Cost
 Cheaper interactive interfaces generate
more verbal customer contact and therefore
do not reduce costs in the long-run
 Implementing cheap systems runs the risk
of failing to manage customer inputs which
will cause confusion and repetitiveness
www.mubeena.net
Best Self-Service Practices
Service
Need
Speedy
Simple
Satisfying
Service
Achieved
 Speed is the most important benefit of Self-Service
 Systems must have Simplicity for customers to get needed service
 Satisfaction results when a customer feels empowered and valued
www.mubeena.net
Self-Service Research
Source: Journal of Consumer Behavior,
Vol 2(4), Jun 2003. pp. 382-392
 Most consumers still prefer human interaction at key
stages of the purchase cycle
 Self-Service options are more accepted when the
consumer experience is in mind rather than for costcutting reasons
 Consumers thought automated touch-tone
telephone options represented poor service delivery
www.mubeena.net
Self-Service Research
Source: Journal of Business Research,
Vol 56(11), Nov 2003. Special issue:
Strategy in E-Marketing. pp. 899-906
 Respondents with high levels of technology
anxiety use fewer self-service technologies
 Technology anxiety predicts usage of selfservice technologies more than demographics
 Technology anxiety influences satisfaction and
intention to use self-service systems again
www.mubeena.net
Key Summary
Don’t rely only on sales for customer service. An
organization must possess internal harmony!
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Customer-Oriented Culture
Employee Relations
Customer Involvement
Research
Continuous Improvement of Services
Smooth Organizational Processes