» Customer Service

Effective customer service has many levels of meaning to it. On the surface, it may be thought of as a friendly greeting followed by a smile when a customer walks through the door, and prompt attention to the needs of that customer. If a customer seems to be looking for something, the employee of the establishment asks if they can be of assistance.

It goes deeper than that, however, encompassing literally every aspect of the customers all around experience in the store, restaurant or business. It alludes to the general quality of wanting to give the best possible experience to another. Often, this attitude is overlooked in the business world. The correlation between the business world and the rest of our lives, in this regard, is strong.

When we begin to think of customer service in terms of how we relate to everyone, rather than just the people whom we come into contact with at work everyday, we realize that it is an attitude that is lacking in stores and restaurants, but also in family dynamics and in general social settings. If we do not live our lives being courteous and friendly to strangers, to our neighbors, to our kids, then it is not likely that simply walking through the doors of our place of business will change our internal make-up and allow a selfless, friendly person to emerge for the next eight hours.

Customer service to some degree, is wanting to help others just for the sake of bringing them joy, wanting to see people happy, wanting to be a part of that in some way. For the most part, we live in a selfish society and most of us do not really seem to care if other people are happy or not, as long as we are happy. This is unfortunate, and this underlying attitude of me, me, me has deep and disastrous repercussions. It can be evidenced in advertising, in movies and television and in the snide, judgmental remarks that can be heard on the radio, and read in print. It goes beyond one’s personal opinion and it has evolved into a general collective psyche of selfishness. How do we move beyond this?

Well, first we must realize how deeply entrenched we are within it. If we go through our entire day without thinking of how we can be of service to another, not even one time, then we are completely and utterly wrapped up in ourselves. It is understandable that people live their lives this way, after all, we view the world and our place within it from our own eyes. Contrary to what your mother may have told you when you were a child, the world, in a sense, really does revolve around you. If you were not here to experience it through your body, then by all accounts, it would not exist. 

That being said, we can make the choice to move consciously throughout our lives, which we do when we strive to provide good customer service to another, and to strive to make other’s lives more rewarding just for the sake of seeing the joy in their eyes. Conversely,  we can choose to let the waves of emotion and selfishness be our navigator, pulling us forever in the direction of our own desires, what we want, what we need, to make us happy.

What comes as a surprise to many people, though, is that when they begin to consciously apply to principles of excellent customer service not just in their job, but outwardly, to all of the people in their lives, a sense of satisfaction and peace begins to grow within their lives. Suddenly, doing things for others is not an inconvenience anymore. It becomes a joy. It becomes a way of living that takes the focus off of oneself and gives it, with love, to another. It is generous, kind and loving, and it can transform a selfish life into one of greatness. It is customer service amplified.

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Customer service is what a business stands on. A happy customer means good business while a displeased customer can spell the doom. If you are running a business it needs no fresh mention that keeping the customers pleased is what you are aiming towards. This is true whatever might be your business, be it furniture storage or car sales or chimney sweeping or landscaping. But there is a concern. Do you really know whether your customers are happy? A business running peacefully and generating revenues does not always mean that the customers are happy. You might not know but your business may have the potential to give you more than it is currently doing. So, how do you judge it? The answer is market survey and what can be a better tool than anonymous shopping, the latest instrument in for judging the market.

Anonymous shopping is known by various names but what it actually does is the same. This is a type of shopping where the shopper acts as your surveyor but without disclosing the identity that he or she has been working for you. You might ask why this hush hush when you can straightaway ask your employees how the product or service is faring with the customers. Or you can directly ask your customers to give their views on the service and products. There are problems and these needs to be explained in details if you are looking to improve your customer service .

The first option was asking the customers to rate everything from the quality of the product to the ambience of the shop. This is good but you need to remember that most of the time the customers are the restless people and the complaining lot. It is true with any business that you will never be able to satisfy each and every customer because each of them will have unique matters to complain about. Moreover, hardly any customer will have the time and energy to fill up a long questionnaire and a long questionnaire is necessary for a detailed view on the customer service . This means that you might not always get the best of feedback from the customers.

The next step is to conduct regular inspection. It is possible to make sudden visits to your establishments and look how things are going on. But it has a problem. If the staff is somehow responsible for bad customer service , you will never know because the staff will put up a show for you and never ever allow you to get even a peep into their inefficiency. After all it is a matter of their survival and they will not leave a stone unturned to satisfy you. This means that you come back to where you started from. Your ailing business remains ailing or the potential is not reached.

Anonymous shopping sends in the shoppers who are like any other regular shopper and they shop. But they are the trained people who have the eye and ear for mopping up the minutest details including how your staff behaved or how much are they conversant about your business or whether they are giving the thrust where it is actually needed for selling your product or service. This is very important data that is analyzed and at the end it results in recommendations that are bound to improve your business. Here the companies that provide such special shopping services prove to be the friend and guide to many businesses, especially those that are associated to customer service directly.

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How many times have you got frustrated waiting for the salesman to answer your query? This is a situation that is faced by many customers on their visit to their favorite shops. The salesman may be busy, not available, reluctant or simply not cooperative or courteous. What happens in most of the case is that you decrease your frequency of visits to the place. The establishment loses its customer, and maybe one by one it stands to lose many customers. Customer service needs attention at the moment. This is a major problem faced by many establishments, where customers complain of poor service and decline visiting the place after some initial visits.

This is due to these factors that major companies are hiring the services of specialized shoppers, who visit shops and report on the customer service of the establishment. They take into account several factors such as

1. Whether the staff is greeting the customer who is entering or leaving the shop.
2. To check if the staff puts in extra efforts to help the customer.
3. If phone calls related to query or problem are responded well and quickly.
4. If the staff is listening attentively to all queries of the shopper and providing a solution effectively.

The hired shopper reports to the company about the nature of customer service found at the shop. If the service rendered by the staff is satisfactory, the company starts thinking about other areas that need improvement. The officer tries to identify the problem areas, so that measures can be taken to retain customers. It is a well known fact that finding new customers is much difficult than retaining old customers. Hence all companies, whether big or small give extreme importance to client service so that no customers are lost for poor service. If the company finds that client service needs to improve then it takes measures so that the quality of service rendered can be improved.

Any company that has the problem of poor customer service tries to find out ways so that the quality of service can be improved. There are many ways in which the service rendered by a company can be improved. The staff of the establishment should be given a specialized training so that they know what is expected from them. There are many establishments in which the staff were not aware about their responsibilities and often avoided doing many things. They should have updated knowledge about all the products that is available in the store, so that they can solve all the queries of the customers. If they are not aware about the products themselves they will not be able to perform their duties themselves.

If you are the owner of any restaurant, then you should take special care of your customer service . People usually visit restaurants to spend some leisure time with their family and friends and if under these circumstances the person has to keep waiting for the attention of the staff, and then nothing can be more depressing than this. People usually ask about food, ingredients and spend some time thinking over the perfect menu. At these times, they need full cooperation from the existing staff so that their visit is pleasant and enjoyable. Nothing makes a customer happy than attention and courteousness of the staff. What more do you ask for?

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A secret shopping service may be of many types. It usually involves finding out the consumer satisfaction measures taken by a given firm. Agents may be employed for conducting market surveys, internal auditing, employee performance appraisals, and office cleanliness inspection programs. They work under different profiles and use different media for communication. The primary mode of communication is through personal contact with the people concerned. The other modes are telephonic and electronic mail communication. Whatever the mode of communication, the feedback that is obtained is of utmost importance for the firm to improve the quality of its performance.

When a firm hires a secret shopping service to get information about the level of consumer satisfaction it is able to give to its consumers, it asks its agents to pose as consumers and interact with other consumers and the staff members to extract information. By interacting with other consumers an agent gets the general impression that people have about the products and the consumer satisfaction levels of a given firm. The agents interact with the store staff members to assess their attitude towards their clients. The agents collect the information and make reports. They submit these reports to their employers who work on these reports to understand whatever is happening in their front offices and take the necessary steps accordingly.

A secret shopping service can be used by the top managers of the firm to assess the general performance of their employees. The agent can observe the knowledge of an employee regarding the products that he sells and about any competing products available in the market. The employees should be able to convince the consumers about the superiority of their products over all other similar products available in the market. The employee should be able to retain an existing consumer and attract more and more new ones with his consumer relationship prowess. He should not indulge in any unfair practices, such as keeping some products aside for personal use, without paying for them or taking the permission of seniors. He should be reliable in terms of financial matters of the firm and he should not try to make any personal profit from while doing his job.

A firm can use a secret shopping service to find out about its major competitors in the market. It can send agents to the stores of its competitors to understand their marketing strategy, the grade of their products and the consumer satisfaction techniques employed by them. With this information, a firm can understand its own strengths and weaknesses and act accordingly to improve its position in the market in comparison to its competitors. Sometimes agents are sent by organizations to different departments for conducting internal audits. These agents interview the personnel from different departments about their style of working, and inspect their files and other office documents for the standard of maintenance.

A secret shopping service can be used to assess the efficiency of maintenance of the premises of a retail outlet. Outlets that are shabbily kept or in a dilapidated condition do not attract consumers even though the products that they sell may be of very good condition. The outlets that are maintained in top condition are the ones that attract a lot of consumers and retain them for a long time. A store that is well maintained and that has a friendly ambience about it leaves a lasting impression on the visitor.

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Customer service is of prime importance for the success of any business. Today, a lot of industries and business houses are competing with each other for satisfying their consumers to the best of their abilities. There are some basic ingredients to satisfying consumers. The degree and type of consumer satisfaction given by an organization depends on five factors. They are namely, the culture of the organization, the temperament of the consumer relationships executive, the type of consumer behavior exhibited by the leadership of the organization, the expected level of consumer satisfaction conveyed to the consumer relationships executives and the training that is provided by the management in this regards.

The culture of the organization plays a vital role in determining the attitude the employees develop towards consumers. Generally those firms that lay a high emphasis on office etiquette offer customer service of high standards. This is usually seen in the organizations belonging to the hospitality industry. The staffs of hotels and airline industries are, for example, very courteous with their guests because these organizations lay a lot of stress on organizational etiquette. They are polite and helpful not only to the consumers, who are outsiders, but also they interact with each other in a polite and professional manner.

The personality of the consumer relationships executive matters a lot when it comes to maintaining cordial relationships with the consumers and winning their loyalty. Some customer service executives have a natural flair for interacting with consumers. They are always in a good mood, socialize with the clients, creatively describe about the products that the firm offers and patiently listen to the consumers and address their queries. Naturally consumers feel that they are being given importance and remain loyal to the firm. Of course, it is not that only those who have a good temperament only make successful consumer relationship executives. There are a number of people who have learned these skills during their course of work and have become some of the best consumer relationships executives over the years.

Consumer satisfaction is not the responsibility of the public relationships executive only. It is the responsibility of each and every employee of the firm. It starts with the topmost level. The subordinates learn from the leaders. If the leader behaves well with his visitors and strives to satisfy them then the subordinates will automatically strive to provide customer service to the best of their abilities. The subordinates cannot be expected to provide a consumer satisfaction of higher level than his superiors.

Many times the expected levels of consumer satisfaction to be offered is not conducted by the top management to the consumer relationship executives. It is always better to convey the meaning and the criteria of satisfying consumers clearly to the concerned executives. There is no point in conveying the expectations vaguely. The management should also provide customer service and communication skills training to all those individuals who are lacking in these, so that consumer satisfaction of the desired level can be achieved. It is seen that when all these five elements are taken care of by any organization, the levels of consumer satisfaction that they provide automatically improves. Employees can also be given some attractive incentives for satisfying their clients well. On the whole, these measures are known to ensure high business success.

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Companies can improve their standard quality of customer service by using the secret customers. A secret customer is supposed to act as an ordinary customer to find out detailed information for the management to evaluate the service and technical expertise of employees. The success of any company is very much dependent on their service to the customer. The reports from the secret customer will help the company to improve their status by increasing sales, lowering employee attrition and decreasing losses due to employee error. Secret customer can help the organization by their quick, friendly, personal service with 100 per cent satisfaction.

Customer service is mostly the pillar of success for any industry. Each and every year the companies have a distinctive budget to satisfy their customer. In case a customer drops in to your shop or business facility, it means either the customer wants to check out the product or service line up or he wants to buy the product or service. In such an occasion the customers must feel happy and content, by the staff. They should be treated properly so that they take the decision to buy. If they receive a healthy and friendly service from the staff, they will come back to your facility again and again. They will also recommend your company to their family and friends, which will ultimately increase sales.

If the customers are not satisfied with the customer service at your business outlet, they will not buy the product or service and they are not going to come back either. On top of this they are going to narrate their bitter experience to their acquaintances, eventually this will lead to fall of sales. So, this is a very important factor which controls the revenue of the company. You can not ignore this fact at all. That is why a regular evaluation of the service provided to the customers is very much required. This will give you a chance to improvise on the attitude of the employees to the customer and the general service received by the customers.

A yearly customer service audit is going to help your company in a great way. This audit is going to identify the weakness of the service provided. It will also suggest you a recommendation to solve this issue, to increase the customer satisfaction by improving the performance of the employees. Secret customer will check with the department of customer assistance in person and by telephone. They will act as a real customer enquiring on a certain product or service. They will try to acquire as much information as possible and then note it down to the evaluation form. Finally they will produce the report using all their findings.

This will be the perfect way to identify the negative sides of the customer service section. Once you identify your faults, it becomes easy to rectify. Your employees might require training, or they might be looking for any reward, whatever is the scenario, you are going to have better quality service for your customers, if you follow the recommendation. These audit programs can be customized just to fit into your specific requirement. If you search internet, you will find many specialized auditor firms working on this. They will be able to provide you with the right solution for your business growth by improving customer satisfaction.

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Nowadays almost all firms belonging to any particular industry are offering more or less the same products and facilities. Hence their customer service and the satisfaction of the clients become determining factors in drawing clients. The clients are no longer at the receiving end. They have a wide range of choice. Hence it is up to the firms to try their best to retain their old client base and attract new ones. Hence maintaining a happy clientele is imperative to succeed in any business. Any business is done to serve its clients who play a major role in deciding its fate.

In order to improve client satisfaction, many firms are nowadays employing agents to visit their retail sites and give them a feedback as to how the clients out there are being treated by their appointed staff. These agents pose as buyers and do not disclose their identities to the staff of the firm. They observe the quality of customer service being rendered, evaluate it against the factors specified by the firms and write reports. These reports are provided to the managers and decision making bodies of the firm who bring in the necessary reforms and strengthen the already present plus points. This method of evaluating the end user satisfaction enables the firm to understand how effective it is in delivering its products and facilities to the end user.

Any firm that wants to make it big in its business should bear in mind that the onus of satisfying the end users does not lie with the staff directly interacting with the end user alone. The attitude for satisfying the end users should be imbibed right from the top level of the firm. The top management should realize that customer service should be aimed at exceeding that expected by the end user rather than just meeting the requirements. This is because each and every firm will try to satisfy its clients and hence client satisfaction itself is a competitive affair and the firm that satisfies its clients the best wins at the end of the day. Training regarding developing healthy and long lasting client relationships should be provided to not only the client serving and marketing personnel but also to all the employees even if they are not directly involved in interaction with the clients.

The first thing that a firm should do to train its employees to provide excellent customer service is to learn to analyze the client and accurately assess what he wants. The agents who visit the retail outlets of a firm observe the staff that provides customer service . They see the disposition of the staff towards the end users. The employee who presents himself in an amicable manner to the end users is given credit. Those employees who are impatient or aggressive with their clients are evaluated negatively. The time duration for a client to get the attention of the staff and that taken for a transaction to finalize is also noted. The lesser the time spent, the greater is the ranking of the staff being evaluated. Sometimes these agents present the staff with hypothetical situations and see how well they respond to them. The staff members are evaluated on their demeanor, presentation and communication skills, accuracy of information that they provide to the clients and how well they carry out the tasks entrusted to them to their best of their capabilities.

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It is the customer service that is thoroughly dissected by the special or anonymous shopping method. The dissection is necessary for any business that deals with the customers first hand. The importance of surveillance of the service quality of these businesses is felt when the growth of the business becomes stagnant of the business declines. The companies need constant monitoring of the quality to stay in the competition and the agencies providing special shopping services are considered the best friends to such businesses.

We all talk about customer service but do we know what do we mean when we mention the words? Literally it means serving the customers or providing service to the customers. it is true as per definition but the service so given is no ordinary service. When we speak of the words we expect something which is more than just plain service. Customers are there to be served and the company is there to do that only. So there is nothing new to it. But what is new is the level of service on offer. When we talk of service we mean service that exceeds the expectations of the customers. It also means maintaining the level of service so that it never falls short or behind. This means that there must be a consistency. The best service is that which the customers never dreamed of.

Maintaining the level of customer service in the very large businesses is a real problem. The problem is aggravated when the company is a chain of outlets or a franchise chain. The stores and establishments spread all across the country and the globe covers such a huge geographical area that monitoring the quality of customer satisfaction seems to go out of hand. It is very difficult to build up a reputation but a simple slip can bring it down in a matter of few days or even hours. Building up the lost reputation is even tougher than starting afresh. To maintain the level of expectation the business should remember that the responsibility does not lie only with the front end but also the support the back end provides.

Customer service starts right from the point where a product is designed and manufactured. The thinking that goes into the manufacturing itself is a form of serving the customer. The product needs to be customer friendly to gain popularity and this is what the company wants. The next stage is the stage where the product is brought to the customers and for a popular product the availability when the demand is at its zenith is the best occasion. So there needs to be a constant supply of the popular objects to ensure good flow of business. Finally, comes the front end, the showcase and window for the customers to see through. It is the most important part of any business serving customers though it is the final stage of the whole process that goes behind the service.

A very popular way to monitor the customer service is through the special shopping programs. Though the shoppers deal and interact with the front end, the observations that these shoppers make and send in for analysis tells much more. An analysis of the front end result often indicates what is going wrong in the back end. The results provide a valuable insight into the state of affairs and the company can take measures to ensure that they are providing the best to its customers and not compromising as far as the level of satisfaction goes.

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Satisfying the consumer is of prime importance of any business today. The sales staff member at a retail outlet might be thinking that she is extending excellent quality assurance services to consumer of the products of her firm, but the consumer might not be satisfied at all. Hence it is better to know what a consumer actually means by consumer satisfaction. Many people look out for professional demeanor from the sales staff members. They expect them to patiently provide them with whatever they wish for. Client satisfaction is a highly individualistic affair and hence it is very important for the sales staff to be educated on consumer psychology to deal smoothly with the consumers.

Quality assurance services include different types of jobs. They are not about simple interaction with clients in a polite manner and making them happy. Many firms train their frontline executives in dealing with consumers. It is quite a vast but interesting subject. At the end of the program the frontline executives are well groomed and ready to interact in a professional manner with the consumers. These days, consumer satisfaction has become a powerful competitive factor. Business houses are spending huge amounts of money in satisfying their consumers. It is very important for a business house to provide ace consumer service to excel and survive in business, however good the standard of the products that it manufactures may be.

There are certain factors that a frontline executive needs to keep in mind while providing quality assurance services to the consumers. Consumers might be of different personality types. But the executive should behave in a professional manner with the toughest of consumers. Consumers look upon these executives for expert advice. This is where the executive should be clever enough to provide a convincing suggestion to the consumer when he is struggling to get one. The executive should understand the personality type and requirement of the client and conform his style of interaction to match to that of the consumer.

One of the most vital quality assurance services attributes is to be a good listener. It is agreed that a frontline executive should definitely have tremendous verbal skills, but he should be a good listener too. The consumer might be dying to put forward his point and he will definitely get irritated if people do not listen to him. A prudent executive will follow the three golden principles of communication. i.e. what to speak, when to speak and how to speak. He will be a good listener and will get a good understanding of the needs of the consumer in the first few seconds of speaking to him.

The quality assurance services might look easy but they are quite difficult to follow when it comes to the practical situation in a marketplace. The consumers might be very irritating and illogical. They might express anger and insult an executive. Tackling all these situations requires one to control his emotions, think wisely and take quick action. A sales executive is a human being after all and it is really difficult for her to maintain her cool all the time. It is not an inborn trait. She has to practice a lot to extend hundred percent services to the consumers who visit her stores. However, some people possess a natural flair for good consumer interactions and they are the ones who satisfy the consumers the most.

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Many business houses engage agents for quality assurance jobs. They send the agents to their retail outlets and ask them to give them a feedback of the performance of their sales staff out there to evaluate the level of consumer satisfaction that they are providing at present. It is not only that they send agents to retail outlets. They send them to their production houses also to see if the product is being manufactured in strict accordance to the criteria set by the production experts. Any discrepancy is supposed to be reported immediately to the concerned authorities.

Quality assurance is the prime motivational factor for any business house and it does everything to give itself that. A business house always strives to produce excellent products to the best of its ability. A good client feedback gives it the confidence to proceed forward and make progress. But manufacturing a product of superior grade is not an easy job and selling it is also equally tough. Hence, a business house spends huge amounts of money in locating talented people, employing them and rewarding them for their appreciable output. After all, it is these people who play a vital role in making the business a grand success.

The large business houses usually have a quality assurance department. The professionals out there strictly check if the manufacturing units are strictly following the procedural instructions set and conveyed to them. These professionals evaluate each and every piece of the final product before allowing it to go into the market. But sadly enough it is seen that many products available in the market today are of inferior standard. They are defective or do not deliver what is promised by their producers. Then, it is but natural for anyone to wonder how the product passed the stringent evaluation that it is subject to, just before being released into the market.

These days the buyers also seem to do not want quality assurance very much. They are buying whatever is available without any qualms as they do not have the time to make an issue of the inferior standard of the products. This is the reason the manufacturers have started taking the buyers for granted and are producing goods that are not up to the mark. It has become common with the buyers to accept products with minor defects. The salesmen use their tricks to convince a buyer into buying these defective items. The clients notice the defects only after they take the product home. Many times they think they can overlook a defect but they release that their decision to buy the product was wrong when it starts delivering less than what it is supposed to.

The buyers think expecting quality assurance is a bit too much on their part, as an ideal product never seems to exist in reality these days. They do not take the trouble to complain about any dissatisfaction that they experience on account of the product. In this, it is not the buyer only who is to blame. The process of making complaints is too cumbersome, expensive and time taking. The officer in charge of considering the complaint and taking action are too lazy. They do not respond in time and most often they are inefficient. The consumer is made to visit the complaint office a large number of times and the process is unnecessarily complicated. The consumer gets tired of all this and wishes he had not complained in the first place at all.

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