Customer service week 2013

It is customer service week 7-13 October 2013. Time to celebrate.
Surely this week is an opportunity to communicate to your employees and customers and ask then to join in a celebration of customer service. Only a few days to go so if you have not planned ahead here are a few ideas of things you could do. Please make sure that you take part in this 2013 customer service week, more and more of your customers are expecting you to. If you are already well ahead, please do not hesitate to add your suggestion so that the list can be even more comprehensive for next year.


Agenda

• Chairman back on the shop floor - @Centrom @AskaHomes
• Call for nomination of members of staff who go the extra mile - @GreaterAnglia
• Free Breakfast and afternoon tea for clients (Avanta Offices) @AvantaOffices
• Asking students for their feedback on the university - @LeedsMet
• Call for supporting the entry to a customer service award @NikonatGrays
• Members of staff tweeting about their work @BrightonHoveCC
• Free breakfast goodies (Stagecoach bus) @StagecoachEScot
• Looking for their customer service champion (@The_MMO)
• Manager serving on Front Desk (@TimeTideMuseum)
• NVQ certificate presentation to staff members - @DuploUK
• Bitesize Gober Sessions for staff and Partners (@YourGuinness)
• "If you were an animal?" (reverse) game/survey/prize draw (Sureflap) @sureflapnews
• A selection of passenger focused activities - @EMTrains
• Surprise gifts for customers who visit shops - @Airtel_life
• Team activity day with treasure hunt (@Moathomes)
• CEO joining in for charity (@HawksfordGroup)
• All members of staff involved in doing a customer service survey by telephone - @DuploUK
• Customer service team partaking in a community impact day - @Moathomes
• Speaking engagement at customer service week event - @RFClimited
• Staff job swaps (Stagecoach Bus)
• Collecting smiles via Instagram - @nationalexpress
• Appreciation - meet the customer service employees - @SmartSign
• Asking travellers what song they would like being played on trains (@SouthernRailUK)
• Visit by local MP to hear advisers in action - @hellosanctuary

And many more....

If you have other customer service celebration ideas, please do not hesitate to leave a comment below and don't forget to capture customers' ideas for customer service week next year...

Treat your customers like Royalty

Treat your customers like Royalty

Should you treat all your customers like Royalty? We have written previously about whether to offer a standard customer service to all or tailor it to individual customers or group of customers. The debate rages on as tailored customer service will obviously be much more expensive to deliver. There is even an argument that tailoring is not actually required. Most customers need similar things, it is just a matter of anticipating all the possible needs well and standardise the service to accomodate them. Irrespective of the choice made, there is one constant theme, customers should all be treated like royalty, whether they are important in terms of money spend with your company or not. Indeed, the so-called small customers might have rapidly increasing orders or may know a huge number of large customers and become a major referal source for your business.

Customer service: could your reputation go up in smoke?

Customer service reputation

One critical aspect of good customer service management is to be well aware of all the smoke signals sent by customer though all available channels including social media. If they are carefully monitored, captured and acted upon they can help create a positive feedback loop initiated by customers for the long term benefit of the company. A thorough handling of complaints for example is an easy to achieve step which could led you a long way towards achieving great results. On the other hand, if a company ignores them or thinks that all the customer feedback is unfair or inaccurate, it runs the risk of seeing a gradual deterioration of its trade and see its reputation go up in smoke.

Customer service at low tide

Customer service at low tide

"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked". This quote from Warren Buffet says it all. It can easily be applied to the field of customer service and every organisation should anticipate predictable changes in the environment they operate in and assess the impact they may have on their customer service performance.

BIG DATA and customer service

BIG DATA and customer service

Big data and customer service are definitely becoming the in-topics in the digital industry and there association is also increasingly linked with the ability to improve customer service. Capturing the data, harnessing the data, shaping the data, using the data are all common themes which make the headlines everyday. The power of modern computing technology and data analytics allows companies to capture and model the behaviour of their customers and gain a deep understanding of the key trigger points in their day today interaction with the business. Once the hidden patterns and correlations leading to a purchasing action are fully understood, companies gain predictive influence over their customers and can certainly encourage or stimulate additional purchases. Often this is done under the pretense of better customer service and improved responsiveness to customer needs. 

However, before pushing the experiment too far, it is important that companies reflect on the ethical attributes of the techniques being deployed. Provided they are genuinely aimed at delivering a better customer experience, they could be encouraged. If they are purely designed with the objective to milk more out of a customer, often without him or her realising it, then one should pause and make sure that the customers interest is safeguarded before proceeding.

Customer service: the path to nowhere?

Customer service career path

Is customer service a good career path for employees? Through the years of writing this blog, we have establish a (small) number of truth which could be hard to challenge. To name a couple, we have established that quality customer service is a key factor in the long term prosperity of an organisation and that employee satisfaction is a key success factor driving good customer service. Bringing the two together, it becomes clear that any organisation must be able to attract quality employees to its customer service teams and to make it attractive in the long run, convince employees that customer service offers a solid career path. To ensure their long term future companies must therefore make sure that enough attention is paid to the customer service career path, not only to allow development of individuals within the function but also to make sure that they can progress in others parts of the business, such as marketing for example, so that there customer interaction experience can be fully leveraged.