Customer Service

In the book Chief Customer Officer, Jeanne Bliss lays down three primary reasons why customer service suffers: Motivation, Metrics and Mechanics.

• Motivation: Employees will follow the path laid down by the leaders of the organisation. They will always want to be a part of what is of the greatest importance to the organisation. So if the leaders are not clearly signalling the importance of customer service through their actions, and not just words and catchy slogans, the rest of the organisation will simply follow suit.
  
• Metrics: Metrics are criteria by which success is measured, and are clear guidelines to employees how they should focus their efforts. Very few organisations have metrics measuring customer satisfaction that are followed with the same zeal as revenue and profit targets. Without metrics, there is simply no initiative for the employees to drive performance in customer satisfaction.
  
• Mechanics: When a customer interacts with an organisation, he/she has to often move along from one part of the organisation to the other. If the processes for moving the customer along from one department to the other is not well oiled and the departments act and behave as water tight compartments, it causes the customer a lot of pain. In many organisations, the mechanics to move the customer seamlessly across departments is often missing, leaving the customer bewildered and often disgruntled. How often we ourselves have said, "Don't you people ever talk to each other?"